Wix vs. Squarespace: A Detailed Comparison On Key Features
By LitExtension
Introduction
Under the impact of Covid-19 outbreaks, the whole world seems to rely more on online shopping. Regardless of its consequences, many store owners can seize the chance to kick off an online business. However, choosing from hundreds of eCommerce platforms has never been an easy job for beginners.
Wix and Squarespace are currently two prevailing website builders in the market with distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, they still gain popularity by offering top-notch features that fuel online businesses.
If you are considering between Wix vs Squarespace, don’t look further because you are in the right place. This article comes as a rescue since we will be providing you with the fundamentals of these giants to consider which one best fits your live store.
Let’s scroll down to find out 4 key differences between Wix vs Squarespace as follows:
- Price estimation
- Support system
- Website builder features
- eCommerce functionalities
Wix vs. Squarespace: Which one is more popular?
To begin with, Wix is a website builder that provides everything you need to create and manage your online store. This cloud-based platform is preferable for beginners and non-coders thanks to its drag-and-drop interface and all-in-all functionality.
Since the dawn of foundation in 2006, Wix has been a reliable home for 4,565,423 live websites all over the globe. Especially, this website creator would be a perfect option for those who want to develop a content-rich web page.
Similarly, Squarespace is well-known for being a leading CMS (Content Management System) solution for website, blog, portfolio and online store. It lets all types of businesses create professional shop pages with the use of available toolkits instead of complicated code lines.
Currently, Squarespace is paying more attention to enriching itself by optimizing eCommerce features. As a matter of fact, 2,478,031 users chose Squarespace to start their online businesses.
All in all, Wix vs Squarespace are two newbie-friendly platforms that support content-based eStores. Both of them dominate the highest usage distribution on the entire Internet that leaves other hosted-cart solutions miles behind.
Although they seem to be alike, there are some dissimilarities between these two website builders. Now, let’s dive deeper into multiple aspects of Wix vs Squarespace for your final decision.
Wix vs. Squarespace: All things considered
In the next paragraphs, we will compile some facts and figures about Wix vs Squarespace.
1. Pricing plans
Wix
Speaking of price, the criteria for choosing proper Wix’s pricing options greatly depend on the user’s purposes.
The first option is Website. It charges you at least $4 each month for the basic package with limited features and on-site ads. Therefore, getting access to more useful features by purchasing a higher pricing plan is a must if you want to scale up your web page.
You can save up to $66 and $168 respectively if payments for Website pricing plans are made one year and two years in advance.
Another price option for those who want to make an online business on this platform is Business & eCommerce. Take a look at the image we show you below, Wix offers three packages ranging from $17 to $35 per month.
Moreover, you can save up to $60 and $240 for the Business VIP package if subscription periods are one year and two years correspondingly.
All of these packages benefit store owners with unlimited bandwidth, domain connection, statistics and reports on sales,… which helps you enjoy a feature-rich online store.
Especially, Wix allows you to create a website free of charge until you want to drive more functionalities from paid plans.
Squarespace
On the other hand, Squarespace users are able to choose from four pricing options: Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. The price for each plan ranges from $16 to $46 per month.
Plus, online merchants can avail of discounts up to 30% per year if annual payments are fully made in advance. By doing this way, you can save a maximum amount of $8 per month depending on your choice.
In addition, you are capable of having a 14-day free trial to assess whether Squarespace satisfies your business demands.
However, there are two notes you should keep in mind when purchasing any plans on Squarespace. First, all of the pricing plans offer eCommerce features except for the Personal package. Second, the Business plan will charge you 3% more for each transaction as an additional fee.
The verdict
Comparing premium packages between Wix vs Squarespace, we can conclude that Wix outperforms its biggest rival with cheaper investment costs and superior features inside each option.
2. Support
Because of the nature of a hosted solution, both Wix vs Squarespace put a huge attempt to offer high-quality customer service along the way. You can dig into official documents and instruction tutorials on the Help Center and FAQs to find the answer for yourself. Otherwise, you can ask for help on Wix vs Squarespace’s own forum or community. This is an ideal place where experts and other business owners share their knowledge and experience.
