Wix vs Squarespace Comparison – Important Differences To Know

Which is a better option when comparing Wix vs Squarespace? I will evaluate both website builders on design, ease of use, business features, pricing, and much more to determine which is the best for you.

Wix and Squarespace are two incredibly popular website builders, allowing you to make a beautiful, functional website in a matter of minutes. But naturally – you have to choose one.

And with both of them having their advantages and disadvantages, it can be a little bit tricky. So, to determine whether Wix or Squarespace is the better builder, I took both platforms for in-depth test drives. What did I find?

 

Wix vs Squarespace Comparison

The two services offer highly competitive pricing and features, including excellent eCommerce functionality. But there are some key differences.

Wix allows virtually unlimited customization but can feel overwhelming and chaotic for it. The editor may take a little getting used to – but it’s a rewarding process that won’t take all that long.

 

Wix review.
Wix website builder platform.

 

Meanwhile, Squarespace gives users a more limited but highly curated website-building experience. It’s much easier for beginners to get started, but the editing process may feel slightly restrictive once the novelty wears off.

 

Squarespace website builder overview.
Squarespace website builder.

 

I ultimately liked the Wix site editor a little bit better. It offers a cleaner menu layout and the ability to place your content on the page however you like. While Squarespace simply didn’t.

Luckily enough, you may not even want to because Squarespace offers a great library of extraordinary themes.

For business users, it’s hard to choose a winner, as a lot depends on the personal goals of your website. For instance, Wix has plenty of great applications that give your website a lot of extra potential.

While Squarespace wins out if you want to add a blog to your website. The integrated blog editor is seamless and intuitive, and the galleries are much nicer than those available in Wix, making Squarespace a better option for sharing your thoughts and pictures.

NOTE: I have also compared Wix vs Elementor, Wix vs Gator builder, Wix vs WordPress, Wix vs Weebly, Wix vs. JimdoWix vs. Webs, Wix vs. Shopify, Squarespace vs Weebly, Squarespace vs WordPressSquarespace vs Shopify, Squarespace vs GoDaddy and Squarespace vs BigCommerce.

 

Ease Of Use

Wix and Squarespace are pretty different regarding ease of use and customization. Wix gives you a simple menu layout and virtually limitless possibilities, and Squarespace offers a more curated experience with a labyrinth of menus.

Which one’s easier to use? They’re both pretty simple – but Wix has just a couple more aces up its sleeve.

 

Getting Started

I found that both Wix and Squarespace make it extremely simple to start building a website. Essentially, all you need to do is choose a theme, and you’ll be taken to the site editor from there.

It’s worth noting that your choice of template matters a lot for Wix and Squarespace. Wix and Squarespace do not allow you to switch your website’s template and keep the customizations made.

 

Squarespace editor.
Squarespace editor example.

 

This was perhaps my biggest complaint about either platform since it forces you to commit to a template before you really know what your site will look like.

One thing that could influence your decision on whether to use Squarespace or Wix is that Wix offers an AI-based website builder.

 

Wix classic editor review.
Wix classic editor.

 

Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) asks you some basic questions about what your website will be used for and offers a basic few options for its layout. From that, the builder will automatically launch a customized website for you.

 

Wix ADI review.
Wix ADI editor.

 

I thought Wix ADI was a neat feature, but it’s not the serious, highly-customizable business builder. If you build your website with Wix ADI, your customization options in the site editor are severely limited compared to the standard Wix builder.

The AI-based designer is primarily useful for quickly getting a simple website up and running.

 

Site Editor

The site editors in Wix and Squarespace each have advantages and disadvantages. Both require a bit of a learning curve since there are many menus and options for creating your website.

Ultimately, I felt that the Wix editor provides more flexibility, making it a more powerful option.

 

Squarespace creating website.
Squarespace editor.

 

However, the Squarespace editor makes it much faster and simpler to customize your theme. It’s a game of personal choices here.

 

Menu & Layout

The Wix and Squarespace site editors are laid out in completely different ways. Squarespace doesn’t have a dashboard where you can change general things about your website and then move to a visual editor.

Instead, all your options are displayed in a series of menus on the left-hand side of the screen. This is nice because you don’t have to switch back and forth between the site editor and a dashboard.

