Wix vs Squarespace: Plans, Features, Hidden Costs and More

Choosing the right website builder is an important decision for businesses serious about creating the kind of polished site that turns clicks into cold hard cash. For Wix vs Squarespace, our research found that Wix is a slightly better website builder than Squarespace thanks to its robust set of ecommerce features and design assistance.

While Wix takes our top spot, Squarespace is still one of the best website builders for beginners, as it provides the most impressive and flexible design functionality, making it best for artists and bloggers looking to showcase their work.

In this guide, we’ll explore how Wix vs Squarespace match up on everything from features and price to ease of use and customer support.  Alternatively, if you want to quickly compare Wix and Squarespace against other market-leading builders, check out our handy website builder comparison page.

In this guide:

• Wix vs Squarespace: Head-to-Head
• Wix Pricing vs Squarespace Pricing
• Best for Ease of Use
• Best for Website Features
• Best for Design Functionality
• Best for Help and Support
• About Our Research
• Verdict: Wix vs Squarespace
• Frequently Asked Questions

Wix and Squarespace: Head-to-Head

Here’s how the two website builders match up on some important criteria for users looking to get started today:

• Wix is better for building an online store
• Squarespace has better design features 
• Wix is more geared towards small businesses 
• Squarespace has better blogging and portfolio features

The battle between Wix and Squarespace is a close one – they both score 4.8/5 overall – but we’d say that Wix is for most people and businesses, with a vast set of helpful integrations as well as a myriad of marketing and ecommerce tools, making it excellent value for money.

Squarespace excels with slick design features, offering the perfect solution for people in the creative industries. Wix, on the other hand, provides a more rounded experience and gives everyone the tools they need to create a brilliant site.

As we’ve mentioned, both Wix and Squarespace score 4.4/5 for ease of use, which was the best score achieved by any website builder in our testing. With the scores so close, it’s likely your individual use case will determine which is the best for you.

Squarespace vs Wix: Pros and Cons

Wix and Squarespace received the same overall score of 4.8 out of 5 in our research. While they are both extremely well-suited to website building, the reality is that they have a lot of differences that can contribute to how you see these two providers.

Wix offers some serious value, with a massive feature catalog that can handle virtually any task for any type of business. In addition to the basic features, Wix offers CRM functionality, email and social marketing capabilities, and even a logo maker, to really establish your brand.

While Squarespace can’t match Wix on features, it still offers a lot. With some seriously robust marketing features, Squarespace is the ideal website builder for growing businesses looking to grow even more. Plus, with stunning templates, you’ll be able to attract customers to your site with professionalism and style.

Like we said, Wix and Squarespace have both improved greatly over the course of time, and there’s a lot of good and some bad when it comes to Wix and Squarespace. Take a look at some of these pros and cons for each provider to understand exactly what they bring to the table:

Best for Website Features: Wix

Squarespace and Wix offer all the features anyone would reasonably need to run any sort of website. However, Wix’s sheer volume of features is unmatched across the website-building industry, so we have to give the edge to Wix on this one, with a features score of 4.8/5 compared to Squarespace’s 4.6/5.

POS features

From the CRM functionality and the robust marketing tools to the logo maker and POS compatibility that just launched this year, Wix is simply the cream of the crop when it comes to the features available; in fact, it scored better for features than all the other website builders we tested.

Online ordering

If you’re running a restaurant, you’ll be pleased to hear that Wix and Squarespace both make it easy to accept takeout orders. With Squarespace, all you’ll have to do is set up your checkout and enable pickup orders. With Wix, you’ll need to enable online ordering, connect the menu, and then enable pickup orders.

SEO tools

There’s no point building a site that doesn’t get seen. A strong SEO toolkit can drive up your sites visibility – increasing organic traffic and boosting your brand authority as a result.

Both website builders excel when it comes to search engine optimization. Squarespace offers all the basic capabilities like page titles and descriptions and an SEO checklist, as well as advanced tools like SEO friendly translations, ecommerce-focused SEO, and a ‘hide a page’ feature which allows users to hide webpages from search engines.

Wix also goes beyond the basics a SEO learning hub, a site inspection too and integrated SEO support. Even better, Wix now integrates with Semrush. This means that users will be able to see up-to-date SEO keyword data directly in their Wix dashboards, improving your ability to reach new customers with helpful insights.

Best for Ease of Use: Tie

There’s always a learning curve involved with getting started with a new builder, especially for those with little experience in web design and development. However, you can remain rest assured that both Wix and Squarespace are some of the easiest to use builders out there.

Wix uses an intuitive drag-and-drop system to edit the content on your site’s pages. Want to add some text? Simply drag a text box to the perfect spot on the page. Want to remove an image? Simply drag it off the page.

Don’t even want to go through that amount of effort to get your website up and running? Wix ADI will build you one if you input a few prompts about what you want it to be like.

