Wix vs Squarespace: Which Website Builder is Best in 2025?
Wix and Squarespace are both titans of the website builder world, so much so that they each take a different approach to serve different types of users. Wix offers unmatched customization, thanks to its multiple editors and template library. Squarespace, on the contrary, goes the simple path, giving you one straight line to beautiful, functional small business websites.
In this full-on comparison, we compare Wix and Squarespace in detail. We spare no effort in covering the essentials from features and customization to if you're a custom kettle, performance, customer support , and price-to-value ratio. At the end of this post, you'll also know how to make a smart choice and pick the website builder best suited for your needs.
Squarespace Overview:
Squarespace is an advanced website-building tool, made for forward-thinking minds or digital landlords wanting to way things out of the online horizon. A strong point is its ability to enable the building of excellent websites without requiring coding skills. All it takes is a few minutes and the ability to create a visually-acclaimed site, complete with integrated eCommerce checkout tools, a custom domain, and a much-needed layer of SSL certificate protection.
Squarespace was founded in 2003 out of Maryland, United States. Stack Overflow began as a simple blog hosting service around October 2023 and had evolved beyond slick business to become a large player. At the end of 2006, it has also received a respectable revenue of more than $1 million.
While Squarespace as a hosting platform is available for anyone to design a website, it is primarily for the creative brain, which is why it is popular among designers, artists, photographers, and creative minds.
Getting started with Squarespace is easy. All you need to do is create an account, choose the template that best matches your vision, and start customizing. The vast repository of design options that is built into Squarespace fuels its rise; among the top eCommerce and transactional representatives that make up the great eCommerce and transaction world.
Wix Overview:
Wix is one serious website builder with no need for coding; and a wide range of business tools, from a simple personal blog to an online business center for large enterprises. Its catalog of core features for eCommerce, email marketing, scheduling, branding, and much more go right into this category. Wix has stood at the forefront of web design for decades, being one of the earliest adopters of new technologies — such as AI for creating websites.
Consider Wix for Advanced Website Features
Wix: One Of The Best Website Builders For Beginners — If you are looking for a super easy site-building experience along with many great features, and you don't want to spend time learning to code. You can easily integrate with hundreds of things thanks to its intuitive platform. Wix is the ultimate feature-rich website builder in our tests. Notably, it excels in the needs of e-commerce sites, providing not just advanced features but also with availability of apps to support what you expand your business online. Whether a newcomer or seasoned, Wix offers an effortless, comprehensive way to build your online identity.
Squarespace Is Best for a Visually Stunning and Cost-Effective Website Design.
That is why we recommend Squarespace to create a professional-looking site that immediately grabs the attention of visitors. Our newest research gives Squarespace a standout design score of 4.7 out of 5 making it a top-level pick. Unlike Wix, Squarespace provides well-designed templates with increased underlying structure. Plus, we also found that Squarespace outperforms its competitors, not only on looks but price for value — saving you potentially thousands in the long run. Create a beautiful website and grow your business with Squarespace.
To help you choose the best website builder for you, we thoroughly reviewed countless key criteria through in-depth research. We specifically explored the inner workings of the platforms Wix and Squarespace, evaluating all elements including features, design freedom, ease of use, price for value, and the quality of the help and support.
But enough about our proprietary research process — this is an article about pairing you with the right builder. So even if Wix is the cream of the crop, that does not mean it's the right solution for your situation. But with no further delay, it is time to decide between Wix vs Squarespace for your needs!
Wix vs Squarespace Quick Check
Short on time and need immediate insights? No worries – consider this rapid reference table for a swift side-by-side comparison. It's designed to assist you in determining whether Wix or Squarespace better aligns with your specific requirements.