But, the menus can be a labyrinth to navigate if you’re looking for a specific setting. As I got deeper into creating a Squarespace website, I found the menu design to be the biggest hindrance to my progress. With so many things in one place, it can get just a tiny little bit confusing.

Wix uses a traditional dashboard. It seemed crowded and chaotic looking, which turned me off at first. But after playing around with Wix for a while, I found that the dashboard ensured that the site editing and backend features were thoroughly separated. Ultimately, that made it easier for me to find the settings I needed for any particular task.

More importantly, it frees up the site editor menu in Wix. It was far easier to add and edit content and to move between pages in the Wix editor because sitewide settings, eCommerce settings, and other complex functions were relegated to the dashboard.

In the end, Squarespace’s labyrinth of options is the number one thing that makes me lean toward Wix for ease of use.

 

Content Elements

Wix and Squarespace deal with content differently. Squarespace elements are relatively easy to edit directly, and each text box can open up a pop-up with multiple settings pages for advanced options. This was nice initially because it made it easier to figure out what each element was capable of.

But once I got my footing in the editor, I found that the pop-up settings menu increased the time it took to make changes. When changing a lot of things at once, it turns into quite an elaborate process.

In Wix, the menu options are accessible immediately when you click on an element. This was severely confusing at first — I felt like I would never get the hang of the Wix editor — but after a while, I found that it sped up the editing process.

 

Custom Code

Wix and Squarespace support adding custom code to your website. Squarespace makes adding code easier, while Wix offers a much more in-depth interface for advanced website creators.

In Squarespace, there are simple options to add header and footer code to every page and HTML or CSS to your theme. The code editor is a text box with alerts for basic things like unclosed tags, so don’t expect a complete development environment.

Still, I liked this because it encourages people to create code for various Squarespace themes and put it online for people to use. For most themes, it was easy to find free code for making basic adjustments, such as adding images with a before and after slider.

Wix takes a much more serious approach to coding. Corvid by Wix is a full-blown interactive development environment baked into the site editor.

You can access any of the code underlying your theme or content elements and have full freedom to modify it. While this is great for website developers, Corvid will be too complicated for regular website designers who want to play with it.

 

Online Store Setup

If you intend to use Wix or Squarespace for eCommerce, either platform makes it simple to create an online store. The process and available options for product creation are largely similar between the two platforms. Both builders have a dedicated page, complete with their own menus, to design a new product and add it to the store.

Squarespace offers a cleaner experience for designing product offerings. Options are separated into self-descriptive tabs, making it significantly easier to find what I needed when creating a product.

Although all of the same functionality exists in Wix, I had to search through an overcrowded page to find the options I wanted.

There is one significant difference to note between them for product design. In Wix, when you define variants, all of your variants need to be available in every category option.

For example, if you have multiple colors and sizes, every color must be available in every size or set to “Out of Stock” using inventory management. In Squarespace, you can define exactly which combinations of variants are available.

 

EASE OF USE WINNER: Wix takes the medal for ease of use because it separates the dashboard and editor. As a result, creating content on your site is fast and straightforward once you overcome the initial learning curve. However, Squarespace makes it easier for you to add products and is just a bit easier for beginners to get started.

 

Design & Templates

Squarespace and Wix are known for great designs – and for a reason. Squarespace especially excels here, as its templates are immaculately designed, and the platform makes it easy to create appealing content that matches your theme.

Wix has the advantage of allowing complete freedom in the design process – but it misses out on starting designs.

 

Design

I absolutely love Squarespace’s content elements and the ease with which you can create a single, unified style across your website.

However, I love that you can move content anywhere on the page using Wix. No such freedom in Squarespace because you’re limited to a grid pattern.

While I’d love to see Squarespace offer the ability to place content elements wherever you’d like, I think such a system makes it very useful for beginners. At the same time, Wix allows you to do pretty much anything you want – making it a better choice for those looking to flex their design muscles.

It’s all about your personal choice.

 

Arranging Content

One of the most significant differences between the Wix and Squarespace editors is how they allow you to place content on the page. This is where Wix shines for me and likely for any other advanced website designers.

