Wix is the clear winner in this Wix vs Squarespace comparison. Wix is more beginner-friendly and offers better value for money, features, and tools. With Wix, you can create blogs, online stores, portfolios, and other business websites. It also offers more advanced features and tools for experienced users.
Ideal for beginners, offering easy-to-use website-building tools.
Beginner-friendly and intuitive website builder.
Design and Templates
Offers over 800 templates for various industries.
Provides sleek templates that work well on all devices.
Features and Tools
Stands out with a broad array of features, including Wix ADI and Editor X.
Offers robust features, including SEO, blogging, and marketing tools.
Performance
Our tests showed a loading time of 735 msec
Our tests showed a loading time of 1.65 seconds
Customer support
Accessible through social media, live chat, forums, and a 24/7 phone callback service. Offer a help center and blogs, guides, and video tutorials.
Available through live chat on weekdays, 24/7 on Twitter and email, a comprehensive help center, blog, and online forum with articles, guides, and tutorials.
Wix Website Builder
Discover unprecedented creative freedom. Templates are customizable with its editor. Wix’s eCommerce connectors and wealth of features help every vision, big or little, come true online.
Wix is an all-in-one solution for website creation that includes web hosting, a builder, templates, security, domain names, eCommerce tools, and an App Store. Wix is excellent for building a simple, fully-functioning business website, blog, and online store.
The builder also comes with many unique featuresandtools you can use. This includes Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) for automatic website creation, Velo by Wix for advanced web development, Wix Editor for drag-and-drop website design, and Editor X for responsive web design.
Squarespace has been around since 2003. Ever since then, it has built a large user base and has earned a reputation for being a robust and reliable website builder.
Squarespace offers more than 100 designer-made templates, web hosting, security measures, domain names, a drag-and-drop website builder, a WYSIWYG editor, support for many third-party apps and tools, and more. With it, you can get everything you need to build a website in one place.
Wix offers a free plan and four different pricing plans.
Wix’s free plan is an excellent way to get started and test out some of the features before committing to a paid plan.
Important
The free plan is not ideal for the long term. With the free plan, you have a Wix subdomain and Wix ads on your website, which is not a good look for a professional website that wants to be taken seriously by customers and other businesses.
So, even if you start with the free plan, you will inevitably have to upgrade to a paid plan if you want to grow your business.
The paid plans start with the Light plan at $17/month, suitable for small projects with 2 collaborators and 2 GB of storage.
As you move up to Core, Business, and Business Elite plans, priced at $29, $36, and $159 per month respectively, the offerings expand to include more collaborators, greater storage, and enhanced marketing, analytics, eCommerce capabilities, and developer tools.
Important
Wix’s prices differ based on your location, so prices in Europe are not the same as prices in the U.S. The prices that we mention in this comparison are the ones for U.S.
Squarespace Pricing Plans
Squarespace does not offer a free plan, but it does offer a 14-day free trial for all paid plans.
The builder offers four different pricing plans starting at $23/month when you pay monthy or $16/month when pay annually. You get a discount of up to 30% when you pay upfront for the whole year.
Each Squarespace plan includes a free custom domain for the first year if you pay annually, a free SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, SEO features for site visibility, all of Squarespace’s templates, 24/7 customer support, and more.
If you want to build an online store and sell online with Squarespace, you will have to skip the basic plan and go for the Business plan, which will cost you $23/month if you pay annually.
However, if you only need a basic website and do not want to sell online, Squarespace’s cheapest plan – the Personal plan, will be enough for you.
And the Winner is Wix
Wix offers excellent price flexibility thanks to its low prices and free plan. It also provides great value for money and allows you to create a fully-functioning online store for $17/month. However, Squarespace can be a better option if you value design and inclusive features.
2. Ease of Use Comparison: Which Builder Is Better for Beginners?
Wix Ease of Use
Wix is one of the most beginner-friendly and easy-to-use website builders available on the market. The platform has many features and tools that are made specifically for those who do not have any prior website-building experience or coding knowledge.
Drag-and-drop website builder
Wix offers an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder that allows users to build their websites by simply dragging and dropping elements where they want them.
ADI is a feature that allows you to automatically create a personalized website by answering a few simple questions about your needs and preferences. It combines the ease of template-based design with the customization of professional web development
Wix’s ADI works in the following way:
First, Wix ADI will ask you a few questions related to your website, like which colors you want, which template you want, and other website-related questions;
After you answer the questions, the ADI will create the entire website for you based on the answers;
You will receive your website within minutes after answering the ADI’s questions. Your website will be ready to launch, and you won’t need to do anything more to it if you don’t want to;
If you want to add something or move some things around, you can do so after you receive your website from the ADI builder;
After you review the website and make changes or whatever else you like, you can launch your website and get online!
Wix ADI is the ideal tool for beginners and those who want a more hands-off website-building experience.
Squarespace Ease of Use
Squarespace allows you to manage everything in one place and comes with all the features you need to create and maintain your website. These features include web hosting, domain names, SSL security, a website builder, a website editor, and more.
