If you want a simple website live this week and you don’t need it to win much on Google, Wix or Squarespace will do the job, and is often the better choice. If the website needs to bring in work, grow with the business and stay yours if you ever want to move, WordPress usually comes out ahead.
Worth saying up front: I build websites on WordPress, so you’d expect me to land there. I’ll try to earn that conclusion by being straight about where the builders are better, because there are real cases where they are.
Wix vs WordPress: which is better for a small business?
Wix is better for a small business that needs a straightforward site quickly and wants nobody to maintain it. WordPress is better for a business that expects the website to do real work over several years.
Wix suits you if:
- You’re starting out and the budget is tight
- You need five or six pages, not fifty
- Most of your customers already know your name before they visit
- You’d rather pay a monthly fee than think about updates
WordPress suits you if:
- The website is meant to bring in enquiries from people who haven’t heard of you
- You plan to publish regularly, or add services and locations over time
- You want control over speed, structure and SEO
- You want to be able to move host, or move designer, without starting again
Which WordPress are we comparing?
This comparison is about WordPress.org, the free software you install on your own hosting. WordPress.com is a separate hosted service that works more like Wix, with plans and limits set by the company. When designers and agencies talk about building on WordPress, they almost always mean WordPress.org.
What does each cost over three years?
Over three years, Wix and Squarespace cost roughly £600 for a basic business plan, and a self-managed WordPress site costs somewhere between £300 and £900 plus your time. The headline monthly price is only part of it.
| Typical small business plan | Three years | |
|---|---|---|
| Wix Core | £16 a month, billed annually | about £576 |
| Squarespace Core | £17 a month, billed annually | about £612 |
| WordPress, self-managed | Hosting, domain and a paid plugin or two, roughly £100 to £300 a year | £300 to £900 |
| WordPress, built and looked after | Build from £2,000, then a care plan from £45 a month with hosting and domain included | from about £3,620 |
UK plan prices at the time of writing. Both builders change their pricing regularly, so check before you sign up.
A few things the table doesn’t show:
- Domains. Both builders include a free domain for the first year only.
- Transaction fees. Squarespace’s Basic plan takes a percentage of shop sales; Core and above don’t.
- Your time. A builder site is quick to set up, but it’s still your evenings. A self-managed WordPress site also needs updating, and if nobody does it, things eventually break.
The last row is the professional route, and it is the most expensive one. What it buys is a site designed around your business rather than a template, built with SEO from the start, and maintained so you never have to think about it. Whether that’s worth it depends entirely on how much work the website needs to bring in. For more on that, see how much a website costs in the UK.
Is Wix good for SEO? Is Squarespace good for SEO?
Yes, both can rank, particularly for local searches where the competition is a handful of nearby businesses. Wix in particular has closed most of the gaps it used to have: you can edit page titles, URLs and structured data, and a well-run Wix site can reach page one.
The limits show at the edges. You’re working inside the platform’s code, so page speed and technical structure are only as good as the platform makes them. And if you outgrow the builder later, moving away takes your rankings through a migration, which is manageable but is real work.
WordPress has the higher ceiling. It also has a lower floor: a WordPress site stuffed with plugins and never updated can be slower and less secure than any Wix site. The platform doesn’t do the SEO. Whoever builds and runs the site does.
Who owns your website on each platform?
You own a WordPress site outright, files and all, and can move it to any host. On Wix and Squarespace you own your content and your domain, but the site itself lives on their platform.
- WordPress. Download the whole site and put it somewhere else whenever you like.
- Wix. There’s no way to export a Wix site to another platform. Leaving means rebuilding the site and moving the content across.
- Squarespace. You can export some content, such as pages and blog posts, as a file WordPress can import. The design and a good deal else stays behind.
None of this matters on day one. It matters on the day you want to change something the platform won’t let you, or change who looks after your site.
Squarespace vs WordPress
Squarespace is the better choice if you want a polished-looking site with very little effort, and WordPress is the better choice if you need flexibility. Squarespace’s templates are among the best-looking of any builder, which is why photographers, designers and small shops like it. The trade-off is that you’re working within those templates. Step outside what they were built for and you hit walls quickly.
What about GoDaddy’s website builder?
GoDaddy’s builder is the quickest way to get something online if your domain is already registered with them. It’s generally seen as more limited in design and SEO control than Wix or Squarespace, so it works best as a holding page or a very simple site while you decide what you actually need.
Website builder or web designer: when is it worth paying?
Pay a web designer when the website has a job a template won’t do well, usually bringing in enquiries from people who don’t know you yet.
A builder is the right call if you’re testing an idea, money is tight, or most of your work comes through word of mouth and the site just needs to confirm you exist. Starting on Wix and moving later is a perfectly sensible path, as long as you go in knowing the move is coming.
It’s worth paying when:
- The website is expected to win work from search, not just confirm you’re real
- You’re competing with established local firms for the same searches
- Your brand needs to look as considered as the work you charge for
- Your time is worth more than the money saved
Moving from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress
Moving from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress means rebuilding the site and moving the content across, and the step people miss is redirecting the old addresses. Each platform structures its URLs differently, so almost every page ends up at a new address. Without redirects, Google loses track of them and your rankings drop with it.
The process is the same as any redesign: record what ranks now, map every old URL to a new one, set up 301 redirects before launch, and watch Search Console closely for the first couple of months. I’ve covered it step by step in how to redesign a website without losing your Google rankings.
If you’re on a builder and starting to feel its limits, or deciding where to start, I’m happy to give you a straight answer, including “stay where you are” if that’s the right one. Web design in Southampton, working with businesses across Hampshire and further afield.
