Wix vs. Squarespace: Which Is Right For Your Business in 2025?

Over 81% of consumers do research online before buying a product or service, and many will outright avoid a business that lacks a website. A website is often the first touchpoint for clients searching for offerings like yours. The good news? You don’t need to be a tech guru or hire an expensive developer to get online. DIY website builders, such as Wix and Squarespace, enable business owners to manage their own sites using intuitive, code-free tools. More than 18 million websites are built using DIY site builders, with Wix and Squarespace together commanding over 60% of that market. These two platforms are the go-to choices for entrepreneurs wanting a hands-on approach to web design.

In this guide, we’ll compare Wix and Squarespace head-to-head on the features that matter for a growing service business, from ease of design and SEO tools to file support, scalability, pricing, and more.

Market Presence

When choosing a website platform, it helps to know you’re in good company. Wix and Squarespace are both well-established players with large user bases and significant market share in the website world. Globally, they rank just behind WordPress (the dominant CMS) and Shopify in usage. Here’s a quick look at how they stack up in the wider content management system (CMS) landscape:

Platform	Global CMS Market Share (2025)
WordPress	~68% (open-source CMS leader)
Shopify	~6.7% (e-commerce focused)
Wix	~4.8% (fast-growing site builder)
Squarespace	~3.2% (design-centered site builder)

Table: Approximate CMS market share for top platforms (2024–25).

In raw numbers, Wix has a larger user base than Squarespace at present. Wix reports over 282 million registered users on its platform, of which 6.2 million are premium (paid) subscriptions as of the end of 2024. This reflects Wix’s massive reach, in part due to offering a free-plan option that attracts users worldwide.

Squarespace, although smaller in total accounts, focuses on paying customers since it does not offer a free tier. It has roughly 4.9 million paid subscribers. In terms of live websites, both host millions of active sites. Wix powers around 8 million live websites globally. Squarespace’s footprint is also huge, it’s especially popular in the U.S., where over 4.4 million websites are using it.

Both companies are growing steadily, indicating that they can scale with your business in the long run. Wix’s revenue reached $1.56 billion in 2023, and Squarespace pulled in $1.01 billion the same year. Each is a publicly traded company continually investing in new features (from AI design tools to e-commerce capabilities), so neither is likely to fade out any time soon. You won’t be “betting on the wrong horse” with either Wix or Squarespace; they are among the top choices globally for DIY site building, each powering a vast and growing community of websites.

For context, WordPress still dominates the overall web (powering ~43–68% of sites, depending on how you measure), but that often requires more technical management or hiring developers. Wix and Squarespace have carved out their own huge niche by serving non-technical users who want control over their site without coding.

Editor Experience

For a service business owner building a site DIY, the editing experience is make-or-break. You want creative freedom to make the site yours, but not at the expense of usability or your sanity! Let’s compare how Wix and Squarespace approach site editing and design, including their different editor versions and what real users say about them.

Wix’s Editors: Classic Drag-&-Drop vs. New Wix Studio

Wix has long been known for its extremely user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, now sometimes called the “Classic Editor.” This editor is pixel-perfect and unstructured, meaning you can place text, images, and elements anywhere on your page – freedom that many beginners love. You start with one of 900+ templates and can customize just about everything with a click, drag, or drop-down. Want to move a button 5px to the left? Go for it. Need to add a slideshow, contact form, or map? Just drag it on. The classic Wix Editor’s intuitive WYSIWYG interface makes it feel like PowerPoint or MS Word – no coding required. It’s often praised for enabling a “highly intuitive” design experience ideal for beginners.

Unlimited flexibility, however, has a flip side. Wix’s freeform editing can initially lead to sensory overload due to the sheer number of options. And if you’re not careful, you might inadvertently create design inconsistencies or layout issues (since nothing is locking your content to a grid).

Wix sites are not automatically responsive in the classic editor; you typically design a desktop layout and then use a mobile editor view to adjust how things stack on smaller screens. It does create a basic mobile version for you, but you often must tweak font sizes, element order, etc., manually for a perfect mobile look. This means extra work to ensure mobile-friendliness, and if overlooked, it could negatively impact your user experience and SEO. Wix’s flexibility can lead to elements that aren’t initially mobile-optimized. On the bright side, Wix has introduced features to help maintain consistency (such as site-wide style themes and an AI auto-layout helper), but it’s still largely up to the user to mind the design details. Some designers also report that Wix’s classic pages can become heavy with many elements, potentially leading to slower page load speeds compared to Squarespace if the site isn’t optimized.

