Wix vs. Squarespace: Which is Best for Ecommerce in 2021?

If you’re thinking about starting an online store, but you can’t decide between Wix vs. Squarespace, then this is for you. There are so many platforms out there, all with their pros and cons. It can be difficult to decide which one will work best for your needs. Sure, you can use trial and error, but that’s a lot of work and wasted effort as you build and rebuild your store for each platform. 

I’ve spent hours researching, testing, and compiling the data on the most popular ecommerce platforms out there, so you don’t have to. I use a proprietary ranking system that the platforms themselves cannot manipulate. I’ve done this to keep my reviews and comparisons as unbiased as possible. It would be easy to give five stars to everything – but then you wouldn’t get any real value.

In this detailed Wix vs. Squarespace comparison, I look at everything from pricing and value to the integrations, design, and ease of use. 

Wix vs Squarespace Overview

Wix and Squarespace are two of the most popular website builders. According to BuiltWith, Squarespace is the most popular hosted solution in the United States and the second most popular on the “Entire Internet in Hosted Solution” category. And to no real surprise, Wix is the second most popular in the United States in the Hosted Solution category and the most popular in the “Entire Internet Hosted Solution” category. 

Both are content management systems (CMSs) designed to help beginners build a website without coding knowledge. They are both software as a service, or SaaS, which means you don’t have to purchase separate hosting, and the technical stuff is handled for you. Unlike Shopify, these are built to be content-based websites first, with ecommerce functionality added after the fact. Wix is definitely more beginner-friendly and easier to use.

While the two are quite similar, there are plenty of differences worth noting, as well… and that’s what I’m going to address throughout the rest of this comparison guide.

Wix Vs. Squarespace: Pricing & Value

Both Wix and Squarespace offer a variety of personal and business plans. However, those plans don’t include ecommerce features, so I’ll only be focusing on the ecommerce plans. Though Wix limits your storage space based on the plan you choose, both Squarespace and Wix offer unlimited bandwidth and custom domain names for your store.

Wix Pricing

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Wix offers a variety of plans, including a free-forever plan. However, if you want ecommerce features, you’ll have to start with the Business Basic plan. The good thing is that all premium plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it for two weeks before committing to it.

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Business Basic Plan: $23/month

This plan includes:

• Unlimited products
• 20 GB storage space
• 5 hours of video time
• A free custom domain for a year – using .com, .net, or .org.
• Payment collection and customization
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Social channel selling
• Customer support

Business Unlimited: $27/month

With this plan, you’ll get everything in the Business Basic Plan, along with an additional 15 GB of storage space and 5 hours of video. Plus:

• Subscription/recurring payments
• Shipping/order fulfillment management
• USPS discounts
• Expand sales channels to include large online marketplaces
• Dropshipping for up to to 250 products
• Product reviews – up to 1,000 new reviews posted every month
• Automated sales tax calculation for up to 100 transactions per month
• Support for multiple currencies

Business VIP Plan: $49/month

With this plan, you’ll get everything above plus:

• Another 15 GB of storage space (for a total of 50 GB)
• Unlimited video hours
• Automated sales tax calculation for up to 500 transactions every month
• Deeper USPS discounts
• Unlimited dropshipping products
• Up to 3,000 product reviews
• The option to start a customer loyalty program with a third-party app connection.

Enterprise Custom Package and Pricing: $500+/month

If you need something more than what the Business VIP plan has to offer, you can reach out for more information about the Enterprise plan. It’s customized to the needs of your specific business. This means your pricing is personalized according to your plan features. Pricing starts at $500 a month. A plan like this isn’t necessary for most small business owners, and is meant for growing companies and larger businesses.

Squarespace Pricing 

Squarespace has a variety of plans to choose from, but you’ll only have two to choose from with ecommerce features included. There’s a two-week free-trial available to help you decide if you like it before you commit to it.

Basic: $26/month (Billed Annually)

If you’re willing to pay for an entire year upfront, you’ll save 13%. Otherwise, you’ll be paying $30/month. This plan includes:

• Free custom domain for 12 months
• SSL security
• Unlimited storage and bandwidth
• SEO Tools
• Variety of design templates to choose from to fit the needs of any business
• Basic analytics information
• Mobile optimized websites
• Squarespace Extensions
• Premium integrations and Blocks
• Unlimited products
• Promotional popups and banners
• Accept donations
• Gift cards
• Customer accounts
• Point of sale
• Products on Instagram

Advanced: $40/month (Billed Annually)

As with the basic plan, you’ll save 13% if you pay for an entire year upfront. Otherwise, you’ll be paying $46/month. 

