Wix vs Squarespace: Which Is Better For Your Business?

We tested both Wix and Squarespace, and can confidently say that Wix is the best website builder for most US businesses. It suits a wide variety of needs and use cases, thanks to its incredible range of varied templates and breadth of built-in tools, from marketing to reservations management to product management.

That said, while Squarespace might not be as much of a do-it-all website builder as Wix, it’s slightly easier to use and allows users to create attractive websites without much technical knowledge. This makes it a great option for creatives or businesses in aesthetic-forward industries, such as fashion or wellness.

We’ll compare Wix and Squarespace’s features in more detail in our review, looking at pricing, website design tools, ease of use, marketing features, and more.

Wix vs Squarespace: Which is the Best Value For Money?

Winner: Wix

When looking at paid plans, Squarespace costs less overall than Wix. However, Wix offers a forever-free plan, which is highly functional and a great option for personal websites. Squarespace, on the other hand, only offers a free trial.

Here’s a side-by-side look at Wix and Squarespace’s pricing:

As you can see, pricing is relatively similar for both platforms, although Wix’s paid plans are more expensive than Squarespace’s.

That said, Wix offers far more built-in tools than Squarespace, so you’re getting more for your money on average with Wix. For example, Wix offers built-in social media marketing tools, whereas Squarespace doesn’t, and it offers more generative AI tools to speed up the initial website setup process.

That said, Squarespace has a leg up in one department. You can start selling products for just $16 per month on Squarespace’s Basic plan, but you need to pay $29 per month for Wix’s Core plan to do the same.

What about transaction fees?

Squarespace and Wix are somewhat evenly matched when it comes to transaction and processing fees.

Wix and Squarespace both offer their own payment processing services – Wix Payments and Squarespace Payments. Both platforms offer starting processing fees of 2.9% + 30¢, however, Squarespace’s fees go down to 2.5% + 30¢ on its most expensive plan.

When it comes to additional transaction fees (fees charged by website builders on top of card processing fees), Wix charges 0% on all of its plans, whereas Squarespace charges an additional 2% on its $16 per month Basic plan, which can really eat into your profits.

To avoid that, you need to upgrade to Squarespace’s $23 per month Core plan, which is still much cheaper than Wix’s equivalent $36 per month Business plan.

Wix vs Squarespace: Which Has the Best Website Design Tools?

Winner: Squarespace

Squarespace beats Wix when it comes to website design tools, since its website templates are more attractive and better organized than Wix’s on the whole. That said, Wix’s templates are still very high quality.

We’ll compare three aspects of website design to give you a complete idea of where each website builder excels:

Templates

While Squarespace has fewer templates than Wix (150+ compared to 900+), you’ll also be hard-pressed to find a Squarespace template that isn’t absolutely stunning, whereas Wix’s can sometimes be hit or miss.

Additionally, we found that on the whole, Squarespace’s templates had a better layout than Wix’s, which means that visitors to your website will enjoy a smoother experience.

That said, Wix’s templates are still finished to a very high standard on the whole, especially compared to competitors such as GoDaddy or Hostinger.

Additionally, with more than 900 templates to choose from, you’re likely to find more than one Wix template that fits your website’s topic, no matter how niche it is.

Design customization

Both Wix and Squarespace allow for a high level of customization; however, Squarespace’s guiding grid layout means it’s to implement attractive modifications.

Wix’s free-flowing drag-and-drop editor may feel less restrictive, but it has the potential to lead to somewhat messy outcomes, especially if you’re new to website building.

Additionally, Wix is one of the only website builders we’ve tested that doesn’t let you change your template after you’ve published your website. Squarespace, like most website builders, does, and this makes rebranding much easier for businesses.

AI assistance

The one design area where Wix beats Squarespace is when it comes to its generative AI tools. Put simply, Wix has more extensive AI tools than Squarespace, which make designing content faster and easier.

This is mainly because Wix hopped on the trend much earlier than Squarespace. Wix started playing around with AI in 2016, whereas Squarespace only launched its first AI products in 2024. This means Wix has had more time to test and develop its AI features.

Both platforms have an AI website builder, and while neither is perfect, when testing them, we found that Wix’s AI builder produces a greater variety of templates than Squarespace’s when given the same prompt. This is important because it means you’re less likely to get a generic website with Wix AI.

Wix also offers an AI image generator, while Squarespace doesn’t. That said, the images it produces, while high quality, aren’t what most businesses want to use on their websites, so this isn’t necessarily an extra point to Wix.

Wix vs Squarespace: Which Is Easiest to Use?

Winner: Squarespace

We found Squarespace slightly easier to use than Wix during our testing, although the difference in usability wasn’t big.

Overall, we found Squarespace’s backend less overwhelming compared to Wix’s. Here, Wix might be a victim of its own success. Since Wix offers so many features, finding them all in the backend can be a challenge.

