Battle of the Best: Wix vs Squarespace for Top Website Builder in 2025

Website builders provide an affordable way for aspiring bloggers and small business owners to create an eye-catching website without a heavy investment. When choosing a platform, two of the most well-known options are Wix and Squarespace.

The online landscape is filled with numerous content management systems (CMS) and website builders, making it challenging to pick the best one. On one side, you have WordPress, offering extensive customization possibilities. On the other side, there are user-friendly website builders that are easier for beginners. This can be quite overwhelming for new website owners, which is why we’ve focused on comparing the two leading website builders: Wix and Squarespace.

Which platform aligns best with your needs? In this article, I’ll guide you through key factors like ease of use, SEO, design options, customer support, pricing, and more to help you make an informed decision. Let’s dive in.

Important Note: Some links below may earn me affiliate commissions at no extra cost if you decide to purchase a paid plan. Rest assured, I’ve tested and reviewed these tools extensively to recommend the best options for launching and managing your website. You can learn more in my privacy policy.

Before considering other aspects, most beginners, and even seasoned users, prioritize how simple and intuitive the platform is. What’s the point of having fantastic features if you can’t easily access or utilize them? If you find yourself struggling to navigate the builder, it can hinder your progress. Both Wix and Squarespace offer features that contribute to their ease of use.

For instance, both platforms include drag-and-drop editors, making it straightforward to add and position elements such as text boxes, images, social media widgets, and more. This visual approach simplifies site design for users of all skill levels. Wix excels as a dedicated drag-and-drop builder, allowing you to freely move and place elements exactly where you want.

Conversely, Squarespace offers semi-drag-and-drop functionality, meaning you can’t freely reposition every element—you might need to adapt to certain design templates and adjust accordingly, which could take some getting used to.

Building a website with Wix is remarkably straightforward yet engaging. The entire process is designed to be fun, dynamic, and flexible, which keeps the experience enjoyable whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer. Wix doesn’t just stop at drag-and-drop—you also have an option to use its Artificial Design Intelligence (Wix ADI). This feature simplifies website building even further by automatically creating a tailored website based on your preferences, making for an effortless setup process.

All you need to do is provide some basic information about your website, such as the name, its main purpose, the elements you want to include, your preferred themes, and more. After submitting these details, Wix ADI will automatically generate a website that best matches your style and needs. Once you’ve entered all the necessary information, the platform takes care of creating a personalized site that aligns with your preferences.

Once you’ve provided all the necessary details, Wix ADI will automatically design a website tailored to your preferences, making the process quick and easy.

While Squarespace is also an excellent choice for beginners, it tends to be a bit more technical than platforms like Wix or Weebly. The learning curve is slightly steeper, but once you get familiar with the interface and layout, it becomes much easier to manage and customize your site.

A key advantage of Squarespace is its ability to let you use multiple templates within a single website. Additionally, adding content is straightforward: just click anywhere on your site and start typing.Wix

Wix comes out ahead in this comparison. Both platforms are designed to be user-friendly and simple to navigate, but Wix offers a more beginner-oriented experience, making it easier for newcomers to get started.

Get started with Wix.

Everyone aspires to create a striking website that captures the attention of their target audience. Achieving a creative and appealing website becomes more manageable when you have greater flexibility in design options and a wide range of templates. Besides, you should consider how easily you can switch themes, whether the designs are visually appealing, and other customization factors.

Let’s compare how each platform performs regarding design flexibility and creative control.

Scrolling through the extensive collection Wix templates, you’ll find a diverse selection of professionally designed options. The templates are not limited to specific niches; instead, over 500 attractive designs are available across various industries such as blogging, photography, videography, and more.

Here are some important points about Wix templates:

Squarespace offers fewer templates compared to Wix, and customizing elements can sometimes be less flexible. However, it excels in allowing seamless theme switches, making it easier to change the look of your website in the future.

Important details about Squarespace templates include:

When comparing template variety, Wix has a clear advantage with its extensive selection and aesthetic options. Its templates are diverse and highly responsive, suitable for many different types of websites.

However, Squarespace’s standout feature is its elegant, minimalist templates. These designs, crafted with care by top designers, radiate sophistication and are mobile-ready right away. When considering quality over quantity, Squarespace’s templates take the lead in terms of design excellence.

Both platforms offer templates with high visual appeal, but customization options are vital for tailoring your website to your needs. Wix makes customization straightforward for beginners: you can easily replace images, change text, upload logos, and modify elements with just a few clicks. However, choosing the right template carefully is crucial because Wix restricts switching templates after initial setup—changing templates later can be challenging and may require rebuilding the site.