You’ll get everything from the Basic Commerce plan, plus:

• Abandoned cart recovery
• Sell subscriptions
• Advanced shipping
• Advanced discounts
• Commerce APIs

Squarespace Select: Enterprise Plan

For enterprises that need a customized plan, there’s Squarespace Select. It costs $4,900 a year.

Payment Gateways

Wix offers a variety of payment gateways, including:

• Wix Payments
• Manual Payments
• 2Checkout (in more than 150 countries)
• Affirm (USA)
• Afterpay (USA, Australia, New Zealand)
• Paypal

See the full list here.

Squarespace accepts credit card payments through Stripe. You can also accept payments through PayPal and ApplePay.

Credit Card Processing and Transaction Fees

As you make your pricing decisions, remember that you’ll have to pay transaction fees on every transaction your store processes. This is the case regardless of the ecommerce platform you use. 

Wix offers its own payment gateway that charges reasonable fees. But, before you use it, you’ll want to make sure that the countries you want to sell to are supported. 

If you want to use another payment gateway, you can expect to pay anywhere from 2 to 3% of the transaction in fees. Wix Payments doesn’t charge anything in addition to these fees, though.

Squarespace doesn’t charge transaction fees on the Basic and Advanced Commerce plans, but you’ll be charged a 3% transaction fee on any sales on the Business plan. You’ll still pay processing fees with Stripe and PayPal, though.

I declare Wix the winner here because it gives users a more affordable way to access ecommerce features than Squarespace. And when you consider that a major ecommerce feature — abandoned cart recovery — is available at a lower price point with Wix, it’s definitely worth paying attention to. 

That said, Squarespace doesn’t impose limits on storage space as Wix does.

Winner = Wix

Squarespace and Wix Performance Test Results

While price is important, it shouldn’t be the only thing you base your purchasing decision on. If you get a good deal, but your site doesn’t function the way you need it to, then it’s not the good deal you thought it was. 

Load Time and PageSpeed

Squarespace has a slow page load time, coming in at 3.5 seconds. Wix isn’t that much faster, averaging 3.2 seconds. 

The longer your pages take to load, the less likely people are to stick around and wait. People are busy, impatient, and want instant gratification wherever possible. 

Where Wix really beats Squarespace is the mobile and desktop speed. Wix is significantly faster on both mobile and desktop devices compared to Squarespace.

SEO Tools

SEO is a crucial part of ecommerce because you need to bring in as much organic traffic as possible.

The right tools can make all the difference in how effective your SEO efforts are.Squarespace and Wix offer their own SEO tools. But Wix beats Squarespace for a number of reasons.

Both platforms offer the basics: meta tags, sitemaps, page descriptions. Where Wix makes the difference is that it uses SEO patterns that make it possible to edit tags and URL slugs for a large portion of your website. It also offers SEO-friendly redirects so that your rankings won’t suffer if you make any changes to your site’s structure. You can also integrate Wix with a variety of third-party SEO tools.

If you want to optimize your site quickly, you can use the AI tool, Wix SEO Wix. The interface asks you a few questions, then works on your whole site’s SEO based on how you answer. Squarespace offers an SEO checklist, and a few built in tools. These features aren’t as beginner-friendly, and there is no personalized help like with Wix.

My performance tests show that Squarespace beats Wix in terms of the average SEO traffic. So, even though Wix may have the better tools, there are other factors at play with ranking Wix sites. And that’s why I have to call this one a tie.

Winner = Tie

Squarespace Vs. Wix: Features

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Blog

Squarespace and Wix offer similar writing experiences to bloggers. Using either service, You’ll have a fully functional blog with the ability to schedule posts for publishing, save drafts in advance, add categories, and manage your blog.

The Wix blog post editor is separate from the rest of your website. The post editor is decent, but while you’re writing, you won’t be able to get a picture of how your content appears to users. That seems a bit off to me, because Wix is a site editor, so you should be able to see how it looks as you go.

The way Squarespace handles writing blog posts feels a lot like designing your page Using the dragon drop out of there. Of course you don’t get the same layout and design freedom but you do get to see how your blog post will appear to your readers.

Upselling and Cross-Selling

Wix does not offer built-in up selling or cross-selling on any of its plans. 

You can make use of cross-selling and upselling with Squarepsace but it does require a bit more work. You have to edit products to add more information to the product descriptions on any of the products you want to display related products for. 

You can do this with a “Summary Block” using a carousel layout within that box. Then, choose the products you want to add. Opt for the three Items for room layout and then make the customizations you need on the display tab of this on my block other there. Repeat this process for each product in your catalog.

