When comparing
Wix vs
Squarespace, on the surface it may appear that both website builders are similar.
However, if we take a deeper dive, you’ll see that they are actually quite different in a lot of ways.
Whether you pick Wix or Squarespace (
or any other website builders),
choosing the right website builder is important to you as the last
thing you want to do is invest months building a website, then
discovering that you need to switch to another builder.
In this Wix vs Squarespace review, we’ll show you where some of the biggest differences between them.
In this comparison review, I will compare Wix and Squarespace in
4 different aspects, plus our conclusion, to see which one is better.
Click on the following to see the specific sections regarding Wix vs Squarespace:
We also have in-depth
reviews on Wix and
Squarespace where we break down all the features and pros and cons of each website builder
1. WIX VS SQUARESPACE – TEMPLATES
Here is a quick snapshot of the difference between the templates provided by Wix and Squarespace:
Squarespace Templates
- Responsive designs (great for mobile phones and tablets)
- Over 40 polished and beautifully designed templates, and over 20 Cover Page designs
- You can change templates for your website at any time (no content will be lost)
Click to see Squarespace’s templates
Wix Templates
- 510+ templates for you to choose from across different industries
- Very professionally looking
- Once you pick a template, you cannot change it without rebuilding your website (so pick carefully!)
- Not mobile responsive, but they have a dedicated, advanced mobile editor
Click to see Wix’s templates
Our Thoughts
Although Wix’s templates are not bad by any means, in fact, they are
quite attractive and they have templates across a lot of different
industries so you can quite easily find one that will work for you, I
just can’t help but admire Squarespace’s templates.
This is a classic case of “Quality Over Quantity”.
Squarespace has a lot fewer templates than Wix, but they are all designed by professional designers. If you look at some of them, you can tell that the Squarespace team has invested a lot of time and effort into crafting these templates.
Mobile Ready Websites – Each Has Its Pros & Cons
Squarespace’s templates are not only are they beautiful, all of them
are also responsive templates. What this means is that no matter where
you are looking at the website (be it on your desktop, mobile phone or
tablet), the layout and design will always look great.
All of Squarespace’s templates are Responsive (mobile ready)
Wix, on the other hand, does not provide responsive templates. However, they do provide you with a
mobile interface editor so you can configure how people see your Wix site on their mobile phones (
see our review of Wix’s mobile editor here).
Each has its own pros and cons.
With a mobile responsive template (from Squarespace), your
design is automatically optimized for mobile devices and there isn’t
much more you need to do.
With Wix’s dedicated mobile editor, you have some advanced
tools to pick and choose what content to display or hide. So you do
have a bit more control over your visitors’ mobile experiences.
You can also insert a Mobile Action Bar, which clearly
displays buttons / icons on the mobile website, which enables your
visitors to email, call, locate your address on a map, or see your
social network profiles with just a single tap.
Wix – Cannot Change Templates
One of the biggest downsides of using Wix is that once you’ve
selected your template and start using it to build your website, if you
decide to change your template to give your site a different look, you
will have to rebuild your content. At the moment, Wix doesn’t allow you
to transfer your existing content into a new template. Bummer.
For Squarespace, if you pick a template and change your mind later,
you can just switch to a new template in their control panel. Your
existing content will be automatically transferred into the new
template, so you don’t need to rebuild your content. You will probably
have to make some styling updates to “dress up” your website, but that’s
not a huge hassle as rebuilding all your content.
So from this perspective, Squarespace is definitely a lot more flexible for you over the long term.
| Summary |
Wix |
Squarespace |
| Template Designs |
Wix has over 500 professional looking, trendy template designs
across a broad range of industries. They are mobile ready and you can
edit your mobile site through a dedicated mobile editor. |
Squarespace has over 40 design templates and they are all mobile
responsive. Although they have a lot fewer designs, they are much more
polished and high-end. |
2. WIX VS SQUARESPACE – CUSTOMER SUPPORT
One of the biggest concerns that most website builders have, is what
type of support they will receive. This is an important consideration
for you, as the last thing you want is running into issues and have no
one to turn to.
Wix and Squarespace approach their customer care / support in different ways, but both are very supportive:
- Wix – Provides support through forums, their Support Center, also email and phone (available from 6am to 5pm PST). Currently, there is no live chat functions available.
