Squarespace vs Wix: which is better in 2026?

The quick verdict

Pick Squarespace if you want a polished, template-led site with selling built in. Its Core plan ($29 a month billed yearly) charges 0% store transaction fees and includes one Google Workspace email account free for the first year. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial.

Pick Wix if you want to start on a free plan, like a drag-and-drop editor, or want AI to draft your first version through Wix Harmony. The trade-off shows up when you leave: Wix scores 3 out of 10 on our exit score, Squarespace scores 5.

Side by side

These numbers come from each company’s pricing page and help center. Wix lists yearly prices only; its month-to-month prices appear at checkout.

For scale, W3Techs counts Wix on 4.2% of all websites and Squarespace on 2.4%. Both are established hosted builders, so this choice is about fit, not about which one will be around next year.

Cost over 3 years

Headline prices leave out the domain after year one, email and fees. So we priced the same small-business site on both: about 10 pages, a blog, a contact form, one business email address, and the option to take an online payment now and then.

That last part rules out Wix Light, which cannot accept online payments. So we compare the two Core plans.

How we got there:

• Plans: $29 a month billed yearly on both, or $348 a year. Neither pricing page lists a separate renewal price, so we assume today’s price holds.
• Domain: both include a free domain for the first year on yearly plans. Neither publishes its renewal price, so for years 2 and 3 we budget $18.48 a year, Namecheap’s published .com renewal.
• Email: Squarespace Core includes one Google Workspace account free for year one. Wix’s email offer was not on the pages we checked, so we price Google Workspace Business Starter bought from Google: $7 per user a month on the annual plan, or $84 a year.
• Left out: card processing on sales, paid apps or extensions, and sales tax.

The two land $84 apart, and that gap is the free year of email on Squarespace Core. On plan price alone, they are the same.

Cheaper plans, and what you give up

Squarespace Basic ($19 a month billed yearly) brings the 3-year total to $972.96, with email paid from day one. It adds a 2% fee on store sales and 7% on digital content and memberships. It also drops JavaScript and the advanced code block.

The break-even math is short. Basic saves $120 a year over Core, and a 2% fee eats that at $6,000 a year in store sales. Sell more than that and Core is the cheaper plan.

Wix Light ($17 a month billed yearly) brings the total to $900.96. It has 2 GB of storage and cannot take online payments, so it fits only a site that never sells.

Design and ease of use

Squarespace is built around templates made by designers. You pick one, add your content and adjust the style settings. Its Blueprint AI tool builds a starting site from those designer-made templates, so even AI-drafted sites start from a designed layout.

Wix uses a drag-and-drop editor and offers thousands of templates, according to its plans page. If you like placing things exactly where you want them, that freedom is the main draw. Squarespace does not publish a template count.

Custom code is split by plan. On Squarespace, Basic gets a basic code block and a CSS editor, and JavaScript plus the advanced code block start on Core. Wix’s top Business Elite plan lists an “advanced developer platform.”

Team size and storage also differ:

• Squarespace: 2 contributors on Basic, unlimited from Core. Video hosting runs from 30 minutes on Basic to 5 hours on Core, 50 hours on Plus and unlimited on Advanced.
• Wix: 2 collaborators on Light, 5 on Core, 10 on Business and 100 on Business Elite. Storage runs from 2 GB on Light to 50 GB on Core, 100 GB on Business and unlimited on Business Elite.

One more practical difference: Squarespace gives you a 14-day free trial, while Wix has no trial on paid plans but offers a 14-day money-back guarantee. Wix’s free plan lets you build for as long as you like before paying.

Store, blog and SEO

Selling

Squarespace can sell from Basic with a 2% transaction fee, and at 0% from Core up. Standard card processing is 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic and Core, 2.7% + $0.30 on Plus and 2.5% + $0.30 on Advanced. Premium cards cost 3.2% + $0.30 on every plan, per Squarespace’s pricing page.

Wix takes payments from Core. Its store features step up from basic on Core to standard on Business and advanced on Business Elite. Wix says it supports more than 80 payment options worldwide, but its US card rate and any transaction fee were not published on the pages we checked.

Selling memberships or digital content? Squarespace charges a separate fee for that: 7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus and 0% on Advanced.

Blogging

Both have a built-in blog. Squarespace lets you run several blogs on one site. Wix pairs its blog with CMS collections, which hold structured content like listings or team members. (A CMS is the system that stores and organizes your content.)

The difference shows up later. Squarespace can export one blog. Wix cannot export blog posts at all.

SEO

Both include built-in SEO controls. Squarespace’s 2025 Refresh added an AI SEO Scanner that suggests page titles, descriptions and image alt text, plus an AIO Scanner that tracks mentions of your brand on AI platforms like ChatGPT. Wix includes its own SEO tools; we did not re-check their details for this comparison.

For most small sites, rankings depend far more on your content and local signals than on which of these two you pick.

AI features

Wix launched Wix Harmony on January 21, 2026. It mixes prompt-based building, which Wix calls “vibe coding,” with Wix’s visual editor, so you can create a site from a single prompt and then edit it by hand. Inside Harmony, an AI agent called Aria takes plain-language requests and knows your whole site. Harmony is rolling out in English first.

Squarespace has Blueprint AI for generating a site from designer templates. Its September 2025 Refresh announced Beacon AI, a business guide across the platform, plus AI Product, Discount and FAQ Composers, AI image and video backgrounds, and a Squarespace GPT in the ChatGPT store. Some pieces, like chat-based site generation and an AI Site Scanner, were announced as coming soon.

Know this before you sign up: Squarespace meters AI with credits. Basic gets 10 credits one time, while Core, Plus and Advanced get 20, 40 and 120 credits a month. If you plan to lean on AI for writing, Basic will run dry fast.

Leaving later

This is where the two differ most. Our exit scores rate how much of a site you can take with you, out of 10. Content, design, code, data and domain get up to 2 points each.

Squarespace exports a WordPress-format XML file with your basic pages and one blog, including up to 1,000 comments per post. Store, portfolio and index pages, product, audio and video blocks, drafts, style settings and custom CSS stay behind. Images download one at a time from the asset library, and uploaded videos cannot be exported. Products export to CSV, and orders and contacts can be exported too.

Wix says your site must run on Wix’s servers, and its help center confirms it cannot be hosted elsewhere. Blog posts cannot be exported to other platforms. CMS collections and products export to CSV, with products capped at 5,000 rows per file and digital products left out.

On both, the design stays behind and you rebuild it on the new platform. The safest habit is to register your domain at an independent domain registrar and connect it, so your address is never part of the move. If your domain is registered at Squarespace, note the 60-day lock after a new registration or transfer, and that a transfer can take up to 15 days. Our guide to leaving your website builder walks through the steps.

Which one should you pick?

Pick Squarespace if

• You want a designed look without hiring a designer, for a portfolio or service business.
• You plan to sell and can pay for Core or higher to get 0% store transaction fees.
• You want hosting, domain, payments and email marketing on one bill.
• You want to keep the door open: a partial export beats none.

Pick Wix if

• You want to try everything on a free plan before paying.
• You prefer dragging elements anywhere on the page over working inside a template.
• You want AI to draft the site and then edit it visually with Wix Harmony.
• You need bookings, a store and marketing tools in one dashboard and do not expect to move hosts.

Neither? Look at these

• You want to own the site outright: read Squarespace vs WordPress or Wix vs WordPress. Self-hosted WordPress scores 10/10 on exit, but you handle upkeep.
• Selling is the main job: read Wix vs Shopify.
• You are a designer who wants finer control: read Webflow vs Squarespace.

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