In case you still struggle with technical issues, go for direct support from these platforms. While Wix offers phone support (via callback), you can text right on Squarespace’s chatbox.
The verdict
Similar to other platforms, Wix vs Squarespace both aim at improving customer satisfaction. Therefore, whatever website builders you will settle in, please rest assured that dedicated, professional support is always at hand.
3. Website Builder Features Comparisons:
For most beginners and non-technical base users, debuting a mesmerizing website display with little effort is always a target to achieve.
In the next paragraphs, let’s move on to our analysis of website builder features of Wix vs Squarespace.
Design & Template & Theme
It is of great importance for a brand-new eStore to have a dazzling storefront. By doing this way, chances are that store owners can foster their product visibility and thus capture more sales from potential customers.
- Wix
The exposure to more than 700 templates makes Wix become a huge reservoir. Those eye-catching templates can cover up to 70 categories with various industry-specific features. In addition, Wix users have full control over all elements and sections, which enables them to customize on their own taste.
Contrastingly, you cannot switch to another Wix theme once picking. So, think carefully before selecting. In addition, Wix design flexibility could be a disadvantage for eCommerce newbies because they may don’t know how to organize contents on their website.
- Squarespace
In the other corner, Squarespace impresses store owners with a wide range of attractive themes. Most importantly, over 100 Squarespace templates are professionally designed to ensure usability, performance and mobile responsiveness.
Similar to Wix, you can see the preview of the template in advance and then freely edit the storefront for selling purposes.
However, Squarespace was originally a blog-hosting service. As a result, some designs are more well-tailored for art blogs, photography, or music portfolio. Thus, they might not always be fully optimized for an eCommerce site.
The verdict
Interestingly, both Wix vs Squarespace get their names on the score sheet thanks to the drag-and-drop interface. This saves you a lot of time on customizing your eCommerce store compared to open source carts like WooCommerce or Magento.
When it comes to website appearance, Wix seems to surpass Squarespace in terms of the number of templates and themes. But not all Wix designs are as nice as you expect.
Extensions and apps
Feature enrichment is what online merchants always focus on to improve store performance. Therefore, the integration of apps and extensions besides core functionalities is a good way to make this dream come true.
- Wix
Once registering for a seller account on Wix, you can get access to over 300 apps on its App Market. However, most of them are development apps that support the creation of a website. Therefore, those who want to open an online shop on Wix will need to go for apps from third parties.
- Squarespace
Squarespace introduced its Extension gallery in December 2009. Unfortunately, there are only 23 extensions totally sponsored by third parties.
Regardless of limited selection, most Squarespace extensions focus on boosting eCommerce integrations. Therefore, online merchants can make use of some highlighted features like shipping or accounting.
The verdict
Apparently, Wix vs Squarespace offer a narrow selection of apps and extensions compared to other website builders like Shopify, BigCommerce or Weebly. On the contrary, you are still able to strengthen your online store with powerful functionalities. For example, shipping & fulfillment, finance, inventory management, and sales & marketing.
SEO
SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website rank to make it appear on the top Google search result pages. Therefore, taking notice of SEO features of Wix vs Squarespace will essentially help your online store stand out from the others.
No matter which one you will go for, both Wix and Squarespace offer SEO features to get your online store a higher rank in the search engines. In detail, store owners can edit meta tags, URLs, keywords, anchor links, heading tags, alt text and so on.
Further, you can benefit from built-in SEO features such as Google indexing, Google analysis, XML sitemap and more, leading to effective store operation. For more information, please take a closer look at the table below:
Blogging
Besides SEO features, both Wix vs Squarespace equip their platforms with the built-in blogging engine.
- Wix
Wix comes with a range of basic blogging features right on your newly-created eStore. However, you will need to add the free Wix Blog from the App Market if you want to customize a more appealing blog page.
Nonetheless, Wix only supports blog posts categories.
- Squarespace
On the other hand, Squarespace has an edge over Wix by supporting both blog posts tags and categories instead of covering only one aspect.
The verdict
According to our research, Squarespace offers a large number of blog-oriented templates. Therefore, Squarespace somehow brings a better experience to the table over Wix in regard to blogging.
4. eCommerce Features Comparison:
Besides being a wonderland for developing regular websites, Wix vs Squarespace also provides their users with numerous eCommerce features.