- Squarespace – In addition to providing a forum and knowledge center
for you, they also have live chat (from 3am EST – 8pm EST Monday
through Friday), and a 24/7 email response team. It is also
Squarespace’s policy to respond to all emails within 1 hour – that’s
impressive.
Our Thoughts
It’s hard to determine which of Squarespace or Wix is better here.
Squarespace offers very rapid email responses and Wix offers phone
support.
So you can get fast turnaround support times with either website builder.
I think that phone support and email support can both come in handy
under different circumstances. Phone support is great if you need a bit
more hand-holding, or when you are faced with more complex challenges.
But when / if you just want more straight forward support, email might
be sufficient.
Even though you do get to speak with a live person on the phone,
sometimes when support desk gets busy, you might be on hold for a while,
so a simple email may work better such circumstance (so you can move on
to focus on other things while waiting for an email response).
Although Wix doesn’t have a live chat support team, they do have a
very comprehensive Support Center where you can find a lot of helpful
tips and instructions on how to use their tools. Don’t forget you also
get email and phone support.
Although the phone support is only available from 6am to 5pm PST, you
can also schedule a call for one of their support team members to call
you. If you are subscribed to Wix’s VIP plan, you get direct access to
their “VIP Team” support.
One thing I like about Wix is that no matter where you are on
their website editor interface, you will find a lot of help buttons
around each tool that you are using. Their help includes video tutorials and text instructions. This makes troubleshooting or learning very accessible.
| Summary |
Wix |
Squarespace |
| Customer Support |
Wix provides phone, email, forum, and a support center where you can
find a lot of tutorials. You can even setup a phone call appointment
with them. |
Squarespace provides email, live chat, forum, and support center. |
3. WIX VS SQUARESPACE – PRICING
Pricing is also a very important consideration for you. Before we dive
into our analysis of their pricing plans, let’s take a look at what
they are offering in terms of monthly packages.
Let’s start with Squarespace.
Squarespace offers
4 premium pricing plans. The higher the plan, the more features become available to you:
Squarespace Plans – Prices are based on annual plans.
If you sign up to an annual plan, you can save between 13% to 25% compared to signing up to a month-to-month plan.
| Squarespace Pricing Plans |
Monthly Plan ($/month) |
Annual Plan ($/month) |
Savings (%) |
| Personal |
$16 |
$12 |
25% |
| Business |
$26 |
$18 |
31% |
| Basic (eCommerce) |
$30 |
$26 |
13% |
| Advanced (eCommerce) |
$46 |
$40 |
13% |
Wix’s premium plans off you 5 different packages. The higher the plan, the more features and support you receive:
Wix Plans – Prices are based on annual plans.
The listed prices in the image above are based on 1-year plans. If
you choose to pay on a month-to-month basis, the prices per month are
higher.
If you sign up for a 1-year or 2-years plan, you can save from 18% to 43% per year, depending on which package you select:
| Wix Pricing Plans |
Monthly ($/month) |
1-Year ($/month) |
Savings (%) |
2-Years ($/month) |
Savings (%) |
| Connect Domain |
$7.00 |
$4.50 |
36% |
$4.00 |
43% |
| Combo |
$12.00 |
$8.50 |
29% |
$8.00 |
33% |
| Unlimited |
$16.00 |
$12.50 |
22% |
$11.50 |
28% |
| eCommerce |
$20.00 |
$16.50 |
18% |
$15.00 |
25% |
| VIP |
$3o.00 |
$24.50 |
18% |
$23.00 |
23% |
If you compare the monthly fees for the annual plans for Squarespace
and Wix (just so we’re comparing the same subscription commitment
period), you’ll see that Wix plans are cheaper than Squarespace plans.
So on the surface, if you are very price sensitive, Wix might be the better pick for you.
However, you should look beyond just dollars and cents when comparing
their pricing plans, as just looking at the price per month might not
tell the whole story.
They key here is which website builder gives you better value, and more stability over the long run. We’ll break things down in the following categories:
Wix – Available for Free (but at a cost)
One of the biggest differences between Wix and Squarespace is
that Wix is actually available to you for free, while all the
Squarespace plans are paid.
Initially, this sounds like a no-brainer to go with Wix. But before
you jump to conclusion, just know that if you choose to use the free
version of Wix, there are a few trade-offs:
- There will be a very visible Wix advertisement at the top of your website so all your visitors can see it
- You will not be able to use your own custom domain name, and so your website address with always have “wix.com” in it
- Wix gives you limited storage space and bandwidth.
