Squarespace vs. Wix: Which Site Builder is Better?
Are Squarespace and Wix your current top contenders for building your website?
If so, it’s time to take a deeper look into these platforms to determine which one is best for your business. To help you make your decision, we’ve created this article to help you analyze critical aspects of each builder, including:
- Templates
- The site builder
- Ecommerce features
- Pricing plans
- SEO features
Keep reading to learn who is victorious in the Wix vs. Squarespace debate!
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Squarespace vs. Wix: Templates
So, is Wix or Squarespace better? To determine which is best, let’s first look at the templates that each platform offers.
Squarespace templates
With Squarespace, you can choose from 70 different templates. While Squarespace doesn’t offer as many templates as Wix, it does offer more aesthetically pleasing and professional templates.
Many of Squarespace’s templates deliver a clean and modern look for your website. While there aren’t as many options, it can make it easier to narrow your focus to one that best fits your business’s needs.
Wix templates
With Wix, you have access to over 800 templates for your website. You can choose templates based on your business’s category to help refine your search and find a suitable template.
You can find nearly any style of template with all Wix’s options.
Wix or Squarespace: Who wins?
Winner: Squarespace
When your compare Wix and Squarespace in terms of templates, Squarespace takes the cake. While Wix has a variety of template options, it’s challenging to wade through all of them to find a design that’s sleek and modern.
With Squarespace, you get templates that are professional, modern, and suitable for any business. The refined selection makes it easier for you to settle on the right template.
Squarespace vs. Wix: The site builder
Next in the Wix vs. Squarespace debate, let’s look at the site builder. Each platform offers a unique setup for building your site, so it’s crucial to analyze the builder to see which one will make it easier to build your dream site.
Squarespace site builder
Squarespace offers a structured site editor for building your website. This site builder uses rows and columns, so you can only place elements into those rows or columns. You don’t have the drag-and-drop freedom that other site builders offer.
Having a structured site builder is also more challenging to learn because it has more restrictions. Despite the difficulties, it can be a great option if you don’t have a lot of design experience. The structured setup reduces errors and chances of having a sloppy design.
One defining feature of Squarespace is that it offers a set color pallet that you can choose. Squarespace will carry your color choices throughout your design to maintain consistency when you choose the color pallet. For example, if you set your text color to blue, it will already be blue anytime you add text to your page.
Wix site builder
With the Wix website builder, you have complete freedom to structure your site how you want. Wix offers an unstructured editor, so you can drag and drop elements wherever you want on your site.
You’ll have more freedom with Wix’s designer, but it does leave room for frustration and sloppy design if your website doesn’t turn out how you envisioned. You must give more thought to where you place elements and how many elements you put on your site.
Wix or Squarespace: Who wins?
Winner: Wix
When you compare Wix and Squarespace, Wix is the better option in terms of website builders. While Squarespace’s structured builder can be great for creating a clean design, it restricts your site’s creativity and uniqueness.
You want your business to stand out from the crowd, so you need a design that’s unique to your company. Wix can help you build a unique design, and it’s easier to use, so it’s the better option when looking at the building mechanism.
Squarespace vs. Wix: Ecommerce features
If you’re an ecommerce business, you want to ensure your website builder offers all the features you need to sell your products online. So, is Wix or Squarespace better for ecommerce? Let’s find out!
Squarespace ecommerce features
Squarespace offers numerous features to help you run an ecommerce site. You get access to basic features like:
- Inventory management
- Discounts
- Product variations
You’ll also get access to numerous advanced features, including:
- Selling digital products
- Custom email receipts
- Automated cart recovery
- Point of sale system
- Recurring payment products
Squarespace also offers a few features that are unique to the site builder. These features include:
- Back-in-stock notifications
- Low-stock notifications
- Gift card promotions
Wix ecommerce features
Wix offers all the same basic and advanced features that Squarespace offers.
In addition to all the standard and advanced features, Wix also offers a few additional ecommerce features for businesses:
- Multiple tools like Wix Logo Maker and Business Name Generator
- Wix Payments
- Limitless customization with APIs
Wix or Squarespace: Who wins?
Winner: Squarespace
While both platforms offer unlimited product uploads and multiple payment options, Squarespace edges out Wix with better ecommerce features. Having features like low-stock and back-in-stock notifications are vital components to helping you sell more effectively.
Overall, Squarespace’s features are slightly better for ecommerce businesses.
Squarespace vs. Wix: Pricing plans
To answer the question, “Is Wix or Squarespace better?” let’s look at the pricing plan offerings for each platform.
