Wix vs Squarespace – Comparison & Review

In this Wix vs Squarespace comparison, we pit the platforms against each other to see which website builder comes out on top and offers the best value for money.

As you most probably know, choosing a website builder requires you to prioritize its strong areas that meet your business/individual requirements. Some of which we’ve evaluated in this Wix vs Squarespace battle include:

• Small Business Website Building
• eCommerce (Online Store) building
• Personal Blog Building
• Ease of Use
• Pricing (Plans)
• SEO
• Analytics
• Customer Support
• Security among others

By the end, it should be clear whether you should go with Wix or Squarespace.

To warm you up, here is a summary of what to expect:

eCommerce	Offers more online store features at lower prices, e.g., more payment gateways. Advanced eCommerce tools are provided with cheaper plans, and there’s no commission charges.	Its eCommerce features – though fewer – have better full-functionality. Plan prices are higher and there are transaction fees for the Business plan.
Small Business Website	Includes lots of business-friendly features, but most require you to add apps. Hosting resources for plans might be limiting if you plan to scale up.	A better platform for running a business site as it offers excellent features that come already built-in and with full functionality.
Personal Blog	Highly intuitive posting tool but overall blogging tools and posts features are fewer.	Minimalistic post creation tool, but it has more blog features and lots of article posting options.
Templates	700+ responsive templates, they allow lots of customization and flexibility while still being simple enough for beginners.	100+ stunning designs that are all mobile responsive and allow a high level of customization.
Ease of Use	Unstructured drag and drop editor (flexible) with excellent ease of use and simplicity. AI-powered Wix ADI option creates your site automatically.	Structured drag and drop editor which has a bit of a learning curve but is simple once you get used to how it works.
SEO	You can edit titles, meta descriptions, ALT text. Features like AMP pages, automatic sitemaps and 301 redirects option are supported.	Matches Wix’s SEO features, but since Wix doesn’t use clean URLs, you cant edit blog SEO, and sitemaps are not accessible; it ends up being the better platform for SEO.
Apps	Provides lots of apps (300) to expand functionality in a dedicated app store.	Lacks a dedicated store, but you can add 70+ integrations and extensions from leading online services.
Site Analytics	Wix built-in Analytics tools show you reports on sales, traffic, behaviors and people. Alternatively, you can add Google Analytics.	Squarespace also has integrated Analytics tools that show you the same stats as Wix, but what’s accessible depends on your plan. You can also integrate Google Analytics.
Security	Free SSL certificate is provided, the platform is PCI compliant, and you can auto-backup and restore your website.	Also offers a free SSL certificate, provides DDOS protection, utilizes Web Application Firewalls, and its platform is PCI compliant.
Customer Support	You must go through self-help resources before reaching support staff via either email tickets or requesting a phone callback.	Has a better and responsive customer support service; channels include live chat and email support.
Pricing	Free plan available. Paid plans are cheaper across the board; you can pay per monthly, semi-annually or yearly.	4 Ad-free plans that offer you more value for the money; you can pay per month or year.
Domain Names Services	Offers a free domain for yearly paid plans and a free subdomain for the free plan. You can connect a custom domain with a cheaper plan than with Squarespace. Prices are lower for domains.	Gives you a free 1st-year domain name with WHOIS privacy for annually billed plans. Domains renew at the same initial price.
Overall rating	4.7 Website Builder	4.5 Website Builder
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First, off a little background information on both Wix and Squarespace.

Wix is an Israel-based company that got founded in 2005. It is larger – 3,000 employees vs Squarespace’s 800 – and hosts over 8 million live websites. Squarespace – based in New York – was founded in 2004 and hosts over 2 million websites.

So, which builder came out on top in this Wix vs Squarespace head to head battle?

Wix won, but it was a very close battle. We found Wix to be better in 6 sections against Squarespace’s 5. In 3 sections, the website builders tied.

Which sections are we talking about? Well, keep reading.