When using Squarespace’s editor, we appreciated the smoothness of adding elements to a page simply by hovering over it, selecting an element from the pop-up menu, and using the grid layout to guide our placement.

Using the Wix editor was a slightly less smooth experience, but relatively easy nonetheless. Wix uses both a sidebar menu and a pop-up menu, which appears when hovering over a page. Not all edit actions are contained in both menus, which can get a little confusing, but each edit option is clearly defined.

Over the past few years, Squarespace has gotten easier to use than Wix. Three years ago, we were recommending Squarespace to tech-inclined users and Wix to total beginners, but now Squarespace is a better option for novices.

Wix vs Squarespace: Which Has Better Customer Support?

Winner: Wix

Wix has better customer support than Squarespace since it offers more contact channels and a larger variety of self-help resources.

Both Wix and Squarespace offer live support via email and chat, but Wix also offers over-the-phone support. This is useful for fixing complex issues that require more than a few quick messages to resolve.

When it comes to self-help resources, both Wix and Squarespace offer knowledge centers; however, Wix’s offers a wider variety of guides and resources than Squarespace’s. For example, Wix offers interactive courses, while Squarespace only offers video tutorials.

Both providers also offer a network of experts for users to contact, including specialists in topics such as SEO, web development, and marketing.

Wix vs Squarespace: Which Is Better For Ecommerce?

Winner: Squarespace

Squarespace offers slightly more ecommerce features than Wix; however, both platforms have essential sales and ecommerce features that can meet the needs of small businesses.

One reason Squarespace ranks higher than Wix for ecommerce features is that businesses can start taking payments on Squarespace’s $16 per month Basic plan, which is actually quite unusual for a non-ecommerce-focused website builder. With Wix, you need to be on the $29 per month Core plan.

Additionally, Squarespace lets businesses sell an unlimited number of products, whereas Wix has a 50,000 product cap, even on its most expensive plan. That cap will be more than enough for most businesses, but it does give Squarespace the edge when it comes to large ecommerce operations that don’t want to be restricted at all.

Squarespace’s integrated booking tools, thanks to its acquisition of Acuity Scheduling, also make it a particularly good option for businesses that take appointments and want to give their customers the option to pay online.

Of course, Wix is a jack of all trades, so it also offers booking and scheduling software, but it’s not quite as intuitive to use as Squarespace’s. This is mainly because it hasn’t been perfected as much as Squarespace’s booking tools, and is one feature among the many Wix offers.

It’s also a great option for ecommerce, even if it doesn’t allow for unlimited products like Squarespace. For example, Wix now offers its own POS system, including hardware, which makes integrating online and in-person sales easier. Squarespace doesn’t offer this, but has a partnership with Square POS.

Wix also integrates over 90 third-party payment processors. Squarespace, on the other hand, only integrates with three: Stripe, PayPal, and Square.

If ecommerce is the focus of your business, you might also want to consider Shopify. It’s a dedicated ecommerce platform that can be scaled up to enterprise-level.

Not sure if it’s right for you? Our comparison of Wix and Shopify can help you make an informed decision.

Wix vs Squarespace: Which Has Better Marketing Features?

Winner: Wix

Wix has a slight edge over Squarespace when it comes to marketing. Both have built-in email and social media marketing functions, a studio where you can design emails and social posts, and attractive prebuilt templates.

However, Wix offers more built-in tools than Squarespace and offers generative AI to make the creation process easier.

Email marketing

Both Wix and Squarespace have a library of pre-built email marketing campaign templates. That said, Wix has a larger selection than Squarespace, even if  Squarespace’s designs are a little more attractive than Wix’s.

Wix now also offers an AI email campaign creator, which lets you generate a template design in a few prompts. Squarespace doesn’t yet offer this, but it has a handy function that lets you automatically match an email template to your website’s color scheme and adds your brand’s logo.

On the topic of AI, both providers also now have an AI writer that can help you craft promotional copy for your email campaigns. The AI writers for email campaigns are pretty evenly matched. Both can write new copy based on a prompt or edit existing copy, and neither produces the most inspired content. We recommend you edit anything produced by an AI writer to make it original.

Social media marketing

Wix offers built-in tools for creating and scheduling social media marketing posts, whereas Squarespace offers a separate app called Unfold.

Because of this, it’s more convenient to manage social media marketing with Wix, since its social media marketing features are in the same place as its email marketing tools.

That said, Squarespace’s Unfold app, which was purchased by Squarespace in 2019, has some truly stunning templates for static social media campaigns, as well as video templates. It also has more options for customizing and designing unique content, especially when it comes to video.

Both Wix and Squarespace also integrate with a wide range of popular social media apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

How We Compared Wix and Squarespace