Squarespace vs Wix (2026): Which One Should You Pick?
Two portfolio templates side by side: Wix’s Photographer (Muted) demo on the left and Squarespace’s McCurry preview on the right, October 2026.
Our verdict: Pick Squarespace if your site is mainly about how it looks: portfolios, creative work, and small design-led shops or blogs. Pick Wix if you want the most tools for the money: a free plan to learn on, the cheapest ad-free plan, bookings included, and a much bigger app store. For most small service businesses and first-time site owners on a budget, Wix is the better fit. For photographers, designers and creators who want a polished site with less fiddling, Squarespace is. Both cost the same $29 a month on their popular Core plans.
For this update we built the same small test site on both: a made-up pottery studio called Juniper Ceramics, with a home page, an about page, a contact form, a blog post and a shop with one product. We used Wix’s free plan and a Squarespace 14-day free trial with each builder’s AI setup, and we did not pay for anything or publish either site. Prices, template counts and fees come from the public pricing pages, template galleries, help centers and app marketplaces, plus speed measurements of one official demo from each. Prices are US prices before tax, checked in October 2026.
Squarespace vs Wix at a glance
| Squarespace | Wix | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans (billed annually) | Basic $19, Core $29, Plus $49, Advanced $99 per month | Light $17, Core $29, Business $39, Business Elite $159 per month |
| Monthly billing | $25, $39, $65, $139 per month | Offered, but the price is only shown at checkout |
| Free plan | No. 14-day free trial, no card needed | Yes, with Wix branding and a wixsite.com address |
| Refunds | Annual plans within 14 days; no refunds on monthly plans | New plans within 14 days, monthly or annual |
| Templates | 202 in the gallery | 2,000+ (vendor figure) |
| Switch template later | Not in version 7.1; restyle the same site instead | Not possible; start a new site and copy content over |
| Cheapest plan that can sell | Basic, with a 2% transaction fee | Core, with no extra fee on store sales |
| Storage | Unlimited, plus video limits per plan | 2 GB to unlimited, depending on plan |
| Add-ons | A smaller set of Squarespace Extensions | Over 800 apps (vendor figure) |
| Bookings | Separate subscription from $16/month | Included from Core |
| Export your site | Partial export to WordPress format | No site export; blog posts cannot be exported |
| Share of all websites | 2.4% (W3Techs, October 2026) | 4.2% (W3Techs, October 2026) |
| Best for | Portfolios, creatives, small design-led shops | Small businesses, beginners, budget sites, bigger catalogs |
Winner for each type of site
Portfolio or creative work: Squarespace. Its templates are fewer but more consistent, every plan has unlimited storage and bandwidth for big image galleries, and each template ships with preset color palettes and font packs that are hard to make look bad. Wix gives you more freedom, which also means more ways to end up with a messy layout.
Small business (local services, appointments, leads): Wix. Online booking (“Scheduling and services”) is part of the Core plan at $29 a month. On Squarespace, scheduling is a separate product (Squarespace Scheduling, built on Acuity Scheduling) that starts at $16 a month on top of your website plan. Wix also has far more apps and more built-in marketing tools.
Online store: Wix, unless your shop is small and design-led. Wix Core allows up to 50,000 products, adds dropshipping and selling on marketplaces and social channels, and charges no extra platform fee on store sales. Squarespace caps a store at 10,000 products, according to its help center, but it is an excellent choice for a boutique shop with a few dozen products, and its Basic plan lets you start selling for $19 a month if you accept a 2% fee.
Blog: Squarespace. Both have capable blog tools. Squarespace wins because you can export your blog to WordPress format if you ever leave, while Wix says plainly that blog posts cannot be exported to other platforms. If blogging is the main point of your site, read the WordPress section below first.
Beginners on a budget: Wix. You can build and learn on the free plan for as long as you like, the cheapest ad-free plan is $17 a month, and the 14-day refund covers monthly plans too. Squarespace has no free plan, and its cheapest plan is $19 a month billed annually or $25 billed monthly.
Pricing: what you actually pay
Squarespace’s pricing page with annual billing selected, October 2026.
Squarespace has four website plans. Here is what each costs as of October 2026:
| Squarespace plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly | Online store fee | Digital content and memberships fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $19/month ($228/year) | $25/month | 2% | 7% |
| Core | $29/month ($348/year) | $39/month | 0% | 5% |
| Plus | $49/month ($588/year) | $65/month | 0% | 1% |
| Advanced | $99/month ($1,188/year) | $139/month | 0% | 0% |
Every site starts with a 14-day free trial, and annual plans include a free domain for the first year. Squarespace refunds annual plans canceled within 14 days, minus the domain cost, but does not refund monthly plans.
Wix’s pricing page, which shows yearly prices only, October 2026.