Pros

• Unstructured and flexible drag and drop editor
• Highly intuitive user interfaces
• Features an easy to access the left-side menu
• Alternative AI-powered Wix ADI automatic builder
• Has mobile editor for making site responsive
• Code editing (CSS or HTML) supported

Cons

• Being unstructured, you can easily mess overall site designs
• Separate desktop and mobile editors add extra work

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Pros

• Structured (rigid) drag and drop editor
• Well organized editor dashboard
• Simple and minimalistic interfaces
• Supports deep customization with HTML and CSS code blocks

Cons

• The editor is not highly intuitive
• No ADI builder
• Lacks a global undo button
• No easy to access a left side menu

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Wix’s editor gives you more freedom and flexibility to achieve your desired website design as you can drag elements anywhere on a page. Furthermore, it’s a WYSIWYG – “What You See Is What You Get” – editor meaning you can easily preview changes without switches pages.

However, while it has a separate mobile editor that allows you to optimize designs for mobile, you must remember that necessitates more editing work. Wix makes up for that with an ADI builder; you only need to answer a few questions about your website, and it auto-creates your website.

Squarespace has no answer to Wix’s ADI builder, also, compared to Wix, its editor is not:

• As easy to use; it requires a few more clicks to do some things,
• Very flexible; editing is rigid, you’re limited to grids,
• Highly intuitive – most submenus are hidden, making navigation a little harder.

Furthermore, the preview system is not like Wix’s.

But hey! Don’t get me wrong;

Squarespace editor is still great once you get used to it. Being a structured editor, moving blocks (elements) within specified columns and rows greatly reduce the chances of messing up your template design. Neither Wix nor Squarespace editors allow you to edit CSS or HTML fully, but Squarespace code editing and injection support gives you more flexibility with the Business plan and up

Verdict: Wix wins

Pros

• Beginner-friendly and easier to use
• Lots of pre-made building elements
• Very flexible and straightforward editing
• Better preview system

Cons

• A bit fiddlier editing experience
• No content import and export features
• Lots of features can be overwhelming

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Pros

• User-friendly editing process
• Includes site-wide settings
• Various useful pre-built blocks
• Excellent import and export content features

Cons

• Fewer pre-made blocks
• It has a bit of a learning curve
• Lots of hidden submenus

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No coding knowledge is required to use both website builders. Wix is effortless to use and more beginner-friendly than Squarespace since you can move elements anywhere. This high customization flexibility is nice, but it also increases the chance for design errors.

Some of the things that can make using Wix a headache;

First, the lack of content import and export tools doesn’t make adding content a breeze. Squarespace supports this.

Second, changing templates midway forces you to start over, unlike Squarespace.

Lastly, having to edit desktop and mobile modes separately is not fun but requires more work instead. Squarespace simplifies this with a single editor. Another way Squarespaces impresses is that you can easily make global changes with site-wide settings. Despite that, it’s still not enough to topple Wix’s simplicity for web building.

Verdict: Wix Wins

Pros

• 500+ templates; over 300 are free
• 17 main templates categories
• Blank template option
• Professionally and stylish designs available
• A decent level of template customization allowed
• All are responsive designs, and you get a mobile editor

Cons

• You can’t switch templates midway
• Can be cumbersome to customize designs

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Pros

• Over 100+ website templates
• 14 categories of designs
• Stunning, sleek, modern-looking templates
• A high level of customization allowed
• You can switch templates anytime
• All are fully responsive (mobile- optimized)

Cons

• Fewer templates
• No blank canvas templates

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In terms of templates, the only benefits of going with Wix are if you want:

• More templates variety
• Lots of elements to use
• To start with a blank theme

For eye-catching (gorgeous) templates with more layouts and design options, template switching without losing content or having to start over, as well as excellent responsiveness for desktop, tablet, mobile, Squarespace blows Wix out of the water.

Beyond that, you get more customization freedom – you can tweak fonts, tweak colors, background images, content layout (multiple options available), content element styles, sidebar width, image padding, and more. Even better, you don’t have to build different website versions – mobile and desktop – like with Wix.

