You're thinking about your next website and tired of WordPress? Today there are a number of alternatives, different platforms meeting a variety of needs. Among these alternatives are many quality services, some of which can get you up and running in under an hour.
This is where the Wix vs Squarespace debate comes in — arguably the two most popular website builders on the market: both platforms host millions of personal and business websites.
While they share many similarities, a more thorough look at Wix and Squarespace should help you make an informed decision, and this article aims to scrutinize both solutions.
There's a lot to cover, so let’s go!
Wix Overview
In the website creation space, Wix has quickly become a giant: most internet users have at least heard of it. Wix surpassed 180 million users in 2019 and boasts a team of over 3,200 people running the operation. Wix is best known for its drag-and-drop editor: very intuitive, it lets users publish their content quickly and easily.
With more than 500 templates available, you'll quickly find something that suits your needs. In addition, an extensions marketplace makes it easy to add new features (whether from Wix developers or third parties).
You'll find solutions for everything: analytics tools to search engine optimization tools, email marketing solutions to online selling solutions.
Wix is primarily aimed at beginners who want to create their website themselves, quickly. It's easy to use and lets you get up and running in no time. Overall, Wix offers a bit of everything to cover basic website creation needs.
Wix's strengths:
- Very easy to use even for beginners.
- A wide selection of website templates to choose from.
- Wix is fairly inexpensive.
- And it has good customer support.
- The builder is intuitive thanks to its drag-and-drop interface.
- The service offers a large choice of add-ons.
- A mobile app lets you edit your site on the go.
- You can try Wix using its free plan.
- A new development feature allows for more advanced customization, with access CSS and HTML ideal for those with coding knowledge!
Wix's weaknesses:
- The e-commerce features are very basic and may only suit small shops.
- Once you have selected a website template, you can’t change it without having to rebuild all your content.
- Wix relies on third-party apps for much of its functionality. Blogs are also only possible via an app, though these are easy to add to your site.
SquareSpace Overview
Founded in 2003 in a university dorm room, Squarespace is a website builder that today employs a team of over 1,200 people. To date, millions of websites have been launched thanks to Squarespace, which stands out for its versatility and solid blogging and e-commerce features.
If you haven't yet decided on the direction for your website, or plan to evolve it quickly, you can't go wrong choosing Squarespace.
All the templates offered by Squarespace are designed by professional web designers and, as you would expect, they are elegant, modern and professional.
Squarespace is perfect for artists, designers and photographers: the templates are often focused on photography and can be easily used to showcase visuals in the best possible way. Of course, sites created with Squarespace are optimized for phones, tablets and PCs, ensuring a good user experience regardless of the screen size used to visit them.
Advantages of Squarespace
- You can change templates easily, as many times as you want.
- There are over 110 templates available, all created by professional designers.
- Squarespace's built-in features are well designed and plentiful.
- Squarespace offers native blogging and analytics features.
- Squarespace provides a mobile app that lets you manage your pages on the go.
- Squarespace offers a powerful image editor.
Disadvantages of Squarespace
- Squarespace does not allow dragging and dropping website elements, so it takes longer to get used to the site editor.
- Squarespace does not provide phone support.
- A limited choice of pricing options.
- And finally, the service does not offer a free plan.
Wix vs Squarespace: Content editing
Wix
First, you can get started by choosing from more than 500 responsive Wix templates, with options suited to every type of business: whether you want to create an online store, a blog or a portfolio site, Wix has everything you need.
Next, you need to “furnish” the site, and simplicity is the cornerstone of the Wix editor: everything about your site is easy to edit and customize thanks to the drag-and-drop editor. Just click on an element of the site to bring up an options menu. From there, you can customize colors, styles and fonts. You can drag an element across the screen and drop it where you want it to appear on your page, and that’s it.
Getting familiar with the Wix editor takes just a few minutes, and if you get stuck, don’t worry: on every component, links will take you directly to the relevant section of the Wix Help Center.
It’s easy to add web design elements, including media galleries, parallax effects or animations (such as zoom-in or fade). You have a very large choice of fonts, and that’s just part of what’s possible.