Wix Vs SS |
Wix |
Squarespace |
---|---|---|
Ease of Use: |
Ease of use is a standout feature of Wix, owing to its straightforward drag-and-drop editor. With Wix ADI, crafting a website and making it live becomes a breeze, potentially achievable in just an afternoon. | Squarespace has undergone significant enhancements in its user experience (UX) recently, resulting in an impressive 11.1% increase in its usability score. This transformation ensures that Squarespace is now more user-friendly than ever before. |
Design and Flexibility: |
Wix offers a selection of more than 800 templates, each blending attractiveness with ease of customization. However, it's worth noting that while many templates are modern, some may not meet the latest design standards. Additionally, once your site is live, Wix doesn't allow template switching. | Squarespace boasts the highest-quality templates available in the market. While its range may be more limited compared to Wix, the designs are consistently stunning, ensuring a visually impressive and cohesive appearance for your website. |
Pricing and Value for Money: |
Wix provides four pricing plans, with costs ranging from $16 to $159 per month when billed annually. Notably, Wix offers a free plan with no time constraints, allowing users to stay on it indefinitely. Additionally, all paid plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee, ensuring satisfaction for users exploring the platform's premium features. | Squarespace offers four pricing plans, spanning from $16 to $49 per month when billed annually. While there isn't a free plan available, all paid plans come with a 14-day free trial, and no payment details are required during this trial period. |
Features and tools: |
Wix boasts an extensive array of built-in features that span customization, e-commerce, marketing, and beyond, earning it the highest feature score among all the builders we've tested. Additionally, its vast app market provides an ideal platform for enhancing and expanding your website's functionality | Squarespace distinguishes itself by incorporating the majority of its features directly into the platform, and these features are widely recognized as the highest quality available in the market. |
Ecommerce: |
Adding an online store into your Wix website is a straightforward process. With the option to integrate apps such as Ecwid, you can further enhance the capabilities and power of your site. | Squarespace sets itself apart by having all its ecommerce tools integrated directly into the platform, providing an excellent showcase for displaying products. Additionally, the flexibility to add integrations allows you to enhance and extend your store's functionality according to your specific needs. |
Blogging: |
Wix comes equipped with fundamental blogging tools integrated directly into the platform. However, for those looking to elevate their blogging experience, the extensive app store offers a multitude of options to take your blog to the next level. | Squarespace offers an impressive array of ready-to-use blogging tools, providing users with a comprehensive suite of features to enhance their blogging experience. |
SEO: |
Wix comes with built-in SEO tools, complemented by extensive support resources that offer guidance on optimizing your website for search engines. The user-friendly Wix SEO Wiz stands out for beginners, providing an interactive experience and generating a personalized step-by-step plan to streamline the optimization process | WSquarespace offers built-in SEO tools and designs its pages to be inherently SEO-friendly. Additionally, the platform provides comprehensive support resources and a convenient SEO checklist to assist users in optimizing their websites for search engines. |
Marketing: |
Wix's marketing toolkit encompasses a range of tools, including SEO capabilities, a proprietary email marketing system, and the comprehensive all-in-one business solution known as Wix Ascend. | Squarespace Comes with a set of marketing tools, including features such as SEO, seamless integration with social media platforms, and its proprietary email platform. |
Help And Support: |
Squarespace delivers high-quality support services accessible through live chat and email. Additionally, their extensive help center features guides, videos, webinars, and a forum, providing users with a comprehensive resource for assistance. | Wix provides comprehensive support options, including 24/7 priority support through both phone and live chat. Users can opt for VIP phone support with faster assistance by upgrading to a higher plan, allowing them to skip the support queue. |
Read on our in-depth comparison to uncover the distinct reasons behind Squarespace's superior designs, why Wix earns our recommendation for beginners, and which platform boasts the edge in terms of marketing tools.
Easy of use: Which platform is more user-friendly?
Wix and Squarespace both operate as drag-and-drop website builders. In our evaluations, Wix maintains a strong score of 4.4 out of 5 for ease of use, attributed to its smooth drag-and-drop editor. Squarespace, with a similar score of 4.4 out of 5, has notably enhanced its user-friendliness by introducing a grid-based design.
While this can stifle some creative expression, Squarespace's grid-based system is ideal for the clean organization of page layouts. The platform's accessibility has continued to improve, with an impressive 11.1% increase in its overall ease of use score.
