Wix vs Squarespace – customization or simplicity?

Both Wix and Squarespace are popular giants in the website builder world. You have heard about each of these services in an ad or maybe even researched them to find which fits your needs best.

While they are popular website builder solutions, Wix and Squarespace are different. One offers many customization abilities, while the other is a lot more beginner-friendly.

Wix is the most versatile website builder in the world. 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 and over 900 templates available.

Meanwhile, Squarespace focuses on simplicity. If Wix gives you a toolbox and a whole world to discover, Squarespace gives the straight 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.

In this Wix vs Squarespace review, we will test both of these website builders, their features, customization, performance, customer support, and price-to-value ratio. So, in the end, we will get to pick the best website builder for you.

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How we compared both web builders

To ensure the accuracy of this comparison, we tested these two website builders in several different categories. Here are the ones that show their capabilities and allow for the best accurate comparison:

• Pricing. We compared each provider’s plans and prices to determine which offers a better price-to-value ratio. In addition, we checked their scalability options and budget-friendly plans.
• Ease of use. We tested and compared their ease of use to pick the provider that’s both beginner friendly. This included setting up, editing, and managing.
• Design. We compared both providers’ design capabilities, number of templates, and editor features to select which is more beginner-friendly, seamless, and allows for better customization possibilities.
• Features. To select the best website builder for your needs, we compared what features each of them offers.
• Performance. We compared both of these website builder reliability with performance. This was based on GTMetrix data and our testing sites' performance.
• Customer support. We also compared the customer support availability of these providers to determine which one can provide better support in case of any issues.

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 5 plans, while Squarespace only has 4 different plan options available. The plans offer different storage, features, and scalability options. In addition, Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan option, only a 14-day free trial for testing. On the other hand, Wix has a free plan available for testing purposes.

Wix plans

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

Here is how the different plans compare based on your needs:

• 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.
• Light plan – removes Wix advertising and includes a free custom domain for the first year, making it best suited for a simple personal site or a small portfolio, such as a website for a therapist.
• Core plan – include SEO apps, increased storage, and basic website analytics. Plus, basic eCommerce functionalities like accepting online payments, selling up to 50,000, and dropshipping for 25 products are also included.
• Business plan – same as Core plan, and has added storage of 100GB storage, 10h of video time, standard site analytics, and standard eCommerce (advanced shipping, dropshipping for 250 products, and up to 6 currencies).
• Business Elite – adds a few more things to help you deal with all the sales tax, let to do dropshipping for unlimited products, and allows up to 11currencies.

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.

When it comes to other plans, here’s how they fare:

• Personal plan – includes all the basics: free custom domain and no limitations on the site's bandwidth and storage. It's a better value deal than Wix, which will ask for $2.00 more and keep limiting the bandwidth and storage.
• Business plan – will add advanced analytics and, most importantly, E-commerce capabilities. However, we can't really recommend this for selling online. The 3% transaction fee will massively increase your expenses. Wix offers a much better business plan deal with a scalability option.
• Commerce Basic plan – much better than the Business plan, accepts online payments, removes the transaction fee, and adds a professional email and CSS/Javascript customization. In addition, compared to Wix, it’s a much cheaper option for the features you’ll get.
• Commerce Advanced plan – allows for more advanced shipping options and will allow you to sell subscriptions. Alternatively, you might wish to pick Wix for this, as it offers more features and priority customer support.

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

Wrapping up

Between Wix and Squarespace, the best value is in Squarespace Personal and Wix Business plans. They offer excellent features and value for both personal and business websites. Overall, prices for both of these prices are quite similar, however, Squarespace has the slightest edge of being a bit more budget-friendly.

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Wix vs Squarespace – a case study

To fully test and compare Wix and Squarespace, we created mock-up sites and tested all available features. From the editor to additional features aimed to help you grow your website and its audience.

We managed to create this with Wix website builder:

And this is what Squarespace website builder had to offer:

So, how easy was it to make these sites? And which builder is better? Continue reading to find out all about building your website with Wix and Squarespace.

Ease of use

• 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 synced: 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, if you can’t manage to navigate it and use it to build your site? This means having a look at the sign-up, website building, and editing processes. Here are my experiences from using them both:

Using Wix

Using WIX is pretty easy and straightforward. Therefore, no matter whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, you’ll manage to build your website quickly and easily.

Starting with WIX ADI:

• You start by picking what website you’re going to make and what features you’ll need.
• Then you’ll need to pick a design template and edit it to fit all your needs. The editor is very easy to use, but it is limited. Therefore, you will be quite restricted with the changes you’ll be able to make.

On the other hand, the regular editor allows for a lot more freedom:

• You’ll start picking one of the over 900 templates available.
• Then you’ll move on to the editing part – this is a classic drag-and-drop editor, so customizing the look will be really easy. There are hundreds of various elements that can be added, mixed, matched, and combined on your Wix site.

Overall, using Wix can be 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:

• You start with picking a template that interests you the most. Even on a free trial, you can choose however many websites and templates that you like.
• After picking your template, you’ll need to answer a couple of questions to set up your site. The question included things like the site name and the pages 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.
• Then you’ll be taken to the editor, where you can finally customize your site’s appearance. Squarespace is not a drag-and-drop builder like Wix. Everything here falls into 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 suit the template you pick: in their overall style, fonts, and colors.

This system makes Squarespace a lot 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.

