Wix vs Squarespace – customization or simplicity?

Both Wix and Squarespace are great options for making a website that's both pretty and functionally powerful. But these platforms are not the same – and they suit different types of users. Finding out which builder fits your needs is incredibly important before you start your online journey and build your online presence.

Wix and Squarespace are the big dogs of the website builder market. They're very popular – used by millions of people all across the world. And it's not just thanks to great marketing or something. Both of these platforms have a lot going on for themselves.

Wix is the most versatile website builder in the world. There are no two ways about it. With two entirely different website editors available: the highly customizable classic Editor, and a quick, AI-powered ADI, it offers the right type of building experience for various skill levels.

Now, mix that with over 700 unique templates, as well as thousands of in-house and third-party integrations, and the entire thing becomes clear. It's a website builder that lets you do everything.

Meanwhile, Squarespace focuses on simplicity. If Wix gives you a toolbox and a whole wide world to discover, Squarespace gives the straightest path to a simple, beautiful, and completely functional small business website. There aren't as many templates or tools. But the ones that you get are genuinely great.

The templates look good, and the tools let anyone who can operate a cursor, a blog, an online shop, or any other type of business website.

On this Wix vs Squarespace comparison, I made test websites for each of the platforms (you’ll see them later) and ran both of the builders through a series of tests concerning pricing, ease of use, templates, business features, and overall performance.

Naturally, this makes the comparison quite big. So you can skip all that reading and just click here to read the conclusion. Or you can use the links in the table below to check out the things that interest you the most.

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Wix and Squarespace for different websites

When it comes to different types of websites, some builders may be better for a specific site than others. While both Wix and Squarespace are very good at what they do, here’s what they can offer to each type of website.

Pricing

Wix offers a total of 8 plans – 1 free basic plan and 7 premium ones. The prices range from $16.00 to $59.00 a month. Plans offer different storage, as well as marketing and eCommerce features.

Squarespace is very similar, with 4 premium plans, ranging from $16.00 to $49.00 a month. There is no free plan, but you can use a 14-day free trial to test everything out.

This is how both of the provider’s two cheapest plans would stack up against each other:

Now, let's have a deeper look at each of the options, so we can see which one's the better value for money here:

Wix plans

Wix offers 5 pricing plans for regular websites: 1 free and 4 paid.

...and also 3 plans for eCommerce websites.

The free plan is honestly only good for testing. With basic features, like pretty limited bandwidth and storage, as well as the site being hosted on the .wixsite.com subdomain, this isn't exactly a perfect business option.

The Combo plan removes all the biggest limitations and lets you make a proper professional website. But there will be no bells and whistles. This is what Unlimited and Pro plans are for: they include SEO apps, increased storage, and advanced website analytics. The VIP Plan, on the other hand, doesn't offer much more. On top of added storage, it only adds some priority customer support.

Now, moving on to eCommerce-capable plans, Business Basic includes most of the basics required (you'd hope!). That means no limits on products, no transaction fees, and also a couple more advanced features, such as abandoned cart recovery and sales via social media platforms.

Business Unlimited adds a few more things to help you deal with all the sales tax, let to do dropshipping, and sell subscriptions. Product reviews and advanced shipping options are also included.

And finally, Business VIP adds priority support, loyalty programs feature, and a few extra small additions.

In sum, the best plan will entirely depend on you and your needs, but one thing's for sure, you have a wide variety of options.

Squarespace plans

When compared to Wix, Squarespace's plans are a lot more simple. There are only 4 options to choose from:

You can't publish a website with a free plan: however, there's a 14-day trial, which lets anyone quickly test the platform without risking any money.

The cheapest plan (Personal) includes all the basics: free custom domain and no limitations of the site's bandwidth and storage. It's a better value deal than Wix, which will ask for $2.00 more, plus still, keep limiting the bandwidth and storage.

The Business plan will add advanced analytics, and most importantly – eCommerce capabilities! However, I can't really recommend this for selling online. The 3% transaction fee will massively increase your expenses. If you want to accept online payments with Squarespace, you'd be better off picking the Commerce Basic plan. At $32.00/month, it removes the transaction fee and adds a professional email, as well as CSS/Javascript customization.

Finally, the Commerce Advanced plan also allows for more advanced shipping options and will allow you to sell subscriptions.