Wix, on the other hand, is a "pure" drag-and-drop builder, giving you the most freedom of placing elements anywhere. Conversely, Squarespace is more structured and a little less intuitive at first glance. One downside is that Squarespace lacks the same precision in placing elements, but that is largely offset by their grid-based layout.
If you don’t have the time or skills to design your website, the Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) option is for you — Wix will create the site for you! This tool creates a site based on your answers to a few simple questions if you want an easier option.
Design And Flexibility
Wix has a vast library of more than 800 templates, so you have a ton of variation to work from and with the right template you can create professional websites in little to no time. The templates are designed to be visually appealing as well as mobile responsive, with a separate mobile editor for designing desktop and mobile views.
But, with so many templates in the library, a few might not quite cut it. As we scoured through Wix templates, we give evaluation to the good ones and the bad ones which is what we found, most Wix templates don't fail, we mean they are the best but few of them are full of colors and pretty bad design
Squarespace emerges as the unparalleled champion in template design. With a focus on quality over quantity, Squarespace templates are consistently modern, professional, and meticulously tailored for various industries. Squarespace secures an impressive design functionality score of 4.7 out of 5, reflecting its commitment to delivering stunning and contemporary designs across the board.
Wix, which scores 4.6 out of 5 is in a close second, and also considerably improved its design rating by 4.5%. While you can find somewhat more types of templates available on Wix than Squarespace, Wix is hands down the winner when it comes to customizability. The downside of this creative freedom, on the other hand, is that it can lead to designs that don't have the same level of refined polish as Squarespace sites.
Overall, Wix is a great pick for users looking to unleash their creativity, but users must be careful to ensure they maintain a cohesive design. On the other hand, Squarespace's constant emphasis on high-quality templates guarantees that your website will appear sleek and polished.
Pricing
Both Wix and Squarespace offer the same starting price of $16 per month on their basic plans (when billed annually). At the higher tiers, though, Squarespace is marginally more affordable, with an ecommerce-enabled plan coming in at $13 versus Wix's $17 per month plan. One key difference is that Wix offers a free plan, while Squarespace does not.
It's worth mentioning that you shouldn't use Wix's free plan as a long-term strategy. The site is built on a Wix subdomain and contains several Wix ads, so you are unable to remove Wix ads from the site. Upgrading is required to build a professional and growing social presence. But once you move on to a paid plan, Wix is usually the more expensive option in comparison to Squarespace.
Despite the general trend of increasing prices across all website builder plans, Wix has experienced an 11.8% decrease in its value score. Wix scores 3 out of 5 for value for money, while Squarespace secures the top spot with a value score of 4.6 out of 5. Impressively, Squarespace is the only builder that has improved its value score since the previous year, registering an impressive 15% increase.
Squarespace's entry-level plan stands out for its excellent value, offering features like unlimited bandwidth and storage right from the $16 per month Personal plan. In contrast, Wix reserves unlimited bandwidth for its $27 per month Core plan, and unlimited storage is exclusive to Wix's higher-tier plans.
In conclusion, Squarespace provides better value for money, offering a robust set of features even at its lowest price point.
E-commerce: Which Platform is Optimal for Online Selling?
Over the past few years, both Wix and Squarespace have rapidly improved their ecommerce performance, with each holding up well relative to Shopify — the ecommerce builder of choice. Squarespace has a little additional benefit over Bookly in regards to providing features required for an on-the-web shop, such as inventory management, discounts, product variations, taxes, etc.
Each platform supports a full range of features, including digital products, custom email receipts, integration with print-on-demand services, point-of-sale systems, Instagram shop tagging, automated cart recovery, recurring payment products, gift cards, back-in-stock notifications, and low-stock notifications.
Squarespace, on the other hand typically adds more advanced features. No, they also enable you to add custom forms into typical products which means you can collect more details at the checkout process. Squarespace's forms feature a wide variety of field types including dates, radio buttons, phone numbers, text fields, and file uploads.
Wix allows the addition of form fields to products, but its capabilities are more limited, restricted to text fields.
Moreover, Squarespace demonstrates superiority in areas like inventory management, shipping, tax settings, and product editing – the latter including its comprehensive page editor for additional information.