Squarespace
When it comes to templates, Squarespace is not as well endowed as Wix, but they are all designed by professionals and are therefore very high quality. As we saw above, Squarespace beats Wix when it comes to the ability to swap templates: you can change your layout at any time and your content will be transferred to the new design, which you can then modify however you like!
The Squarespace site editor is powerful, feature-rich and highly customizable: you can edit your pages using hundreds of settings, including fonts, colors and the arrangement of page elements.
Unlike Wix, Squarespace does not use a pure “drag-and-drop” editor. You can move elements, but not drag them anywhere on your site. Instead, Squarespace offers content areas that you can edit using types of blocks (video, audio, text, etc.).
However, with CSS access you can flexibly modify every aspect of your site, but this comes with a slightly steeper learning curve because you will need some knowledge to take full advantage of it!
Wix vs Squarespace: E-commerce features
Wix
If you choose Wix to launch an e-commerce site, you’ll be pleased to learn that it’s easy to manage. You can showcase products using one of Wix’s pre-designed layouts and use the editor to customize it to your taste.
Wix’s built-in tools make it easy to track orders and manage your inventory, and you can create promo coupons for customers.
Several payment methods are available, including credit cards, PayPal, offline payment methods, etc. All of this with no commission!
However, depending on the level of ambition you put into your e-commerce project, know that Wix will not meet all your needs. It will suit small businesses selling only a few products, but it is not as advanced as Shopify, WooCommerce or others. For example, Wix does not offer features like printable shipping labels, and payment options are fairly limited compared with other solutions.
Wix's e-commerce feature is more of a complement to a website — it's convenient but not designed to be a "real" online store.
Squarespace
Squarespace also allows you to create an online store where you can sell an unlimited number of physical or digital products.
You just need to choose an e-commerce template to access the online selling features. You can also use "limited availability" labels to create a sense of urgency and drive a sale.
With Squarespace, customers can create an account, which is good for building an email list and encouraging repeat business.
You can accept card payments via Stripe, Apple Pay and PayPal.
Squarespace's basic plan charges a 3% transaction fee, but these fees drop to 0 with the Commerce plans.
Wix vs Squarespace: Blogging
Wix
You can integrate a blog into your Wix site and have the basic functions of a blog. It remains quite basic nonetheless: for example, you cannot organize your content using tags or categories, and the formatting options are very simple.
If you're looking for a sophisticated content management tool, you can forget Wix.
Squarespace
Squarespace, on the other hand, offers more advanced blogging features in terms of design, content management and flexibility. Squarespace's blog uses the same technology as the rest of the site; you'll edit content blocks the same way you would on any other page. Thus, the creating a blog reflecting your site's and brand's aesthetic is a breeze!
You can also organize your content using tags and categories and schedule your posts in advance.
You have the option to enable a sharing feature to increase the reach of your posts and customize the URL of each article. If you are podcaster, Squarespace is a builder worth considering, thanks to the integration of "audio" blocks.
Wix vs Squarespace: SEO
Wix
Wix has an "SEO assistant" that tells you whether you've done what was necessary to optimize the SEO of your Wix pages.
It can suggest descriptions, titles, and tags to give your pages a chance to rank for a keyword you choose.
Squarespace
Squarespace has built-in SEO tools that spare you from downloading additional plugins. Squarespace's clean HTML markup makes your web pages easily indexable by search engines.
It also automatically generates sitemaps and canonical markup, which allows search engines to identify the correct page if you have similar content or keywords across multiple pages.
As we've seen, the ability to customize blog post URLs is a plus, and Squarespace also automatically creates image tags and meta tags.
Wix vs Squarespace: Pricing
Wix
Expect to pay €10 to €40 per month for Wix's most complete plan.
Squarespace
Prices are similar to its competitor: €11 to €36 per month.
Have you made your choice? Whatever it is, you can find a Wix expert or a SquareSpace freelancer on Codeur.com to help you with creating and customizing your site. Post a project for free to receive quotes from professionals experienced with these CMSs!
