Wix vs Squarespace: 2024 website builder comparison

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Wix and Squarespace are both great website builders to use for either small business owners or individuals looking to launch their online platforms.

We’ve tested them both to provide you with a clear guide on which is going to be more suitable for your needs.

Of course, your needs may not be the same as someone else’s, so in this guide, we’ll be comparing each website builder for a range of features. Which of these features matters most to you might make your decision much easier.

Wix vs Squarespace: Key takeaways

You can take a look at our quick summary of each builders’ main strength in the boxes below if you just want the headlines. If you’re looking for more detail, continue reading below.

From £9/month

Wix: Best all-round website builder

Wix was the easiest website builder to use, beating out Squarespace and every other builder we’ve tested. It also offers an excellent range of options, with hundreds of templates to choose from and all the features and tools you could need.

Full review

From £12/month

Squarespace: Best design-focused builder

Squarespace isn’t far behind Wix for ease of use but outpaces it when it comes to design. Squarespace has built its brand to focus on high-quality aesthetics, with those working in the creative industries likely to be impressed.

Full review

You can compare Wix, Squarespace and a range of other options on our best website builder page.

Wix vs Squarespace: Feature comparison

The key takeaways above may have helped you to make a decision, but it’s worth diving into more detail, especially if you’re still unsure of which builder to choose.

In the sections below, we’ve compared Wix and Squarespace based on some of the most important factors or features.

You know better than anyone what you need from your new website, so take a look at the sections that matter most to you to make sure you can make the best decision possible.

Ease-of-use

Ease-of-use matters most for those users who are new to website creation. If you’ve never built a site before, then an easier-to-use platform is probably going to matter more to you than it would to an expert.

When it comes to Wix and Squarespace, there are similarities in functionality – including drag-and-drop editing and design – that mean most people will get along fine.

For us, Wix pulls ahead as the easier-to-use builder. In fact, Wix ranks as the easiest-to-use builder of all of the sites we’ve reviewed. While Squarespace is unlikely to throw up any major roadblocks for newcomers to site design, it just doesn’t quite match the intuitive user experience offered by Wix.

Price

When it comes to comparing Wix and Squarespace for price, you need to consider what you’re planning to do with your website.

For the most basic plan from each, you’ll find Wix cheaper at just £9 per month compared to Squarespace’s £12 per month.

For the price, you’ll be getting a fairly similar offering from each, with the ability to build a custom website with a URL chosen by you. You’ll also be able to choose between a number of templates to make sure your website looks and operates in the way you want it to.

If you want to sell online, you’ll need a plan with ecommerce functionality. Wix comes out slightly cheaper here too, with their Core plan offering basic ecommerce for £16 per month. The equivalent from Squarespace comes in at £17 per month.

Before taking a look at the full comparison in the table below, it’s also worth noting that if you need multiple users to be able to access your site, you might be better off with Squarespace.

Squarespace offers unlimited users from the £17 per month plan (and for every plan after), whereas Wix only allows up to five users for their Core plan, with that number increasing by five users with each account that follows.

	Wix	Squarespace
Cheapest plan	£9/month	£12/month
Most expensive plan	£119/month	£35/month
Number of plans	4	4

For the lowest price, Wix is the better pick overall, whether you’re launching a simple site without ecommerce, or an online shop. However, if you need multiple users, you might be better off with one of Squarespace’s plans.

Templates

Templates are an important tool in any website builder. Fortunately, Wix and Squarespace both provide a high level of variety and quality to choose between.

In terms of pure numbers, Wix is the overall winner, offering over 500 designer-made templates for users to choose between. Whatever website you plan to launch, there’ll be a Wix template that matches your design and functionality needs.

Squarespace, on the other hand, offers fewer templates, with just over 100 designer-made options to choose from. While you’re still more than likely to find a template that suits your brand, the smaller range of options may mean that you’ll need to do more customisation to create a template that matches your needs exactly.

Regardless of the number of templates offered by each brand, it’s important to mention that whatever option you choose from either Wix or Squarespace, you can be confident that your website will hit certain benchmarks that are important for online performance.

Wix and Squarespace templates will be optimised to work effectively on a range of device types, including laptop and smart devices, and they will be built to be fast.

When it comes to templates, which brand you prefer will depend on what exactly you’re looking for. Wix offers a much larger variety of templates to choose from, potentially making them a better pick for anyone who wants to avoid having to do much customisation themself. On the other hand, Squarespace has made a name for itself as a designer of highly aesthetic websites that are particularly suitable for those working in the creative industries.

SEO

Wix includes an SEO tab in its website builder dashboard. From here, you are provided with an easy-to-use platform that provides clear actions and steps for you to take.

As you set up your site, you’ll be provided with an SEO setup checklist. You’ll be asked to answer questions to determine what sort of website you’ll be launching, as well as the priority keywords you’ll be targeting.

Once you’ve answered your questions, Wix will provide you with a series of actions to take. This can include things as simple as adding text to your homepage, to something a little more fiddly, such as connecting your website to Google Search Console.

Whichever action Wix suggests, you’ll be provided with a brief explanation of how to do it, along with information on why it matters.

For some of the SEO tools on offer from Wix, you’ll need to upgrade your plan. This is fairly common practice among website builders though.

