Video: Wix vs Squarespace

Wix free trial details | Squarespace free trial details | Subscribe on YouTube

Video transcript

Hi there, I’m Matt Walsh from Style Factory, the go-to site for website builder reviews and ecommerce advice.

In this Wix vs Squarespace comparison, I’m going to highlight 5 key reasons you might want to use Wix over Squarespace, and 5 key reasons why Squarespace might be the better choice.

So stay tuned, and within a few minutes you’ll have a much better idea of which of these platforms is right for you.

Let’s kick things off by taking a look at the 5 key reasons to use Wix over Squarespace.

One — a totally free Wix plan is available.

Unlike Squarespace, which only gives you access to a free trial, Wix can be used for free indefinitely.

Now to be fair, the Wix free plan is pretty basic — you can’t sell products with it, it doesn’t let you make use of a custom domain name and it places Wix ads prominently on your site.

But it does nonetheless let you build a simple online presence for free, and gives you a good way to try out the platform.

Two — a larger range of templates is available from Wix.

When you create a website with hosted solutions like Wix or Squarespace, you typically use a predesigned template as the starting point for your design.

Wix gives you far more templates to choose from than Squarespace: there are over 800 templates available from Wix, but only around 140 available from Squarespace.

The larger selection of templates that Wix provides can make it easier to source a design that works really well for your business area or niche.

Three — the Wix ecommerce features are better.

The ecommerce features in Wix are more comprehensive than in Squarespace.

First, Wix gives you a lot more options for processing payments than Squarespace. While Squarespace limits you to accepting payments using just Stripe or PayPal, Wix works with over 90 payment processors.

Second, Wix lets you display prices in multiple currencies, which is not currently possible in Squarespace.

Third, an important ecommerce feature, abandoned cart recovery, is available on all Wix ecommerce plans. By contrast, you’ll need to be on the most expensive Squarespace plan to avail of this functionality.

Four — Wix gives you free email marketing tools.

Although Wix and Squarespace both provide you with handy email marketing tools, Wix makes them available to you entirely for free. Using Wix, you can send 3 newsletters per month to up to 5,000 subscribers, and this adds a lot of value to a Wix subscription.

By contrast, with Squarespace you’ll have to pay to send e-newsletters out using the platform, and the costs can mount up.

Five — it’s cheaper to build multilingual websites with Wix.

If you want to translate your website into multiple languages, there are no additional charges for doing so in Wix. You just add the free ‘Wix Multilingual’ app and you can translate your existing site into over 100 different languages.

But to translate your content in Squarespace, you’ll usually need to make use of a paid-for Weglot integration. This can work out very expensive if you have a high word count on your site, or need to translate your site into lots of different languages.

OK, so those are 5 key areas where Wix beats Squarespace. Now it’s time to take a look at the key areas where Squarespace wins.

But before I do that, I’d really appreciate it if you could like this video, subscribe to our channel, and hit the notification bell. This helps us out and gives you easy access to all our website building and ecommerce tips.

Ok, so let’s take a look at where Squarespace can be the better choice.

One — Squarespace uses responsive design.

Websites that use responsive design automatically resize themselves to suit the device they’re being viewed on — mobile, tablet or desktop.

Responsive design makes building websites easier, because you are only dealing with one version of your site. It is also preferred by Google, and sites using it can receive preferential treatment in search results.

Now, although Wix lets you create mobile friendly sites easily enough, they’re not truly responsive.

In Wix, you’re basically dealing with two different versions of your site — a desktop one and a mobile one. This means that you’ll always have to check that both designs are working properly.

By contrast, all Squarespace templates are 100% responsive, meaning that they adhere to Google’s search guidelines more closely. Their responsive nature also means that your main design will display fine on any device, and unless you really want to, you don’t need to bother about editing the mobile version of a Squarespace site.

Two — Squarespace is easier to use.

Based on the website builder tests we’ve carried out at Style Factory, we feel that the Squarespace interface is one of the very best available. It’s uncluttered, elegant, and very easy to build websites with.

Although the Wix learning curve isn’t terribly steep, we feel that most users will find it considerably easier to build and maintain a website with Squarespace than with Wix.

Three — the Squarespace templates are stunning.

This is a subjective area, but we think Squarespace’s templates are really special. This view is shared by a lot of reviewers: Squarespace templates have a reputation within the web design industry as being top class from an aesthetics point of view.

Although there are a lot fewer templates available from Squarespace than Wix, the range is still pretty extensive, and we feel that from an aesthetics point of view, Squarespace templates take the win.

Four — you can export your content more easily with Squarespace.

Unlike Wix, Squarespace lets you export your website’s pages and blog posts.

So, if you find yourself needing to migrate to another website building platform down the line, this will be more doable with Squarespace.

Five — Squarespace gives you unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans.

Unlike Wix, Squarespace doesn’t place any limits on how many files you can store on your website, or how much data can be downloaded from it.

By contrast, all Wix plans place limits on file storage, and its cheaper ones place restrictions on bandwidth too.

So, if you are planning on making large files available to your site visitors, or expect a lot of traffic, watch out for that.

So that’s it — 5 key reasons to use Wix over Squarespace, and 5 key reasons to choose Squarespace over Wix.

There are lots more pros and cons of Wix and Squarespace to discover however — you’ll find all these listed in our full Wix vs Squarespace blog post comparison.

There’s a link to this in the video description, along with links to free trials of both Wix and Squarespace.

Before I go, a quick reminder to subscribe to our channel and hit the notification bell — this will keep you up to date with all our website building tips.

And if you have any questions, do leave them in the comments section. We read them all and will do our best to help.