Wix lets you place content anywhere on the page, including on top of existing elements. A grid and snap-to-content feature allows you to create a clean layout seamlessly, but you also aren’t limited to a content grid. Even better, the Wix editor lets you drag the corner of an element to resize it to fit any space you want.

Squarespace only allows you to place content in a grid layout — you can forget about having elements overlapping to create a unique visual effect.

In addition, resizing content elements is anything but flexible. Containers can only be expanded or shrunk in large intervals. Guess that’s the sacrifice you have to make for design.

 

Content Elements

Wix definitely has a better overall diversity of content elements compared to Squarespace. For example, there are hundreds of styles of buttons in Wix, whereas, in Squarespace, there are just a few. Wix also has elements for simple vector graphics, user input text boxes, and numerous types of galleries.

That said, Wix’s element offerings felt a little spray-and-pray to me. The elements don’t necessarily match your theme or one another, so you need to spend quite a while trying to customize every element to create a cohesive appearance for your site.

The sheer number of elements is also counterproductive since it can lead to decision paralysis when facing a blank website.

There’s a lot to be said for Squarespace’s content elements. There aren’t hundreds of choices for every element like in Wix, but the choices you do have are stylish and functional.

 

Squarespace content elements.
Squarespace content elements.

 

The designers at Squarespace put a lot of thought into the elements that come with each theme and the customization options you have for them.

I think it’s worthwhile to highlight the galleries in Squarespace. They are downright gorgeous. If you need to display visual content like photography, menus, or art on your website, Squarespace galleries blow the options from Wix out of the water.

Squarespace also offers several very appealing options for displaying images with text, and it doesn’t take effort to match these with your theme.

 

Sitewide Customization

Another important difference between the Squarespace and Wix editors is how they work for customizing your chosen theme. This is significantly easier in Squarespace, which offers straightforward options for changing your sitewide settings in a single menu. You can even click on an element or theme aspect, and the theme menu will jump to the settings for that item.

Customizing your entire site with Wix is much more time-consuming. There aren’t sitewide settings for most things, so if you want your fonts and element colors to match across your pages, you’ll need to edit the settings individually. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to end up with site pages that don’t converge on a single aesthetic.

 

Templates

Squarespace offers around 70 themes, while Wix provides more than 500. So Wix must win this category, right? Well, it’s more complicated than that.

Squarespace’s templates are unparalleled among website builders, and I’d argue in favor of them over Wix’s starter designs.

 

Squarespace templates.
Squarespace available templates example.

 

Squarespace built its reputation as the platform of choice for designers on the back of its theme offerings. While there are only around 70 themes, the attention to detail within each one is incredible.

The menus, images, and fonts all blend to create a stunning aesthetic. Simply put, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a website builder with a more impressive set of themes for its users.

That’s not to put Wix’s themes down by any means. The platform’s more than 500 themes are also very strong, although they’re not quite at Squarespace’s level. They just don’t pop to the same degree, and having more themes doesn’t exactly help with getting your website started quickly.

 

Wix templates.
Wix templates examples.

 

As I covered before, though – there’s so much more freedom in Wix. So it’ll be up to you to turn a Wix template into something that would make even Squarespace jealous.

Squarespace and Wix designed their themes around specific industries, making it easier to find a starting point for your website. You can also search for keywords in either platform to find themes that match a specific aesthetic. With 500 options, it’s no surprise that Wix has more options for each industry.

One thing to remember about Squarespace themes is that the industry-specific design matters a lot. For example, restaurant themes come with pages for menus, while photography themes come with specialized gallery pages not available in every theme. In addition, themes are grouped into ‘families,’ each of which has a different underlying code structure that can impact any CSS you want to add later.

A major complaint about Squarespace and Wix is that you can’t change the theme of your website. In Wix, it’s not allowed at all, and in Squarespace, you’ll lose all of your customizations.

This is more of an issue in Squarespace since themes have significantly different properties, and the code editor is more limited in scope. However, Wix is constantly adding new templates, and current users can’t take advantage of them unless they make a new website and copy the content from their previous one.

 

DESIGN & TEMPLATES WINNER: I favor Squarespace heavily over Wix for its design controls and templates. If Squarespace could match Wix’s freedom in placing content elements, I think Squarespace would be a cinch for the overall best website builder title. But, don’t discount Wix’s hundreds of template offerings and numerous content elements.

