Wix vs Squarespace: Which Is the Best Website Builder for Your Needs?

Last Updated on February 16, 2024 by Ewen Finser

Having your own website comes with a lot of benefits. With 4.66 billion active internet users, nearly 60% of the world’s population is online. They shop online, find businesses online, decide whether to use a product or service by reading online reviews, and more.

If you aren’t online, how will people know about you or find your business? This is true whether you are a solopreneur (freelancer), a small business owner, or a large company. Even if you just want to share your passion for art, cooking, or dancing, online is the place to be.

With many content management systems (CMSs) available, Wix and SquareSpace are two popular options. However, which is the best for your website-building needs? Today, I dive deep into the main differences between these two website building platforms, look at their pros and cons, their pricing options, and which is easier to use.

Let’s dive in.

Bottom Line Summary: The winner is Wix, simply because you can do more without needing a background in coding. You get 250+ apps (Wix app market) to choose from to personalize your site, the subscription plans start at a lower price point, and you can move your elements to wherever you want on your page with the simple Wix editor. That said, if you are a solo designer, photographer, or visual artist, SquareSpace has better presets out of the box.

Main Differences Between Wix vs SquareSpace

The main differences between Wix vs Squarespace are:

• Page editor: Both feature drag-and-drop interfaces. With Wix, you can place your elements anywhere on the page, whereas with SquareSpace, your page elements are placed more structurally on the page with the help of content blocks (rows and columns).
• Ease of use: Wix is easier to use than SquareSpace as it is more beginner-friendly. It has Wix ADI, which is an artificial intelligence tool that asks you questions. Once it has your answers, it presents you with a website you can tailor (or choose something else).
• Features and tools: Both platforms have a significant number of built-in features, but Wix has a huge app library that helps you scale your site.
• Knowledge center: SquareSpace offers more helpful forums, videos, blog posts, webinars, and guides to help you figure out how to build a website and troubleshoot.

There are just a few of the main differences before I discuss each CMS in detail. Then, I discuss each separately so you can decide which platform will suit your needs best.

What is Wix?

Founded in 2006 by Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami, and Giora Kaplan, it took only 3 years before Wix was already used and loved by 1 million users. Fast-forward to today (2021), and 200 million users in 190 countries have used Six for their website building needs. Currently, more than 7 million websites are live that have been built using Wix.

The platform has 1,000+ features that you can test and use to create professional-looking websites. The purpose is to enable users to easily create a website after the founders realize that it is costly, frustrating, and challenging to create a website without tech know-how. With Wix, which helps you intuitively build sites, you don’t need any tech knowledge.

Wix Pros

• Drag-and-drop interface that lets you place your logo, photos, text boxes, and more anywhere on the page
• More than 800 templates
• Ideal for beginners to create their first website
• Lots of apps to choose from to improve website functionality
• With Wix Wizard, you get a personalized SEO tools to help ensure your site ranks
• Affordable starting plans

Wix Cons

• You need to edit your site twice: once for desktop view and once for mobile view
• Once your site is live, you can’t change your template
• No 100% free plan
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What is SquareSpace?

SquareSpace was founded in 2003 by Anthony Casalena. Today, the platform has nearly 3.8 million subscribers. In addition, more than 2.7 million websites are currently live that have been built using SquareSpace.

Compared to Mac (vs PC), SquareSpace is better suited for creatives because you can get really creative with your website. Plenty of built-in features and third-party extensions or plugins gives you customization options to design your website. So you can get it looking and working the way you want it to.

SquareSpace Pros

• An excellent blogging platform
• Mobile app so you can edit your site anytime, anywhere
• Stunning templates
• Offers high-quality customer support, 24/7
• Only need to edit your website once, as it features responsive web design (it’s optimized for both desktop and mobile)
• Change your templates with ease

SquareSpace Cons

• Not as beginner-friendly as Wix
• Only 113 templates
• Need some coding know-how to get the best out of your website design
• No 100% free plan (like a WordPress website, theoretically)

Is Wix or SquareSpace Easier to Use?

Even though Wix and SquareSpace both use drag-and-drop to create websites, their editors are vastly different. With Wix, you get an unstructured editor, meaning you can place your text, images, and videos wherever you want on the web page. If you have a keen eye for design, this is no problem, but if not, it is easy to create a chaotic-looking web page.