Abandoned Cart Recovery

Both Wix and Squarespace offer abandoned card recovery. Years ago, Wix did not have an abandoned cart recovery feature.  After customers told Wix that they needed the abandoned cart recovery features, they decided to add it. Your customers will receive an email if they leave their carts unfinished. This feature is included in every Wix pricing plan.

Product Options and Variants

Squarespace doesn’t place limits on your product. It is easy to include variance of each product. Possible to import your product catalog from other platforms. 

You can also integrate MailChimp for your email campaigns, integrate Google AdWords, and share buttons. However, it is not possible to sell your products on Amazon with Squarespace because Amazon is limited to affiliate tracking only. 

You can quickly and easily create a product category catalog that has as many physical and digital products as you want.There is no integration with Facebook, Amazon, or Google shopping. It does however integrate with Facebook and other social media channels to help you advertise your product.

Product Search

Product search is a critical area for user-friendliness. You want to have a good site search function to make it easy for your visitors to find whatever it is they are looking for. Squarespace does not include an intuitive product search option on either of its ecommerce plans. Wix offers robust product search features on all three of their business plans.

Ratings and Reviews

Wix makes it possible for you to add user reviews on your site but it’s definitely not easy to do. You’ll need to add a decent amount of coding if you want to make reviews work on your website. considering that one of the main advantages to using Wix is that you don’t have to use coding or have advanced technical skills to build a stellar website, this is a distinct disadvantage.

Customer Loyalty Reward Programs

With Wix, there is no built in customer loyalty program or reward program. If you want to add this feature to your store, you’ll need to rely on a third party app like Smile. With the Smile app, your customers will accumulate points with each purchase, that they can later redeem on future purchases.

Real-Time Shipping Rates

Real-time shipping rates are included on the Advanced plan with Squarespace, but not on the basic plan. It is included in all Wix plans. If you want a fulfillment center integration, you’ll need a third-party app to help you get the job done, whether you use Squarespace or Wix.

Dropshipping

If you use a dropshipping business model, you will need a third-party paid app to use it with Wix. No dropshipping integration exists with Squarespace, so you’ll need to use a different ecommerce platform.

Subscriptions and Recurring Billing

If you want to sell subscriptions or anything else that requires recurring billing, you can do so with a free add on on Wix. Like the real-time shipping rates, it is not possible on the basic Squarespace plan, but can be done on the advanced plan.

Importing and Exporting Products

Both Wix and Squarespace make it easy to import and export products from other ecommerce platforms.

Wix gives you a CSV template that you can easily populate with your product data for importing. In terms of exporting, however, Wix limits you to 5,000 products. If you want to export digital products or other non-product content, you’ll need to use a workaround. Those workarounds are a bit technical in nature, though.

Mobile Apps

Both platforms offer mobile apps to their customers. 

Squarespace App

For those who want to be able to edit their website on the go, Squarepsace offers the aptly named Squarespace App for both Android and iOS devices. You can use the app to update pages when you’re away from your computer, write and edit new blog posts, add images and galleries, and get website analytics data. 

At the time of this writing, the iOS app offers more features than the Android version. With it, you can create and send email campaigns, manage, add, and edit products, and even handle order and inventory management. 

It is not possible to use the Squarespace App, on either platform, to handle some features. For instance, you cannot update billing settings or view invoices, access domains, or your templates. Your app has to connect to a Squarespace 7.0 or 7.1 website. 

All contributor levels can make use of the app. If you are not a site owner or administrator, you will be able to access everything in the app that you would otherwise have access to on the desktop version.

An internet connection is required to publish any changes to your site from the app. If you do not have an internet connection, the app will save any work you have in progress. When you return, you’ll be able to save or discard those changes before pushing any updates live.

Wix Apps

Wix has multiple apps available. The Wix Owner app, formerly known as Wix Mobile App is the one site owners can use to make edits. 

Wix Owner makes it easy to: 

• Edit your website and store
• Create and share social content
• Create and send email marketing campaigns
• Track store analytics in real-time
• Chat with site visitors (if you have the Wix Chat app installed on your website)

Wile Wix Owner is generally enough to get the job done, there’s also a new option, called Wix Spaces. 

With Wix Spaces, you build a customizable “space” for each of the websites in your Wix account. You have the option to create a space that isn’t connected to any particular website. These spaces provide a way to interact with customers and visitors. Customers can download the Wix Spaces app and use it to join your space, which gives them a mobile app experience with your store.

Using Spaces you can:

• Build groups
• Add a forum
• Write and share blog posts
• Manage your storage, including any Wix apps you have on your website.