Wix has a free plan and four paid plans:
| Wix plan | Billed annually | Storage | Can sell online? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 500 MB | No, and shows Wix branding |
| Light | $17/month ($204/year) | 2 GB | No |
| Core | $29/month ($348/year) | 50 GB | Yes |
| Business | $39/month ($468/year) | 100 GB | Yes |
| Business Elite | $159/month ($1,908/year) | Unlimited | Yes |
Wix’s pricing page states that the prices shown are for yearly plans paid up front. Monthly billing exists, but the monthly price only appears at checkout, which needs an account, so we cannot quote it here. Paid plans include a free domain voucher for the first year, and Wix gives a full refund on new plans canceled within 14 days, whether monthly or annual.
Which is cheaper?
- Cheapest ad-free site: Wix Light at $17 a month, versus Squarespace Basic at $19.
- Cheapest way to sell: Squarespace Basic at $19 a month plus a 2% fee on sales. Wix’s lowest selling plan is Core at $29.
- The break-even point: Squarespace Core costs $10 a month more than Basic and drops the 2% fee. Two percent of $500 is $10, so once you sell more than about $500 a month, Core is the cheaper Squarespace plan.
- The popular middle plan: both Core plans cost $29 a month billed annually, or $348 a year.
Remember domain renewals after year one, and any paid apps or extensions you add.
Ease of use and editors
Both are built for people who have never made a website. You pick a template or describe your site to an AI builder, then edit on the page.
Wix uses a free-form drag-and-drop editor. You can place almost any element anywhere on the canvas. Its newest templates are labeled “Wix Harmony”, and Wix describes Harmony as a mix of AI prompting and hands-on drag and drop. Its built-in AI agent, Aria, can answer questions and make changes for you. AI creation tools are included on every plan.
Squarespace uses a grid-based editor called Fluid Engine. You drag and resize blocks, but they snap to a grid, which keeps layouts tidy on desktop and mobile. With its Blueprint AI builder, you describe your business and it creates a starting site with suggested content and styling. AI features run on credits: Basic gets 10 credits once, while Core, Plus and Advanced get 20, 40 and 120 credits a month.
In practice, the grid makes Squarespace harder to break and Wix easier to bend. If you like control, Wix. If you like guardrails, Squarespace.
What happened when we built the same site on both
The Wix Harmony editor after we asked Aria to add an About page for our test site. Wix free plan, October 2026.
| On our test site | Wix (free plan) | Squarespace (free trial) |
|---|---|---|
| AI setup | A short chat with Aria, then one “Generate Site” button | Blueprint AI: topic, goals, name and tone, pages, colors, fonts |
| Time to a usable homepage | About 13 minutes, mostly waiting for Aria to build | Under three minutes |
| What the AI made | Home page with collections, 9 sample products, 3 on-topic blog posts, booking classes and a services list | Home, About, Contact and Shop pages with a contact form and sample products |
| What we had to fix | A bookings page we had turned off, an invented phone number and email in the footer, a product called “Handged Cereal Bowl” | No blog page offered, footer left as “Your Site Title” and “email@example.com” |
| Changing a page | Asked Aria for an About page; it built one in about nine minutes | Click a block, edit it in place; added a blog page in three clicks |
| Free plan or trial reminders | “Upgrade your website to remove Wix ads” bar in preview; 50% off offers in the editor | Countdown bar for the 14-day trial on every dashboard screen |
Editing the Blueprint homepage on our Squarespace trial. Clicking a block shows a small toolbar to edit, move, duplicate or delete it, October 2026.
Wix’s AI did more of the writing: every section of the homepage had on-topic copy, and the blog posts were real first drafts. It was also slower and less careful, so you need to check each page. Squarespace’s Blueprint finished much faster and looked more polished, but left more for you to fill in, such as the blog and the footer. Each of our two big Aria requests (build the site, add an About page) took about nine minutes in our session (our browser tab was in the background, which may have slowed it), while Squarespace edits were instant because you make them yourself.
Templates and design
The Wix template gallery with its Type and Industry filters, October 2026.
Wix says it has more than 2,000 templates, and its gallery runs to hundreds of pages. You can filter by type (store, portfolio, blog, one-page) and by industry. Many templates come in several styles, such as Fitness Trainer (Dynamic) or Photographer (Muted).
Squarespace’s gallery listed 202 templates when we checked, with filters for site type (online store, portfolio, memberships, blog, scheduling, courses) and topic. There are far fewer, but they share a consistent, editorial look that is the main reason designers choose Squarespace.
Both galleries open live previews without an account. On Squarespace, the preview page also lets you try the template’s preset color palettes and font packs before you start a trial.
The McCurry template preview on Squarespace, with its color palettes and font packs on the right, October 2026.
Can you change your template later?