So Wix limits how many images, videos or audio files you can upload to
your site, and also limits how many visitors you can allow on your site
every month.
While all this sounds very restrictive, which they are, but bear in
mind that you are using Wix’s services for free. The saying of “
no such thing as a free lunch” holds true here.
For Squarespace, you get a
14-day risk-free trial
to test them out to see if you like them. If you do, you can sign up
with their monthly payment plans which do not have any of the
restrictive features that Wix has. But to be fair, when you start
paying for Wix, you will have a lot less restrictive features as well.
Bandwidth Limitations (Squarespace = More Bandwidth)
Bandwidth is something that’s not easy to explain, and almost impossible for you to measure.
Simplistically, think of bandwidth as how much power it takes for Wix
or Squarespace to allow your visitors to look around your website.
Everything from loading of images, video, text, etc takes up bandwidth.
So the more content you have on your pages, the bigger your website,
the more bandwidth it will use up when your visitors look around your
site.
It’s extremely difficult for you to figure out how much bandwidth
your website will use, as it depends on so many different things such as
how many visitors you get, how many pages they visit, how much content
you have, etc.
Here’s what we know, though –
Wix has a lot more bandwidth restrictions than Squarespace.
Wix Bandwidth (Less than Squarespace)
Here’s a breakdown of what Wix offers you in terms of bandwidth:
- Connect Domain Plan ($4.50/month) – 1GB
- Combo Plan ($8.50/month) – 2GB
- Unlimited Plan ($12.50/month) – Unlimited bandwidth
- eCommerce Plan ($16.50/month) – 10GB bandwidth
- VIP Plan ($24.50/month) – Unlimited bandwidth
Wix Bandwidth Allowance
Squarespace Bandwidth (more than Wix)
- Personal Plan ($12/month) – Unlimited bandwidth
- Business Plan ($18/month) – Unlimited bandwidth
- Basic Store Plan ($26/month) – Unlimited bandwidth
- Advanced Store Plan ($40/month) – Unlimited bandwidth
Squarespace Bandwidth Allowance
Squarespace gives you unlimited bandwidth across all plans, which is much more lenient and what Wix offers you.
What exactly does 1GB worth of bandwidth give you (such as Wix’s
lowest plan)? How many visitors can that handle? I’m not really sure,
to be honest. But what I know is that once you hit 1GB, your site will
no longer be able to handle any more visitors.
So if you’re building a website for the long term and that
you’re planning on growing your visitors, I would suggest selecting a
website builder and a plan that won’t hold you back. Squarespace gives you a lot more bandwidth, and potentially growth for you.
Customer Support (Squarespace = Slightly Better Value due to 24/7 Support)
As discussed above, Squarespace provides you with 24/7 support where
one of their customer care representative can answer your emails within 1
hour, or you can chat with them on live chat on any weekday from 3am –
8pm EST. You should factor this into Squarespace’s pricing plan.
Although Wix offers phone support, it’s not 24/7 and is only
available from 6am – 5pm PST. Outside of that time frame, you can
schedule a call for Wix to call you back. So if you are a night-owl
(you know who you are!) and enjoy working on your website late at night,
you may not be able to reach a live support person at say 2am (though
Wix’s team is answering emails throughout the night).
To be honest, Squarespace’s monthly prices are not that much
different than Wix’s monthly prices. When you start to consider the
differences in customer support packages,
it becomes clear that you get slightly more value in terms of hands-on support from Squarespace.
The last thing you want is to be stuck with something and having no
one to turn to during late hours. With Squarespace, they will answer
your specific question within an hour of emailing them.
This support offering in itself is pretty good value, especially when
it’s in the middle of the night and you need some immediate support.
Technology is painful, so getting that extra personal attention from Squarespace goes a long way.
| Summary |
Wix |
Squarespace |
| Pricing |
Wix’s pricing plans range from $4.50 to $24.50 per month. Wix’s
premium plans are lower than Squarespace’s. Also, you can build and
publish a website for free with no time limits. |
Squarespace’s pricing plans range from $12 to 40 per month. They
offer a 14-day trial period and you’ll have to decide to upgrade or not. |
4. WHO IS MORE POPULARITY?
It’s really hard to gauge which website builder is more popular, as
there isn’t a whole lot of concrete data to assess this. But here are
some interesting observations and data points that we’ve put together
for you, which you might find helpful.