 

Business Features

Squarespace and Wix are powerful options for business owners. Wix offers slightly better features for eCommerce and app integrations for customer analytics.

Meanwhile, Squarespace has a built-in analytics dashboard and much nicer blogs. The two platforms compete closely on marketing features, customer management, and SEO.

 

eCommerce

When choosing Squarespace or Wix for eCommerce, I nod towards Wix – its very advanced online store plans are cheaper.

I like that Wix’s advanced selling features are standard with every online store plan. Abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping calculators, gift cards, and the ability to sell subscriptions all come with Wix business plans.

 

Wix eCommerce features.
Wix eCommerce options example.

 

All of these features are also available in Squarespace. But, you’ll have to pay for the ‘Advanced Commerce’ plan. If you’re willing to shell out $40 per month for a Squarespace plan (as opposed to $23/month for Wix), then the eCommerce features are almost indistinguishable between the two platforms.

But there’s still one specific feature that stands out in Wix. And that’s selling bookings. With Wix, you can add a booking calendar directly to your site and assign different staff members.

That’s ideal for doctors’ offices, massage parlors, trainers, and so many more businesses since it lets your customers see when their favorite staff member is available and book them directly.

On marketing and customer management, Wix and Squarespace are closely matched. Both platforms provide you with a business email at your domain, and you can create email marketing campaigns around any product.

The email builders work just like the site builders, so you have slightly more design flexibility in Wix.

The two eCommerce builders also allow you to seamlessly migrate your products to Facebook and Instagram to expand your store’s reach. Promoting your entire site with Squarespace was easier since there’s a dedicated ‘Marketing’ menu. On Wix, creating ads around a single product is faster and simpler.

Ultimately, I was very happy with both Wix and Squarespace for eCommerce. In addition to everything I mentioned above, inventory tracking is standard on both platforms. Plus, keeping customers on your domain during checkout is easy.

 

SEO

Squarespace overhauled the platform’s SEO capabilities, and I was thoroughly impressed by the changes.

The platforms allow you to control the title and description not only for your site but also for every page and every product in your online store.

However, Wix has a slight edge on product SEO because it allows you to add custom meta tags to product descriptions and images. But overall, comparing the products’ features, I would say that Squarespace and Wix are neck-and-neck for SEO.

 

Analytics

When analyzing your site traffic and customers, I felt like Wix has a slight edge. Squarespace has a handy integrated analytics dashboard, but Wix gives you access to app integrations that can vastly improve your analysis potential. Of course, both platforms offer access to Google Analytics.

 

Squarespace analytics.
Squarespace analytics dashboard example.

 

I started by exploring the capabilities of Squarespace’s native analytics dashboards. The interface is extremely easy to navigate, and I appreciated the data visualizations. I think they are easy to interpret and give you nice slices of information, such as where your customers are located and how they’re finding your website.

 

Wix business tools.
Wix has all the business tools you will need.

 

I was disappointed that Squarespace doesn’t let you download your analytics data, so you can’t plug it into Excel or another program to take your analysis to the next level.

In Wix, there is no integrated analytics dashboard. Instead, there’s the Visitor Analytics app, which costs $4.99 per month (paid annually) if you want the same kind of data available with Squarespace’s native analytics. Even then, I didn’t think the bar graph visualizations available in this app were all that great.

But I tip my hat towards Wix for analytics because there are six other apps available specifically for analytics. One focuses on helping you hone your site’s SEO, while another is designed to use data to improve your product funnel.

When it’s about the analytics, Squarespace deals better with the basics – but Wix has a higher ceiling.

 

Blogging

When starting a blog for your business, Squarespace is easily the better platform. Squarespace’s blog post editor works the same way as the rest of the site builder, which means you can add just about any content element to your blog post. Your blog posts can pop with stylish content, just like Squarespace pages.

In Wix, the post editor is a more straightforward text editor with little resemblance to the Wix site editor. You can add images, galleries, and videos, but there’s no ability to drag and drop content or access the hundreds of elements available in the page builder. To me, Wix blog posts look like Medium posts — nice but somewhat bland.

