Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress Comparison (2024)

Are you confused between Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress to build a website?

Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress are three of the most popular website builders on the market. They all offer different features and benefits, so it can be difficult to decide which one is right for you.

In this article, we’ll compare Wix vs WordPress vs Squarespace to help you choose the best one for your needs. We’ll cover everything from ease of use to features and functionality to pricing so you can make an informed decision.

Let’s get started with a quick overview of these three website-building platforms.

Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress: Overview

Let’s take a closer look at each one before comparing them.

Wix

Wix is a drag-and-drop website builder that has been around since 2006. It was designed with small business owners in mind, offering a number of features to help you build your online presence.

Through an easy-to-use editor, you can customize your website using the drag-and-drop builder. It’s simple to add content blocks to pages, and there are several things to select from, such as text, photo galleries, contact forms, and more.

Furthermore, Wix gives you the ability to create a website that properly displays your vision. You can choose from a number of pre-designed templates or start from scratch with a blank template. In addition, it also offers Wix App Market that you can use to add more features and functionality to your site.

Squarespace

Since its inception in 2003, Squarespace has given an unparalleled website-building experience to businesses of all sizes. With so many professionally designed templates to choose from, you can create a great-looking website easily.

Squarespace stands apart due to its emphasis on aesthetics, responsiveness, and performance. While it does not have a dedicated marketplace like Wix, it does have many options for third-party and native integrations and plugins.

WordPress

WordPress.org is a free and open-source content management system you can use to create websites and blogs. It is one of the most popular CMS platforms in the world, powering over 43% of all websites on the internet.

WordPress.org is self-hosted, meaning that you will need to purchase hosting and a domain name in order to use it. For web hosting, we recommend Bluehost, which is officially recommended by WordPress. Or check out these cheap WordPress hosting for more options.

Furthermore, WordPress is highly customizable and extensible. It offers thousands of free and paid themes and WordPress plugins to add new features and functionality to your website, similar to Wix.

Note: For this article, we’ll compare Squarespace vs Wix with WordPress.org, not WordPress.com, which is a hosted free blogging platform. See the difference between self-hosted WordPress.org vs WordPress.com sites.

Wix vs WordPress vs Squarespace: Ease of Use

Let’s compare Wix vs WordPress vs Squarespace and check which platform is easy to use and beginner-friendly.

How Easy Is Wix to Use?

Regarding ease of use, Wix is the most user-friendly platform. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can add and remove elements from your website without having to write any code. You can add text, videos, images, buttons, forms, and more.

If you’re not looking to create something from scratch, use Wix ADI, an AI website builder that allows you to create a stunning website in minutes by simply answering a few questions.

How Easy Is Squarespace to Use?

Similar to Wix, Squarespace also offers a drag-and-drop editor that lets you easily add content and rearrange it on your pages without having to touch a single line of code.

For each element, you have customization settings to configure its appearance. For example, if you select a Text block, you will see controls for editing the font size, paragraph alignment, and typeface styles.

How Easy Is WordPress to Use?

Compared to Wix and Squarespace, WordPress comes with a much sharper learning curve. You’ll need to invest a fair bit of time learning your way around the platform.

WordPress comes with a powerful WordPress block editor which lets you edit your pages with a live preview.

This allows you to build visually stunning layouts by adding blocks. There are blocks for all common elements, such as text, headings, buttons, images, and more.

However, if you want a code-free way to build a website, then you can use drag-and-drop page builder plugins. Page builder like Elementor or Divi allows you to build completely custom WordPress websites without writing any code.

Winner

It’s a tie between Wix and Squarespace when it comes to ease of use. In comparison, WordPress has a steep learning curve.

WordPress vs Squarespace vs Wix: Themes and Templates

Let’s compare which offers more themes and template options for your site.

Wix Templates

When it comes to design, Wix offers over 800+ website templates spread across 19 categories to create a stunning website. All templates are fully mobile responsive, meaning they look just as good on a phone as they do on a laptop screen. Plus, if you feel confident, you can select a blank template and let your creative juices flow.

