Wix vs Squarespace

The short answer

Choose Wix if you want a free plan to start, built-in booking and the most tools in one place. Choose Squarespace if design matters most and you're happy to pay to publish, with lower entry prices on annual billing. Neither lets you switch templates on a current site, and neither moves easily elsewhere.

The quick comparison

Shingle wrote this guide and sells a builder of its own, so check each company's pages too. Here's Wix vs Squarespace on the points that matter to a small business. Prices are as of November 6, 2026, from each company's own pages. Wix's need a note, which is in the next section.

Price

Squarespace is the simpler to read. Its pricing page lists Basic at $12 a month paid yearly or $19 monthly, Core at $17 or $27, and Advanced at $25 or $36.

Wix needs more care. Its plans page showed Light at $17.77, Core at $29.77, Business at $39.77 and Business Elite at $159.77 a month, paid yearly. The page marks those as including tax and says prices and currency vary by location, with US dollars shown for reference. On October 26, the same page read $17, $29 and $39 for the first three. So expect your own figure to differ a little, and check it at checkout.

What you get for the price differs as well. Wix's Light plan has 2 GB of storage and two collaborators, and it doesn't include taking payments or scheduling. You need Core for those, at $29.77. On Squarespace, Basic allows two contributors and can sell from day one with a 2% fee on sales, and Core at $17 removes the store fee and the limit on contributors.

So for a business that takes payments, Squarespace's entry price is well below Wix's. For a business that needs booking, the sums change again, as you'll see below.

Free plan and trial

Wix has a free plan that publishes at a wixsite.com address, with Wix ads, 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth. Your own domain needs a paid plan. There's no free trial of paid plans, but there is a 14-day money-back period when you first upgrade.

Squarespace has no free plan. You get a 14-day trial with no card, and it needs a paid plan to publish.

If you want something live today for nothing, only Wix does that. A real business will want its own domain soon anyway, so this matters most for testing an idea.

Building and editing

Both let you start from a template, or from a description given to an AI builder, then adjust in a drag-and-drop editor.

In Wix's editor, you can drag a single element freely, and align tools help you line things up. That gives you a lot of freedom, and also the freedom to make a mess. Squarespace's current editor places blocks on a grid, with desktop and mobile layouts arranged separately. Its templates and style system tend to keep a page looking consistent.

The big limit is the same on both, and it catches people out. Neither lets you switch templates. Wix says you can't switch to a different template on a site you've created, so a new look means a new site, and things like the store, bookings and design don't transfer. Squarespace says you can't switch templates in version 7.1, its current version, though you can change colors, fonts and page types, or use its redesign option to keep your content and pick a new style. That gives Squarespace an edge if you expect to refresh the look.

AI tools

Both have an AI website builder, and you can try each before you pay.

Wix's starts from a prompt and wires in tools like a store or scheduling based on what you describe. Its agent, Aria, takes on layout changes, new sections and visuals when you ask. There's also a text writer, an image generator and a meta tag creator in the editor.

Squarespace's makes a multi-page starting point from your description, with copy, images, colors and fonts that fit together. Its plans set a limit on AI credits: 10 once on Basic, 20 a month on Core and 120 a month on Advanced.

With either one, read every line before you publish. An AI builder fills gaps with whatever sounds likely, and Google says you should fact-check AI content. Our guide to the best AI website builders has a test you can run on both.

Selling online and taking payments

Both can run a store, and the fees are where they differ.

Squarespace charges a 2% fee on online store sales on Basic, and 0% on Core and Advanced. Digital content and memberships carry 7% on Basic, 5% on Core and 0% on Advanced. The payment processor's own fees come on top.

Wix needs at least Core to accept payments. Wix Payments charges 2.9% plus 30 cents on most US credit and debit cards, and the page lists no separate commission. Business and Business Elite add more store features.

For a few products, either will do. If your store is the business, compare the store features on each plan with your own catalog, rather than trusting a summary like this one.

Booking appointments

For a salon, a trainer or a clinic, this may decide it.

Wix includes scheduling from its Core plan, so booking lives in the same subscription and the same dashboard.

Squarespace offers Acuity Scheduling, which has its own price list: Starter at $16 a month paid yearly or $20 monthly, and Standard at $27 or $34. It can be embedded on almost any site, so it's a strong tool in its own right. You'd be paying for two subscriptions, though. A site plus booking comes to about $28 a month on Squarespace Basic or $33 on Core, against $29.77 on Wix Core, so the choice comes down to whether you want one bill or a dedicated scheduler.

Search and local basics

Both cover the basics a local business needs: page titles and descriptions, a sitemap, and permanent redirects for pages that move. Wix has a redirect manager with bulk import, and Squarespace uses URL mappings, which hold around 2,500 lines.

We've seen no good evidence that either one ranks better. What decides local results is mostly elsewhere, in your Google Business Profile, your reviews and how well your pages answer a search. The local SEO checklist applies the same on both.

Leaving later

Nobody thinks about this on the first day, so it's worth a minute now.

Wix says a site must be hosted on its servers, so you can't take it elsewhere. Leaving means rebuilding. You can keep your domain, and export a store's product list.

Squarespace can export some content as a file for WordPress: basic pages, one blog and text and image blocks. Most other page types, your styles and your custom code stay behind. Products and contacts export separately as spreadsheets.

Neither is a clean exit, and Squarespace's is a little better. Either way, if you move, map your old addresses to the new ones. The website redesign checklist explains how.

If you build for clients

Both have programs for people who build sites for others. Wix Studio is a separate editor, with a dashboard for client sites, billing and support tickets, and a partner program with revenue share. Squarespace Circle gives partners discounts of 10 to 25% on annual plans. Neither one's main pages showed a full white-label offer.

Which one to choose

Choose Wix if:

• you want to publish something free first
• you need booking in the same subscription
• you want one place for a store, booking, blog and marketing
• you like placing things exactly where you want them

Choose Squarespace if:

• the look of your site does the selling, as with photographers, florists and studios
• you'd like a lower price to take payments or sell on annual billing
• you want templates that are harder to make a mess of
• you expect to restyle the site later

Choose neither if you need full control of your code, or you want a site you can move anywhere. Look at the wider list in the best website builders for small business.

Where Shingle fits

Shingle wrote this guide, so here's the short version. Shingle is built for local service businesses and for people who sell websites to them. It writes a site from a Google listing or a few notes, holding to your facts, and lets you download the code on its plan. It doesn't take payments or run a store, so a shop is better off on Wix or Squarespace. It has no free plan: it starts with a 7-day trial for $1 that includes a live site. See Shingle vs Wix and Shingle vs Squarespace for the details.