Switching to a different website template later on can require a complete rebuild of your site, meaning starting from scratch and losing your current setup. This makes choosing the right template from the beginning very important.

Although Squarespace offers only limited drag-and-drop functionality, it remains a popular choice because it allows you to change templates down the line without too much hassle. You can also easily customize other aspects such as fonts, backgrounds, colors, and more to match your brand’s style.

Winner: Squarespace.

When comparing design flexibility, Squarespace’s templates stand out as the best option. They provide a wide array of professionally-designed, visually appealing templates, and you can switch to a different layout at any point during your website’s development. Additionally, Squarespace includes a mobile editor, making it simple to optimize your site for smartphones and tablets.

Get started with Squarespace.

After designing an eye-catching layout for your website, the next step is to ensure your visitors stay engaged and explore all that your site offers. While creating a beautiful website is essential for attracting visitors, it’s equally important to equip your site with useful features and functionalities that encourage interaction and retention.

This is why selecting a website builder that offers rich features and tools is crucial. For those who prefer to build their website without writing a single line of code, Wix presents an excellent solution. It offers a diverse range of tools tailored for different industries, including e-commerce, corporate sites, and more. Most of these tools are native, integrated directly into the control panel, allowing easy access without any additional setup. However, if you seek even more features, you can expand your website’s capabilities by installing third-party apps from the Wix App Market.

The only downside is that many of these apps on Wix come with limited features in their free or basic plans. To access the full suite of functionalities, you’ll need to pay for premium packages. Nonetheless, the core tools are available for free, allowing you to get started without immediate costs.

Squarespace and other options don’t feature an app marketplace as extensive as Wix’s. Consequently, Wix is equipped with a wide variety of built-in tools and features directly within its control panel, making it a versatile choice.

Both Squarespace and Wix excel in providing robust tools for three major functions:

If you’re opening an online store, you should consider transaction fees, the number of products you plan to sell, and the overall ease of managing sales. For new e-commerce ventures, both Wix and Squarespace offer similar core features. In particular, Wix Ecommerce provides a wide selection of templates with built-in tools such as no commission fees, Google Analytics for tracking, absence of ads, unlimited bandwidth, and up to 50GB of storage, among other benefits.

Squarespace provides a range of eye-catching ecommerce solutions. The basic option is tailored mainly for showcasing products and selling a limited number of items, while the more advanced themes are designed to deliver a richer, more engaging shopping experience. Like Wix, Squarespace offers impressive ecommerce features such as unlimited bandwidth, cart recovery, email marketing, and additional tools to enhance your online store.

Creating a successful blog involves more than just publishing text; it requires robust tools and features to help grow your audience and improve engagement. Wix simplifies this process by offering a variety of beautiful layouts and built-in features like feeds, galleries, and email campaigns, all of which support your blogging journey. Additionally, you can enhance your blogging experience by adding their dedicated app, which provides even more options for building a strong online presence. Squarespace, on the other hand, comes equipped with powerful blogging features integrated directly into its visual editor. Its stylish templates are particularly ideal for photography and graphic design blogs, and it includes features like multiple authors, social sharing, and category management to support diverse content strategies.

Your website won’t attract visitors or grow on its own. To boost your online presence and reach a wider audience, you need to utilize effective marketing tools. Both Wix and Squarespace offer comprehensive sets of marketing features without skimping on quality.

Wix’s collection of marketing tools allows you to start your email campaigns easily by creating eye-catching newsletters. It also provides tracking options to monitor your success, supports social media marketing, and offers additional features to enhance your outreach efforts. Likewise, Squarespace helps you run beautiful email campaigns with customizable, visually appealing newsletters. Besides email marketing, it integrates seamlessly with social media platforms and offers built-in analytics to analyze your performance.

Both platforms provide robust marketing solutions, making it a close call. Wix benefits from its dedicated App Store, giving users access to extra marketing integrations, while Squarespace compensates by integrating powerful tools directly into its control panel. This balance leads to an overall tie in their marketing capabilities.

Getting more visitors to your site largely depends on your Search Engine Optimization strategy. Higher search engine rankings mean more organic traffic, which boosts your site’s success. Both Wix and Squarespace excel at providing SEO tools that help your website rank better by optimizing for mobile devices, including relevant metadata, and using high-volume keywords.

They also support adding descriptive alt text to images, optimizing header tags, and offering free SSL certificates, among other SEO-friendly features.

Wix provides a detailed SEO guide aimed at beginners, making it easier for newcomers to understand and implement best practices. This guide walks users through the essentials of SEO without overwhelming them, helping them get started quickly.