Further customization is also super simple, thanks to Wix’s beginner-friendly drag-and-drop editor.

However, one downside of Wix templates is that they don’t allow you to switch to a different template once they are selected. If you want to use a different template in the future, you’ll have to start from scratch.

Squarespace Templates

Squarespace may feature some of the best-looking website templates available, but there aren’t many. On paper, having over 100 looks like a lot, but it’s not much when compared to other site builders.

Especially when they are divided into specific website categories.

Furthermore, the level of customization isn’t all that amazing. Each design has a limited number of page layouts, and while code may be used to get more options, beginners will not know how.

WordPress Themes

Designing a WordPress website is slightly different. There are thousands of free WordPress themes available, which you can download from the official theme repository. If you don’t like the available options, consider looking for other options from third-party marketplaces.

One feature that WordPress does not provide, but Wix and Squarespace do, is the option to create your website using a visual drag-and-drop interface by default.

However, if you want, you can easily add this type of drag-and-drop interface using a page builder plugin.

The plus point about using WordPress is that you can change your WordPress theme at any point and use another theme, which is not possible with Wix or Squarespace.

Winner

Whether you choose Squarespace, WordPress, or Wix, you can create a really elegant website. However, WordPress is a clear winner with its massive theme collection and styling options.

WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: Plugins and Apps

This section will focus on plugins and apps, which are add-ons that enable custom features not provided by the core software. They can grant you more control when building and customizing your site.

Wix App Market

Wix offers an App Market with over 300 popular web apps that you can add to your website. There are apps for online forms, marketing analytics, and payment gateways, to name a few.

Some of these Wix-created apps will simply connect to your site and allow you to manage events or build online courses.

Plus, Wix App Market offers several third-party apps.

Squarespace Extensions

Unlike Wix and WordPress, Squarespace offers 38 extensions, all of which will connect your website with a third-party service.

Since most extensions are focused on business or marketing, they are most useful to freelancers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress has over 60,000+ free plugins in its official plugin repository, and many more are available on third-party marketplaces.

Whether you want to sell an online course, build a membership website, or create a forum on your site, there’s a plugin for that.

Check out our handpicked list of essential WordPress plugins for more recommendations.

Winner

When it comes to extending the functionality of your website, it is difficult to beat WordPress. With such a wide plugin choice, you can create any website you think of. Hence, WordPress is a clear winner here.

WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: eCommerce

eCommerce has grown in popularity, and most online users mainly focus on building online stores. Even offline markets are shifting to internet platforms in order to compete. As a result, choosing the best eCommerce platform is critical.

Let’s see who can stand out the most between Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress.

Is Wix Good for eCommerce?

Wix offers eCommerce as part of their high-tier plans. This means that users of the Wix Light plan cannot run their online store on Wix without upgrading to one of the high-tier plans.

Furthermore, Wix Stores lets you accept payments using their own native payment system or through third-party applications that are linked to various payment gateways like PayPal, Authorize.net, and others.

If you choose Wix Payments, you will be charged 2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD for the US region. As you sell more products, this processing cost adds up.

Is Squarespace Good for eCommerce?

Similar to Wix, Squarespace offers eCommerce as part of their high-tier plans. However, the only payment methods you can accept are PayPal and Stripe. While they are extremely popular in the United States, they will cause issues on a global scale.

This is a restriction that an eCommerce website should not have to start with.

Furthermore, the lowest plan charges a 3% transaction fee. That is on top of what PayPal or Stripe will charge.

Is WordPress Good for eCommerce?

WordPress doesn’t have built-in online selling features. However, you can enable them by installing an eCommerce plugin.

The most popular option is WooCommerce, with over 5,000,000 installations and 4.5-star reviews on the official WordPress plugin directory.

Compared to the other platforms on this list, eCommerce is entirely free to add. It supports almost all payment gateways. It even accepts Bitcoin payments!