Marketing Tools

Squarespace has a variety of SEO options available but they do need a bit of an extra effort to get them working correctly. You need to spend time going through the advanced settings to find out where to integrate Google Analytics, how to handle your 301 redirect, and image options. Ultimately, the marketing tools need a boost as the lack of apps and extensions makes it harder to Market your business when you compare it to other platforms.

Squarespace also offers gift cards, back in stock notifications and low stock notifications. Wix doesn’t offer any of these features.

Wix has more features overall, but the ones that Squarespace does offer, they tend to do better.

Winner = Wix

Wix Vs Squarespace: Integrations

Wix has an extensive app market that makes it easy to add more features to your website. Everything from hotel and restaurant apps, advanced gallery images, and donation boxes are available. Though some of the add-ons are not free and Wix will not vouch for the support quality of all the third-party developers, it’s useful to know that you can add more to suit your individual needs. You can find anything you need to add extra stuff to your site on Wix’s app market.

Squarespace offers Squarespace Extensions, launched in December 2019. The majority of the extensions in the marketplace are focused on e-commerce such as shipping and accounting services. There aren’t a huge number of Integrations available right now, but I will hopefully continue to grow with time.

 That said, Squarespace does have more built-in functionality then Wix does right out of the box.

You can use integrations to add things like:

• Membership sites
• Live chat
• Reward programs
• Dropshipping (Wix only)
• And more

Let’s take a look at some common features and how you can get them using Wix or Squarespace. 

• If you want a membership site, you can easily add it with the Wix Members app. With Squarespace, you’ll need the Memberstack integration. 
• If you want a forum, you can use the Wix Forum app. On Squarespace, you’ll need integration with Muut.
• If you want to add live chat, you can use the Wix Live Chat app. For Squarespace, you’ll need to use an integration with a third-party provider like Tawk.
• Running a restaurant and want to make ordering take out easy online? Use the Wix Restaurant Orders app. On Squarespace, integrate with Chownow.
• Need ticketing and RSVP features? Use the Wix Events app. Otherwise, integrate with Eventbrite.
• Need to accept donations? With Wix, you’ll use a basic donation button that sends users to PayPal. Squarespace, on the other hand, includes a fully-featured donation system that includes donor specific checkout, donor email receipts, and suggested amounts.
• Want to make use of podcasts on your site? Wix gives you a podcast player, but it doesn’t allow for podcast syndication – which is what you need if you want to submit your podcast to Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Squarespace is the only platform that can syndicate podcasts.

Even though Wix has all these apps, many come at a premium. These are paid on top of the monthly subscription costs. For instance, Wix Events charges a 2.5% service fee on all ticket sales. If you want to use the ad-free version of Wix Chat, pricing starts at $10/month.

Winner = Wix

Squarespace Vs. Wix: Website Design

Both Squarespace and Wix have a variety of templates to choose from, making it easy to design and build a professional quality website with little to no experience. Wix has Squarespace beat in sheer numbers. There are more than 800 templates to choose from where Squarespace only has about 115.

Despite the fact that Squarespace lacks a huge volume of templates and themes to choose from, there is something to be said for their quality. Aesthetically all of these themes are amazing. There is plenty of filler in the Wix theme store.

If you want, you can use a video background with either Wix or Squarespace. However, if you want to use a video background with Squarespace, you have to first upload it to vimeo or YouTube, then provide Squarespace with the relevant URL. Wix allows you to upload the video directly to their platform.

Fonts

If the typefaces that are available to you matter,Then you’ll find the Squarespace offers a wider variety of choices. You can use Google and 1,000 typekit font. However, with Wix you are restricted to only 96 type spaces. That said, it is easier to install custom fonts on Wix. 

Stock Photography

Squarespace and Wix integrate stock photography libraries into their platform. You can browse a selection of free images to include in your website. You can also buy stock photographs through Shutterstock on Wix and Getty on Squarespace.

Responsive Design

Wix does not offer mobile responsive templates. That means the templates don’t automatically adjust themselves to fit screen size or shape. However, you do get a mobile version that you can adjust in a separate editor to be sure that your site looks great on smartphones. At this time, there is not a way to preview how your site will look on a tablet.

HTML and CSS

Wix doesn’t allow you to access the CSS code of your website. You can however, add custom HTML and CSS to your site.

Squarespace includes a CSS editor you can use to customize your site beyond what’s possible in the design panel. It recommends only using CSS to change colors, fonts, and backgrounds as changes outside of that could cause issues with your site. If you need to add custom HTML, you can do so with a block, similar to how you would do it in Wix.

