Wix vs Squarespace, or a web designer: which is right for your business?

If you are comparing Wix and Squarespace, you have probably decided to build the website yourself and want to pick the right tool before you give up a weekend to it. That is a sensible plan. For a lot of small businesses, a website builder is exactly the right answer.

The tool is rarely what decides whether a website works, though. What decides it is what the site has to do for the business, and who will keep it doing that a year from now. Answer those two questions first, and the choice between Wix, Squarespace, WordPress or paying someone mostly makes itself.

Do you need a website for your business?

Not every business does, straight away. If your work comes from word of mouth and your diary is full, a website can wait.

If people search for what you do, or look you up before they ring, it cannot. A website is the one place online where you decide what they see: what you offer, where you work, what it costs and how to get in touch. A social media page can do part of that job, but it is laid out the way the platform chooses, not the way you would.

Wix vs Squarespace: what actually differs

Both are all-in-one services. You build the site in their editor and they host it. Wix's help centre says a Wix site has to be hosted and operated on Wix's own servers, and Squarespace says all its plans include fully managed hosting. Both let you start building before you pay, and both can take bookings and payments. For a simple site of a few pages, either will do the job well.

The differences that matter to an owner show up at the edges, and mostly later. We checked each company's own help pages on 6 November 2026, and both change their products often, so check again before you commit.

Bookings. Wix has its own booking tool, Wix Bookings, for appointments, classes and courses. Clients can pay online or in person, and you can send reminders by email or text. Wix says you need to upgrade your site before it can accept bookings or online payments. Squarespace adds appointment booking through Acuity Scheduling, shown on your page with a scheduling block once you have set up an Acuity account. If you already use another booking tool, Squarespace lets you link to it or embed its booking widget instead.

Payments. Look at what you pay per sale as well as per month. Squarespace's pricing page lists transaction fees on online sales that vary by plan. Whichever builder you use, ask what the payment provider charges on top.

Moving away later. This is the difference most owners only discover when they want to leave. Wix says a Wix site cannot be moved to another host at all, because of how the platform is built, although the content you create is yours and you can keep your domain with another provider. Squarespace lets you export some of your content to a file that WordPress can import: ordinary pages, one blog, and text and image blocks. Store pages, product blocks, video blocks, your style settings and custom CSS stay behind. Either way, leaving means rebuilding the design and much of the site somewhere new.

So which one? There is no single best website builder for small businesses, only the one that fits how yours works. Try both. Choose the editor you will happily open on a busy evening to change your prices, and the booking and payment route that matches how your customers already buy. If you can see yourself outgrowing it, count the rebuild as part of the price.

Where WordPress fits

WordPress works differently. It is free, open-source software, and it comes in two forms.

• WordPress.com is a hosted service, closer to Wix and Squarespace. Hosting is included, and updates and backups are handled for you.
• Self-hosted WordPress, downloaded from WordPress.org, runs on hosting you choose and pay for yourself. You, or someone you pay, take on more of the technical work of keeping it running, and its security depends on your host. WordPress.com's own comparison also warns that, depending on the plugin, add-ons you install could compromise your site.

If you are weighing up Wix vs WordPress, the trade is freedom for upkeep. WordPress.com says you own your content and can move any WordPress site to or from its service wherever it is hosted, so you are not tied to one company. In return, a self-hosted site needs someone keeping it updated, and if that someone is you, it is a job that never quite finishes.

Six questions that matter more than the builder

Feature lists change every few months. These questions decide whether a website keeps paying its way.

1. How much of your time will it take? The tool is the quick part. The words and photos take the time. If those already exist, a builder is fast; if not, that is the work, whichever tool you choose.
2. Who keeps it up to date? Prices, hours, photos and services change. Decide now who updates the site, and how often. A website that is a year out of date tells customers something too.
3. How do customers book or buy? If a booking, an order or a payment is the point of the site, test that route first on each builder, including what it charges per sale. Our guide to free online booking systems covers when a free booking tool is enough.
4. Where do enquiries go next? A form that lands in your inbox is fine at first. Once enquiries need to reach your diary, customer records or email list, someone either connects those tools or copies details across by hand. Builders offer add-ons and embed options, and each connection is one more thing to check when the other service changes. Our piece on when a spreadsheet stops working as a CRM covers this.
5. Will people find it on Google? Any of the three can be. Google's own starter guide says you usually do not need to do anything except publish your site, and that some systems handle technical jobs such as sitemaps for you. What decides it is whether your pages answer what people actually search for. Nobody can guarantee a ranking, and Google says some changes show in a few hours while others take several months.
6. What happens if you leave? Register the domain in your business's name, keep your own copy of your words and photos, and know before you start what the way out looks like.

When doing it yourself is the right answer

A website builder is a good choice when most of these are true:

• You are starting out, or you need a few pages live quickly.
• You are comfortable writing your own words and taking your own photos.
• Customers book or buy in a simple way, or contact you directly.
• Nothing on the site needs to connect to the rest of your business.
• You would rather put the money into something else for now.

That describes a lot of small businesses. Build it, keep it up to date, and look at the decision again when the business changes. Builder prices change often, so check each one's current pricing page. Our guide to what a small business website costs sets a builder's subscription against the other routes.

When paying for a build earns its keep

Paying someone makes sense when the website has more to do than a builder makes easy, or when your time is worth more elsewhere. The signs:

• Details get copied by hand. Bookings, enquiries or orders land on the site and someone retypes them into another system.
• The site needs to compete in search for what you do and where you do it, and the pages you have are not being found.
• Booking or buying is the point of the site, and the builder's route does not match how your customers actually buy.
• You keep hitting the edges of what the template allows, and working round them instead of running the business.
• You want to own the site outright, so that moving it later is a handover, not a rebuild.

That last one is worth asking any web designer before you sign: who owns the code, and what do you get if you leave?

Our builds cover the range. Presence, from £1,500 plus VAT, is a fast, professional website that turns visitors into enquiries. Connected, from £3,000 plus VAT, is a website connected to the tools your business already uses, such as booking, reviews, customer records and email. Bespoke, from £6,000 plus VAT, is custom development for work that off-the-shelf software cannot do well. Your website's code is yours once the build is paid for, and any website we host also needs Care, at £60 a month plus VAT. What we build explains each one, and every price is on our pricing page. If a builder will do the job, we would rather tell you so.

What it did for our own business

At The Anchor, our own venue, the old website looked fine and described the business in its own words, while people nearby were searching in quite different ones. The site was rebuilt around what people actually search for, page by page, and its Google Search visibility grew by 828%.

The difference was what the pages said, not how they looked. The Anchor is a pub, but every small business has the same gap between how it describes itself and how its customers search. The full case study explains the changes.

If your business is in Staines or Spelthorne

Orange Jelly is based in Stanwell Moor, Staines, and Staines and Spelthorne is where we look for clients first. If your business is local too, here is how we work with businesses in the area.

The short version

• Wix and Squarespace are both good enough for most small business websites. Try both and pick the one you will keep up to date.
• The differences show up later: how each takes bookings and payments, what you pay per sale, and what you can take with you if you leave.
• WordPress gives you more freedom to move, in return for more upkeep.
• Being found on Google depends on what your pages say far more than on which builder you use.
• Pay for a build when the site has to connect to the rest of your business, compete in search or work in a way a template will not, and your time is worth more than the build costs.