In summary, while both Squarespace and Wix offer essential features for small online stores, Squarespace's ecommerce capabilities are distinguished by their sophistication and attention to detail, making it the preferred choice for those seeking a more advanced ecommerce solution.
Features And Tools
The functionality aspect is where the difference between Wix vs Squarespace is evident in their features and the variety that they offer. This difference is reflected primarily in category ratings, where Wix achieves an impressive 4.8 out of 5. This is a slight 1.3% decrease on last year’s score, but not bad yet indicating continued excellency. Squarespace was the clear winner here, improving its rating from 4.4 to 4.6 (an impressive 4% increase). Wix may still be reigning supreme in the numbers department but the evolution of Squarespace requires close monitoring for further growth in the feature department.
Wix features multiple functionalities, for example, a membership application, live discussion combinations, benefaction capacities, reserving frameworks, and consistent online media incorporation. Wix also offers diverse options for contact forms, ensuring smooth customer communication. In terms of significant upgrades during the last year, integrating Semrush for the website-building process is an example of how you can quickly see what keywords are being targeted.
On the other hand, you can get membership and live chat features in Squarespace, but at a higher payment tier or by using third-party applications. Squarespace reflects Wix’s ability to take donations, bookings, social media, and contact forms. This has included the optimization of third-party applications, allowing for scheduling, CRM, and marketing support.
Overall, Wix and Squarespace are very much a close comparison. Whereas Wix continues to offer a rich feature set, Squarespace has had to rely on high-quality third-party tools that work well together.
Wix, on the other hand, distinguishes itself by offering a comprehensive range of features all in one place. Its built-in component Wix Events makes ticket sales pretty easy, functioning more as an app than a web program. By making this distinction, users who do not need this feature will not have to incorporate third-party solutions, which greatly improves the user experience.
Blogging:
In a bygone era, Squarespace would have effortlessly clinched victory in this category. However, recent enhancements in Wix's blogging capabilities have created a scenario where selecting a definitive winner between the two proves to be a formidable challenge.
Our research awarded both platforms a perfect score of 5 out of 5 for blogging, a commendable recognition. Wix has undergone a transformative evolution, now providing writer profiles, specialized analytics for blogs, robust blog SEO tools, an archive function, social sharing capabilities, and the convenience of scheduling posts directly.
For Wix Blog users, the editing process unfolds seamlessly, offering options through the frontend editor or the Wix dashboard.
Squarespace, meanwhile, maintains its supremacy with visually striking template designs, standing as a testament to its unyielding commitment to aesthetics. It not only aligns with many of Wix's features but goes a step further.
Squarespace's blogging toolkit is optimized around team collaboration and multi-author engagement and includes a workflow feature designed to ensure teams are on schedule. (A feature to mark drafts as “Needs Review,” for instance, helps facilitate transparency and collaboration in the team.)
Unfortunately, Squarespace takes a hit in that department with no specific search bar; a hefty miss on their part. However, users can still use search fields to help visitors find content on the site.
The battle between Squarespace and Wix blogging features is one such story of the evolution of website-building platforms in the modern age.
Marketing
The most remarkable thing about Wix's marketing arsenal is its extraordinary level of customization. Wix Email Marketing — one of its flagship features enables users to run email campaigns to promote their website, blog, or business. There’s a myriad of styles available to customize it with — fonts, colors, background styles, you name it. Contacts integrates so that users can easily add and save contact information. Also, Wix Email Marketing includes a detailed stats tracker, which lets you gain insight into email engagement metrics, like opens, views, and clicks. It is even more functional with social media tools, allowing campaigns to be shared easily on various platforms.
Another jewel in Wix's marketing tiara is Ascend by Wix, a comprehensive all-in-one marketing suite for businesses. It includes a customizable email editor, automation features, advanced analytics, SEO tools, social integrations, a video maker, live chat and forms, and invoicing, in a feature-rich suite. Wix has a free version (that is quite limited) but then has three plans to pay for, which can run anywhere from $9 to $45 a month giving users a range of options.