Here’s the real downside with Wix. Once you build your website with Wix and make it live, you cannot change your template. You can move things around a bit, change your colors and fonts, but other than that, everything’s pretty much set. 

If you use Squarespace 7.1, the latest version, you cannot switch templates either. But the difference is that you can change things up since all the Squarespace templates use the same underlying structure and style.

Winner = Squarespace

Head To Head: Ease Of Use

It doesn’t matter how awesome an e-commerce platform is if it’s not easy to use. People use website builders because it makes the task of creating a website simple. Both Wix and Squarespace do a good job at making the process straightforward.

Wix is one of the easiest website builders on the market. It uses a dragon drop editor and has built-in how to make it easier for people. The onboarding process is smooth which makes it easy for beginners to start making the most out of wix and a matter of minutes.

Everything about Wix is designed to be user-friendly and users do not need to have any understanding of web design or development to build a stunning website.

Wix gives users three interface options for building websites:

• Wix Editor: Choose a template, create your site structure, then populate it with content.

• Wix ADI: Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) mode automatically creates a website for you with images, video, and text. It uses answers to questions about what you’re aiming to do, then fills the site with information about you and your business that’s publicly available on the web. You can then customize it to suit your needs.

• Velo (formerly known as Corvid): This approach gives you access to the Wix API to provide you with certain aspects of Wix’s code. With it, you’ll have more control over the design, but it requires development skills.

It takes a bit more time and effort to learn Squarespace. There is no drag and drop editor so positioning elements isn’t that more difficult. Squarespace does however have quite an extensive set of built-in features. This means there’s no additional research or trial and error involved in downloading and making use of extensions and app integration. Everything is already there. Squarespace has a variety of website templates that handle the majority of the web design work for you.

Customer Service and Support

Customer service and support, both Squarespace and Wix offer a variety of solutions. Both platforms have customer support forums, articles and tutorials. They offer videos and step-by-step guides to assist users. The Squarespace help center also features webinars to help customers learn more  about how to make the most of the platform.

Answers are both clear and useful with Squarespace and Wix. It is worth noting that Wix does offer phone support via call back. Phone support is available from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST.

Squarespace offers live chat support from 3 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST Monday through Friday. 24/7 email support is available with a policy that promises you’ll receive an email response within 1 hour. 

The winner here will most definitely depend on your preferred method of communication. Wix however always wants you to read the FAQs first so it can be a bit harder to contact them.

Winner = Wix

User Reviews

If you have experience with Wix or Squarespace, please leave a review to help others. We work hard to keep things unbiased. We can’t do it without you.

What’s The Better Website Builder For Ecommerce?

There’s no clear winner between Wix and Squarespace. Both platforms have their place in the market. One may work better than the other for some business models, though. If you still can’t decide which one you should use, consider these points and where you fall among them.

Wix and Squarespace are versatile, affordable options for anyone who is new to building a website. Both platforms will get you a website with a variety of functionality. However, Wix and Squarespace cater to different audiences the one may apply to you more than the other.

Wix works well for anyone. It is easy to use and has intuitive drag-and-drop features. With it, you’ll get everything from e-commerce features to apps that handle blogging, search engine optimization, and analytic. The variety of templates makes it easy for anyone to find a website design that suits their needs. Wix is the clear winner when it comes to something easy for beginners to use.

Squarespace does require a bit more of a learning curve. However, in exchange for that you get a bit more flexibility, and something that looks a bit more professional end. Because of this, Squarespace is typically the better choice for creatives.

Which is the better choice for beginners who want to get  shut up quickly on a budget.  Squarespace provides a more sophisticated approach. If you have more time to spare and can handle the super learning curve, you’ll end up with a more sophisticated result.

Why Use Wix Over Squarespace

• You want total creative freedom.
• You need something that’s super user-friendly for beginners.
• You need more third-party apps and integrations.

Why Use Squarespace Over Wix

• You’re a creative who wants to build a portfolio, with a small shop on the side
• You want a more professional looking website
• You’re willing to take time to adjust to the learning curve.

No matter what, you don’t have to decide based on this review. You can get started with Wix by signing up for its free plan or test first base using a 14-day free trial. Remember that neither Squarespace or Wix is primarily focused on ecommerce. If the main purpose of your website is ecommerce, you’ll want to look at alternatives like Shopify or BigCommerce, as these platforms are built with ecommerce in mind. But, if you have rather simple ecommerce needs, either Wix or Squarespace could work well for you.

Still can’t decide? Want more comparisons? Take a look at my Squarespace vs. Shopify comparison to help you go deeper before making your choice.