As leaders in the website builder industry, Wix and Squarespace each empower millions of small businesses, creators and entrepreneurs to establish their online presence without coding skills.
But the heated debate rages on – which platform should you choose in 2023 for launching that personal blog, eCommerce store or portfolio site?
In this extensively researched yet easily digestible 2,300 word guide, I’ll compare every facet of Wix and Squarespace side-by-side to help identify your best fit based on needs and skill level.
Strap yourself in for an epic feature face-off!
A Brief History of Wix vs Squarespace
Before analyzing homepage builders based on metrics like ease of use or security, understanding the history behind these SaaS juggernauts provides helpful context on their roots and values.
Wix dates back to 2006 when co-founders Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan sought simplifying website creation for non-developers. Based in Israel, their vision soon attracted venture capital such as Bessemer Venture Partners and Insight Venture Partners.
After launching a free ad-supported platform in 2007, Wix grew swiftly to boast over 200 million registered users by 2022 based on accessibility and word-of-mouth buzz. Their global workforce now includes over 6,000 employees.
Wix [1] went on to complete an impressive $127 million NASDAQ IPO in 2013 that valued the company at nearly $800 million at the time!
| Year | Key Milestones |
|---|---|
| 2006 | Founded by Abrahami, Abrahami and Kaplan |
| 2007 | Free website builder platform launches |
| 2013 | $127 million IPO on NASDAQ |
| 2022 | Over 200 million users |
Meanwhile on the East Coast in 2003, Squarespace emerged from the dorm room of student entrepreneur Anthony Casalena at the University of Maryland. The initial version provided users tools for managing online blogs and journals.
Over time, Squarespace [2] evolved into a leading website building platform focused on simplicity, elegant design aesthetics and robust ecommerce capabilities. It’s attracted over 3 million websites spanning blogs to full blown online stores.
Let’s check out a historical growth snapshot:
| Year | Key Milestones |
|---|---|
| 2003 | Founded by Anthony Casalena |
| 2010 | 1 million accounts created |
| 2014 | $40 million fundraising round |
| 2017 | NYC headquarters opens |
| 2021 | IPO raises $300 million |
While both companies established themselves over 15 years ago, they each continue innovating with new features and tools in the crowded website builder space.
But which stands above the rest in satisfying the most use cases among creators in 2023? Let’s dig in!
Ease of Use Comparison
For many new site owners devoid of web development expertise, an intuitive user experience proves paramount for having a positive first impression.
Let‘s see how Wix and Squarespace platforms cater to beginners through their respective site building journeys.
Wix makes usoability a high priority through its Artificial Design Intelligence. As users drag page elements onto a blank canvas, smart guidelines help align everything seamlessly while identifying mobile responsiveness issues immediately.
Rich animations and balloon tips guide you through each design decision as well. Wix [3] even offers a way to fully rollback changes as you tweak a template. Overall, their vibrant interface and attention to newbies helps explain huge adoption.
Squarespace also employs a drag and drop builder for arranging page elements visually. However, its grid-based templating system reduces freedom in placing items compared to Wix’s freeform editor.
While generally simple to utilize, some Squarespace settings reside outside the main editor which can interrupt creative flow. Interactive guides exist but prove less prominent than on Wix sites.
When weighing ease of use specifically, Wix better caters to absolute beginners, especially those lacking background in topics like responsive web design principles that optimize sites for any device.
That said, neither website building platform should pose major headaches for tech savvy folks since you rarely (if ever) touch code.
Template Design & Customization
All website creators want to showcase their authentic personal or business style from first glance. How do template design options and customization potential stack up across platforms?
The Wix template marketplace contains over 800 designer templates spanning industries from restaurants to mechanics shops and salons. Filters allow narrowing your search across categories to match site goals.
High competition in template sales keeps designs extremely modern and tailored toward conversion rate optimization as well.
Wix lets you fully customize colors, fonts, backgrounds images and layouts to override the base template initially chosen during setup. The flexibility caters well to folks who crave both a fast launch yet wholly personalized site.
By comparison, Squarespace adopts a more curated approach in its template library highlighting ~100 contemporary designs for uses like retail, weddings, online course marketplaces and more.
The polished "Squarespace style" shines through strongly on all templates with clean lines, beautiful typography, animated hover states and balanced whitespace. Sites embrace limited accent colors that complement photography extremely well by design.
But whilst you can tweak font styles, navigation patterns and content width to a degree, Squarespace actively discourages tampering with core structural elements in their templates. Doing so can break visual cohesion quickly.
This rigidness pays dividends for certain personal brands desiring an elevated, distinctly “Squarespace looking” site. But more nimble startups may chafe at the enforced consistency which fights extreme custom redesigns.
Commerce Capabilities
Creating an online store provides an immense avenue for generating revenues 24/7/365 by selling products/services globally. How do Wix and Squarespace compare on ecommerce features?
The Wix Stores module grants users access to a customizable online shop builder plus promoted marketing tools aimed at conversions. You easily upload products then enable features like coupons, customer reviews and an integrated blog showcasing new releases or sales.
SEO and speed optimizations come baked in for driving organic traffic and keeping pages nimble even on mobile devices. Site search makes it effortless for customers to find specific items in your catalog. You can even create unique discount experiences through member accounts.
On security, Wix provides HTTPS across checkout and order management workflows alongside oversite from their Trust & Safety team.
For order fulfillment, Wix integrates seamlessly with shipping carriers globally, enables ship station compatibility, provides discounted USPS rates and automates sales tax calculations.
Squarespace Commerce also delivers secure, hosted web stores maintained by dedicated engineering teams. The provided inventory and order dashboards simplify managing SKUs and purchases across locations.