If you do mess up, there is a Site History function that lets you recover content. The platform also offers Wix ADI, an assistant that presents a website after you’ve answered some questions. If you are happy, great! You can go with this website, and if not, go to the regular editor and create your site.

SquareSpace, in contrast, has a structured editor. So you have Content Blocks in the form of columns and rows in which you place your text, images, videos, and other content. In essence, you click more times to get the same results you need on Wix.

With SquareSpace, you don’t need to edit your content for mobile and desktop separately as it uses responsive design. On Wix, a mobile-friendly version of your site is automatically created. Still, it isn’t always perfect, so you need to tweak your content a bit.Overall, if you are new to creating websites, Wix is your go-to. Its drag-and-drop approach is intuitive, and with Wix ADI, it doesn’t get any easier to set up a website.

However, if you don’t mind a learning curve and watching a few tutorials, SquareSpace is the platform to use.

Wix vs SquareSpace: Which Website Builder Makes the Most Professional-Looking Website?

It’s a tie. You can create professional-looking websites using Wix and SquareSpace.

Wix has more template options, but with more options comes indecisiveness too. While SquareSpace has fewer templates, their template designs are simply stunning. With some coding knowledge, you can create a genuinely professional-looking site.

Other SquareSpace Website Building Platform Features

There are a few other elements I want to note in this Wix vs SquareSpace battle:

SquareSpace Blogging CMS

With Wix, you have a separate blog editor for blog content. The editor is fine, but you can’t see what your post will look like on the front-end (what your visitors see).

SquareSpace wins with its blogging features. The best part is that you can search through your older posts, and this is a convenient tool to have if you create a ton of content.

SqureSpace eCommerce Features

It’s a tie here. Wix and SquareSpace aren’t pure eCommerce platforms. For Wix, you want to choose one of their eCommerce or Business plans if you need to accept online payments. You can also get some apps to integrate eCommerce features on your site.

I found that both platforms offer the same features in accepting payments, selling digital and physical products as an online store, creating mailing lists, setting up an import catalog, and more.

Marketing

The question here is whether you prefer quantity over quality. For example, Wix offers many marketing tools. Still, many customers prefer how SquareSpace’s marketing tools work and integrate with their site.

Here, it is best to see what tools you need and what CMS platform offers them.

SquareSpace SEO Tools

Is there a purpose to having a website, but no one can find it? You need SEO, and Wix does this really well. While Wix and SquareSpace offer the basics in search engine optimization, Wix has an SEO Wiz (wizard SEO tools) that helps you set up your SEO.

You can also adjust your URLs and tags, and you can set up SEO-friendly page redirects. Even better, you can install third-party apps, like Crazy Egg, to boost your SEO even more.

SquareSpace Apps vs Extensions

Everything in SquareSpace is in-built, and if you want anything more, there are third-party extensions you can add. The downside is that most of these are geared toward eCommerce, so there are extensions for sales and marketing, finance, fulfillment and shopping, and inventory and products.

With Wix, you have an App Market with apps made by Wix and by third-party creators. These apps let you customize your website and add features to make your site do what you need. For example, there are apps to send you notifications, set up calendars and take bookings, dropshipping tools, call conversion apps, and so much more.

Pricing for SquareSpace vs Wix

Whenever you need to choose a plan, you only want to pay for the elements you need. Otherwise, it’s like throwing money away, right?

With Wix and SquareSpace, there are 4 subscription plans each, so you can find the best solution for you. With Wix, if your business needs to accept online payments, there are 3 business and eCommerce subscription plans.

However, back to the vital question: which is better with pricing and what you get? Wix or SquareSpace website plan?

Wix Pricing

Fix (and SquareSpace) offers a free 14-day, no-commitment trial. There is no free plan. The rest of the plans Wix offers are Premium plan options.

Wix has two groupings of pricing plans:

1. Website plans are ideal for freelancers and small businesses to showcase your skills, products, and services.
2. Business and eCommerce plans are the way to go if your business website needs to accept online payments.

