Short answer: Squarespace if you care about how it looks, Wix if you care about how flexible it is, and neither if you want it to perform on Google. Both are fine starter platforms. Both have ceilings. Here's the honest comparison.
What Wix is good at
Wix is the most flexible drag-and-drop builder on the market. You can put any element anywhere on the page — text on top of a video on top of an image with a button half overlapping all three. That freedom is its biggest selling point and its biggest problem.
Strengths. Hundreds of templates. Genuinely easy editor. Built-in tools for everything: bookings, e-commerce, restaurant menus, fitness scheduling, hotel bookings. Wix Studio (the pro editor) is closer to real design software than anything else in this category. App market for adding extras.
Weaknesses. Wix sites are usually slow — heavy page weight, lots of third-party scripts, mediocre Lighthouse scores out of the box. SEO is workable but you're fighting the platform. The "free" plan plasters Wix branding across your site, so realistically you're on a £14–£36/month plan. You can't export the site if you ever leave.
What Squarespace is good at
Squarespace gives you fewer choices and better results. Templates are tighter, the editor is more opinionated, and the defaults are tasteful. If you have no design sense, Squarespace makes it harder to build something ugly.
Strengths. Best-in-class templates for portfolios, photography, restaurants, hospitality. Excellent built-in image handling — your photos look right without you having to crop them. Cleaner code than Wix, slightly better SEO out of the box. Built-in e-commerce, members areas, and email marketing.
Weaknesses. Less flexible — you'll hit walls if you want a layout that doesn't match a template. Heavier pricing creep once you add e-commerce or member areas. Same lock-in problem: leave Squarespace and you start over.
Pricing in 2026
Wix Business plans run from £14 to £36/month. Squarespace from £12 to £40/month. Both bill annually for the best rates. Both also bill you in dollars that get converted at a rate you don't pick.
Over five years, you're looking at £840 to £2,400 in subscriptions on either platform — for a site you don't own and can't move. That's the part most comparisons skip.
SEO honestly
This is where the comparison stops being interesting. Both platforms slow your site down. Both inject extra JavaScript you don't need. Both bury structured data behind toggles most users never find. Wix has improved over the last three years; it's still a long way behind a hand-coded site on Core Web Vitals.
If you're a Lincoln café competing with two other Lincoln cafés on Wix, you'll be fine. If you're trying to rank for "plumber Lincoln" against a hand-coded competitor, you're going to lose.
E-commerce
Squarespace's commerce is slicker out of the box for small product ranges (1–100 SKUs). Wix's commerce scales further but feels more put-together. Neither matches a dedicated Shopify or hand-coded Stripe build once you pass £5k/month in turnover.
Wix vs Squarespace — quick decision matrix
- Photographer, artist, restaurant? Squarespace. Templates are made for you.
- Trades, salons, multi-service businesses? Wix Studio. More flexibility for service pages and area pages.
- Care about Google rankings? Neither. Move to a hand-coded site sooner rather than later.
- Selling £5k+/month? Shopify or a custom Stripe build.
- Want to own the site? Neither. Both are subscription platforms with zero portability.
The third option nobody mentions
For most small businesses, a hand-coded site from £500 ends up cheaper over five years and faster from day one. You pay once, you own the site, hosting is £100/month, and the only thing you "subscribe" to is the optional retainer for edits. No platform lock-in, no annual price hike, no surprise bill in dollars.
Wix and Squarespace are great for testing whether a business is real. Once it is, neither is the long-term answer.
See the Wix vs custom build comparison for the maths, or build a quote if you want to skip the subscription model entirely.