Verdict: Squarespace Wins

Pros

• There’s a free plan
• Prices are lower for all plans
• Has 7 very affordable premium plans
• Changing plans supported
• Offers lots of features with the plans
• More billing cycle options: monthly, semi-annually months or per year
• 14 days money-back guarantee

Cons

• Limited storage and bandwidth for most plans
• Wix Ads (free & cheapest plans)
• Complicated-pricing structure

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Pros

• 4 decent premium plans
• Ad-free plans
• Plans include unlimited bandwidth and storage
• Offers better value and quality features for the price
• Billing cycle: monthly or annually
• Includes Google Ads Vouchers
• 14 days money-back guarantee

Cons

• No free plan, only a 14-day trial
• Fewer plans (variety) compare to Wix
• Plans are more expensive than Wix

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Wix’s plans are categorized as eCommerce and general website plans:

Wix’s Website Plans

• Connect Domain ($4.50/month)
• Combo ($8.50/month)
• Unlimited ($12.50/month)
• VIP ($24.50/month)

Wix’s eCommerce plans

• Business Basic ($17/month)
• Business Unlimited ($25/month)
• Business VIP ($35/month)

Squarespace Plans

• Personal ($12/month)
• Business ($18/month)
• Basic Commerce ($26/month)
• Advanced Commerce ($40/month)

For those on budget, Wix provides a free plan with 0.5 GB storage and bandwidth.

You can try the basic functionality of their service but note your website gets ads plastered all over. From there, you can upgrade to any of their 7 paid plans (wider variety), you get more storage and features. For flexible billing Wix offers more payment options.

Wix’s plans come at lower rates than Squarespace but hosting resources are limited. In contrast, Squarespace has fewer plans (4), which makes choosing easier. Their plans come at higher price points but have:

• No Ads,
• Unlimited resources (bandwidth and storage),
• Excellent overall value.

To put this in perspective, Squarespace’s entry-level plan is comparable to the Unlimited plan from Wix, which costs more and offers you fewer features.

See the different strategies?

However, Wix’s eCommerce plans are more budget-friendly for almost the same features or more than what you get with Squarespace. Paying for annual contracts on both platforms comes with great perks. Both give you a free domain name, a 2 weeks money-back guarantee, and handsome discounts (up to 30%). But Squarespace goes the extra mile of offering you Google Ads credits and 1 free G-Suite user/inbox for the first year.

Verdict: Wix Wins

Pros

• eCommerce plans start lower ($17/month)
• Lots of online store designs
• App Store with lots of selling apps
• More Payment gateways (40+): Wix Payments, Square, PagSeguro, Stripe, Paypal and more
• More robust marketing tools (paid)
• Shipping partner integrations –Shippo, ShipStation and Fetchy
• No transaction fees
• Automatic tax rate calculator

Cons

• Lacks fully working POS for offline selling
• Most features require plug-in and Apps
• No integrated print orders services

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Pros

• Sleek templates – with product pages – for online stores
• Impeccable product presentation
• Excellent inventory management
• Accept payments PayPal, Stripe, and Apple Pay
• Synced Square POS integration for offline selling
• Set custom tax and shipping rates
• Shipping partner integrations – ShipStation, Shippo
• Free email marketing

Cons

• eCommerce plans are priced higher
• 3% transaction fees for Business plan
• Few eCommerce apps to expand functionality
• No automatic tax rate calculator

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Want to sell physical products, digital downloads as well as services?

Both builders allow that and you get integrated shopping carts to enable your customers to shop and checkout securely. Besides, Wix and Squarespace support synchronized multichannel selling via Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, and eBay shops. Etsy is supported explicitly by Squarespace, while for Wix, Amazon is exclusive.

Sticking to similar features, you can:

• List unlimited products with different variations. Here Squarespace is superior for product presentation and descriptions
• Manage your store using their mobile apps.
• Use their built-in analytics to improve your store.
• Access advanced features like abandoned carts and inventory management.
• Support gift cards, discount codes and coupons.

But we’re not here to check similarities; you’re looking for answers on who (Wix vs Squarespace) gives you the better overall value when you create an online store?