While there are fewer plans to choose from than with Wix, Squarespace seems to have a little more resource-rich options.

Between Wix and Squarespace, the best value is in Squarespace Personal and Wix Business Unlimited plans. They offer excellent features and value for both personal and business websites. Overall, prices for both of these prices are quite similar. Only beware that Squarespace has no free plan, only a free trial.

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Wix vs Squarespace – a case study

What's the best way to compare two website builders? It sounds obvious: we need to make some websites! So, I did just that.

For this Squarespace and Wix comparison, I signed up for both platforms and made my own test websites.

Here's the Wix website (click on the image to open it in full).

And here's the Squarespace website:

So, how was my experience, and which one do I recommend more?

Ease of use – Experiencing both builders

• Wix offers 2 different types of website editors: one very simple but not customizable, another highly customizable but a tiny bit complicated.
• Wix has a backup/restore system: you can create a backup of any of your live content and restore that version whenever needed.
• With Wix, desktop and mobile versions are automatically synched: Any change made to the desktop version will be visible on the mobile version too. However, changes made in the mobile version will not transfer to the desktop one.
• Squarespace has 1 simple website editor that's very well suited for beginners.
• Complete beginners will appreciate Squarespace more, while more advanced users will love just how much you can do with Wix.

First up, we need to look into the general ease of use – after all, what's good of a website builder, is it's as complicated as a fighter jet? This means having a look at the sign-up, website building, and editing processes. Here are my experiences from using them both:

Using Wix

Wix doesn't waste time with the details (such as asking your name or credit card details). Instead, I was quickly thrown in to choose the type of website I wish to make.

And then, it was the real decision time, as I had to choose between the two available website editor options.

While they are both products made by Wix, these editors are quite different from one another:

• Wix ADI is an AI-powered website builder that generates a website based on your business needs, information, and responses to the questionnaire. It doesn't allow much editing – but can be very useful for beginners.
• Wix Editor is a pixel-perfect editor that lets you choose a website template and then edit it to your heart's content. It's both more powerful and complicated than ADI.

Wix ADI will simply ask you a bunch of questions – such as your specific business niche. To my surprise, it was totally ready to offer an option for "Pet Clothing Store".

The entire setup takes a few minutes, during which you pick what elements you wish to have on the site...

And then, after choosing the preferred homepage design...

There's a page, ready to go!

The editing of such a site is simple – but also very limiting. Honestly, I could only rearrange the blocks in order and choose alternative versions of the ones already selected.

Meanwhile, the regular Editor will go the other way around – offering you to choose from over 700 themes first...

And then giving all the editing options you can dream of.

There are hundreds of various elements that can be added, mixed, matched, and combined on your Wix site. There's a lot.

This Wix Editor is armed with a simple drag-and-drop editing tool. In simple terms, it lets you place anything wherever you want. Each of these elements can go at any place. And while freedom rules, it's important to not go overboard.

Simply put, Wix is a powerful editing tool, allowing you to do all sorts of edits on the site. It can look a bit complicated at first (because it is), but once you get used to it, it's a pretty lovely interface.

Overall, using Wix was a bit of a sensory overload. But there's a good reason for that: there's just so much you can do. With two entirely different editors, hundreds of themes, and neverending design customizability, it's a multitool to end all multitools. And actually, once you get used to everything, things start looking pretty intuitive.

Using Squarespace

Squarespace, unlike Wix, uses only one website editor – making the setup process a little less hectic. I was immediately sent out to choose a Squarespace template that interested me the most.

Even on a free trial, you can choose however many websites and templates that you like. So, there's no need to sweat over this decision. Once I picked one out, I had to answer a few important setup questions.

These are some of the most basic suspects: I filled in information such as my site name and the pages that I needed. There was also a short tutorial on how Squarespace works – which is always pretty handy. By the way, all the inputted information can be edited later in the settings, but it was nice to set everything up before jumping in.

And here I was – on the Editor. I thought it was pretty simple to use, highlighting all the possible editing options, letting me quickly add or remove content on the website.

Squarespace is not a drag-and-drop builder like Wix. Everything here falls in one simple grid. The entire Squarespace editing system is built out of sections, going one after another. And then there are blocks, that fill in the sections with content.