For the website plans, here are the subscription options, what they cost (at the time of writing), and what you essentially get:

• Connect Domain: the most basic plan that displays Wix ads, $4.50/month, get a custom domain, SSL certificate, 1 GB bandwidth, and 500 MB storage space
• Combo: ideal for personal websites, $8.50/month, everything in the Connect Domain + a free domain for a year, no Wix ads (!), 2 GB bandwidth, 3 GB storage space, a $75 ad voucher, and 30 mins of video time
• Unlimited: ideal for entrepreneurs and freelancers, $12.50/month, everything in Combo but unlimited bandwidth, 10 GB storage space, 1 hour of video time, a Site Booster app, and Visitor Analytics app
• VIP: ideal for priority customer support (beyond the basic help center), $24.50/month, everything in the Unlimited plan, plus 35 GB storage, 5 hours of video, professional logo, and social media logo files

For the Business and eCommerce plans:

• Business Basic: $17/month, no Wix ads, secure online payments, and more
• Business Unlimited: $25/month, ideal for growing your business, more storage and other features than the Basic plan
• Business VIP: $35/month, everything in the Business Unlimited but with more storage, priority customer support, unlimited video hours, customized reports, and more

SquareSpace Pricing

With SquareSpace, there are only 4 subscription options. All the prices are if you pay annually, so you save between 25-30% compared to paying monthly.

• Personal Plan: $12/month, free custom domain, SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, SEO features, basic website metrics, and more
• Business Plan: $18/month, everything in Personal, plus premium integrations, advanced website analytics, fully eCommerce integrated, and more
• Basic Commerce Plan: $26/month, everything in Business and point of sale option, customer accounts, eCommerce analytics, products on Instagram, and more
• Advanced Commerce Plan: $40/month, everything on Basic Commerce and abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping, advanced discounts, and more

Squarespace Discounts: Be sure to also check out our Squarespace deals tracker page here for the latest special offers (and hidden discounts).

The Winner

The winner is Wix. Their plans start at a lower price point, so you just pay for what you need. They offer a total of 7 plans compared to the 4 on offer by SquareSpace, and even their business and eCommerce plans are less expensive.

Other Popular Website Builders

Other popular website builders you can consider for your site-building needs if Wix or SquareSpace doesn’t quite meet your needs are:

GoDaddy

This is a user-friendly website builder. If you need to quickly create a basic site, GoDaddy is ideal. You can also change templates, but there are no SEO tools if you opt for the cheapest plan.

Weebly

If you want to scale your business and your website, then go with Weebly. It has a large app store (similar feature to Wix). The templates aren’t the best, but you can still create a pretty site for eCommerce or blogging.

Zyro

If you are making your first website, Zyro is a good choice. The templates are logical and clean (similar to Wix template options), and with the help of a grid system, everything on your site will be in place. One feature con is that you can’t change your template once your site is live, so you’ll need to start from scratch if you want a different template.

Further Read: Zyro versus Wix Compared.

FAQs

The Final Verdict: Should You Choose Wix or SquareSpace for Your Website-Building Needs?

Bottom Line Summary: The winner is Wix, simply because you can do more without needing a background in coding. You get 250+ apps (Wix app market) to choose from to personalize your site, the subscription plans start at a lower price point, and you can move your elements to wherever you want on your page with the simple Wix editor.

It is also beginner-friendly, and with knowing how to use a computer, you can set up your website in no time.

I’m not saying you need to discount SquareSpace, however. It is a great website builder, but it is aimed at photographers, fashionistas, artists, designers, and other creatives. If you are in this category, definitely go with SquareSpace here instead as the best website builder option.

Looking for more Wix vs SquareSpace alternatives? 

SquareSpace and Wix Compared to the Competition

SquareSpace and Wix obviously aren’t the only web builder games in town, so how do they both stack up against other site builder options? Our editorial team has created a number of in-market comparisons to assess this.

SquareSpace vs The Competition

• SquareSpace versus Bluehost
• SquareSpace versus Etsy
• SquareSpace versus Webflow
• SquareSpace versus Shopify for an Online Store
• SquareSpace versus Duda
• SquareSpace versus Webflow

Wix vs The Competition

• Wix Website Builder versus Weebly
• Wix versus Hostgator
• Wix versus Duda
• Wix Store versus Shopify for an Online Store
• Wix vs Thinkific for LMS
• Wix vs Google Sites
• Wix versus Unbounce