Perhaps most importantly, it can scale as your store expands.

Lastly, you can use many WooCommerce extensions to enhance its functionality further.

Winner

WordPress is a clear winner in terms of eCommerce functionality. It offers many eCommerce plugins which are free to download. In comparison, Wix and Squarespace offer eCommerce functionality in their high-tier plan.

WordPress vs Squarespace vs Wix: Blogging

Many individuals and organizations use blogs as a valuable part of their marketing strategy. If you want to have a blog on your website, you need to know how Squarespace vs WordPress vs Wix handles blogging.

Is Wix Good for Blogging?

Adding a blog section to your website is straightforward with Wix. It has all of the essential blogging features. For example, categories and tags, images and videos, archives, and so on.

However, Wix does not support backdating or private postings. Furthermore, the native commenting system is difficult to handle, which leads many users to install third-party options such as Disqus.

Also, the blog post writing interface is not the same as that of the Wix website builder. Instead, it uses a plain text editor with limited formatting options.

Is Squarespace Good for Blogging?

With Squarespace, you can easily create and manage blogs on your site. You may have landing pages for multiple blogs, create hundreds of blog posts, tag and categorize posts, create post excerpts, enable comments, and more.

Is WordPress Good for Blogging?

WordPress was developed specifically for blogging, making it one of the most popular blogging platforms available.

WordPress, like Squarespace and Wix, offers a number of blog themes for almost every type of blog you can think of. Since WordPress is a content management system, it has all of the tools needed for full categorization, tagging, and file management.

Plus, you can also install WordPress plugins to further customize your WordPress blog.

Check out how to start a WordPress blog and make money blogging.

Winner

While all these website creators offer good solutions for blogging, WordPress has more robust blogging functionality overall. Since WordPress has been built especially for blogging, it has more specific tools, themes, and plugins for bloggers.

WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: SEO

Having a website is not enough to build an online presence. To reach your target audience, you’ll need to use a site builder with robust SEO tools.

Let’s compare all three of them on the basis of SEO.

Is Wix Good for SEO?

Wix offers plenty of SEO capabilities and tools for enhancing your site’s visibility online. It offers basic SEO features such as page meta tags, heading tags, image alt tags, mobile optimization, etc.

Wix also offers a range of SEO apps and tools, such as the Wix SEO Wiz, which guides you through the process of optimizing your website for search engines. Plus, it also offers integration with Google Analytics and Google Search Console, allowing you to track your website’s performance and monitor search engine rankings.

Is Squarespace Good for SEO?

Squarespace lets you customize the title, meta description, image alt text, and URL of your posts and pages, which is important for on-page SEO. You can use 301 redirects to eliminate broken links and 404 error pages, and you can design a responsive site using mobile-optimized templates.

You won’t have to worry about manually building or maintaining a sitemap since Squarespace handles it for you.

However, because there are no SEO plugins or add-ons available, you are limited to the tools offered by Squarespace.

For that reason, Squarespace is a good option for you if you are already familiar with SEO best practices.

Is WordPress Good for SEO?

WordPress is the more flexible platform for building an SEO-friendly website. WordPress, like Squarespace and Wix, allows you to include image alt-text, meta descriptions, headings, and custom URLs in your posts and pages, among other features. Additionally, it allows you to build your site using responsive themes and templates.

What makes WordPress unique is the ability to optimize your site through the use of an SEO plugin. For example, if you use the Yoast SEO plugin, you can get an on-page analysis of each post and page on your site. Plus, it also helps you to add focus keywords, SEO titles, and meta descriptions. Then, it provides recommendations to help you in improving your SEO.

Winner

As a hosted website builder, Wix and Squarespace have built-in SEO features for better visibility online. However, we think WordPress is far ahead because it’s SEO-friendly and has a greater number of plugins to handle every aspect of your website SEO.

WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: Pricing

Whichever website builder you go with, it should offer enough features and benefits to justify its price.

Let’s see which platform is better value for money – Squarespace vs WordPress vs Wix.