On the builder, you can choose from several pre-made sections. They're all made to be suitable to the template that you pick: in their overall style, fonts, and colors.

And a simple + icon on the editor is where I was able to add blocks – small additions to existing pre-made sections.

This system makes Squarespace a good deal less customizable than Wix, but it’s all for a good reason. This way, the website looks good on all types of devices, making it a good option if you want your page to look good.

You can think of Wix like it is Android, and Squarespace being Apple. Wix offers options and customization, while Squarespace tries to make everything as smooth and minimalist as physically possible. Which approach is better depends entirely on your preference.

Templates – Loads of choices

• Wix offers a massive 700-template strong library that covers just about any conceivable topic.
• Squarespace offers only around 110 themes, divided into 15 categories.
• Both platforms have some excellent templates: my favorites are on Squarespace, but it’s all a matter of taste.
• When it comes to responsiveness, both Wix and Squarespace templates are responsive.

For the second test, we'll be looking at templates. Hey, it's not enough for the builder to just have them or to have many. They need to look good and be suitable for your specific needs. Do they? Will they? Here's what I got for you:

Templates on Wix

Wix offers hundreds of templates with its Classic Editor. Upon newest calculations, the number seems to have reached around 700. But at the time of your reading this, there could be even more.

The templates are separated into 5 different main categories, which are later spread out into dozens more. Most likely, you'll find something relatively close to your business.

You can pick your option like that – or you can just pick it based on your design preferences.

And honestly, go for design preferences instead. That's because templates are a bit of a mixed bag – which I suppose is inevitable when you have so many.

Some of them are genuinely brilliant, offering a unique style and giving an opportunity for you to add your own special twist.

And others roundhouse kick you straight back into the times of dialpad phones.

Yes, they're still there, and you can still use them – all the power to you. Wix really gives you an opportunity to make whatever kind of website you want.

Templates of Squarespace

Squarespace offers not all that many – only 100 templates, compared to Wix's 700. There are fewer topics to choose from, too. With 15 options, there are templates for Photography to Events & Weddings and everything in between.

There is also a section for ‘My Favorites’ – allowing the user to find a template they’ve used before very quickly.

But what are the themes like? Oh, they're actually really good!

They're modern – in the truest sense of the word. The templates focus entirely on the visuals and look good on all types of devices.

If you don't have wonderful images or visuals to go with your project, you might be a little lost: after all, that's what the themes here are meant to showcase.

But in today's world of super high-quality phone cameras and photo-first social media, coming across a few better images to put on your site shouldn't be a problem.

Wix offers quantity, while Squarespace offers quality. But really, amazing themes can be found on either of the platforms. Squarespace offers a simple experience while Wix offers way more choice and variation.

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Business features – Head-to-head match

• Wix has an incredible array of first and third-party tools, letting it be a great tool for pretty much any type of online business.
• Squarespace's tools are mostly in-house: letting you easily do simple business management.
• Both builders are great for business, with Wix aiming more at power users and Squarespace – at beginners.

If you're comparing Wix vs Squarespace in order to find out which one's better for your business, this is the part you probably skipped right to. And I can't blame you – there's a lot to talk about.

Here’s what will be covered in this section:

• Wix vs Squarespace eCommerce tools
• Wix vs Squarespace SEO and Marketing
• Wix vs Squarespace Analytics
• Wix vs Squarespace Apps

eCommerce

Website builders aren't products that change overnight. And despite the recent meteoric rise of eCommerce, a website builder is still not a fully matured selling platform, and only has online shopping on the side, and can't really be used for serious business...right?

Wrong! No, seriously – both platforms offer genuinely decent eCommerce options that they have been developing for years now. Wix's eCommerce plans start at $27.00/month. Squarespace's plans start at $23.00 – but I suggest you go a step further, at $27.00/month, to avoid paying a massive transaction fee.

Let's have a little look at what that money gets you – starting with Squarespace.

Squarespace offers a very simple business setup interface, and here, you can do all the things you would expect from an eCommerce platform. That means selling online, selling digital services, offering gift cards, and managing shipping – all through Squarespace's main interface, which is very easy to learn and handle.

In addition to the stuff already baked in, Squarespace offers a decent bunch of app integrations for online stores. There's stuff ranging from product label printing to overseas shipping management solutions.