To cater to more advanced needs and modern responsive design, Wix launched Wix Studio (formerly known as Editor X during beta) in late 2023. Wix Studio is a more advanced editor aimed at designers, agencies, and users who want fully responsive, grid-based layouts. Unlike the classic “absolute positioning” editor, Wix Studio utilizes a fluid grid and flexible layouts, allowing elements to reflow and resize automatically for different screen sizes. In Wix Studio, you get the benefit of responsive design. Your site is generally going to “look great on any device” with less manual tweaking, because you can design with flexbox style rules and breakpoints. In our own experience, you can achieve more complex, modern designs (like overlapping elements, full-bleed sections, custom breakpoints) that were hard or impossible in the old Wix editor.

That said, Wix Studio is still new (it fully transitioned from Editor X in January 2025), and with new complexity comes a learning curve. Early adopters have reported some bugs and stability issues in Wix Studio’s initial release – e.g. “controls that don’t work properly, odd menu quirks, or the site randomly freezing." It’s also a more complex interface by nature; even Wix acknowledges that moving from the classic drag-and-drop to Studio’s responsive layout “requires a bit more thought and planning,” slowing down the site-building process for newcomers.

In short, Wix now offers two tracks: the Classic Editor for quick and easy site building (with maximum creative freedom but requiring manual polish), and the Studio Editor for advanced responsive design (with more built-in structure but a higher skill threshold). Many agencies use both, including our own, it just depends on the desired outcome for the website. The great thing is you have the choice. As a DIY business owner, you might start on the classic editor and eventually “upgrade” to Wix Studio as you grow or if you redesign; though note, you can’t flip a switch to convert a site from classic to Studio; it would require rebuilding on the new platform.

A quick mention: Wix also has an ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) mode, where it asks you a few questions and generates a starter site automatically. This can be useful to jumpstart the design, but most users switch to manual editing pretty quickly to fine-tune things. The bottom line for Wix’s editing experience: it’s conversational and newbie-friendly (Wix holds your hand with tooltips and even an SEO checklist), and it offers tremendous design freedom. Please be aware that freedom comes with responsibility; you’ll need to put in some effort to ensure consistency and mobile optimization, especially with the classic editor. The newer Wix Studio offers a more structured approach for those willing to invest time learning it, and it signals Wix’s commitment to future-proof design capabilities. Wix consistently updates both editors with new features and listens to user feedback, offering options to vote on features suggested by others in the community.

Squarespace’s Editor: From Structured Simplicity to Fluid Engine

Squarespace’s philosophy on editing and design has always been “guardrails = gorgeous.” From the start, Squarespace made its name with beautiful, designer-crafted templates and a structured editor that restricts how far you can stray from a template’s style – which in turn makes it hard for a novice to create something ugly. With Squarespace version 7.0 (years ago), you’d pick a template family and get a set layout where you could swap images and text and make style tweaks, but the core structure was fairly rigid. This ensured even amateurs ended up with sleek, professional-looking sites. The trade-off, of course, was less flexibility: Squarespace was often criticized as “very rigid and hard to edit” beyond the provided layouts. Business owners who just wanted a clean site loved how quick and polished it was, but those who wanted very custom layouts sometimes found the old Squarespace limiting.

Enter Squarespace 7.1 with Fluid Engine (launched mid-2022) – a major overhaul of their editor to provide more layout freedom. Fluid Engine is Squarespace’s new drag-and-drop system that, for the first time, lets you move content blocks anywhere within a section, not just in pre-defined rows. It’s called “fluid” because it uses an underlying grid and “snap-to” positioning: you can drag items around freely, but they’ll still align to an invisible grid for structure. This gives Squarespace users significantly more creative control than before; you can create overlapping images, collage-style layouts, and precise positioning, which previously required custom code injections. With Fluid Engine you can also edit the mobile layout separately from desktop (e.g. rearrange or resize blocks just on the mobile view), which is a double-edged sword: it allows fine-tuning for small screens (nice for design perfectionists), but it also means the automatic mobile formatting isn’t as hands-off as it was in older Squarespace versions. In the classic Squarespace editor, the template took care of mobile responsiveness (everything just stacked nicely). In Fluid Engine, the user has more control, which again means more power and more responsibility.