Here’s how Wix is better:

You get a wider range of payment gateways, support for multiple currency prices display, multilingual translation (90) with Wix translations, features for sending & managing invoices; you can accept cash payments on delivery. What’s more?  Advanced features like abandoned cart recovery come with cheaper plans.

What about Squarespace?

You get unique store perks, which include:

• Support for importing products via.csv file
• A tipping feature
• Point of Sale System via Square
• Order printing and fulfillment services
• An excellent inventory management system that is better than Wix’s system
• Product merchandising features like Back In Stock Notifications, Limited availability labels and Low Stock Notifications

Both Wix and Squarespace have great selling features, but with Squarespace charging 3% transaction fees and having higher-priced eCommerce plans, we recommend Wix here.

Verdict: Wix wins

Pros

• Advanced bookings and appointment scheduling app
• Includes lead capture forms
• Create memberships with subscriptions feature
• Logo maker
• Excellent social media integration
• Free domain name offered
• Supports Gmail professional email addresses

Cons

• Storage and bandwidth are limited with some plans
• Forms have basic fields
• Few pre-integrated business features

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Pros

• Lots of business features come pre-integrated
• Free credits for Google Ads
• 1 free G Suite user/inbox for the first year
• You can add lots of 3rd party email providers
• Free initial year domain name
• Appointment scheduling block
• Impressive social media support
• Built-in support for selling services and subscriptions
• Unlimited bandwidth and storage
• Sophisticated forms with advanced fields
• Print order and fulfilment service
• Logo maker available

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Should you go with Wix or Squarespace for your small business?

Looking closely you can’t easily identify the platform with the edge. Looking into what is offered by platforms, the better choice seems to be Squarespace, as you:

• Get unlimited hosting resources,
• Majority of features come baked in, e.g. MailChimp, free email marketing, Print order and fulfillment service,
• Get advanced forms.

Adding the fact that Squarespace gives you a free business email and Google Ads credits, its obviously the better choice. Wix only beats it with its ShoutOut marketing app, though you have to pay.

Verdict: Squarespace Wins

Pros

• Intuitive blog editor
• Text editor uses text, video or images
• Post features: saving drafts, scheduling posts, tags and creating categories
• Multiple authors allowed
• Blog features: RSS feeds, Disqus and Facebook comments, search tool, and memberships
• Social features for likes, shares, follow, comments for your posts
• Blog monetization supported

Cons

• Post manager opens in a pop-up
• No creating tags
• Must add Wix App for all features
• Inferior Blog SEO
• Posts only have text, images and videos

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Pros

• Better overall blogging tool (built-in)
• Post features: tags, categories, saving drafts, setting featured posts, scheduling and publishing unlimited posts
• Integrated hosting for podcasts
• Posts can have all site-building blocks
• Easy blog monetization supported
• Built-in comments system or add Disqus
• Blog features: built-in RSS feeds, memberships, and collaborators
• Supports blog SEO tweaking
• Social media features: likes, auto-post sharing, and social sharing images

Cons

• Blog editor is not highly intuitive

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Squarespace has an impressive range of blogging tools – built-in by default – and better than what you get with the dedicated Wix Blog App. Squarespace allows you to add a landing page, for showing multiple posts in a grid, and sub-pages for each post. You also get styling and design options with different layouts available to make an attractive blog.

To help you rank higher, you have blog SEO options of adding excerpts, location, customize posts URLs, editing titles and meta descriptions.

For Wix, you must use the blog app for full functionality which isn’t as convenient as Squarespace integrated features.

Since Wix doesn’t allow you:

• Lots of SEO editing freedom,
• To host podcasts,
• To tag your posts.

We recommend Squarespace here.

Verdict: Squarespace Wins

Summary

• Over 45 elements to use
• Less features out of the box
• Images libraries: Wix stock photography (1000+ Wix Images), Shutterstock, and Unsplash
• Use 96 fonts or upload your own
• Unique features: donation system, Wix chat and Restaurants tools

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Summary

• Over 38 content blocks
• More pre-integrated features
• Images libraries: Getty Images, and Unsplash library
• Unique features: podcasts, full donation system and built-in Instagram galleries
• Over 600 Google and 1000 TypeKit fonts

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Some common site features on both platforms include:

• Mobile apps (IOS & Android) for content and website management,
• Advanced design tools – animations, video backgrounds and scroll effects.