Payment gateways
Online payment gradually gains social acceptance because it significantly reduces the risk of cash on delivery (COD) method. Also, store owners can keep track of checkouts by providing proper paying methods.
- Wix
Wix offers 41 payment gateways in total for its users to choose from. Some of them support all types of currencies and countries in the world. The others are only available in several specific nations.
This platform will automatically connect the most suitable payment options with your location and region. Of course, you can request Wix to add another payment provider in case it suits your preferences.
- Squarespace
Contrary to Wix, Squarespace limits the payment processors as it supports only Stripe, Paypal and Square. Each of them allows store owners to accept different payment methods. You can scan Squarespace’s official guide for more details.
The verdict
Obviously, Wix beats out Squarespace by providing its users diverse ways to receive money from your customers. Moreover, Wix also suggests the most suitable payment gateways and automatically sets it up for your store.
But please note that you need to review credit card processor fees before setting up on both Wix vs Squarespace because they vary among particular locations and gateways.
Sales channels
- Wix
You can multiply your products on Wix to some prominent sales channels including Facebook, Instagram and eBay. Instead of switching among these marketplaces, you can manage and modify your business from the Sales channel section from your Wix store’s dashboard.
Another option for you to manage sales channels is to install the Multiorders app from Wix Apps Market. This is a powerful tool suggested by Wix that lets you connect your Wix store with an Amazon or Etsy kiosk and take control over all of them from the Wix backend. With Multiorders, the process of handling orders, inventory, shipping or supplies will be more effective.
- Squarespace
Squarespace authorizes store owners to diversify their product categories by creating multiple sites from one single admin panel.
However, Squarespace doesn’t offer multi-sites plans. Hence, you need to set up separate billing for each site.
The verdict
In this field, Wix seems to be better than Squarespace for those who want to display their items on diverse marketplaces. In addition, the support of Wix Multiorders app is a plus that makes the administration of sales channels easier.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is an important strategy of eCommerce stores aiming at engaging prospects and driving traffic for your business.
- Wix
With the support of the user-friendly editor, Wix Ascend allows store owners to create intuitive emails from scratch or customize them from designer-made templates. Also, the integration of advanced Data analysis will help you track your email marketing. Based on its result, you can assess the best content for further campaigns. Last but not least, the email automation function will help you to send scheduled drafts as you set.
Wix Ascend empowers you to monitor all marketing activities in one place. An Ascend subscription enables store owners to conduct three email campaigns each month together with premium features and a greater campaign quota. Good news is that you can totally use free Wix email marketing with no obligation to buy the premium plan.
- Squarespace
Undoubtedly, Squarespace offers outstanding email campaigns. This allows users to combine the management of both their website and mailing list from a single admin panel. However, you have to purchase a premium plan to get this functionality:
- Starter: $5 — $7 per month. You are able to create 3 campaigns and send 500 emails monthly. Email automation is not included in this package.
- Core: $10 -$14 per month. There are 5 and 5000 monthly campaigns and emails respectively.
- Pro: $24 — $34 per month. You can conduct up to 20 campaigns and send 50,000 emails each month.
- Max: $48 — $68 per month. This package offers unlimited campaigns. Impressively, you can send up to 250,000 emails within a period of 30 days.
The verdict
To sum up, both Wix vs Squarespace provide a powerful editor to help you create nicely-designed email templates. Although Wix includes both free and premium plans on its email marketing, upgrading to Wix Ascend is way better with numerous features.
Therefore, Squarespace wins in this aspect with a wider selection of email campaign plans.
Product types and other related features
- Wix
Wix gives you the flexibility to sell both physical and digital (e.g. books, decorations,…) & downloadable products (e.g. audio, ebook,…).
Before making your Wix shop go live, please make sure that the product type you are going to showcase is up to snuff. You can read this Wix list to avoid selling its prohibited and restricted product or service.
- Squarespace
Using Squarespace, you are capable of selling four product types: gift cards, physical, digital and service products. Explicitly, you can sell physical and service products as one-time purchases or subscriptions, which brings recurring, predictable revenue for your store.