So how is the Squarespace editing experience in 7.1 with Fluid Engine? Still quite streamlined and user-friendly for basic site setup, but with newfound flexibility that can at times introduce complexity. Users coming from old Squarespace or other structured builders initially loved the possibilities. But many also reported bugs and UX issues in Fluid Engine’s early days. Some real talk from a Squarespace designer: “Fluid Engine…in my honest opinion, it has more issues than Vogue and is not ready for the public” (a harsh review from when it launched). On forums and Reddit you’ll see comments like “I’m personally against Fluid Engine as it’s still very buggy, unpredictable, and frustrating." Squarespace has been actively updating it since 2022, so by now, it’s more stable than at launch, but the consensus is that Fluid Engine gives Squarespace users more creative freedom at the cost of some of the old foolproof simplicity. If you’re a new user starting fresh, you’ll likely be fine; you’ll adapt to the workflow of placing things on the grid and adjusting mobile view as needed. If you were used to the strict structure of older Squarespace, Fluid Engine might feel a bit too loose for comfort. The good news is that Squarespace still ensures a baseline of design quality: their templates and section layouts are professionally designed, so if you stick within the recommended usage (for example, using pre-designed section blocks and just customizing text/images), you’ll end up with a reliable site. Squarespace also automatically generates responsive image variants and does a lot under the hood to optimize your site’s design for all devices, so it maintains that reputation of sleek, consistent styling.

One thing to highlight: Templates & styling approach. Squarespace offers far fewer templates than Wix; about 180 templates across all categories, versus Wix’s 900+. However, Squarespace templates are often praised for their “pixel-perfect,” modern, and high-quality designs out of the box. They serve as inspiring starting points, especially for visually-driven industries (photographers, designers, consultants, etc.). And in Squarespace 7.1, all templates are part of one unified system, meaning you can change the look and style site-wide fairly easily. You’re not locked into a template structure as rigidly; technically, Squarespace 7.1 has one underlying template with different presets, so switching “templates” is really just restyling. .This is why there is no one-click template swap in 7.1; you can’t install a totally different template, as you could in 7.0. Instead, you’d start a new site or overhaul the style settings to achieve the new look. The style settings panel allows you to globally adjust fonts, colors, spacing, button styles, and more, ensuring consistency. Wix, by contrast, historically allowed per-element styling, which could lead to inconsistent looks if you weren’t careful. (Wix has introduced theme style options now too, but Squarespace’s approach to unified styling is very robust, one of its strengths). The result is that Squarespace “guides” you into a cohesive design, which many busy business owners appreciate.

SEO Tools

Having a beautiful website is one thing; getting found by new customers online is another. For service businesses, strong SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be a game-changer for attracting local clients searching for your services. The good news is both Wix and Squarespace offer built-in SEO tools and best practices support, but there are some differences in approach and depth, which we’ll explore here.

Both platforms cover all the SEO basics that any modern website needs. This includes the ability to set custom page titles and meta descriptions, which are what show up on Google’s results page (yes, you can edit these on every important page). They both let you customize URLs (so your page web addresses can be /services/catering instead of a random ID string) and both automatically generate an XML sitemap and take care of SEO-friendly HTML markup in the background.

You can add image alt text on both platforms to ensure your images are search-friendly. Both platforms also support canonical tags, structured data markup for items like blog posts and products, and integration with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. Wix and Squarespace won’t hold you back from ranking at the top of Google; they are much improved from the early 2010s, when some site builders were considered SEO-unfriendly. In fact, Squarespace’s code output is very clean and follows modern standards, and Wix has invested heavily in shedding its old SEO stigma (years ago Wix sites had some weird URL formats and used to be Flash-based – not anymore!).