Similarly, Squarespace does not lag with its email marketing solution, Squarespace Email Campaigns. A platform that integrates and aligns with websites. While Wix provides a free version for email campaigns, Squarespace Email Campaigns has opted for a trial period — sending three campaigns with up to 50,000 sends each. After that, users have paid plans between $5 to $48 per month when billed annually.
With Squarespace's email marketing tool, you can import website content into email drafts, initiate automatic emails for subscribers, choose from 30+ starter layouts, edit from your mobile phone, and use analytics to measure campaign performance. The price is apparent, but Squarespace provides good services. Alternatively, the Squarespace Extensions Store includes five sales and marketing apps, or integration with MailChimp is possible.
From across channels such as Facebook and Twitter, to email marketing, Squarespace is truly committed to bringing your brand to life. With built-in analytics, the platform allows its users to evaluate the marketing impact through its integrated features, enabling the user to modify the strategies for marketing optimally.
SEO
What Is Seo:
SEO, an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, encompasses a set of practices aimed at elevating your website's position within Google's search result pages.
The optimization journey involves a myriad of elements, ranging from the strategic selection of keywords to the crafting of compelling meta titles. If terms like keywords and meta titles sound unfamiliar, there's no need for concern – this is precisely where the expertise of our website builders becomes invaluable.
Which Platform Is Best For SEO?
In addition, both Wix and Squarespace offer built-in SEO tools that help improve your site ranking. These tools include essential features like mobile-responsive pages, mobile-capturing techniques, heading optimization, search engine optimization knowledge, and images alt text. Now, let's move ahead and compare the key SEO features of Klaviyo Vs Mailchimp.
Surprisingly, they both attain a maximum score of 5/5 for search engine optimization, implying all of the features they provide are crucial components of securing high placements in search results. Shared SEO Features: Custom Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, Alt Image Tags, SEO-Apps, SEO-Prompts, Keyword Support, Google Integrations, and SSL Certificates, Headings, Personal Suggestions.
These animalistic tools not only meet the algorithm needs but also place massive priority on the UX and received a stunning 5 out of 5. Coming to a user-centric experience, Google has always favored.
Wix takes a user-friendly approach to SEO, placing a strong focus on ease of use. Its SEO Wiz serves as an invaluable guide, imparting the basics of SEO during the website-building process. Users can benefit from best practice prompts while constructing their websites. Wix's commitment to a positive UX extends to an expanded template offering with a UX-centric approach, prioritizing website navigation, overall appeal, and sustained visual appeal.
Squarespace, known for its fantastic UX design, has further refined its SEO tools to cater to users of varying expertise levels. Previously considered advanced for beginners, Squarespace now provides a checklist to ensure no crucial steps are overlooked. The platform also offers keyword support and an extensive array of SEO articles within its knowledge center. Best practice prompts are integrated into the building process, aligning with the user-friendly approach seen in Wix.
In conclusion, both Wix and Squarespace demonstrate excellence in SEO tools and prioritize a seamless user experience, aligning with the ever-evolving landscape of search engine optimization.
Help And Support
Both Wix and Squarespace share the top spot, each boasting an impressive score of 4.8 out of 5 for customer support, making them joint leaders alongside Ionos. Wix has embraced a multi-faceted support approach, engaging users through forums, social media channels, live chat, and a 24/7 callback service for phone support. Notably, Wix's dedicated Support Center has undergone significant enhancements, contributing to a remarkable 10.5% increase in its help and support score.
Squarespace, while maintaining a forum, also provides a live chat function available from 3 am to 8 pm EST, Monday through Friday, and ensures a 24/7 email response team. Despite the slight dip from its previous 5 out of 5 support score to the current 4.8, Squarespace distinguishes itself by responding to all emails within one hour, demonstrating a commitment to swift customer assistance.
Wix stands out from the crowd with incredible on-page help that immediately displays within the editing process. Anyone using this 3rd party will just click on a question mark on their screen when the going gets tough and information is needed. Squarespace has improved its onboarding help, but it still doesn't match that of Wix in prompting what you need to do.