Squarespace also provides a drag-and-drop website builder that works on the same concept as Wix’s website builder.
The builder also has its own WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. With Squarespace’s editor, you will be able to see how the changes that you are making will look on your website in real-time.
That means you can see each change you make right on the page you are editing and decide whether you want to keep those changes.
Both Squarespace’s editor and website builder are easy to use and intuitive, making the builder suitable for beginners. Also, building a website with Squarespace does not require any coding skills, which is another excellent trait for beginners.
And the Winner is Wix
Wix is the better option thanks to its excellent ADI functionality and straightforward user interface. You can create a fully-functioning website by only answering a few simple questions.
Wix offers over 800 designer templates suitable for blogs, online stores, business websites, portfolios & CVs, and education websites. Wix templates are responsive and look as good on mobile as on desktop.
All of Wix’s templates are free to use and customizable. However, once you launch your website, you won’t be able to change your template again.
When using Wix, make sure that you choose your template carefully because you will be stuck with it forever. You can edit elements like colors and fonts and move elements from one place to another even after your website is live, but nothing more.
Squarespace Designs and Templates
Squarespace offers more than 100 designer-made templates. All templates are modern, professional, and meticulously tailored to fit all kinds of industries, including:
All of Squarespace’s templates are responsive and mobile-friendly. Squarespace also does not let you change your template once your website is live. It used to allow users to do so, but not anymore.
However, changing the design of your Squarespace website is easy and does not take a lot of work, thanks to Squarespace’s excellent WYSIWYG editor.
With the editor, you can change the colors and fonts and add or remove all kinds of elements from your website with a few simple clicks. You can customize your website even further by adding your own HTML and CSS code.
And the winner is Squarespace
Squarespace is the definition of a website builder that prioritizes quality over quantity. Even though Wix offers a broader range of templates, Squarespace provides better quality and more polished and modern designs. Thus, Squarespace is the winner of this category.
Some of Wix’s most significant features and tools include:
Wix ADI—Wix ADI is an AI-based chatbot that can create a website within minutes. Type in your design preferences, answer a few simple questions, and your website is ready to go.
Wix Editor—Wix’s editor is a beginner-friendly tool that you can use to edit your website and change colors, fonts, and other elements.
Velo by Wix—Velo by Wix is a web development platform that allows you to create, manage, deploy and build web applications. With Velo, you will get total design freedom, serverless computing, and hassle-free coding.
Editor X—Editor X is an advanced website editor that allows you to create dynamic websites. Some of its design features include custom breakpoints, CSS grid, docking, theme manager, the ability to create custom menus, and many more.
In addition to its excellent built-in features and tools, Wix also has a large App Market with apps for all kinds of purposes, including apps for marketing, communication, selling online, design, and more. Wix also enables users to integrate their websites with Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and eBay.
Squarespace Features and Tools
Squarespace offers a variety of features and tools to enhance your website, including:
Squarespace’s blogging tools—With those tools, you can create your blog with designer-made templates, promote your blog, and boost your marketing strategy with Squarespace’s built-in marketing tools.
Built-in marketing tools—Squarespace’s built-in marketing tools include the ability to create unique email campaigns, enable newsletter signups, banners & promotions, marketing analytics tools, form blocks, and more.
Built-in SEO tools—Squarespace’s built-in SEO features and tools include an SEO checklist, integration with Google Search Console, modifying SEO page titles & descriptions, hiding a page from search engines, .xml site maps, clean URLs, etc.
You can also find Squarespace’s App Store, which is called Squarespace Extensions, on its website. On Squarespace Extensions, you can find plugins for shipping & fulfillment, finance, inventory & products, and sales & marketing. You can also push content from your website to many social media platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr.
And the Winner is Wix
Both builders have plenty to offer when it comes to features and tools. However, Wix offers a lot more features than Squarespace that can serve many more purposes and help you achieve many more goals. Thus, Wix is the winner of this category.
To test the speed and overall performance of our Wix and Squarespace websites, we will use Pingdom and test both websites using the same location.
That way, we will be able to compare both builders more accurately and determine which one provides better performance.
Wix Performance
Our Wix website showed excellent results, including a load speed of 735 milliseconds. Anything between 1-3 seconds is considered a fast loading time, so our Wix website performed exceptionally well.
Squarespace Performance
Our Squarespace website also performed very well and had a load time of 1.65 seconds for a website that takes up 1.7MB of storage space. Our website also ranked pretty well with other metrics, which you will see in the photo below.
And the Winner is Wix
Both website builders performed exceptionally well during our speed tests. However Wix had a faster load time.
6. Help and Support Comparison: Who’s Got Your Back?
Wix Help and Support Service
Wix has a help center where you can ask questions via a search bar or browse articles by category.
You can find articles and guides on topics like:
How to start using Wix
How to solve technical issues
How to use the editor
Domain management
Billing & how to upgrade to a premium plan
Business email basics
How to use your site dashboard
Site management
How to use the mobile editor
How to set up your store, and more
Wix’s help center is available in multiple languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Polish, and Turkish.
