Wix vs Squarespace

These two are the default shortlist for a small business building its own site, and the choice between them is not really about features. It is about whether you would rather be given options or be given fewer of them.

Where they actually differ

Wix is broader in every direction. Bookings, a store, marketing email, forms and a blog are all part of the product, the editor lets an element sit anywhere on the page, and round-the-clock support is included on the cheapest paid plan. If the site turns out to need something you did not anticipate, it is usually already there waiting to be switched on.

Squarespace is narrower and more disciplined. Its templates arrive looking finished, and its type and colour settings apply across the whole site rather than element by element, so a site that grows to twenty pages still looks like one site. That consistency is enforced by the editor refusing arrangements that would break it, which is a feature until the day it is not.

The second real difference is the free tier. Wix has one, published on its own subdomain with branding attached. Squarespace does not — there is a trial, and then a decision. For a reader who wants to build something before committing money, that alone can settle it.

The trap in both

Neither lets you leave cleanly. Wix has no export at all, so a move means rebuilding every page somewhere else. Squarespace exports a WordPress-format file covering pages and posts, which sounds better than it is: the design, the styling and any store data stay behind. Whichever you pick, assume you are picking for several years.

Pricing lands in the same band, and the cheapest plan on either that puts you on your own domain without branding is close enough that price should not decide this.

Which should you choose?

Choose Squarespace if the site's job is to make the business look credible — a consultancy, a studio, a restaurant, a portfolio — and you have taste but no design training. The constraint will do more for the result than any amount of freedom would.

Choose Wix if the site has to *do* something: take bookings, sell products, capture leads, run a mailing list. The breadth is the reason to be there, and the editor's extra complexity is the fair price for not having to bolt three services together later.