The web design services industry in the US is sized at nearly $41 billion with an annualized growth rate of 4.4%.
To leverage the opportunities in this market, several web-design platforms have been competing with each other for some time now.
With this article, we bring you the comparison between Wix vs Squarespace, two widely known platforms to create websites globally.
Wix has 180 million users across 190 countries, whereas Squarespace has only over 2.5 million users and over 2 million of them are in the United States.
So, does it mean that Wix is better than Squarespace? Well, the number of users does speak about the popularity of the service.
But which of these web development platforms is better for you, depends on your requirements.
A nuanced comparison of Wix vs Squarespace that we present to you here will undoubtedly help make a selection among these two leading services
Both these web development portals have managed to free the domain from the clutches of its niche tag. Knowing their features well makes you a developer no less than a pro.
When compared with each other, which among these two offers more variety? Which one is more convenient to use? Which one is faster? So many questions arise and we’ll address them all.
Let’s dive right in.
- 1. Wix vs. Squarespace At A Glance
- 2. Who Is Wix Best For?
- 3. Who Is Squarespace Best For?
- 4. A Close Look At The Features Of Wix and Squarespace
- 5. Key Features Of Wix
- 6. Key Features Of Squarespace
- 7. Wix vs. Squarespace – Pros And Cons
- 8. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
- 9. Conclusion – Which Is Better: Wix Or Squarespace?
- 10. Wix vs. Squarespace – FAQ
1. Wix vs. Squarespace At A Glance
In this section, we’ll go through a quick look at Wix and Squarepace, their distinctive features, and their most popular pricing plan to choose from.
   4.8 |   4.7 |
| Best Overall. Intuitive website builder with a simple and straightforward interface to start a website. Starts at $8.50/month. | Best for design. Libraries of well-designed templates for personal, eCommerce, and professional sites. Starts at $12/month. |
| Try Wix | Try Squarespace |
2. Who Is Wix Best For?
Wix serves best for small businesses and individuals who can leverage its tools and features to build sophisticated and professional-looking websites without requiring to have expertise in coding.
Predominantly a free service, Wix also has premium plans targeted at providers of eCommerce services.
3. Who Is Squarespace Best For?
Small businesses and companies that are not willing to hire a full-time or dedicated webmaster are the ideal customer segment to leverage the services of Squarespace.
Among other users, it also supports eCommerce services.
4. A Close Look At The Features Of Wix and Squarespace
| Features | | |
| Website Templates |  | |
| Site Analytics | | |
| SEO Features | | |
| Website Security | | |
| Email Marketing | | |
| Blogging Services | | |
| Ecommerce Templates | | |
| Payment Facility |  | |
| Get Started | Try Wix | Try Squarespace |
5. Key Features Of Wix
#1. Wix Templates
One of the most enticing features of Wix.com is that it has a wide variety of more than 800 website templates.
These templates are aptly segmented as per the purpose they serve and, therefore, as a user, it is easy and convenient for you to choose the exact type you want without wasting much time on trial and error.
For instance, in the business and services segment, you get template-segments catering to different businesses. Apart from that, you get templates for health and wellness, beauty and hair, fashion and style, travel and tourism, restaurants and food, etc.
Among websites highlighting your creative pursuits, you get templates tailor-made for the specific role you are in.
You get separate sections for photography, design, music, creative arts, portfolio and CV, video, etc. Such a specific assortment of need-based templates is rare for any other player in the domain to offer.
#2. Wix Payment Support
Wix has its native payment feature, Wix Payments. But, if the geographic region you are in does not support Wix Payments, you get the option of choosing from more than 50 payment providers.
Ensuring that your website offers a wide range of payment options is often key to grow your business. You may keep on losing important business if your website does not equip your customer with a proper payment option.
#3. Wix Analytics
The high-end analytics support that Wix has to offer equips you with all the necessary data points at your fingertips that will help you to make key decisions.
Your website is not only the front-end of your business. It is also your all-important repository of business data. Leveraging Wix analytics features, you can track where your visitors are coming from, how they reach your site, which days they frequent the site the most, etc.