Where we see differences is in SEO guidance and advanced tools. Wix positions itself as very SEO-friendly, especially for newbies who don’t know where to start. It includes a tool called SEO Wiz, which is essentially an interactive checklist or wizard that helps guide users through optimizing their site step by step. When you run SEO Wiz, it asks for your business name and keywords you want to rank for, and then it generates a personalized plan (e.g. “Add your city name to your Home Page title” or “Make sure to set alt text on 5 images”). It’s pretty handy for ensuring you don’t overlook basic on-page SEO tasks. Wix also integrates directly with Google Search Console, offering one-click verification and a built-in Google Search integration tool that displays analytics or site indexing status in your Wix dashboard. Wix has added some advanced SEO features like the ability to edit your robots.txt file, set up 301 redirects easily in the dashboard, add structured data (JSON-LD) for pages (some of this is a bit hidden but there’s a structured data tool for business info, etc.), and even SEO patterns (to bulk-set meta tags for, say, all blog posts based on a template). Wix’s marketing pitch is often that it has extensive SEO tools including SEO Wiz, customizable settings, and even AI-driven suggestions to help your site rank. Wix recently introduced some AI text generation and SEO audit features that can suggest improvements for your content. Essentially, Wix gives you a lot of control and lots of guidance if you want it – making it a strong choice if you intend to really dig into SEO or if you’re not sure where to start. Experienced SEO users also appreciate that Wix allows things like custom meta tags, <head> code injection (for verification codes, etc.), and has decent URL flexibility.

Squarespace, on the other hand, takes a “SEO is built-in and straightforward” stance. They don’t have a fancy wizard or an SEO-specific app; rather, Squarespace incorporates SEO best practices into the default experience and provides simple fields for key items (page title, description, etc.). The Squarespace backend has an SEO settings section where you can set site-wide meta defaults, but much of it is handled for you. For example, Squarespace automatically creates title tags like “Page Name | Site Name” by default, which is a decent formula for most small businesses. It also has a convenient 301 redirect manager (under URL mappings) for any page URL changes, and it prompts you to fill in descriptions for pages. While it may lack an interactive “coach,” Squarespace’s philosophy is that if you focus on writing good content and filling in your page information, the platform will handle the technical SEO.

The structured editing approach ensures you aren’t unknowingly doing something that wrecks your site’s usability (which indirectly benefits SEO through better Core Web Vitals and user experience metrics). For a busy business owner who doesn’t want to fiddle with SEO settings, Squarespace’s simplicity here can be a plus; fewer things to configure, and less risk of messing something up.

That said, Squarespace can seem a bit bare-bones in SEO tools compared to Wix. There’s no native keyword research tool or content optimizer. If you want to fine-tune SEO, you may end up using third-party tools or even a plugin (for example, there’s a popular third-party Squarespace SEO plugin by a company called SEO Space). One notable difference is that Squarespace automatically handles image optimization to some degree. When you upload images, it creates multiple scaled versions. Although it doesn’t support WebP uploads, it will serve images in modern formats via its CDN in some cases. Wix will similarly auto-convert images to AVIF format for better performance on live sites (support.wix.com), which helps improve page speed. Squarespace does not yet support uploading WebP/AVIF images directly (it only accepts JPG, PNG, GIF), whereas Wix does allow newer image formats and even raw image files. This is a minor technical point, but it highlights how Wix is more forward-looking in certain technical SEO aspects, such as serving next-generation image formats and structured data. In contrast, a critique of Squarespace is that it still doesn’t automatically offer certain SEO enhancements; for example, Wix has a built-in integration that verifies your site with Google and can even show you analytics, such as your Google rank for specific keywords. Squarespace expects you to handle tasks like manually connecting Google Search Console (they provide help guides, but it’s not a one-click UI element, unlike Wix).

A quick mention about site speed and SEO: as alluded earlier, Squarespace often has an edge in performance. Its sites tend to be lean and fast-loading, partly because of that structured approach and fewer third-party scripts. Wix sites can be perfectly fast too, but if you load up lots of Wix Apps or heavy customizations, you might need to watch your speed. Google’s algorithm does factor in site speed and user experience. On average, as one analysis found, Squarespace sites had better Core Web Vitals (user experience metrics) than Wix sites on mobile, likely due to differences in how they handle code and features. Wix has improved significantly, but it still retains a bit of bloat if you utilize many of its advanced features.

