Having a professional website is crucial for establishing your online presence and credibility. Customers expect your website to be visually appealing, easy to navigate, and packed with relevant functionalities. A website builder simplifies this process, allowing you to create a stunning website without advanced technical skills.
Wix and Squarespace are among our top choices for the best website builders in 2026, offering powerful tools to create beautiful, functional websites. Both platforms provide a wide range of templates, intuitive design features, and robust customization options.
Now that you have two of the best options, let’s compare Wix vs Squarespace to see which features are the most important to consider when choosing a website builder. We will identify the winner and explain why you need to choose Wix or Squarespace, helping you make an informed decision.
Quick Introduction: Wix vs Squarespace
Wix and Squarespace are the two most popular website creators currently available. Both platforms allow you to create a website without coding skills. Let’s briefly explore what each website builder offers before diving into our Squarespace vs Wix analysis. Wix offers the freedom to create a website without limits.
With Wix, you can use advanced features like customizable templates and built-in AI tools to create a unique and engaging website that meets your needs. You can build your brand website to sell products online and write blog posts to connect with your customers.
Squarespace is another great website builder to make a visually appealing website. The platform is designed to help you sell anything from products to services. It offers flexible designer templates for every purpose, which you can customize to fit your style.
Wix and Squarespace are built just for you to create a website in minutes, but which one should you choose? In the next section, we will discuss the important differences between the two leading website builders. Keep reading to see the winner of the Wix vs Squarespace comparison.
During our annual website builder testing, Wix was at the top of our rankings, while Squarespace was also a strong contender for second place. However, it’s important to understand the differences between them. The rest of this article aims to identify the best choice and help you decide between Squarespace and Wix.
Which Website Builder Has the Best Templates: Squarespace or Wix?
Building a website with templates provides a ready-made design framework, allowing you to save time compared to creating a site from scratch. Wix and Squarespace offer impressive template libraries that cover a wide range of industries. You can customize your chosen template to perfectly fit your brand’s style and needs.
With Wix, you can choose from over 900 templates, while Squarespace offers fewer options with 200+.
However, Squarespace’s templates are carefully curated to provide high-quality designs for your website, but they can’t match the sheer scale of Wix. The volume of templates on offer means that you shouldn’t have a problem finding one that looks professional and aligns with your needs.
Nevertheless, neither Wix nor Squarespace allows changing templates after choosing a design for your site. While Squarespace offers high-quality and responsive templates, Wix’s sheer volume offers greater flexibility and caters to a wider variety of website styles.
After we tested both platforms’ templates to make a test website, we discovered that Wix has the upper hand in terms of customization. Wix’s templates allowed us to tweak and adjust designs to suit our specific needs and preferences.
This flexibility is ideal for those who want a unique look and feel for their website. Squarespace falls short in this regard as its template design is rigid, resulting in a predetermined and inflexible page structure.
Winner: Wix
Wix’s extensive template library offers a broad range of categories, allowing you to quickly browse through multiple options to find a ready-made design that you can easily customize to suit your taste. For this reason, Wix wins the first part of our comparison with Squarespace.
Website Setup: Wix vs Squarespace
For most website builders, you need to log in to get started. Wix and Squarespace are not left out. After signing up, the next steps require you to set up the kind of website you want to create. The onboarding process on Wix and Squarespace might look similar, but it’s not completely the same.
We carried out the website setup process with both Wix and Squarespace to see what users experience when signing up, and we’ll share our experience with you.
As discussed in our test of Wix, this website builder allows you to either use AI to build your site or continue with a fully responsive, on-trend template. Wix’s artificial design intelligence (ADI) latest addition is the AI chatbot, which provides a conversational chat based on a series of questions.
This step allows AI to help you bring your idea to life by suggesting a website layout with images, tools, and text.
Based on our experience, we were able to chat back and forth with AI to design an entire website from scratch using the generated site profile to create a site brief. This process leads us to the best template selection that offers a unique starting point to start designing our gym wear store.
One thing we noticed with this feature is that if you answer the questions thoroughly, you have control over the generated outcome, resulting in a unique design tailored to your preferences. For instance, AI generated the site design based on our responses during the conversation.