Squarespace pricing plans
Squarespace offers four pricing plan options for your business:
- Personal plan for $12/month
- Business plan for $18/month
- Basic Commerce plan for $26/month
- Advanced Commerce plan for $40/month
Every plan comes with the following features:
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage
- Sites optimized for mobile
- Website performance tracking
- Extensions to enhance your site
- 24/7 customer support
Note: If you use the Business plan, you will pay a 3% transaction fee for every sale. There are no fees for either commerce plan.
Wix pricing plans
Wix offers multiple pricing plans to help you find what fits best for your business’s needs.
First, Wix offers four packages for people who want to build a basic business website:
- Combo plan for $14/month
- Unlimited plan for $18/month
- Pro plan for $23/month
- VIP plan for $39/month
With all these business plans, you get multiple features, including:
- Custom domain name
- Free domain for a year
- Free SSL certificate
- 24/7 customer care
Wix also offers more advanced business plans that have ecommerce functionality. There are three plans to choose from:
- Business Basic for $23/month
- Business Unlimited for $27/month
- Business VIP for $49/month
All these packages offer the same features as the business plans. There are also a few ecommerce specific features you can expect in each package, including:
- Secure online payments
- Create plans and recurring payments
- Individual customer accounts
Additionally, Wix offers enterprise options where you can create a custom package to fit your business’s individual needs.
Note: None of Wix’s plans have a transaction fee for sales.
Wix or Squarespace: Who wins?
Winner: Wix
When it comes to pricing plans, Wix is the winner. If you compare Wix and Squarespace, you’ll find that the pricing tiers are very similar in terms of cost. In terms of variety, though, Wix edges out Squarespace.
Wix offers more plans, making it easier for businesses to get exactly what they need and refrain from paying more for a site than is necessary.
Squarespace vs. Wix: Search engine optimization (SEO)
When you look at Wix vs. Squarespace, you want to consider search engine optimization (SEO) features. SEO is a critical component to helping your site rank better in search results so that you can drive more qualified traffic.
Squarespace SEO
Squarespace offers some basic SEO features that can help you rank better in search results. There are multiple features built into every Squarespace site that can help with ranking:
- Sitemap: Squarespace automatically creates a sitemap for your business, so your pages can be crawled and indexed to appear in search results.
- SSL certificate: Google ranks secure sites higher, so having an SSL certificate will give you an advantage in the search results.
- HTML markup: Squarespace’s HTML is clean and organized, making it easy for search engines to properly index and crawl your site.
- Built-in mobile optimization: With Google’s mobile-first index, you need a mobile-friendly site to rank in search. Squarespace’s sites are already optimized for the mobile experience.
These are just a few of the many features that help your site rank better in search results.
Wix SEO
Wix offers robust SEO features to help your site rank better in search results. Here are some of the features you’ll get with Wix:
- Sites formatted for search: Wix structures all sites to rank well in search engines. Your site is formatted to enable search engine bots to crawl your site effectively, with features like XML sitemaps and clean URLs.
- Customizable data: Wix provides you with the opportunity to customize your site data, including your meta tags, canonical tags, structured data, and more. You can optimize this data to help your site rank better in search results.
- Faster speeds: Wix optimizes your site to help your pages rank better in search. With features like image optimization, your site can load faster to help you rank higher.
Wix or Squarespace: Who wins?
Winner: Tie
Both platforms offer great SEO features to help your site rank better in search. Either platform would be great to use in terms of SEO.
Squarespace vs. Wix: Is Wix or Squarespace better?
Now that we’ve covered different aspects of the Wix vs. Squarespace debate, you want to know: Is Wix or Squarespace better?
Well, both have great features to offer your business.
If you’re looking for a more professionally designed site with better ecommerce features, Squarespace is a better fit for your business. On the other hand, if you want more design freedom and freedom to choose the best plan for your business, Wix is a better option.
You’ll need to consider what’s best for your business’s needs and determine which platform fits your needs.
An alternative to Wix or Squarespace: Partnering with a web design company
With website builders, there will always be limitations and hurdles you’ll face. It can easily become frustrating or overwhelming trying to design your site. Instead of trying to build your site on your own, consider partnering with a web design company like WebFX.
WebFX has an award-winning team of over 300 web design experts that can help you craft a custom website for your business. With over 25 years of experience, you can feel confident we’ll craft a website you love.
Want to see the websites we’ve designed already? Check out our extensive portfolio!
Ready to build the website of your dreams? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our web design services!
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