Supported File Types

You might not think about “file support” until suddenly you need to upload a specific file (a client PDF, a video explainer, an audio clip, etc.) and run into limits. Let’s break down the file types and sizes that Wix and Squarespace support, from images and videos to documents, because this affects features like portfolio galleries, downloadable resources, or media-rich content on your site. We’ll also note any big differences, like Squarespace’s 20 MB file size cap and Wix’s larger allowances.

Here’s a table of major file types and limits for each platform:

File Type	Wix Support & Limits	Squarespace Support & Limits
Images	JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WEBP/AVIF, SVG, and even RAW formats supported. 25 MB max per image (15 MB for GIF). Wix auto-converts images to modern formats (AVIF) on your live site for speed.	JPG, PNG, GIF formats supported (no WebP/AVIF upload). 20 MB max per image (images over ~2500px are automatically scaled down). Recommends <500 KB for faster loading.
Video	Supports direct video uploads via Wix Video (common formats like MP4, MOV, AVI). Up to 15 GB per video file on premium (1 GB or 15 min on free). Can organize videos into channels or sell/rent them. External YouTube/Vimeo embeds also supported.	Primarily designed for embedding YouTube/Vimeo. Direct upload of .mp4, .mov, .m4v files is available for certain features (Video Pages, course lessons) with up to 5 GB per video on applicable plans. No general video upload in Personal/Business plans (use embeds instead).
Audio	Supports audio via players or Wix Music app. Common formats (MP3, WAV, etc.) supported. 50 MB max per audio track in standard audio player, up to ~300 MB via Wix Music (for longer audio or better quality). Can sell music tracks through Wix Music.	Supports audio uploads (e.g. MP3) using Audio Blocks. 20 MB max (falls under the general file limit), so suitable for most songs or podcast episodes. Built-in podcast RSS feed feature for audio blocks.
Documents & Other	PDF, DOC/DOCX, PPT, XLS, ZIP, etc., all supported. ~25 MB max per file via media manager (for larger files, the Wix File Share app can be used to share bigger files). Plan storage limits apply (e.g. 50 GB on Core plan)wix.com, which can be increased by upgrading.	PDF, DOCX, CSV, PPT, etc., supported for upload/download links. 20 MB max per file – files are hosted and accessible via a generated URL. For digital products sold through Squarespace Commerce, there’s a higher limit of 300 MB per file. No overall storage cap listed ( “unlimited” usage within reasonable limits).

Table: Supported file types and size limits on Wix vs. Squarespace as of June 2025

Future-Proofing & Redesign

A good website platform is about growing and evolving with your business. So, how do Wix and Squarespace ultimately fare? How easy is it to redesign or refresh your site’s look after a few years? Can the platform scale as your service business expands or your needs become more complex? What about integrating new tools or migrating away if you ever outgrow it? These are “forward-looking” considerations that can save headaches down the road.

Redesign Flexibility

It’s common for a business to want a website makeover after a couple of years. Maybe you rebrand or just want a fresh design. Wix and Squarespace take different approaches to templates/themes, and this affects redesign effort.

• Wix: When you create a Wix site, you choose a template. After that, Wix does not allow switching to a different template on an existing site with a single click; there is no “apply new theme” button. This means that if you want a completely new design, the typical method is to create a new site in Wix, select a new template, and then copy and paste your content from the old site to the new one. Wix has made copying content easier (you can copy elements or even pages between your sites via its editor or by saving sections), but it’s still a manual process. Essentially, a full redesign in Wix might feel like rebuilding your site. On the plus side, Wix’s flexibility allows you to heavily restyle your existing site without switching templates. You can manually achieve a new look by swapping in new fonts, colors, and rearranging elements, since the editor allows you to redesign each page individually. But it’s up to you to do so; Wix won’t provide a shortcut. One feature Wix added recently is Site Themes in the editor, which lets you change your site's color palette and text themes in a more unified way. This helps update the style (say you want to refresh brand colors) without manually editing every element. Still, if you were hoping to click a button and apply a completely new layout from Wix’s template gallery, you’ll be disappointed.