You will also get insights into your top customers, the efficiency of your lead generation efforts, and personalized suggestions on how to improve your performance.
#4. Wix eCommerce
With more than 500 designer-made store templates, Wix helps to build your brand by offering a complete solution for online entrepreneurs.
Most websites these days serve as digital storefronts. With Wix eCommerce solutions, you can offer as many products as you want, manage your inventory and take secure payments online.
#5. Wix Mobile App
With Wix mobile app, you can create your website, manage your store, write and share blog posts, and send push notifications – all from the comfort of your handheld device.
You can also take bookings and payments, chat live with visitors, track business analytics, and build a community, all while you are on the go.
Burkhard Berger
Wix has a feature called “ADI” or Artificial Design Intelligence which basically provides you a ready-made site depending on your needs. This makes it convenient to get a website running as soon as possible.
6. Key Features Of Squarespace
#1 Squarespace Enterprise Suite
Websites built with Squarespace enterprise solutions do not require any prior knowledge in coding. Any member of the team can update, test, and innovate without having to employ developers.
Squarespace also offers design consultations.
Overall, the suite makes the launch of your business website easier and it makes it easier to improvise by offering a complete and robust enterprise suite for innovative teams.
#2 Squarespace Advanced SEO
Squarespace SEO comes with a host of advanced features including sitemaps, individual SEO settings for pages and items, clean URLs, automatic markup, SSL security, built-in mobile optimization, etc.
It helps you to stand out in local search. The dedicated SEO panel of Squarespace allows you to have more control over the details that matter the most for your site.
#3. Squarespace Email Marketing
Squarespace offers curated well-designed email layouts. These templates are easy to edit with texts, images, social media, online purchase buttons, blog links, product links, etc.
The content that reaches your audience through Squarespace email marketing is consistent with your website. The design is responsive.
You can also measure the performance of your email marketing while it is still live with the integrated analytics services offered by Squarespace.
#4 Squarespace Connected Services
Squarespace connected services help you leverage all the relevant features of the larger eCommerce and digital marketing landscape including payment, shipping, social media, and marketing tools.
You can connect your social media accounts, such as your profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Medium, etc., with your website.
You can add music and video connections by embedding videos from platforms such as Youtube, Vimeo, Spotify, and SoundCloud.
To collect payments, ship products quickly, and collect payments you can also use plug-ins from USPS, Google, Paypal, Apple Pay, Stripe, etc.
#5. Squarespace Portfolio Websites
Squarespace portfolio website services come with a host of attractive templates. A portfolio website proves useful when exhibiting your work in a highly focused way.
You can additionally add an “About Me” section, a contact page letting your visitors directly contact you. It also comes with email and social media tools helping you expand your reach and grow your following.
Burkhard Berger
If you’re looking for advice or a guide on getting in-depth with Squarespace’s platform then you can consider yourself luck as Squarespace has it’s own “Tips & Advice” section on their support page to get you started with features that you just might miss.
7. Wix vs. Squarespace – Pros And Cons
With both the players having their roots deep in the business of website development, we give you the pros and cons of both platforms to help you decide which one is closer to your needs.