The verdict
Whereas Wix sets strict requirements on eligible products to be served, Squarespace covers all types of products. Spectacularly, the fact that one of Squarespace’s product types is subscription goods will monetize your online businesses on a recurring basis. Above all, Squarespace surpasses its competitor in this round.
Internationalization
When it comes to the internationalization of Wix vs Squarespace, we would like to emphasize taxes, languages and currencies.
Taxes
- Wix
To simplify tax calculation, Wix collaborates with Avalara, a third-party software that provides automated real-time tax rates. This program is available for transactions across almost all locations in the world apart from Brazil and India.
Once connecting to Avalara from the Store Tax tab, your tax collection is subject to up-to-date tax rules. However, you need to upgrade your Wix pricing plan to either Business Unlimited or Business VIP packages to use Avalara.
- Squarespace
Squarespace charges tax rates on products, services and shipping. These figures vary greatly depending on the customer’s billing address as well as the store owner’s local area.
Besides that, you need to pay Value-added Tax and/or Goods & Services Tax to Squarespace. The calculation of VAT and GST is based on the countries where store owners are living in. Therefore, you can enable tax-inclusive pricing to collect these taxes.
Languages
- Wix
There is no need to hire a developer at a costly price thanks to the advent of Wix Multilingual. This is a built-in feature that helps store owners create professional web pages in multiple languages.
Surprisingly, Wix Multilingual supports over 100 languages, which widens your chance to accelerate international plans.
- Squarespace
Currently, Squarespace supports six languages including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
There are two language settings that Squarespace users should know. Account language helps you navigate Squarespace and customize your storefront. Another setting is Site language that decides built-in texts that visitors see when entering your website.
You can easily change your site language in the Language and Region Setting section. In case your store has multiple contributors, each of them can independently change the language for their own account. In contrast, if you have multiple sites, the account language will be the same for all of them.
Currencies
- Wix
Those who run a Wix store can choose from a wide range of currency options. It is the site currency that you will use to set product prices.
- Squarespace
The currency for your Squarespace store will associate with the payment processor automatically. However, you can only select one currency for your store.
In case you are a resident of a country that supports multiple currencies, it would be wise to select the currency of your bank account connecting to your payment processor. By doing this way, funds in that currency will go directly to that account without any conversion rate.
Another thing you should keep in mind is that a store selling gift cards cannot change currency once choosing.
The verdict
In summary, both Wix vs Squarespace offer their users a wide range of options in terms of currency.
Security
In the perspective of Security, there are three aspects that we need to take into account including GDPR, PCI, and SSL certificate.
Wix vs. Squarespace: Which one should you choose?
Both Wix vs Squarespace are best-in-class eCommerce platforms that come to your mind when talking about website builders.
Each of them possesses fascinating features that are worth opting to. Therefore, it is hard to state exactly which one is the cream of the crop. Instead, online merchants need to take an overall look at various aspects of each platform to find a solution that owns necessary features for your taste.
To cut long story short, Squarespace is made-to-measure for a stunning content-based website. The reason lies in its focus on blog-supportive functionalities from aesthetic templates to fully-optimized blogging characteristics.
Meanwhile, Wix gradually gives top priority to eCommerce features by providing suitable Apps to automate the process of setting up your online store such as Multiorders, Avalara, Ascend,… Therefore, Wix is truly a wonderland to develop your own business at little effort and reasonable price.
Final words
In conclusion, both Wix vs Squarespace are powerful enough to provide you with website builder along with eCommerce features. However, nothing is perfect and each of these platforms has several limitations out of your expectation. Therefore, we hope that you will find a suitable home after reading this article.
After all the factors discussed above, our suggestion in the battle between Wix vs Squarespace is that Wix is more favorable for those who want to establish a website for online selling because it integrates a multitude of factors that help you grow a promising store page.
If you are planning on migrating to Wix, Squarespace, between these two platforms, or to any website builders from your existing one, LitExtension is eager to help! As the world-leading shopping cart migration with impressive ranks on Trustpilot, Financeonline, and Youtube, LitExtension can transfer all your store entities automatically, securely and quickly with no technical knowledge required!
Should you have any questions about your store migration, don’t hesitate to contact our support team. We are here to solve all of your problems immediately!