• Squarespace: With Squarespace 7.1’s unified system, there is effectively one “template” that you restyle. This means every Squarespace site has access to all design features, and you can drastically change the look by adjusting the design settings. However, you also cannot swap templates in the traditional sense on 7.1; you can’t, for example, install a template called “Nolan” and have all new demo pages appear; 7.1 sites start from a base design and you customize from there. If you truly want to use one of Squarespace’s pre-made designs as a starting point, you might create a new trial site using that design and then move your content over (similar to Wix’s approach). The key difference is that on Squarespace, because all sites share the same underlying structure, you could also overhaul your design manually by using new layouts/sections and tweaking style settings, without rebuilding everything from scratch. Your content (pages and text) can often remain, and you just rearrange or apply new section designs. For instance, you might completely change your homepage by swapping in some of Squarespace’s pre-built sections (they have a library of content block layouts). The system is built to accommodate redesigns more gracefully, in the sense that you’re not locked out of any design option. In version 7.0, switching templates was possible (you could install a new template and move content), but in 7.1, it’s all-in-one. Similar to Wix, a major redesign will require some work, but you likely won’t need to migrate to a different platform or start a brand new site; you can achieve this within your existing Squarespace site by tweaking styles and sections. One caveat: if you want a completely different vibe than your current site, it’s sometimes easier to start with a blank Squarespace installation and a new preset, then port content over (especially if your current site has numerous custom tweaks that would be tedious to undo). Squarespace doesn’t have a staging mode, so some users duplicate their site or use a trial site to redesign, then swap domains.

  
  

Overall, neither platform has a magic “redesign” button. Wix makes you more likely to do a full rebuild for a new template, whereas Squarespace lets you morph your design incrementally but within a single unified framework. Consider how often you anticipate rebranding or overhauling the site’s appearance. If you want the freedom to change layouts drastically, Wix’s editor gives you the freedom to change things anytime (since every element can be moved), but you do the changes manually. Squarespace provides a consistent structure that you can revamp by adjusting styles or experimenting with new combinations of sections.

One more angle on future design changes: responsiveness and tech evolution. Wix’s introduction of Wix Studio (responsive editor) shows they are adapting to modern needs. Note that if you built your site in the classic Wix Editor and a couple years later decide you want a fully responsive site (like what Studio offers), you cannot automatically convert a classic Wix site to Wix Studio. You would need to rebuild on Wix Studio (Wix did transition Editor X beta users to Studio automatically, but classic Editor remains separate). In contrast, Squarespace’s Fluid Engine was rolled out as an update to all 7.1 sites. If you had a Squarespace site from early 2022, one day you woke up and the editor had Fluid Engine available, you could enable it on existing sections if you chose (though many stuck to classic sections unless needed). So, Squarespace tends to evolve in place (which can be jarring, but it means your site can get new capabilities). Wix tends to add new product lines (like a whole new editor) rather than fundamentally change the one you’re on. Both approaches have pros/cons for the user.

Scalability and Integrations

As your business grows, you may need your website to perform new functions: take online bookings, sell gift cards, integrate with a CRM, display advanced forms, etc. Let’s see how Wix and Squarespace handle these expansions:

• Built-in features vs App ecosystem: Squarespace is known for strong built-in functionality; out of the box, it covers a lot: you can do blogging, basic e-commerce (on the appropriate plan), appointment scheduling (via Acuity integration), email marketing (Squarespace Email Campaigns), membership areas, donations, etc., mostly developed by Squarespace itself for seamless integration. Wix, by contrast, has a massive App Market with over 250+ apps and integrations. Wix itself provides many first-party apps (like Wix Stores for e-commerce, Wix Bookings for scheduling, Wix Events, Wix Forums, etc.), and third-party developers offer others (for example, live chat plugins, advanced form builders, SEO tools, etc.). This means Wix can integrate with a wider array of third-party services more easily, because you might literally find an app and click “Add” to get, say, a chatbot, a payment method, or a specific marketing integration. Squarespace has a smaller Extensions gallery (launched in late 2019) that focuses mainly on commerce and back-office features (such as connecting QuickBooks, print-on-demand services, and shipping software). For general integrations, Squarespace often relies on code snippets or Zapier. For instance, if you want a chatbot on Squarespace, you’d embed code from an external service. On Wix, you might find a native app for it or use Velo to embed it.