In addition to the guide, Wix offers the Wix SEO Wiz, a personalized setup tool that simplifies SEO setup. You input basic information about your website and its goals, and Wix handles the technical details behind the scenes. Wix also includes features like fast page loading speeds, automatic mobile optimization, instant Google indexing, XML sitemaps, and default meta tags—designed to improve your site’s visibility and performance.

Squarespace also prioritizes SEO by incorporating many top strategies directly into its platform. For example, it automatically generates sitemaps, provides free SSL certificates, cleans up HTML code for better indexing, performs automatic image tagging, refines URLs for easier search engine crawling, and creates lightweight mobile versions of pages to enhance load times. It also offers Google keyword analytics to help refine your content strategy.

While Squarespace offers a comprehensive SEO guide suitable for beginners, it lacks the personalized, step-by-step setup tool like Wix’s SEO Wiz. This means Squarespace users may need to do more manual work or research to optimize their sites effectively.

Overall, both platforms support strong SEO practices, but Wix provides more guided assistance for newcomers just starting out.The issue involved my URLs being affected by both versions with and without a trailing slash “/”. It was a straightforward problem with no clear solution, but it didn’t seem to influence my search rankings since it didn’t cause duplicate content issues.

Winner: Wix

Both website builders offer solid overall SEO features. However, they won’t match the strength of a WordPress site.

Read my full Wix vs. WordPress review for more details.

Thanks to its personalized guidance and the smooth experience I had with Squarespace, Wix takes the win in this round.

Get started with a Wix website.

Knowing which platform offers better customer support and quicker responses is crucial. If you encounter difficulties—such as connecting your domain or fixing a design problem—you need reliable help. That’s why the quality of customer support is an important factor to consider before choosing a platform.

Both Wix and Squarespace provide excellent support options, including knowledge bases, community forums, and video tutorials.

Wix offers a range of support channels, making it easy to get help when you need it. You can reach out via email, social media, phone calls, and through their extensive support center. They also provide step-by-step guides, forums, and helpful blogs to troubleshoot issues.

Similarly, Squarespace offers multiple support methods. In addition to tutorials and standard help resources, they have live chat support. They also emphasize a prompt reply policy, aiming to respond to all emails within an hour.

Up until now, both platforms provide comparable customer service features. However, Wix has a significant advantage in on-page assistance. With Wix, help is integrated directly into the website editing interface. Whenever you get stuck, you can click on the ‘help’ button and find solutions without leaving the page.

Squarespace, in contrast, does not provide any direct support embedded on the page. However, it does have an advantage over Wix with its robust Live Chat feature, which enhances customer support.

It’s challenging to determine a clear winner when comparing help and support options, as both Squarespace and Wix excel in different areas. Squarespace’s built-in Live Chat offers immediate assistance, while Wix’s support options include phone support, which many users find more personal. Ultimately, Wix’s on-page support tools give it an edge for this category.

Get started with Wix.

Both Wix and Squarespace are renowned for their attractive plans and flexible pricing options. These packages cater to various types of users, ranging from small startups to larger organizations with websites that exceed 30 pages.

Here’s a breakdown of what each offers.

Squarespace provides four premium subscription plans, targeting different needs. The first two are ideal for simple, professional websites, while the last two are tailored for ecommerce stores.

The Personal plan costs $12 monthly when paid annually and is ideal for basic websites with a beautiful design. If you choose to pay month-to-month, the cost increases to $16. The plan offers features like unlimited bandwidth and storage, mobile-optimized design, website analytics, a free domain, and SSL security.

The Business plan is priced at $18 per month annually, or $26 if paid monthly. It suits small to medium-sized businesses and includes all Personal plan features plus additional tools like promotional pop-ups, a $100 Google Ads credit, and professional email marketing from Google.

For online stores, Squarespace offers a Basic Commerce plan at $26 per month billed annually, or $30 monthly. It supports essential ecommerce functionalities such as integrated payments, product inventory management, and customer accounts. The Advanced Commerce plan, at $40 per month annually or $46 monthly, includes features like abandoned cart recovery, gift cards, and flexible discount options.

Wix offers a wider variety of plans—seven in total—divided into Website Plans and Business Plans. This variety provides more tailored options for different needs and budgets.

The plans vary from basic website packages to full-fledged ecommerce solutions, giving users plenty of options to choose from based on their specific requirements.

Wix’s Combo Plan, costing $11 per month, is the most affordable option. It’s ideal if you’re just starting out and exploring how to build your website, but it may not be suitable for long-term growth. This plan includes basic features such as 3 GB of storage, 2 GB of bandwidth, domain connection, removal of Wix advertisements, and a free domain voucher for one year (with yearly subscriptions).