Squarespace, meanwhile, uses a slightly different system. Page elements can be added or removed by using the sidebar menu, while the actual content of each element has to be edited manually. This will be just as amenable to new users as Wix.

Neither of these systems is perfect — both have redeeming and detracting factors. However, in our testing, they both ended up coming in joint-first place with 4.4/5 for ease of use, and we’re confident you’ll be able to get to grips with both systems without too much fuss.

Wix page editor

Wix’s drag-and-drop system is incredibly intuitive – in fact, it’s similar in style to (and almost as easy as) creating a Powerpoint presentation.

With that being said, it may take you a short while to get the hang of it. “It sort of throws you into the deep end a little bit,” said one user during our testing. “But then, on the flip side, it’s the only way that you are going to learn how to use the tool.”

The amount of creative control and the abundance of options can prove intimidating at first – it’s difficult to know exactly where to start, and which elements your site needs.

But luckily, Wix won’t leave you in the dark. Its “Artificial Design Intelligence” system, or ADI, which can help build a more complete version of your website for you. Simply provide Wix with some information about the sort of site you want to create, how you want it to look, and what you want to do with it, and the ADI will spit out an impressive-looking website design. You’ll find that customization options are slightly more restricted, but it’ll be easier to get the hang of.

Finally, Wix has its Velo app development platform. Essentially, it allows users to code and build custom web applications for their site. For example, you could build a clickable dropdown list with images, or you could create a search menu with more advanced filters and segmentation. It sounds complicated, but there’s plenty of advice and examples online, and it will help make your site truly unique.

Wix page editor in action
Image: Tech.co testing

Squarespace page editor

Squarespace’s page editor restricts some level of creative control in order to maintain a level of order over the website’s design.

That might sound like a problem – it’s your website, after all – but we think that it’s part of what makes Squarespace great. All of its website designs are fantastic and, as a result, you’re going to be reluctant to change them too much anyway.

Initially, it can seem confusing working out which parts of the page are controlled through which section, but most people get the hang of it. “I did find it rather intuitive,” said one of our users. “Most of the time I was able to work out what to do just through buttons on a page. So even within an hour, I was still able to work things out which I was struggling with earlier.”

Squarespace page editor in action
Image: Tech.co testing

Learn more about Squarespace’s web building features in our Squarespace review.

Wix Pricing vs Squarespace Pricing Overview

As far as pricing plans are concerned, Wix and Squarespace offer a considerably different number of options. Wix has a total of four pricing plans as well as a free plan and an Enterprise plan with no publicly available pricing. Squarespace, on the other hand, offers only two standard website builder plans, two ecommerce business plans, and no free plan, for a total of four pricing plans for Squarespace.

Read on for information about how Wix and Squarespace compare on website building and ecommerce pricing plans. However, bear in mind that Squarespace got a better value-for-money score than Wix (4/5 vs 3.6/5) despite increasing the price of its first paid plan to $16 per month, bringing it in line with Wix’s first paid plan.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Squarespace is a better website builder overall than Wix – all it means is that with Squarespace, you get a few more features earlier on in the plan hierarchy, for slightly less money.

Wix vs Squarespace: Price Plans Compared

When it comes to standard website building pricing plans, Squarespace and Wix offer quite similar options when it comes to the starter plans. Both provide a $16 per month personal use plan with basic functionality to get you up and running,

Both website builders also have a more advanced plan for $27 per month (Wix) or $23 per month (Squarespace), which add features like analytics. Both of these plans add ecommerce functionality, but it’s obviously a bit bare bone. Squarespace’s plan even comes with a 3% transaction fee.

Wix and Squarespace both have more robust ecommerce plans that are quite similar again, both coming in at $27 per month, which can help you get your online store off the ground. Both allow for unlimited products and the ability to sell on Facebook and Instagram. As for the differences, Wix allows for abandoned cart recovery at this stage, which Squarespace does not, but Squarespace allows for product reviews at this price, which Wix does not.

Wix has two other advanced ecommerce plans, which cost $32 per month and $159 per month respectively, whereas Squarespace only has one advance ecommerce plan, which costs $49 per month. For both providers, these plans unlock features like customized reports, advanced discounts, and subscriptions functionality. The most expensive plan from Wix really just allows for unlimited version of storage and dropping shipping.

Wix vs Squarespace: Which Free Plan is Best?

This one is easy, because Wix offers a free plan, and Squarespace doesn’t. However, the Wix free plan is pretty limited, with no custom URL and ads all over your page, so it’s best to use it as an extended free trial rather than an actual option. Squarespace also offers a 14-day free trial.

Both offer special deals too, as you can use the code “TC10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans too or code “TAKE10” for 10% off Wix.

Best for Design Functionalities: Squarespace

Wix is great and definitely our top pick for website builders, but when it comes to design functionality and flexibility, no one beats Squarespace. Now, let’s take a look at why.