This matters more than the template count:
- Wix: you cannot switch the template of a site you already created. Wix’s help center says to create a new site with the new template, copy elements and pages across, import your media, and then move your plan and domain to the new site.
- Squarespace: on current version 7.1 sites you also cannot switch templates. Instead, Squarespace’s help center says to change the look inside the same site: edit colors and fonts, pick a preset style pack, or add pre-built page and section layouts. That keeps your content in place and is less work than a Wix rebuild.
Ecommerce
| Squarespace | Wix | |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest plan that can sell | Basic, $19/month (annual) | Core, $29/month (annual) |
| Platform fee on store sales | 2% on Basic, 0% on Core and up | None listed on any plan |
| Fee on memberships and subscriptions | 7% Basic, 5% Core, 1% Plus, 0% Advanced (digital content and memberships) | 4% Core, 2% Business, 0% Business Elite (Pricing Plans app) |
| Standard US card rate | 2.9% + $0.30 (Basic, Core), 2.7% + $0.30 (Plus), 2.5% + $0.30 (Advanced) | 2.9% + $0.30 with Wix Payments |
| American Express | 3.2% + $0.30 | 3.7% + $0.30 |
| Product limit | 10,000 site-wide (help center) | 50,000 on Core and up |
| Abandoned cart recovery | All plans | Core and up |
| Automated sales tax | Core and up, for 0.05% to 0.15% per transaction (max $0.99) | Business (100 transactions/month) and Business Elite (500/month) |
| Selling on marketplaces | Google Shopping from Core; others via extensions | Built in from Core |
Wix is the stronger store builder for most sellers. It allows five times as many products, includes dropshipping (25 products on Core, 250 on Business), lets you sell on marketplaces and social channels, and charges no platform fee on product sales. Watch two gaps: automated sales tax starts on Business, and the Pricing Plans app for memberships and subscriptions takes a fee of up to 4%.
Squarespace is better for small, design-led shops and for selling digital products, courses and memberships alongside a portfolio. Its checkout runs on your own domain on every plan, and abandoned cart emails are included even on Basic. The catch is the 2% fee on Basic and the 7% fee on digital content until you move up.
Neither store could take a test order without paying or connecting payments. On our Squarespace trial, the cart worked, but checkout showed “Checkout is closed. This store isn’t set up to process payments.” On the Wix free plan, we could add products (Aria had already added nine), but Wix Payments showed “Not Connected”, and Wix’s pricing lists selling online only from Core. Adding a product took about a minute on Wix and two on Squarespace, which insisted on a SKU.
Note that Squarespace’s pricing page says you can “sell unlimited products”, while its help center gives a site-wide limit of 10,000 products. For almost every small shop, either number is plenty.
SEO and blogging
Both cover the SEO basics well: editable page titles and descriptions, automatic sitemaps, structured data, mobile-friendly pages, free SSL, Google Search Console integration, and an SEO checklist. Both now also sell “AI Visibility” tracking, which checks whether your brand shows up in answers from AI chatbots.
Wix gives you more technical control. You can edit your robots.txt file, set canonical tags, import up to 500 redirects at once, and change the URL structure of blog posts and products (by default they sit under /post/ and /product-page/). That makes Wix the better pick if SEO is a big part of your plan.
Squarespace is simpler and does a sensible job by default. Code injection, which some tracking scripts need, is only on Core and above.
For blogging, Squarespace places no limit on the number of posts, and its export tool includes one blog with all its posts and up to 1,000 comments per post. Wix’s blog has plenty of features, but you cannot take your posts with you. If you are building a content site, that difference matters.
Speed: what we measured on two official demos
We ran Google’s Lighthouse tool (version 13.5.0) three times each on two comparable portfolio template demos on October 4, 2026: Wix’s Photographer (Muted) demo and Squarespace’s McCurry demo. Mobile runs use Lighthouse’s default simulated mid-range phone on a slow connection. The table shows the median of three runs.
| Demo page measurement | Wix: Photographer (Muted) | Squarespace: McCurry |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile performance score | 71 (runs ranged 69 to 88) | 60 (runs ranged 58 to 61) |
| Mobile Largest Contentful Paint | 3.8 s | 10.2 s |
| Mobile Total Blocking Time | 121 ms | 151 ms |
| Desktop performance score | 93 (runs ranged 82 to 95) | 63 (runs ranged 58 to 64) |
| Desktop Largest Contentful Paint | 1.5 s | 2.5 s |
| Desktop Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.00 | 0.35 |
| Page weight | About 2.3 MB | About 2.4 MB |
The Wix demo scored better on both mobile and desktop. On mobile, the Squarespace demo’s largest element was a big photo, and Lighthouse estimated about 550 KB of possible image savings. On desktop, almost all of its layout shift came from the large scaled headline settling into place. A score of 0.35 is in Google’s “poor” range.