The Unlimited Plan, at $14 per month, is tailored for freelancers and bloggers. It offers essential features like domain connection, ad removal, 10 GB of storage, unlimited bandwidth, access to Wix vouchers, and Premium Apps. It also allows you to upload videos totaling up to 1 hour.

For $19 per month, you can opt for Wix’s Pro Plan, which is among the platform’s most popular options. It provides increased storage capacity of up to 20 GB, the ability to upload up to 2 hours of videos with Wix Video, a custom domain, a professional logo, unlimited bandwidth, and additional features like premium branding.

The VIP Plan, priced at $29 per month, includes most of the features from the Pro Plan but adds priority customer support, ensuring faster and more dedicated assistance. This makes it ideal for users who need quick help and are looking for a premium service level.

Wix’s Business & Ecommerce Plans are designed for expanding your online store. These plans are suitable for businesses ready to scale and sell more effectively online.

The available options are:

The Business Basic plan, costing $20 per month, is excellent for new online stores. It includes features like accepting online payments directly on your site, a free domain for one year, access to the site booster app, Google Analytics integration, and more.

The Business Unlimited plan, at $25 per month, adds enhancements such as a professional logo, social media logo files, allow uploads of videos up to 10 hours long, and additional tools suited for growing businesses.

Finally, the Business VIP plan at $35 per month offers the most comprehensive package, including priority support, VIP customer service, and all features from the Unlimited plan plus extra benefits designed for high-volume stores.

*Note: Pricing and available features may vary depending on the country.*

Winner: Wix

Thanks to its free plan and affordable, varied options, Wix stands out as the top choice. While platforms like Squarespace offer fewer plans at generally higher prices—and Shopify provides more extensive ecommerce capabilities—Wix’s balance of cost, features, and flexibility makes it the preferred platform in this comparison.

Get started with Wix.

After reviewing all the options, it’s clear that Wix narrowly edges out the competition. Both Wix and Squarespace offer many similar features, but Wix’s additional offerings and flexible plans give it a slight edge. Ultimately, the choice depends on your specific needs and preferences. If you’re seeking the best value for your money, Wix is the right choice. Conversely, if you prefer minimalist, elegant designs, Squarespace might suit you better.

Squarespace.

To help you make a confident choice, here’s a FAQ section that addresses common questions about Wix and Squarespace.

If you’re new to creating websites, Wix is an excellent starting point. It’s especially suitable if managing your own domain and handling WordPress plugins feels overwhelming. Overall, Wix offers superior functionality compared to both Squarespace and Weebly. Its on-site editing features, combined with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, mean you won’t need prior technical knowledge to get started. Wix is ideal for individual entrepreneurs, small to midsize businesses, and personal projects.

Squarespace is especially popular among creative professionals. Its elegant templates radiate sophistication, making it a favored choice for photographers, graphic designers, and artists who want to showcase their portfolios. Although Squarespace is user-friendly enough for beginners, some basic technical understanding can enhance your experience. It’s a great platform for those looking to build visually stunning sites that stand out.

Wix is undeniably one of the easiest and most beginner-friendly options available. Its interface allows you to simply select an element and position it wherever you like. While Squarespace is also relatively straightforward, Wix still leads in simplicity and ease of use—making it more accessible for complete novices.

Squarespace is the clear winner for stunning visual design. Although Wix provides a broader range of templates, Squarespace’s templates are expertly crafted, exuding professionalism and aesthetic appeal. The templates available on Squarespace are designed by professionals to ensure your site looks polished and stylish, giving you a slight edge in visual quality.

When comparing plans, Wix tends to offer more flexibility and affordability. It has a variety of pricing options, including cheaper plans for those just starting out, and even a free version. This makes Wix a more budget-friendly choice for many users.

Both Wix and Squarespace provide excellent support resources. Wix has a slight advantage due to its built-in support channels, including phone assistance and comprehensive step-by-step guides to help you set up your site. Squarespace also offers reliable support, notably its live chat feature. Overall, both are strong options, but Wix’s additional support options make it a tad more accessible for beginners.

In conclusion, Wix edges out slightly in overall ease of use and support. You can get started with Wix.com today by trying their free plan.

I hope this detailed comparison helps you decide on the best platform for building your new website.

Further Resources on StepThroughThePortal.com: For more in-depth reviews of top website builders, web hosting services, and ecommerce platforms, explore your options to find the best fit for your business needs.

You can also read about the difference between WordPress and Squarespace for blogging, offering a deeper comparison to help you choose the right platform.