Squarespace templates

Some website builder platforms offer loads of templates. Squarespace, on the other hand, offers a smaller, more curated selection of just over 113 website styles – and they’re all great.

The Squarespace templates are separated by industry, ranging from blogs to events websites and even online stores.

Mobile responsiveness

The templates are all completely mobile responsive, with images and text areas that resize automatically to the users’ device. All the templates support parallax scrolling, where elements can move, appear, and disappear based on how far the user scrolls down the page. They also all support video backgrounds, for extra-fancy websites.

Stock images

Squarespace doesn’t have its own library of stock images. However, it does have integrations with Getty Images and the highly regarded Unsplash library, which should make finding photos a piece of cake.

A selection of Squarespace website templates
Image: Squarespace

Wix templates

Wix offers more than 800 templates, and while we wouldn’t say its approach is akin to quantity over quality, the builder’s templates aren’t as visually appealing as Squarespace’s.

With that being said, Wix’s templates have improved in recent years, and should be more than good enough for most people.

Mobile responsiveness

All the templates Wix offers are completely mobile responsive. Parallax scrolling elements can be added individually to each template. Video backgrounds are supported, too.

Stock images

Wix offers its own library of stock photography, as well as an integration with Big Stock photos. It also offers a selection of clip art style cartoons, if you like that sort of thing.

Selection of Wix website templates
Image: Wix

Customization

Again, Squarespace and Wix take slightly different approaches when it comes to levels of customization. Both allow you to add custom coded elements, such as text boxes with custom fonts, but Wix allows you to go deeper.

Wix gives users the ability to completely alter the code of their website. Admittedly, Wix doesn’t make it easy – you have to enter the scarily titled “Dev Mode” on your site to access the code – but it’s there, nonetheless.

Squarespace, meanwhile, keeps all this stuff hidden away, and regularly provides the user with little notices that warn about the pitfalls of getting your coding wrong. However, Squarespace recently announced that it now works on Fluid Engine system, which makes designing and customizing the website on a Mac infinitely easier for users.

Switching templates

However, while we’ve bemoaned Squarespace’s lack of versatility thus far, it does get the edge over Wix when it comes to switching your template.

With Squarespace, and thanks to its small number of templates, you can swap back-and-forth between different designs as many times as you like.

Wix, on the other hand, doesn’t allow you to change your template after publishing. Perhaps this is why it offers so much customization.

Best for Help and Support: Tie

As with anything on the internet, there’s a chance that something will go wrong with your website at some point. So, naturally, it pays to pick a builder with good help and support.

Once again, it was too close to call. Wix and Squarespace both scored an almost-perfect 4.9/5 when it comes to help and support. Squarespace offers comprehensive 24/7 support, combined with an impressive robust knowledge center, the former of which Wix didn’t use to offer, but now does. In fact, Wix improved its help and support score from 4.8/5 to 4.9/5 in our latest round of testing.

Wix help and support

You’ll be heartened to hear that Wix has some of the best customer support that we’ve come across testing website builders. It offers over-the-phone support between 6am and 5pm PST, as well as email, social media, and forum support. It doesn’t currently offer a live chat function.

Wix also has an extensive support center, with loads of articles that can help you fix problems on your own. It also has lots of on-page help – simply click the little question mark next to any element on your page editor, and you’ll get some helpful advice on how to use it.

The Wix help center
Image: Tech.co testing

Squarespace help and support

Squarespace, on the other hand, has a huge support center with loads of extras that Wix doesn’t offer. For example, you can access webinars, workshops, and video tutorials to help you make the most of your website.

However, Squarespace doesn’t offer support over the phone. It does offer live chat (from 3am to 8am PST Monday to Friday) and will apparently respond to all emails within an hour. Still, with the massive knowledge center, our research shows that Squarespace is better than Wix when it comes to help and support.

The Squarespace help page
Image: Tech.co testing

About Our Research

There are hundreds of sites out there comparing website builders, so it isn’t always easy to work out who’s actually tried and tested the software they’re talking about. Not all websites out there have tested the website builders they review, or worse, have even used products like Wix and Squarespace – so it’s hard to know who you can trust.

Here at Tech.co, we always do our own research – and that goes for all the products, services, and software we talk about. We’re lucky enough to have a team of researchers that spend their days collecting data on absolutely everything we talk about. They work with our expert writers to bring you accurate, up-to-date information on website builders, project management software, and much more. Our website builder research covers six main areas of interest:

• Features: SEO, blogging, and assistance tools
• Design functionalities: Factors including themes and a mobile editor
• Value for money: Do plans include enough features to make their cost worthwhile?
• Help and support: Type and hours of support offered
• Customer score: Feedback from user testing and from real-life customers
• Ease of use: Is the software interface intuitive and simple to use?

Wix vs Squarespace: FAQs