Looking at the overall picture, Wix has more features and page elements. Squarespace features though few are better in quality and fully developed.

Good examples:

• Advanced forms,
• A robust donation system,
• Syndicated podcasts,
• Better galleries and Instagram galleries.

Another thing, Squarespace websites come with more baked-in site features, while for Wix, you have to integrate most features. It’s too close to call this section.

Verdict: Tie

Summary

• Editable page titles, meta descriptions, and images ALT text
• Customizable URLs
• Domain 301 redirects feature
• Automatic sitemap creation for instant Google indexing
• Google Search Console integration
• Managing canonical tags supported
• Includes flexible headings structure (from H1 to H6)
• Websites have AMP format for a better mobile experience
• Schema markup for accurate, rich results
• Provides an SEO guide and SEO apps via store

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Summary

• Editable page titles, meta description, ALT text for images
• Clean HTML mark-up and URLs
• Heading structure (H1 to H4)
• 301 redirects option
• Contain schema markup for better SEO results
• Automatic sitemaps for sites
• Adding Google Search Console allowed
• AMP format for mobile pages supported
• SEO Checklist in the help centre
• SEO features cover blog SEO

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Wix helps you implement a proper SEO strategy and improve it via the Wix SEO Wiz app, while Squarespace gives you an SEO checklist for the same. In terms of SEO options, they match each other feature for feature; but there are some few alarm bells for each platform.

Let’s start with Wix:

• An unideal string gets added to your URLs, which isn’t good for search engines,
• You can’t access and customize the automatic sitemap that gets generated,
• Implementing proper SEO specifically for blog posts is not possible.

What about Squarespace?

The headings structure is not the best, and it’s rather difficult to tweak images ALT text. Fewer cons help Squarespace win here.

Verdict: Squarespace Wins

Pros

• Free 1st-year domain name
• Cheaper plan for connecting domain
• Lower domain prices (from $14.95/year)
• Free privacy protection feature

Cons

• No custom domain on the free plan

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Pros

• All plans support adding and buying custom domains
• Offers free initial year domain
• Domains renew at the same rate
• WHOIS privacy included

Cons

• Costs more to use a custom domain ($12/month)
• Domain prices are higher than Wix (from $20 to $70/year)

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Wix and Squarespace both double up as domain registrars and give you a free domain name for the first year with privacy protection. That is if you go with annual billing. When buying Squarespace domains, you know you’re getting; despite a little higher price as domains renew at the same rate. Wix beats Squarespace here with lower prices and lower plan costs for using a custom domain name.

Verdict: Wix Wins

Pros

• Rating system for apps
• Extensive App Store with over 300 apps
• Both Wix Apps (47) and 3rd party integrations and plug-ins available
• A simple, user-friendly navigation system
• Lots of free apps (100+)

Cons

• Not all apps are of high quality
• Few pre-integrated 3rd party plug-ins

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Pros

• Built-in app store with+70 extensions and integrations
• Has in-house apps and dedicated integrations from leading services
• More pre-integrated 3rd party extensions, e.g., MailChimp, YouTube, Google Maps

Cons

• Lacks a dedicated App Store
• Requires ‘Business’ plan or higher to add commerce apps
• Only a handful of integrations available

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The big difference here is that;

Wix allows apps from lots of 3^rd party developers, which results in more plug-ins, but how well they work can be a hit or miss. That’s why Wix has a rating system and gives you lots of ways to sort (22 categories) and search apps.

On the flip side:

Squarespace only allows official extensions and integrations from leading companies and services. This results in their platform only having a handful of apps, but they are all high quality and work well with most websites. Some even come pre-configured to help you hit the ground running.