While Squarespace also offers a blueprint AI website builder, it only allows you to choose a template and asks for your site name, and the design is not exactly tailored to what you want.
We mistakenly chose a photography template for a gym business, and the final design was a bit confusing. However, while helpful, the design options on Squarespace felt somewhat limited compared to those on Wix.
Winner: Wix
Wix offers the best onboarding process with the AI chatbot. It guides users through creating a personalized website by asking tailored questions. In contrast, Squarespace’s process, while effective, lacks the same level of interactive AI support, making Wix the winner for a smoother and more user-friendly setup experience.
Which is Best for Editing: Squarespace or Wix?
Websites created with drag-and-drop builders are so visually appealing that designers would typically charge you hundreds of dollars for them. Your customers don’t care about the platform you use; they just want a fast, intuitive website that offers a great user experience.
In this Squarespace vs Wix comparison, we had quality time with both website builders and found out that both are easy to use.
However, Squarespace is more suited to beginners, as it offers a structured Fluid Engine Editor. This means you can’t move an element anywhere on the canvas; you can only drag elements into rows and columns within a section.
On the other hand, Wix offers an unstructured page-building approach, which is ideal for designers who prefer to place elements exactly where they want them. This provides unlimited creative freedom compared to Squarespace’s more rigid approach.
However, many beginners prefer Squarespace for its grid overlay, which maintains a clean, predetermined structure but limits customization options. This makes the website look polished since users can change the content without altering the overall layout.
We find Squarespace more beneficial for beginners who prefer a guided design process and just want to tweak the design a bit to suit their needs. However, for those seeking more control and versatility, Wix offers more flexible and intuitive editing capabilities.
Winner: Wix
When it comes to editing, Wix’s unstructured drag-and-drop interface allows users to place elements anywhere on the page, offering unparalleled creative freedom. This flexibility makes it ideal for users who want complete control over the layout and design.
Wix vs Squarespace: Blogging
Which website builder is best for blogging, Wix or Squarespace? This comparison will tell you everything you need to know about both options.
If you plan to create a blog section on your website, both Wix and Squarespace offer fairly even blogging capabilities. Both platforms allow you to add content to your blog page, set up blog-specific SEO, schedule posts, search blog content, create categories, and enable comments or social sharing.
However, Wix surpasses Squarespace by offering blog-specific analytics and archive functionality, allowing for better tracking and organization of blog performance. Wix also provides opportunities to monetize your blog content through subscriptions, online ads, and premium content.
Squarespace only allows you to turn readers into subscribers. This makes Wix a more versatile and comprehensive choice for bloggers looking to grow and profit from their online presence.
Like Wix, Squarespace also offers AI writing assistance, content scheduling, contributor permissions, SEO optimization, social integrations, email marketing, and analytics. We discovered that Squarespace started as a blogging platform, so it’s no surprise that they offer strong blog features.
Furthermore, Squarespace also offers more impressive blogging features. The website builder allows you to add multiple authors to a blog post and integrate Instagram feeds, newsletter forms, event tickets, and galleries. While these functionalities are great, Wix offers them, too, and adds an autosave function that Squarespace lacks.
Winner: Wix
While Squarespace is a great option for bloggers, its only shortfall is the lack of a revision history feature. Wix, on the other hand, offers an autosave feature, ensuring content is never lost, and edits can be easily tracked and managed. As a result, Wix is a considerably better pick.
Which One Is More Affordable – Wix or Squarespace?
When it comes to pricing, the starting prices for Wix and Squarespace are quite close, at $17 and $16, respectively. We also noticed that Squarespace’s most expensive plan is just $52/month compared to Wix’s $159/month plan.
This is three times the price of Squarespace’s premium plan, which makes it less affordable for beginners.
However, Wix offers free website building for making and publishing a site. While Squarespace is cheaper, it doesn’t offer a free plan. You can use Wix’s free plan for as long as you like, which is a great way to get familiar with the platform without spending any money.
However, we recommend upgrading to remove the Wix ad banner, use your free custom domain, and unlock more marketing, eCommerce, and analytics features, along with larger storage space.