Read this as a measurement of two demo pages on one day, not a verdict on every site. Your own images, fonts, apps and content will matter more than the platform. The Wix demo is served from wix.com, and the Squarespace demo from a squarespace.com address, so neither has a custom domain or real content.
Apps, extensions and business tools
Wix’s App Market is much bigger. Wix’s help center says it has over 800 apps, made by Wix and by outside developers. Wix also builds in bookings, events, restaurant orders, loyalty programs, email marketing and a CRM, with limits that grow with your plan.
Squarespace keeps more in-house and has a smaller marketplace. Its help center lists Squarespace Extensions for things like shipping, tax, inventory sync, reviews and translation. Its own add-on products, such as Squarespace Scheduling (from $16 a month billed annually, or $20 monthly) and Email Campaigns, cost extra.
If you know you need a specific tool, check the marketplace before you commit. Wix is more likely to have it.
Ownership and moving away
Neither platform lets you take your site with you in full.
- Wix: your site has to run on Wix’s servers. Wix’s help center says you cannot host a Wix site elsewhere, and blog posts cannot be exported to other platforms. The content belongs to you under Wix’s terms, but leaving means copying it out by hand.
- Squarespace: you can export an .xml file in WordPress format. It includes layout pages, one blog with its posts, text and image blocks, and gallery pages. It does not include store pages, portfolio pages, videos, style settings or custom CSS. Products can be exported separately to a .csv file. The help center says the site must be active and public; on our trial site the export ran, but the file held no page text or posts.
On our test sites, Wix’s site menu offered rename, preview, transfer, duplicate and trash, with no download option. Squarespace’s Settings had an Import and Export Content page with a WordPress export that takes a few clicks.
Squarespace is easier to leave, especially for a blog.
Support
Both list 24/7 customer support on every paid plan. Wix adds priority support on Business Elite. Wix also runs Wix Studio, a separate platform for agencies and freelancers who build sites for clients. We did not contact either support team, so we cannot judge response times or quality.
When WordPress is the better choice than either
We are a WordPress site, so here is the honest version. For many people, Wix or Squarespace is the right call: you pay one bill, and the company handles hosting, security and updates. WordPress asks more of you.
WordPress is the better choice when:
- You want to own everything. Self-hosted WordPress lets you export your whole site, move hosts, or change designs without rebuilding from scratch.
- Your site is mainly content. Blogs and publishers get unlimited posts, full control over URLs, and SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math.
- You need features neither builder has. WordPress has tens of thousands of plugins for memberships, directories, courses and more.
- Your costs will grow. As traffic and features grow, a well-chosen host can cost less than the higher builder plans. Our guide to managed WordPress hosting covers the trade-offs, and budget hosts like Hostinger start much lower.
The trade-off is upkeep. You handle updates, backups and plugin choices, or pay a host to do it. If you want drag-and-drop editing in WordPress, our WordPress page builder comparison is the place to start.
We go deeper in our head-to-head guides: Wix vs WordPress and WordPress vs Squarespace. For all three side by side, with year 1 and year 2 costs, see our WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace comparison.
FAQ
Is Squarespace or Wix cheaper?
Wix is cheaper at the low end. Its Light plan costs $17 a month billed annually, against $19 for Squarespace Basic, and Wix has a free plan. Both Core plans cost $29 a month billed annually. To sell online, Squarespace Basic ($19 plus a 2% fee) is the cheapest starting point, while Wix starts at Core ($29).
Which is better for SEO, Wix or Squarespace?
Both handle the basics well. Wix gives more technical control, including robots.txt editing, canonical tags, bulk redirects and custom URL structures for blog posts and products. Squarespace is simpler and fine for most small sites.
Can I switch templates on Wix or Squarespace?
Not directly on either. On Wix, you start a new site with the new template and copy your content across. On Squarespace version 7.1, you restyle the same site with new color themes, font packs and section layouts instead.
Is Wix or Squarespace better for a small business?
Wix, for most small businesses. Bookings are included from the $29 Core plan, it has over 800 apps, and its marketing tools are broader. Squarespace is the better pick for creative businesses where the look of the site sells the work.
Can I move my site from Wix to Squarespace, or the other way?
There is no one-click move between them, and Wix cannot export its sites at all. Plan on copying text and images by hand and rebuilding the design. Squarespace can export some content in WordPress format if you later move to WordPress.
Do Wix and Squarespace have free trials?
Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card. Wix has a free plan with no time limit, plus a 14-day money-back guarantee on new paid plans. We built our test sites on both: you can use the AI builders, add pages, products and blog posts, but neither lets you take real orders until you pay and connect payments, and the Wix free plan shows a Wix ads bar.