Wix:
| Pros | Cons |
| Wix offers an intuitive website builder with a vast and diverse range of designer templates optimized for mobile view. | You can not transfer content from one template to another in Wix. |
| Wix has a variety of easy editing services, such as a drag-and-drop editor, image editor, and text editor making website building easy and convenient. | If you have opted for a free Wix plan, you will be compelled to carry Wix branding messages which may dilute your brand. |
| Wix offers more than 50 payment channels apart from its native Wix payment services. | Once your website has outgrown the capabilities Wix can support, you can not transfer it away from Wix without having to pay serious money. |
| Wix provides easy-to-add blogs with automatic blog stylings to make blogging hassle-free. | In Wix, tracking and analytics facilities do not come under a free plan. |
| The Wix online store along with the Wix App Market offers the most comprehensive support to run your website as an effective digital storefront. | |
| Digital marketing and user communication both can be done conveniently with Wix’s email marketing, live chat, social buttons, and personalized google mailbox. |
Squarespace:
| Pros | Cons |
| Apart from a variety of attractive, contemporary, and slick selections of web templates, Squarespace offers you access to all of Unsplash’s image library. | Squarespace lacks autosave or site history features. Also, changes get published immediately making it difficult to carry out larger updates. |
| Squarespace offers a wide range of wen fonts with nearly 1000 typefaces from Adobe and over 600 from Google. | Limited sub-navigation features make Squarespace websites unfit for a deep-menu hierarchy. |
| With Squarespace-made websites, you can enable sophisticated features such as AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages – which speeds up the delivery of content and offers SEO benefits. | Squarespace templates register low scores on the Google page speed tools which may lead to poor user experience, especially on smartphones. |
| Squarespace has an enticing logo-designing app. The logo-making templates work in a way that all you need to do is drop your text and symbols onto a grid and realign or readjust them to get the perfect logo of your liking. | |
| Squarespace has a layout engine that makes an attractive presentation of content easy. Here, content includes images, texts, forms, videos, code snippets, etc. | |
| Squarespace-Zapier integration allows you to send data captured via forms |
8. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
It’s quite natural to judge the efficacy of these website-development applications by their value for money.
Let’s delve deeper into each of the platform’s pricing plans to understand which of these platforms is better and worth your investment?
Here’s a complete breakdown of the pricing structures of AWeber and GetResponse (with screenshots).
Wix Pricing Plans
Website Plans: There are four types of website plans starting from a US$14/month scheme to a US$39/month plan.
While the least-priced plan is for personal use, the upgraded versions help entrepreneurs and freelancers and offer online branding services and priority support services.
Business and eCommerce plans: These are essential for running an online business with the mandatory feature of accepting online payments. Starts at a minimum of US$23/month rate. The full suite is available for US$49 per month.
Enterprise Plans: Wix also offers complete enterprise solutions tailormade to the business’s exact needs. These solutions start at a rate of $500 per month.
Squarespace Pricing Plans
For Squarespace’s annual package plans, the minimum pricing is US$12 per month for individual users. The plan is named Personal and does not entail advanced marketing and commerce facilities.
The Business plan is priced at $18 per month. It features all of the marketing support features and a few of the commerce supports.
The Basic Commerce plan comes at a rate of US$26 per month and includes all the business plan features along with some more commerce features.
The Advanced commerce plan comes with all necessary marketing and commerce features
9. Conclusion – Which Is Better: Wix Or Squarespace?
What’s my final verdict when deciding between Wix and Squarespace? Here’s my final take:
If you’re looking for exciting templates and a variety of options to choose from, you must go with Wix. It offers hundreds of designer templates, extremely rich in their diversity.
Wix is also particularly helpful to use as an online storefront with more than 50 payment avenues. You can choose the exact payment avenue supported in your geography.
On the other hand, Squarespace’s newly introduced enterprise solutions make it easier for teams to launch their websites collaboratively without having to deploy full-time developers.
Squarespace also helps with design consultations and white glove tech support when it comes to your team website.
10. Wix vs. Squarespace – FAQ
In this Wix vs.Squarespace comparison post, here are answers to a few of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs):
Can I Create a Free Website with Wix?
Yes, you definitely can. But, the free website that you create with Wix will come with a Wix domain name.
How Can I Migrate to Squarespace from Another Platform?
If you own a domain, you can transfer it to Squarespace. If you have a site with WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr, you can import your blog content to Squarespace.
If you have an online store with Shopify, Big Cartel, or Etsy, you can import your products to Squarespace.
How to Make My Wix Website Easy to Find On Google?
If you answer a few questions about your site, such as your business location and keywords, it will become easy to find your website on Google with Wix SEO Wiz. Wix also offers a personalized SEO plan.
Can I Create a Wix Website Without Knowing How to Code?
You can. With Wix Editor’s drag-and-drop features, you can build a professional website without knowing how to code.