Whether you pick Squarespace or Wix, you will get a 14-day free trial to try out any of their paid plans. If you are not satisfied, you will receive a refund, provided that you’ve requested it in the first place.
Winner: Squarespace
While Wix allows you to publish a free website, Squarespace, though not free, offers a range of features tailored to creative professionals and online merchants at a more competitive price. More details can be found in our Squarespace review.
Top Choice for eCommerce: Squarespace vs Wix
Wix offers superior eCommerce features compared to Squarespace, making it the better choice for online stores. Both platforms provide robust tools for setting up and managing an online store, but Wix stands out due to its extensive functionality, ease of use, and flexibility.
Wix provides a robust system for managing your online store, seamlessly integrating eCommerce with in-person sales through Wix’s POS solutions. It allows you to sell up to 50,000 physical and digital products and offers advanced features like abandoned cart recovery, free shipping, local delivery options, and inventory management.
Wix also supports multichannel selling, making it easy to list your products on platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Facebook. That’s not all; its built-in drop shipping capabilities enable you to expand your product offerings without holding physical inventory, ensuring flexibility and scalability for your business.
With Squarespace, you can also sell anything online. The platform provides unlimited storage and product uploads, but has fewer sales and multichannel integrations than Wix. One of those features is appointment scheduling, which requires an extra fee as an add-on.
When it comes to online payments, Wix has a built-in feature and supports more payment methods. For instance, Wix payments allow you to accept payments from Apple Pay, major credit/debit cards, Google Pay, BNPL, iDeal, and Pay Now by Klarna.
Another reason why Wix is the leader in eCommerce is that it lets you choose from over 80+ other third-party payment processors worldwide. Squarespace is a strong contender but falls behind by only supporting major credit/debit cards, Apple Pay, and Afterpay. It also allows connections to several third-party processors like Stripe, PayPal, and Square.
Winner: Wix
Squarespace and Wix are two of the best website builders for creating an online storefront. However, Wix offers a more comprehensive eCommerce solution with omnichannel selling and greater scalability. It provides several built-in features, third-party integrations, and diverse payment options, making it the better choice for eCommerce businesses.
Who Dominates in Marketing: Wix or Squarespace?
Marketing is crucial for increasing your website’s visibility and reach. It also helps to attract more visitors and potential customers. For example, an eCommerce website collects email addresses from visitors and sends out regular newsletters with special offers, updates, and personalized product recommendations.
This keeps the audience engaged and encourages repeat visits and purchases. If you are looking for a website builder with a suite of amazing marketing tools, Wix is a stronger choice. When it comes to email marketing, Wix and Squarespace offer built-in features and integrations like Mailchimp.
This automation platform allows you to easily grow subscriber lists, send newsletters, and set up automated emails. One of the reasons Wix is a great choice is that it offers an AI email generator. Although Squarespace also offers an AI tool to write email content, it doesn’t provide the same capabilities as Wix’s built-in feature.
The AI email generator allows you to craft full-fledged emails based on your business type, brand voice, and campaign objectives. Wix also takes a step further with ready-made email templates to create a marketing campaign. This feature provides a complete email layout specifically designed for your campaign objectives.
You can also edit the text and add new images, products, and other elements to customize your email layout. When it comes to social media marketing, Squarespace allows you to connect and publish posts via your social accounts. They also provide social selling for Instagram and Facebook.
This can be a great addition to reaching a wider audience. However, Wix takes the crown again by offering unified publishing and scheduling across Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and more.
Winner: Wix
Wix is the winner again, without any doubt. It has more marketing tools than Squarespace, but both have helpful integrations and self-service features. Wix allows you to run ads from your dashboard, create campaigns with AI, and use native integrations to embed feeds.
SEO: Which Performs Better, Squarespace or Wix?
Another important aspect in the Squarespace vs Wix battle is SEO.
While both website builders offer standard SEO tools like SEO setup checklists, page titles, and descriptions, Wix comes out on top again. With Wix, you can integrate Semrush to research and analyze keywords for optimized content directly within your dashboard.
Squarespace lacks this feature and only offers automatic markup and static URLs.