As I was setting up my online store, Squarespace followed each step of my way, similarly to building a website. I was asked what kind of shop I want to make and what do I plan to sell, leading to a more curated setup experience. Everything was fast, simple, and fast. Did I mention fast? It was super fast.

Moments later, I was already adding my products. Squarespace even noticed it was vinyl and added an example art for me. Cute!

Wix uses a slightly different path. The online store feature can simply be added to the website by adding a new section through the site editor. Comparing Squarespace vs Wix here, the latter lacks the super in-depth guides and tutorials.

But overall, it's still super easy to set up and get started: within a couple of minutes, a store is up and running. Of course, adding your products and pictures will take longer, but it’s certainly isn’t a slow experience.

Wix’s integrated eCommerce functions allow you to do pretty much everything you could think of – the usuals like selling online, shipping management, inventory, etc.

Wix also gives you an abundance of layout and design options for your online store. There are more design customization options on Wix than on Squarespace.

Another thing Wix does a bit better than Squarespace is the eCommerce apps.

If Squarespace has plenty, then Wix has plenty times ten. The wide range of apps anything and everything: think of things like drop shipping options, donation buttons, print-on-demand, and even Paypal payment buttons, there’s honestly plenty.

Both Wix or Squarespace offer a good online sales experience. Wix has more customization, while Squarespace relies on first-party integrations and easy-to-follow guides to offer you a smoother experience.

Marketing and SEO

Both Wix and Squarespace try to be your best friend when it comes to marketing your business. Here's how the two platforms try to streamline your business efforts.

Wix

Wix has some solid marketing features available, most notably – the integrated video maker and the Facebook/Instagram Ad Center.

The former is a real novelty for website builders. I haven’t seen it before and was pleasantly surprised by it.

After clicking the “Make a Video” option, I was taken to a page where I was asked to input some information to help Wix get me started – this is almost identical to the path I took when creating my Wix ADI website.

There are tons of options available – from adding media like text and videos to changing transitions, themes, and even color grading! It's a fitting tool – many professional websites love using looping videos to attract user attention. So it's good to see this professional feature chewed up and turned into something people without both video and site editing skills can do.

So, if you have any promotional material, this is where you can make the best of it. The editor is free, too!

The Facebook and Instagram ads options are really cool as well – they basically allow you to use Wix’s machine-learning algorithm to set up automated ads that target the best audiences based on your site and user information. The methods will also be continually changed and tested in order to find the perfect one.

For email marketing, Wix offers Ascend – its premium tool, letting anyone build custom email messages and reach the desired audiences.

It's a shame that it's paid – but the prices are rather okay, starting at an extra $5.00 a month.

Many other marketing tools you’ll find through Wix will come from the App Market. You’re able to install things like Google Ads and integrate them into your site immediately.

But you won't need to download any app to do basic SEO. Wix's SEO interface is perhaps the most powerful one out of all conventional website builders. This is where you can do redirects, site verification, access the XML sitemap, insert custom URLs, edit your robots.txt file, and similar.

Squarespace

Squarespace is pretty similar – and everything is done with a lot of built-in tools. However, Squarespace’s marketing motto seems to be based around social media mostly – with integrations from Unfold allowing you to build and post stories about your business to places like Instagram and Facebook.

It's a good tool, allowing many businesses to use one platform for quite literally everything, even social media posting.

There's also an option to do email marketing. In a typical Squarespace fashion, you'll find several beautiful-looking templates.

Sadly, this feature also costs extra: you'll need to pay anywhere from $5.00 to $48.00 a month, depending on how many campaigns and emails you wish to go through.

As for SEO, Squarespace offers some basic tools, allowing you to change the page description, titles, and some meta-information, but that’s about as far as it goes.

Comparing Wix vs Squarespace in terms of business features, you can see that between them, there are some fundamental changes. Wix focuses on more professional site-related features, such as better SEO or video design.

Meanwhile, Squarespace focuses more on extending its features outside of the website. However, both Wix and Squarespace offer comparable email marketing solutions. It's just a shame that they're also comparable in their premium price.

Analytics

Analytics are pretty important. It’s a great way to see who is using your website, where are they coming from, what are they doing on your site, and how they interact with your physical or digital products. Analytics helps you to make smarter business decisions and possibly rank higher on the result page of different search engines.