How Much Does Wix Cost?

Wix is known for its free plan. But if you want more from your website – like eCommerce features, more bandwidth, or your own domain – you’ll need to upgrade to one of its five premium plans:

• Light: $2.39/mo
• Core: $4.79/mo
• Business: $9.60/mo
• Business Elite: $19.21/mo
• Enterprise: Contact them.

How Much Does Squarespace Cost?

Unlike Wix, Squarespace doesn’t offer a free plan. However, you can trial the platform at no cost for 14 days. If you enjoy using Squarespace, you’ll need to upgrade after that period.

It offers four premium plans:

• Personal: $16/mo
• Business: $23/mo
• Commerce Basic: $27/mo
• Commerce Advanced: $49/mo

Each plan helps you design beautiful Squarespace websites, but for selling online, you’ll need to be on Basic or Advanced.

How Much Does WordPress Cost?

WordPress offers the best value for money because it doesn’t cost a single cent to use! However, this does not mean that you can create a website for free. You will need to pay for hosting, which varies depending on the web host you choose.

We recommend Bluehost or Hostinger for your web hosting. Its prices start from just $2.95/mo and 2.99/mo for its WordPress hosting package and include a free domain name and SSL certificate. For more, check out cheap WordPress hosting services.

In addition, you might need to invest in a premium theme and plugins to create a site that acts and looks exactly as you want it to.

Because the prices of hosting, domain registration, themes, and plugins vary, the cost of building and managing a WordPress site can range from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.

However, the average cost is reasonable. According to Website Builder Expert, creating a WordPress site costs roughly $200, and managing it costs $11 to $40 each month.

Winner

If you choose a cheap WordPress host, WordPress offers excellent value for money. Plus, it offers more freedom over which themes and plugins you install, so it’s possible to adjust the expenses to fit your budget.

Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress: Customer Support

Customer support is another key thing to consider when comparing these website builders. Although you may never need it, it is always beneficial to have a dedicated support team ready to answer any queries you may have.

Let’s look at who offers the best customer support.

How Good is Wix Customer Support?

When it comes to customer support, Wix is one of the best platforms. Regardless of the plan you select, the Wix support team is available 24/7. You may use this service to troubleshoot problems and get quick solutions.

Further, you can use the Wix Help Center to find answers to your questions.

How Good is Squarespace Customer Support?

Squarespace is excellent for help and support. If you experience any problems, you can reach out via 24/7 Email, Live chat, Social media, etc.

It also offers an excellent Knowledge Base with several articles, video tutorials, and forums to help you if you get stuck.

It’s worth mentioning that Squarespace doesn’t offer phone support, but there are lots of other options.

How Good is WordPress Customer Support?

WordPress does not have a single support channel for the core software. However, the WordPress community is global, and there are countless blogs, forums, videos, and online courses that can help you get started with WordPress and answer any issues you may have.

Furthermore, if you buy a premium theme or plugin, you’ll typically get excellent support, and if you’re truly stuck, there are hundreds of web developers you can hire.

Winner

It’s a tie between Wix and Squarespace! Both offer good customer support.

Final Thought: Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress

If you’ve been paying attention to the winners in each category, you should know that WordPress is the better option.

It’s simple to use, offers more customization in every way, has the best eCommerce tools available, integrates with almost everything, and is far cheaper owing to the competitive nature of web hosting.

To put it simply, WordPress has no limitations since it allows you to create any type of website. The tools at its disposal outweigh the competitors, and the user base is massive. As a result, the level of help available online is as wide as night and day.

There’s a reason why WordPress is used by over 43% of all websites on the internet, and we believe it’s pretty clear.

We hope this article helps you choose the best website builder for your website, between Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress.

For more, check out these other WordPress comparisons:

• Wix vs WordPress
• Weebly vs WordPress
• Blogger vs WordPress
• WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
• Shopify vs WordPress
• Drupal vs WordPress

Lastly, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on the latest WordPress and blogging-related articles.