Squarespace includes a range of SEO tools to help you get your website ranking on Google. As you set up, you’ll be prompted to provide several pieces of information, including your site title and page titles.

On the right plan – some of which are paid – you’ll also gain access to the Squarespace SEO dashboard – this tool allows you to monitor traffic, create and edit settings for pages and items on the site, create crawlable sitemaps for the pages on your website, and other features.

Like Wix, Squarespace will also provide several features that are beneficial to SEO as standard with every paid plan. This includes an SSL certificate, and mobile-ready optimisation, for example.

Squarespace also provides several resources for beginners in SEO, including their SEO checklist.

Wix and Squarespace both offer a suite of SEO tools to help newcomers and experts alike. While many of these SEO tools and features are standard across most website builders, there are some differences to note. In particular, Wix’s SEO dashboard can be an enormous help to people launching a website, especially for those with less experience in the online world.

Visit our what is SEO page if you want to find out more about search engine optimisation in general.

Ecommerce

With Wix, you can start using basic ecommerce features once you opt for their Core plan, costing £16 per month. With Squarespace, you’ll need to pay £17 per month to get access to ecommerce functionality.

All of Wix’s ecommerce-enabled plans allow you to accept payments for products, plans or subscriptions. They also allow you to sell on marketplaces and social media channels.

Wix allows you to host up to 50,000 products on your site, including variations of single products. For example, if you were selling a t-shirt in five sizes, you would need to use five product spaces to showcase them all. Unless you’re operating an enormous online shop, you’re unlikely to hit the 50,000 maximum number of products on your site.

Wix also includes abandoned cart functionality as standard with all of its ecommerce-enabled plans. This can be a powerful tool for bringing customers back to your website to complete transactions.

If you upgrade to the Business and Business Elite plans – costing £25 and £119 per month, respectively – you can then get access to Wix’s advanced ecommerce features, including multiple currency support and increased review capacity.

Squarespace offers ecommerce functionality that is broadly in line with the options from Wix. Once you start paying for an ecommerce-enabled plan, you’ll gain access to stock alerts and product listings that form the basis for your online store.

Squarespace also includes several tools as standard in its ecommerce offering, including analytics and professional email options.

As with Wix, for more sophisticated ecommerce functionality, you’ll need to pay more each month. For example, if you want access to advanced shipping options and discount functionality, you’ll need to pay at least £35 per month.

The ecommerce options from Squarespace and Wix can both provide a robust foundation for anyone launching an online business. Whether you just need a basic ecommerce plan to get started or a more sophisticated set of tools to help scale your business, you’ll be able to select plans from both builders that best suit you. For price, you’ll be able to get more from Wix for less across most plans.

While both Wix and Squarespace offer online shopping features, neither is an ecom-first builder. To compare more options, take a look at our best ecommerce website builder page.

User reviews

User reviews aren’t always the best judge of how good or bad something is, and this is true for website builders as much as it is for any other product.

However, user reviews can provide a basic indication of how satisfied users are. They can also call out specific issues or benefits that people consider important.

On Trustpilot, as of May 17th, 2024:

Wix scores 4.6 out of 5 stars. Over 16,900 people have reviewed Wix with over 70% rating it 5 stars.
Squarespace scores 1.4 out of 5 stars. Less than 1,000 people have reviewed Squarespace with only 16% rating it 5 stars.

The first thing to point out with the Trustpilot reviews above is that there’s an enormous discrepancy in numbers, with almost seventeen times more people having provided a review for Wix than Squarespace.

Given the relatively low number of reviews on Trustpilot, it might be worth taking the Squarespace score with a pinch of salt. However, the high score from such a large number of users for Wix can be taken as a sign that generally people are happy with the web builder.

Wix vs Squarespace: Conclusion

Wix and Squarespace are both quality website builders, though they stand out in different areas for different reasons.

Take a look at the list below for a side-by-side comparison of the various categories included in the article above.

Ease-of-use: Wix is the easier-to-use website builder overall.
Price: Wix is the cheaper website builder, though Squarespace may be the better pick if you need multiple users to access your website.
Templates: Wix offers a much larger selection of templates.
SEO: Squarespace and Wix both offer solid SEO options.
Ecommerce: Wix and Squarespace both offer solid SEO options.
User reviews: Wix is the clear winner, though Squarespace has not had many reviews on Trustpilot, by comparison.

Wix wins more categories than it loses against Squarespace, taking the lead in ease-of-use, price, variety of templates and user review score. For SEO and ecommerce functionality, the brands score fairly evenly.

For us, Wix is normally going to be the better website builder to choose when you’re comparing it to Squarespace, though there are a few exceptions to that.

If you’re building a basic site – with or without ecommerce – and only need one user to be able to access it, Wix will normally be your best bet. However, if you’re building a site that requires multiple users to access it, or if you’re building a website in a creative industry – if you’re a photographer, for example – then Squarespace may be the better pick.

Bryn Glover

Bryn is the founder and editor of WebsiteJumpStart. He has worked in the digital field for over a decade and was editor for Startups.co.uk - the UK's leading small business website - and for NerdWallet UK before launching WebsiteJumpStart to help people and businesses get online with ease.

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