Wix also offers video tutorials and has a blog where you can learn how to promote your website and get business tips.
You can reach Wix’s Support team via social media, live chat, forums, and a 24/7 callback service for phone support. Also, Wix offers in-editor help, which will help you as you are editing your website directly from the page you are editing.
Squarespace Help and Support
Squarespace has an extensive Help Center where you can ask a question via a search bar or browse the Help Center by product or topic. You can find articles and guides for products like websites, domains, Google Workspace, Commerce, Email Campaigns, Scheduling, Member Areas, Video Studio, and more.
You can also find guides on topics like getting started, account, billing, commerce, domains, Google Workspace & custom email, images & videos, pages & content, privacy & security, Video Studio, technical issues, templates & design, etc.
You can reach Squarespace’s Support Team via live chat, which is available from Monday to Friday from 4 am to 8 pm (EST). Also, you can communicate with Squarespace’s team 24/7 via Twitter and email. Squarespace’s email support is excellent and usually responds pretty fast.
Squarespace also has a blog, an online forum, and video tutorials on how to complete specific tasks. You can join Squarespace’s online forum and communicate with other Squarespace users, ask them questions, and provide answers.
And the Winner is Squarespace
Even though Squarespace does not come with phone support, its overall customer support is better and more responsive compared to Wix’s. Its Customer Support team responds to emails a lot faster than Wix’s, and its Help Center offers easy-to-follow articles and guides on all kinds of topics.
Ideal for small to medium-sized stores needing detailed customization.
Great for boutique stores aiming for an elegant online presence.
Blogging
Preferred for its versatile customization and extensive app market.
Ideal for blending storytelling with visually compelling layouts.
Business Site
Great for a wide range of industries due to its adaptability.
Ideal for companies prioritizing a clean, professional image with minimal effort
Portfolio Site
Suitable for creators who enjoy experimenting with design elements.
Great for for artists and designers showcasing their work in a sophisticated gallery-style format.
Wix vs Squarespace: Final Words and Recommendation
Why Choose Wix?
If you are a beginner and have no prior experience with building a website
If you have a tight budget
If you want more creative control over your website
Wix Website Builder
Discover unprecedented creative freedom. Templates are customizable with its editor. Wix’s eCommerce connectors and wealth of features help every vision, big or little, come true online.
If your main priority is creating a good-looking, design-centric website
If you want to have 24/7 support
If you are involved in more creative businesses
Squarespace
Squarespace makes beautiful, professional websites easy. The platform offers limitless storage, bandwidth, and eCommerce on most levels. Squarespace’s mobile app, amazing third-party connectors, and free SSL certificate make it beautiful and smart.
Overall, we recommend Wix over Squarespace, as it proved to be the better overall website builder. We recommend Wix because it is easier to use, allows users to have more creative freedom over their website, offers better prices and flexibility, and has more built-in features and tools that you can use to do all kinds of things, like make bookings via your website, sell tickets, sell products, manage events, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to build a website with Wix?
You can build an entire website with Wix for free. Wix offers a free plan which you can get to create your website, but the free plan comes with certain limitations, so if you want to create a professional website, it is not the best option. Wix’s premium plans start at $4.50/month and go up to $35/month (paid annually). Also, if you want to build an online store and sell online, you will have to pay at least $17/a month to do so.
How much does it cost to build a website with Squarespace?
Squarespace’s plans start at $14/month if you pay annually. You can also buy plans for $23/month, $27/month, and $49/month. If you opt to pay on a monthly basis, the plans will cost you $19/ month, $33/month, $36/month, and $65/month. You will also get a free custom domain for the first year, but only if you choose to pay for your plan yearly. If not, you will need to pay between $9 and $15 a year for a domain name.
Do professionals use Squarespace?
Many professionals use Squarespace due to its elegant designs and all-in-one platform features. It is popular among artists, photographers, and small business owners who prioritize a strong visual presence and ease of use over extensive customization.
Is Wix or Squarespace better for artists?
Squarespace is often preferred by artists because of its superior design templates and aesthetic appeal. Its platform is tailored to showcase portfolios with a clean, professional look, making it a go-to for artists seeking to impress with visual content.
What is the disadvantage of Squarespace?
The main disadvantage of Squarespace is its limited customization capabilities compared to more flexible platforms like WordPress. Users may find it challenging to implement specific functionalities or alter the design beyond the provided templates and settings.
Is Squarespace or WordPress better?
Whether Squarespace or WordPress is better depends on the user’s needs. WordPress offers unparalleled customization and control, ideal for users with specific requirements or who need extensive functionality. Squarespace focuses on design and ease of use, perfect for those who want a beautiful website without the complexity of WordPress.
Is Squarespace good for small business?
Squarespace is excellent for small businesses looking for a visually appealing and manageable website. It provides a straightforward platform with built-in tools for SEO, marketing, and e-commerce, allowing business owners to focus on their operations without worrying about website intricacies.
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