 

BUSINESS FEATURES WINNER: Choosing between Squarespace and Wix for business comes down to what’s most important to you. Wix offers better eCommerce functionality at a lower cost, but analytics costs money, and blogs are uninspired. In Squarespace, you get an integrated analytics dashboard and blog posts that utilize the editor’s capabilities.

 

Pricing

Wix and Squarespace cost quite similarly, but they offer slightly different features in their pricing tiers. Squarespace allows you to build a basic website for $16 per month with unlimited bandwidth and storage. Wix plans start at $10 per month, but unlimited bandwidth costs $17 per month, and storage is always capped.

Let’s dive into pricing options for basic websites first. Squarespace keeps things simple, offering just one plan that includes unlimited bandwidth and storage for $16 per month (paid annually). Note that in the cheapest plan, your Squarespace interface is slightly limited in that you can’t access your theme’s code, and you can only have two contributors on your website.

Wix basic websites range in price from $10 to $29 per month. There are no limitations on your access to the Wix site editor, but you’ll need a $17 per month ‘Unlimited’ plan to get unlimited bandwidth.

Unfortunately, no basic Wix plan includes unlimited content storage — the best you get is 35 GB of storage for $29 per month (but that should be more than enough).

When it comes to eCommerce, Wix is cheaper than Squarespace. Even if that may not be obvious from the first look.

Squarespace’s ‘Business’ plan costs just $23 per month, but add in a 3% commission on sales, and that price is deceptively low for most online stores.

Most business owners will need to opt for a $27 per month ‘Basic Commerce’ plan that removes this fee.

And just like that, this plan is more expensive than Wix’s similar ‘Business Basic’ plan for $20 per month, that’s entirely commission-free.

Importantly, Squarespace’s simplified plan structure means you must jump to a $49 per month ‘Advanced Commerce’ plan for the most advanced selling features. This includes abandoned cart recovery, selling subscriptions, and creating advanced shipping options and discounts for your store.

Meanwhile, these features are standard in Wix’s ‘Business Basic’ plan.

If you’re not interested in paying money altogether – there’s a clear winner.

 

WINNER: Squarespace has a good variety of plans – but Wix offers more in theirs. While you can get a lower final bill in Squarespace, Wix provides better value for each dollar if you need advanced eCommerce features.

 

Squarespace vs Wix Conclusion

If you need a personal website, Squarespace is slightly cheaper, and you aren’t faced with quite as much decision paralysis as with Wix. Plus, Squarespace offers a better suite of tools for blogging.

Things are more complicated if you’re a serious web designer. I liked Wix’s site editor somewhat better than Squarespace’s editor. It allows you to place content anywhere on the page, with hundreds of content elements to choose from. However, I was disappointed that creating consistent styles across your website can be extremely time-consuming with Wix.

Both platforms offer incredible tools for eCommerce, including email marketing features, inventory tracking, abandoned cart recovery, discounts, and detailed product design interfaces. But Wix makes all of these features available for a much lower price.

They’re both excellent website builders with industry-leading features. Whether you need a website for personal use, promoting a business, or selling products and services online, Wix and Squarespace can help you build it.

 

Alternatives

I’m a big fan of both Wix and Squarespace. But if you’re looking for a cheaper alternative or a more niche platform rather than a do-it-all behemoth, there are several other good options.

 

Site123

If Wix and Squarespace are simply too overwhelming for you, consider SITE123. This platform offers a streamlined site editor that trades away customization in favor of ease of use. With SITE123, you can get an essential website up and running in less than an hour. And you can use it to sell online – at a much lower free than both Squarespace and Wix.

 

Weebly

Weebly is an all-in-one website builder, just like Wix and Squarespace. But its difference is that it focuses heavily on eCommerce. Sure, the site editor isn’t nearly as capable, but Weebly also costs just a fraction of what Wix and Squarespace charge for building your website. For business owners, Weebly’s eCommerce features are extremely competitive.

 

Shopify

If you’re primarily focused on eCommerce and prioritize advanced selling and analytics features over fancy bells and whistles, check out Shopify. This platform is entirely focused on helping you sell products and services. It’s a platform of choice for many major businesses and together with a massive app store, includes nearly every online shop features imaginable.


DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.

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