Templates and design

• Wix offers a massive 900-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: our 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

To start, Wix offers over 900 templates available that cover any possible theme you could think of. Better yet, two editors are also available – Wix ADI and Wix Editor. The former allows you to build your site by asking you specific questions and then creating the site based on your answers. The latter is more of a classic drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to customize the existing templates to your likening.

With so many different template options, you can find the one that fits your needs easily – whether you need a classic-looking site or a modern one. In addition, the grouping by different topics allows for easy navigation.

Templates of Squarespace

Squarespace offers around 100 templates, while Wix has over 900. 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.

Squarespace also uses a simplistic section-based editor. This doesn’t give you too many customization abilities, but it’s very simplistic to use, even for a beginner.

Better yet, with this simplistic editor, you can always be certain that your website’s design will not vary too far from the template and stay looking modern and professional.

Wrapping up

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

To build a successful and attractive business website, both Wix and Squarespace offer various useful features. From general website builder features like free SSLs and domain names to more advanced tools like E-commerce features. Both of these providers have got you covered.

Both Wix and Squarespace offers a variety of features available for their users. You’ll find all that you might need to build a professional-looking business website. Here are the main features worth your attention:

To break down these features a little more:

• E-commerce. There are E-commerce tools available with both website builders that allow you to sell goods and services. In addition, there are payment protection features as well, so your visitors can safely purchase your merchandise or services.
• Security. Both providers offer SSL certificates, protection against DDoS attacks, and firewall protection. This way, you can secure both your website and its visitors from any threats.
• Free domain. Both Wix and Squarespace offer a free domain name for the first year. After that, you’ll need to pay an additional cost for it.
• Email marketing. You’ll get an email marketing feature with both Wix and Squarespace. This way, you’ll be able to customize specific emails to your contacts and customers to advertise your business or services.
• Social media integration. With Wix and Squarespace, you’ll be able to integrate social media. This will allow for more efficient communication and manage interactions with customers.
• Analytics. Both providers have analytic tools available to see how your site is performing, how many visitors you’ve had, what purchases were made, and many others.
• SEO tools. To ensure that your website will be recommended and found on search engines, reliable and useful SEO tools are available. The tools include the likes of sitemaps, optimization features, and an SEO panel, to name a few.

Wix vs Squarespace: SEO features

Both Wix and Squarespace offer excellent SEO tools to maximize your website’s visibility with search results. The array of features includes the likes of URLs, ads, keywords, and many others.

Wix SEO tools

Wix has some solid marketing features available, that will surely help you stand out among other search results.

Here are the most notable features available:

• Custom meta tags. Allows to add SEO-friendly meta tags, meta descriptions, and graph tags.
• Meta titles and descriptions. With Wix, you can create custom meta titles and descriptions for your pages, which would help you rank better among other search results.
• URL customization. Allows to edit URL slugs and the URL structure for your website pages.
• Google Search integration. It helps you create pages for the Google Search Console from your Wix dashboard without needing to do manual verification. In addition, this will be the perfect tool to do keyword research to find out how the visitors find your site.
• Image optimization. Automatically optimizes your site images to better quality, search, and faster downloads.
• Site inspection tools. This tool is integrated with the Google Search console. It allows you to check all your pages and troubleshoot any issues that may affect your ranking in search results.

Squarespace SEO tools

Squarespace is pretty similar to its competitor in the sense of SEO tools available. You’ll get a variety of built-in SEO tools to help you rank up your website among other search results.

Here are the main attractions available:

• Google Search Console. This tool will let you see how your site is performing in search results and will help you look up the keywords your users are using to find your website.
• Meta titles and descriptions. It helps you add meta titles and descriptions so you can better rank in search results and inform users of what your site is about.
• Custom URLs. Allows you to customize your URL to represent your content correctly and clearly.
• Image alt text. Works by adding an alt text to your images, so even if they don’t load, Google can still read them and their relevancy to the search result.
• Canonical tags. This feature will help search engines to determine which page to focus on, this is especially useful if you have multiple versions of the same page available.

Wrapping up

Overall, Wix is a bit more open and customizable, offering hundreds of excellent apps, business and SEO tools, which makes it a winner in this match.

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Performance – One is significantly faster

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, we checked the performance of the two websites made with the platform. We 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, we didn't notice a major difference between the two. The data actually backs us 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.

Customer support

Both Wix and Squarespace offer various customer support channels for you to reach out to:

• Wix has a live chat, callback phone line, ticket submission, and help center options.
• Squarespace offers email, live chat, Twitter, and Facebook messenger options.

From this, it’s clear that Squarespace concentrated more on immediate responses, which may not be the best for bigger issues that require time. On the other hand, Wix can be a bit slower with responses but provide efficient support no matter the issue you’re dealing with.

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Wix customer support

In case you need some support from Wix agents, there are several different ways you can reach them:

• Live chat
• Callback phone line
• Ticket submission
• Help center (FAQ)

Out of all these options, the callback phone line might be the quickest and most reliable one – there are no chances to get in contact with a bot, and you’re instantly able to provide all the information about your issue.

In addition, customer support is available for both paying and free users.

Squarespace customer support

Squarespace offers 24/7 customer support availability on all of their channels except for live chat:

• Email
• Live chat (only available Monday-Friday: 4:00 AM to 8:00 PM ET)
• Twitter
• Facebook messenger

Squarespace doesn’t have a phone line for support, nor is there a ticketing system. Therefore, dealing with bigger issues may be more difficult.

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