Since Wix has a dedicated and well-organized app store, using it and finding the best plug-ins is easy, Squarespace apps presentation is lacking in terms of intuitiveness. There’s no dedicated App Store. The Wix App store is better for expanding your website’s functionality.

Verdict: Wix Wins

Summary

• A built-in Website Analytics tool with in-depth reports
• Add 3rd party Analytics Apps, Google Analytics, and tracking tools via store

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Summary

• Integrated Squarespace Analytics App
• Basic Website Metrics for cheapest plans
• Adding Google Analytics is much easier

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Wix has a basic (old) Analytics tool that shows visits, unique visitors, bounce rates, and forms submitted for your site traffic, blog, store, videos, and bookings.

But the good news is that Wix recently launched Wix Analytics Reports, which are the real deal. They are comprehensive; you get business data presented cleanly in reports categories like:

• Sales by item, by product variant, over time;
• Traffic (location, device, unique visitors, sources, and more);
• Behaviours – traffic by page (page views, visitors, session, bounce rates);
• People – top-paying customers, customers, and contacts over time.

There are more than 23 filters for the data. Even better, you can create customized reports and see the information in different formats and graphs.

Squarespace has a different approach in that the analytics features you can access depend on your billing plan.

E.g., the Personal plan gets you data on:

• Google Search Keywords,
• Popular content – most viewed pages,
• Site keywords,
• Traffic sources (direct, social, search, referral, and more),
• Activity logs,
• Geography,
• RSS subscribers.

You miss out on Sales (revenue, units sold, orders, visits, conversion rates), Form & Button Conversions, Abandoned Cart, and Traffic Alerts (page views, visits, unique visitors) data.

If what you get out of the gate with each platform isn’t enough, you can add Google Analytics. Since the stats and features you can access are almost the same, it’s a tie.

Verdict: Tie

Summary

• Auto-backup and restore feature
• SSL certificate provided
• Password-protection feature
• Creates online stores with PCI-Compliance payments

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Summary

• Websites have an SSL certificate
• Password-protection feature
• DDOS mitigation
• Uses Web Application Firewall
• Secure PCI compliant payment methods

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Most of the security features are the same, but Squarespace lacks an auto-backup and restore solution which benefits you directly. Even if Wix doesn’t mention the DDOS and WAF protection, they assure clients of top-level security measures at the hosting level.

Verdict: Wix Wins

Pros

• Direct support via 24/7 email tickets
• Multilingual (8) phone callback (US business hours)
• Community Forum
• Wix Knowledge Base; video tutorials, and 2000+ articles
• Wix on-page editor help
• Priority response and VIP support perks for high-end plans

Cons

• No live chat
• Premium support requires paying more
• Lengthier process

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Pros

• 24/7 1-hour response email support
• Live chat (Mon to Fri business hours)
• Peer-to-Peer forum
• Extensive Knowledge Base filled with in-depth articles
• Extras support offered via webinars, workshops, and video tutorials

Cons

• Lacks phone help
• No on-page editor support

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This is another section of our Wix vs Squarespace head to head comparison that advantages on both platforms almost cancel out.

A unique feature with Wix is that you get in-page a contextual help option when using their editor. However, Wix lacks a live chat option. Another thing, it’s harder to get direct assistance as you must first read their FAQs before requesting a callback. Despite missing multilingual, phone and premium support, Squarespace has helpful and fast staff.

A common thing we liked; you can use each website builder’s social media platforms to get help. Having higher support quality at no extra cost and more help options makes Squarespace better here.

Verdict: Squarespace Wins

As you’ve seen, each website builder (Wix and Squarespace) makes it ideal for handling different requirements, fitting different budgets, and providing different user experiences.

All in all, neither disappoints; these are the two leading platforms for DIY website creation. Just remember, for a free website, more straightforward editor, 3^rd party apps, better online store, go with Wix. For high-quality templates, advanced customizations, better blogging support, brilliant customer support, and more SEO options, Squarespace leads.

Clap for yourself if you’ve come this far. Do you have any comment, suggestion or point to add to this Wix vs Squarespace comparison. Feel free to do so in the comment section below.