Otherwise, the standout feature of Squarespace is its Knowledge Center, which adds to its 4.8 out of 5 support score. The extensive Knowledge Center is a good first stop for users and usually offers enough information to solve the problem without having to contact a Squarespace adviser.
The conclusion is both Wix and Squarespace are invested in strong customer support, with Wix shining in on-page support, and Squarespace using its extensive Knowledge Center to give in-depth help to users.
Which One Is The Best For Mobile Apps?
There are endless features in the Wix Owner app that allow you to manage one, or many, websites. Note that editing the menu, page structure and design of your site can only be performed on sites that were created in Wix ADI, directly from your mobile phone. Content creation, such as blog posts and product listing, however, is still within reach.
The App's Dashboard allows you quick access to the important views of Contracts, Orders, Subscriptions, Blog Posts, Analytics, Products, and Marketing Campaigns. A few highlights include:
Analytics and Reports — Allow users to create alerts for major changes in traffic or sales.
Blog - Create, edit, and manage posts with page settings and traffic monitoring
Inbox: Shows messages from site members and customers.
The Squarespace app, however, does let you create a website in addition to logging into and managing your existing sites. The app’s interface, however, is more straightforward. Unlike Wix, Squarespace allows you to edit all your pages directly in the app (there is no separate page layout area), but usability could be improved with drag-and-drop functionality to organize how your pages appear in the menu.
Analytics in the Squarespace app has a drag-and-drop ability so you can rearrange cards with traffic overview, activity log, visits by country, traffic sources and popular content. The commerce tab is rudimentary displaying orders (pending, fulfilled or canceled) and inventory.
For Squarespace, users can go to the "Settings" in the bottom menu and "Help" to access user guides and support tickets.
The best part about the Squarespace app is the "Pages" section for editing the content and settings on each page. That said, the Wix app looks better and comes with a wider range of features, claiming the title of the definite winner in this comparison..
Wix vs. Squarespace: Which is right for your business?
Wix is Ideal for Businesses That:
Operate in fitness, hospitality, or event ticket sales.
Seek to design a custom app for their specific needs.
Have sufficient staff resources for dedicated website design and management.
Prefer the flexibility to choose their payment processor.
Squarespace Suits Businesses That:
Focus on selling exclusive content.
Prefer a straightforward website builder, even with a slightly higher cost.
Prioritize simplicity in the website creation process.
In essence, Wix offers versatility for various business models, while Squarespace provides a streamlined solution for businesses emphasizing simplicity and exclusive content.
Conclusion:
To summarize, Wix is not just a popular platform, but one that has overcome its shortcomings to deliver a website builder that perfectly marries ease-of-use with a plethora of features. With the back-end Dashboard added, the platform creates more value for small business owners, providing them with a toolbox to manage their digital operations quickly and simply.
Wix is user-friendly and easy to use for non-technical individuals due to its drag-and-drop interface. The Wix Corvid is a fascinating offering for experienced developers, enabling rapid build time while providing powerful database and dynamic page features.
The rock-solid Squarespace shines when you need to build blogs, portfolios, and simple stores. Its mobile-responsive templates that complement a developer portal make it a good fit for programmers and non-programmers alike.
Comparing these two web titans is no easy feat, as both have delivered sophisticated website-building tools that have improved their products over time. Either option will deliver a visually stunning web presence. But if we have to choose one, we recommend Wix because it is more beginner-friendly and has cutting-edge features.
FAQ
Which is more user-friendly, Wix or Squarespace?
Wix has a drag-and-drop editor, while Squarespace comes with structured templates that are customizable.
But which is the best for SEO this coming 2025?
Both come with good SEO tools, but Squarespace has neater code while Wix has easier-to-follow SEO guidelines for novices.
Which one is better for e-commerce?
Squarespace's built-in features make it great for small businesses, whereas Wix offers more integrations with apps and flexibility.
Should I migrate from Wix to Squarespace or the other way around?
Yes, but migration is manual work because there's no import/export tool.
Is it cheaper: Wix or Squarespace?
Wix has a free plan and varying price ranges, while Squarespace has a few premium designs with a fixed cost.