• Custom code and development: As your needs become more complex, you may require custom functionality. Wix shines here with its optional developer platform called Velo. Velo by Wix enables you to utilize JavaScript to create custom interactions, database collections to store data, and build web-app-like features on top of your Wix site. You could create a custom client portal with dynamic pages that pull data from a database of properties or services, etc. Of course, using it requires some coding knowledge or hiring a developer, but at least the option is there within Wix. Squarespace lacks a full development environment equivalent. Squarespace does have a Developer Mode for 7.0 (where you could download the template code and modify it), but in 7.1, this is not offered; it’s closed-source. You can inject small code snippets (HTML/JS/CSS) in the header or in Code Blocks on a page, which allows some tweaks and third-party widget integrations, but you cannot fundamentally extend Squarespace’s functionality beyond what their API and plugins allow. You couldn’t build a complex web app within Squarespace; you’d have to integrate an external app via embed or move to another platform. So, if you foresee needing very custom features or bespoke integrations, Wix is much more future-proof in that regard.

  
  

Pricing & Value

Let’s talk dollars and cents (and sense). Both Wix and Squarespace are subscription-based services, with multiple plan tiers. We’ll break down how their pricing compares, what features you get at each tier, and the overall value for a growing service business.

Plan tiers overview: Wix and Squarespace both have a few plan levels, but they’re structured a bit differently:

• Wix Plans: Wix offers a free plan (with Wix branding and a Wix subdomain) which is great for testing but not for a professional business site (since your site would show Wix ads). For premium (paid) plans, Wix recently revamped their naming: common tiers include Light, Core, Business, and Business Elite (there are also legacy or specialized plans, but we’ll focus on these). The lower tiers (Light, Core) are meant for personal or small business websites, while the Business and above are geared toward full e-commerce or larger operations. All Wix premium plans remove Wix ads and allow a custom domain. The higher you go, the more storage and features you get (e.g., online payments, more video hours, more staff accounts, etc.).

• Squarespace Plans: Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan (only a 14-day free trial). Its paid plans are Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. Personal is for a basic website (no e-commerce), Business is for a website with some advanced features and the ability to sell a few items (with a transaction fee), and Commerce plans are for serious online selling (with more features and no Squarespace transaction fees). There isn’t an “enterprise” tier publicly like Wix; Squarespace does have an Enterprise offering but you’d negotiate that separately.

  
  

Let’s compare equivalent levels side by side. Here’s a pricing comparison table for common tiers (assuming annual billing which gives the best rates):

Plan Tier	Wix (annual)	Squarespace (annual)
Basic Website (no e-commerce)	Wix “Light” – ~$17/month. Includes custom domain, remove Wix ads, 2 GB storage, basic features.	Squarespace Personal – ~$16/month. Custom domain, no Squarespace ads, unlimited storage/bandwidth. No commerce (can’t sell products).
Business/Service Site (accept payments or sell a bit)	Wix “Business” (mid-tier) – ~$36/month. Supports online payments, 100 GB+ storage, and premium integrations.	Squarespace Business – ~$23/month. E-commerce enabled (sell unlimited products/services). Comes with advanced features (CSS/JS code injection, pop-ups, etc.).
Advanced Commerce (online store or high-volume service sales)	Wix “Business Elite” – ~$159/month. Their top-tier with unlimited storage, advanced marketing, priority support, up to 100 staff accounts, etc. (Overkill for most small businesses; aimed at larger enterprise use.)	Squarespace Commerce Advanced – ~$49/month. Features like abandoned cart recovery, subscriptions, advanced shipping, and more. Squarespace’s highest public tier for serious online stores.

Table: Rough pricing comparison (per month, billed annually) for Wix and Squarespace tiers as of June 2025.

Conclusion

To wrap it up, you really can’t go terribly wrong: both Wix and Squarespace are top-tier website builders that have enabled millions of entrepreneurs to establish a powerful web presence. It comes down to which strengths align with your strategy. If you need a quick recommendation: For a design-forward, low-maintenance site, Squarespace is fantastic; for a highly customizable, feature-rich site, Wix is excellent. Many users even combine approaches, building a quick landing site on Squarespace to start, then later moving to Wix for a more complex site as the business grows. The key is that you now have a clear blueprint of what each platform offers.

Let Purely Imagined Manage Your Website For You

If you're more interested in running your business than learning the ins and outs of web development, Purely Imagined can take care of it for you. We build custom websites designed to grow with you, complete with your branding, content, and visuals that actually reflect your business. Schedule a call with our team today to learn more!