Here is a chart which will show you how widely searched are the search terms “Wix” and “Squarespace”:
Click to see the latest trend graph
You can see that Wix is definitely getting much higher searches in
Google. We think this is the case as Wix has a much higher user count
than Squarespace, and therefore more popular. This is mainly due to Wix
having a free plan, while Squarespace does not (you have to be a paid
subscriber in order to use Squarespace, but you do get a 14 day free
trial period).
This also suggests that Wix has a much stronger brand than Squarespace.
You should also note that Wix is a
publicly listed company, so they do disclose how many registered users and
paying customers they have. A
paying customer has upgraded to a premium plan, which is the
best metric to see users are happy with the website builder (as people vote with their wallets, so to speak).
Registered Wix users grew 27% every year. Paying Wix users grew 39% every year.
You can see that more and more users are upgrading to Wix’s premium
plans, and the growth rate is pretty high. As of February 2017, over
100 million users have registered to use Wix, and they have over 2.47
million paying customers.
As mentioned, people tend to vote with their wallets (why would you pay for something you’re not happy with?). So this data suggests that Wix users are happy with their services.
The downside with observing this piece of data is that
Squarespace does not disclose exactly how many paid users they have at
the moment, so it makes it challenging to compare the growth rate of
paying customers between Wix and Squarespace.
Based on Squarespace’s website, they have over 1 million paying
customers, which is less than Wix’s 2.47 million. This comparison is
not perfect, but it does suggest that both website builders are
reputable website builder.
We’ve compared the pros and cons of Wix vs Squarespace above,
and you should definitely test out both platforms to see which one you
like better.
| Summary |
Wix |
Squarespace |
| Popularity |
Wix has 100 million registered users and over 2.47 million paying
customers. Google Trends shows that Wix is searched much more often than
Squarespace. |
Squarespace has over 1 million paying customers. However, they are
not a publicly listed company so information is scarce in this regard. |
5. WIX VS SQUARESPACE – CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION
As a recap, here is a summary table of our comparison above. We’ll have some final thoughts below the table:
| Wix vs Squarespace |
Wix.com |
Squarespace |
| Template Designs |
Wix has over 500 professional looking, trendy template designs
across a broad range of industries. They are mobile ready and you can
edit your mobile site through a dedicated mobile editor. |
Squarespace has over 40 design templates and they are all mobile
responsive. Although they have a lot fewer designs, they are much more
polished and high-end. |
| Customer Support |
Wix provides phone, email, forum, and a support center where you can
find a lot of tutorials. You can even setup a phone call appointment
with them. |
Squarespace provides email, live chat, forum, and support center. |
| Pricing |
Wix’s pricing plans range from $4.50 to $24.50 per month. Wix’s
premium plans are lower than Squarespace’s. Also, you can build and
publish a website for free with no time limits. |
Squarespace’s pricing plans range from $12 to 40 per month. They
offer a 14-day trial period and you’ll have to decide to upgrade or not. |
| Popularity |
Wix has 100 million registered users and over 2.29 million paying
customers. Google Trends shows that Wix is searched much more often than
Squarespace. |
Squarespace has over 1 million paying customers. However, they are
not a publicly listed company so information is scarce in this regard. |
Understanding the differences between Wix and Squarespace is important in helping you decide which website builder to use.
While both web design software is good and easy to use, I
highly recommend that you test both of them out so you can decide which
website builder is better suited for you unique needs.
Some people find that Squarespace’s design templates better than
Wix’s so they end up using Squarespace. Some people find Wix’s ability
for you to place any content anywhere on the website more important, so
they end up using Wix.
Some people pick a website builder purely based on the fact that they
enjoy their user interface more. So it really is a very personal
choice and you can only find out which one is better for you if you give
them each a test drive.
From a user interface and friendliness perspective, even though we think that both are not difficult to use,
we feel that Wix is easier to use than Squarespace.
Also, Wix is a pure drag and drop website builder, meaning that you
can insert content literally anywhere you want to on your website.
Both support systems are generally effective. Wix offers you phone support, and Squarespace offers you live chat and rapid email turnarounds.
Both are good website builders, and both will give you different
experiences (templates, user interfaces, customer support). At the end
of the day, I’d encourage you to test out both website builders to see
for yourself which one you prefer.
Wix is free to sign up, and Squarespace offers you a 14-day risk-free trial (
no credit card information is required to test them for free).