Wix also goes a step further with its AI meta-creator. This allows you to create optimized title tags and meta descriptions for your blog posts. However, Wix and Squarespace provide access to Google Search Console to monitor how your site performs in search, help identify and fix issues, and optimize your site for better visibility.
Finally, you can also explore the SEO learning hub on Wix to learn more about how to fully utilize the optimization features.
Winner: Wix
Both Wix and Squarespace automatically update your sitemap whenever you make changes to your site and allow you to download it if you want. However, the stronger choice for SEO is still Wix, with more features, including instant Google indexing and customizable SEO optimizations.
Customer Support: Wix or Squarespace?
Customer support is the backbone of every business, and both website builders offer reliable and responsive assistance when you need it. However, there is a slight difference in the quality of support they provide. With Wix, you can get expert guidance and find resources through these channels:
- 24/7 phone call-back support
- Ticket submission
- Live chat, available Monday to Friday between 2 AM and 6 PM EST
- Video guides and a tour of the editor’s features for beginners.
- Knowledge base articles with video tutorials
- SEO Learning Hub
- Help center (FAQ and Community forum)
Like Wix, Squarespace also offers award-winning support through various channels, excluding phone support and SEO resources. When we tested their live chat support, there was a slight delay waiting for an agent on Squarespace, but the help arrived in under ten minutes. If you can wait, you will get answers..
We also tested Wix’s live chat support. The AI chatbot responded to initial questions promptly before transferring us to a customer support agent. It took about four minutes for the agent to join the chat, which is reasonable considering the AI chatbot provided relevant information beforehand.
For general inquiries, the AI chatbot responded within a few seconds. This makes Wix a preferred choice if you need immediate help to resolve any issue.
Winner: Wix
Wix emerged as the winner because it is more responsive via live chat and offers 24/7 phone support (callback). It also takes the crown due to the AI chatbot that handles initial inquiries in live chat, providing instant responses and relevant information before transferring the conversation to a human agent.
Wix vs Squarespace: The Final Verdict
You are right to consider choosing between Wix and Squarespace, as both are excellent website builders. While this article has crowned the winner in the Wix vs Squarespace battle, your ultimate choice will depend on your specific business needs and personal preferences.
Wix stands out due to its extensive features, including a user-friendly, intuitive editor, 900+ customizable templates, robust SEO tools, eCommerce capabilities, and comprehensive customer support. These features make it a versatile platform suitable for a wide range of users, from beginners to advanced designers.
Squarespace follows closely behind with its high-quality, professionally designed templates and affordable pricing. It is especially ideal for those who prioritize design aesthetics and want a seamless, integrated experience for blogging, portfolio sites, and basic eCommerce functionalities.
Both platforms have their strengths: Wix is best for users who need a highly flexible and feature-rich builder that can grow with their business, while Squarespace provides stunning designs and a streamlined user experience at a slightly lower cost.
In conclusion, while Squarespace is a strong contender, Wix’s superior features and overall versatility make it our winner. Whether you choose Wix or Squarespace, both platforms provide everything you need to create a successful website, ensuring that you have the best tools for building and growing your online presence.
Squarespace vs Wix: FAQs
Is Wix the most popular website builder?
Yes, Wix is our top pick for the best website builder due to its user-friendly, intuitive editor, 900+ templates, and extensive SEO and eCommerce features. Speaking of them, Wix is often compared to Shopify, which it rivals closely, and even surpasses in some aspects.
Which website builder is cheaper than Wix?
Squarespace is slightly cheaper than Wix, with the cheapest plan starting at $16 per month, while Wix starts at $17 per month. You’ll also find that SITE123 and Hostinger Website Builder are cheaper, but not better overall.
Which is better, Wix or Squarespace?
Wix is our winner in eight of our nine categories, including SEO, website setup, and blogging, while Squarespace only wins in terms of pricing.
Is Wix good for SEO?
Yes, Wix offers features like an SEO setup checklist, an AI meta tag creator, Google Search Console integration, and Semrush integration to help your site rank well in search results.
What is the best alternative to Squarespace?
While Squarespace provides a beginner-friendly editing experience, Wix is the #1 alternative due to its superiority in SEO, online store capabilities, blogging, customer support, and more.