Both Wix and Squarespace offer built-in analytics solutions, and both are virtually identical at the surface. You can see your traffic, site activity, location of users, traffic sources (Ads, social posts, etc), and more. But going a bit deeper, there are a couple of differences and killer features.

Squarespace

Squarespace has a double-sided version of analytics – one for the website.

And one for eCommerce. With an eCommerce-capable plan, you can dig deeper to see what your purchase funnel looks like and how many visitors you lose at each step of the purchasing process.

Wix

Wix uses this pretty thorough analytics system – with many different forms available to view through and even export or download.

You still have access to a brief overview of stats on the main dashboard, which can be customized to your needs. But if you dig a little deeper, there is some really detailed information.

This is how one of these reports look like:

These reports are incredibly detailed and can give you a lot of additional knowledge as you're looking to build and adjust your business.

Both platforms allow connecting your website to Google Analytics for professional data management, too. Overall though, both platforms have quite extensive in-house analytics tools. Squarespace has something easy to understand for those selling online, and Wix offers some incredibly detailed reports – in case you need them.

App Marketplace

Throughout this Wix vs Squarespace comparison, I kept vaguely mentioning "third-party options" as something both platforms do and have. Well – this is how. App stores, available on both website builders, are integral parts of their feature sets.

Wix

In the Wix store, better known as App Market, you can find loads of third-party apps, like, a lot. Split into many categories, there is pretty much an app for anything you could think of.

There are plenty of free apps, but often the best of them are paid add-ons – as is to be expected. Some notable free options include Mailchimp, iPlayer video hosting, Instagram feeds, and Tidio Live Chat.

Some of the notable apps available on paid plans include Socket Dropshipping, Google Ads, and Wix Bookings – which all either cost a monthly fee or require a premium plan.

Squarespace

Squarespace also has an app store – but the apps here are called Extensions.

Compared to hundreds upon hundreds of apps on Wix, it's pretty easy to feel underwhelmed. The total number of extensions available here is limited to around 30, which pales in comparison next to Wix.

The available options are primarily focused on eCommerce and marketing features. For example, there's no live chat – but there are several features to help improve your eCommerce experience.

Squarespace does make it easy to connect an API, though, so you can still connect to many resources like Mailerlite or Omnisend. It’s just a little more tricky than clicking ‘add’ and being done with it.

Overall, Wix is a bit more open and customizable, offering hundreds of excellent apps and a powerful analytics suite, which makes it a winner in this match.

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Performance – One is significantly faster

• In performance tests, Squarespace does better than Wix.
• Real-life differences are rather marginal.

Websites are not commonly known for being very fast or very optimized. But they should be – a fast website is crucial for a well-optimized user experience.

For the last Wix vs Squarespace test, I checked the performance of the two websites made with the platform. I used GTMetrix. It measures the page's and platform's overall speed and optimization.

Here's how Wix looks like:

And here's Squarespace:

From the first look, Squarespace looks better than Wix.

It loads faster, at 2.8 seconds vs 8.4. And it has a better overall optimization grade at B, compared to Wix's D.

But it's not all cut and clear: while visiting the test websites, I didn't notice a major difference between the two. The data actually backs me up: it takes around 1.5 seconds for Squarespace to display the top portion of the site, compared to around 2 seconds for Wix. Both of these results are well within the industry standard. While Squarespace has a massive advantage in performance tests, real-life differences aren't all that drastic.

Squarespace does better in performance tests. But in reality, the difference between the two isn't too massive. They will both load fairly quickly for your visitors.

Wix vs Squarespace – overall comparison

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Bottom line

When choosing between Wix vs Squarespace, it's very important to know exactly what you're looking for. Wix gives you supreme customizability every step of the way. Between fields of templates, mountains of apps, and oceans of drag-and-drop editing options, there's so much you can do with Wix.

On the other hand, Squarespace does its best to make everything simple and understandable. Gone are the massive libraries of themes and plugins. Everything: from site-building and management to running an entire business can be pulled off by virtually anyone.

So, which one's the right one for you? The right choice between Squarespace and Wix depends entirely on your goals. While they both can be good for most personal and small business websites, Wix excels and wins in in-depth customization, feature-rich suite, subscription plans, pricing, and other categories.

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Wix vs Squarespace FAQs