Subscription scheduling options help juice recurring revenues as well through flexible billing cycles. Strong analytics reveal customer segments driving highest profits.
However, finding compatible third-party integrations for scaling accounting or CRM becomes challenging on Squarespace stores. You also lack powerful marketing tools prominent within Wix around promotions, pop ups and UTM link tagging.
Overall when evaluating advanced sales avenues, Wix eCommerce extends further in servicing serious merchant needs to match leading dedicated platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce. Squarespace sells itself better for modest shops with straightforward catalog/order processing requirements.
Blogging Capabilities
In 2023 and beyond, blogging remains hugely valuable for small businesses establishing themselves as thought leaders through long form content marketing.
After choosing any site template, Wix users enjoy seamless access to the Wix Blogs module – allowing both freeform writing and structured article publishing.
You easily manage subscriber comments/questions below posts alongside categorization for discoverability. RSS feeds automatically notify current blog followers of newly published content as well.
Each blog article gets optimized for search engine visibility through customizable metadata, alt text on images and video XML sitemaps. Social sharing buttons provide a great conversion rate boost for follower accumulation.
Squarespace also supports tagging, multiple authors and robust commenting tools given templates with integrated blogging capabilities activated.
However, picking one of ~5 designated "blog" designsprove mandatory to unlock said features. You can‘t freely add the construct to other templates. SEO elements like configurable metadata and XML sitemaps do come included though.
For those seeing blogging as pivotal toward long term organic growth through keyword targeting and conversation nurturing, Wix more seamlessly facilitates the vision via universal access regardless of your site‘s purpose.
App Integrations
Third party app integration helps website owners simplify multi-channel workflows using the breadth of modern MarTech solutions available today across lead generation, email marketing, appointment setting and more.
The Wix App Market grants one click access to over 350+ marketing, operations and ecommerce focused web apps praising 4+ star reviews from active users.
Top apps boast impressive functionality like:
- Mailchimp synching your subscriber lists and email campaigns
-Gusto for automating payroll, benefits and HR workflows
-LiveChat real-time chatbots for instant customer engagement
You also find category specific solutions in education, travel, healthcare and fitness among other segments.
Many apps enable bi-directional data flows with Wix Site dashboards using secure APIs for a true single source of truth across organizational tasks, CRM, analytics and beyond.
By comparison, Squarespace severely limits third party integrations to a handful of email marketing, accounting and social media tools via their App Marketplace.
Operating multiple business systems while owning a Squarespace site generally requires tedious importing/exporting of data files without the benefit of no code solutions prominent within the Wix ecosystem.
For lean teams and solopreneurs overwhelmed by app constellations, Wix surely simplifies web technology stacks tremendously.
SEO Capabilities
Having your website content surface prominently within Google and Bing remains paramount for driving organic traffic from buyers actively seeking related solutions online.
Out of the box, Wix enables site owners to configure important on-page SEO elements like page titles, menu structure optimization and XML site maps for crawler indexing.
The built-in SEO Wiz tool also checks for broken links, harmful redirects and thin content issues. Switching site domains proves seamless as well.
Additional App Market tools let you deep dive into analytics for optimizing pages/posts by highest traffic landing sources and conversions.
Squarespace allows limited SEO customization for individual page titles plus generation of XML sitemaps. However, configuring metadata descriptions requires digging into custom HTML/CSS rather than a settings dashboard.
This hands on approach caters more to advanced developers but risks overwhelming marketing focused users simply wanting their content indexed properly.
Without extensive tweaking, Wix clearly provides superior baseline SEO capabilities for owners getting started quickly. Squarespace benefits those planning to eventually customize extensively anyways.
Security & Backups
With cyber attacks aimed at hijacking websites for malicious redirects, phishing attempts and stolen customer data running rampant, reviewing key security services proves prudent.
All Wix sites automatically run on dedicated infrastructure utilizing Linux servers alongside content delivery networks to maximize performance and redundancy. You also get free SSL certificates for enabling HTTPS secure data encryption during transactions.
For easily restoring site backups in case of outages or hacks, Wix provides extremely affordable cloud hosting solutions starting around $6 per month for backing up your entire site.
Squarespace relies on a proprietary hosting infrastructure build on their customized version of the NGINX web servers. Here too standard SSL gets bundled for free including auto-renewal safeguarding encryption continuity.
However, configuring regular automated backups requires signing up for one of Squarespace’s $12+ monthly Extended plans. Quite the gotcha for already paying businesses!
And unlike Wix, you can‘t simply drag and drop site backup files if wanting to revert or migrate platforms. This vendor lock-in phenomenon risks headaches for owners valuing simplicity.
Wrapping Up – My Recommendation
Let’s summarize a few key recommendations based on common website scenarios:
For beginners desiring maximized simplicity with built-in guidance, choose Wix. You’ll move past learning curves quicker.
For creatives and designers wanting sophisticated visuals built-in, start with Squarespace. Just don‘t expect total UI control.
For lean ecommerce stores fulfilling lots of orders, Wix Stores should satisfy with greater complexity handling.
For appointment businesses, Wix Bookings dashboard keeps scheduling operationally smooth.
In closing, I want to re-iterate how impressed I remain with both Wix and Squarespace continually innovating in web technology decade after decade. Their journeys should inspire any entrepreneur or artist!
Yet by carefully weighing factors like flexibility in design and function against structure and constraints throughout this extensive comparison guide, your ideal website platform match should start crystallizing based on long term goals.
Here‘s to nailing that perfect online home for showcasing your passion projects in 2023 and beyond! Let me know how I can help with any other questions.
