Choosing between WordPress, Wix and Squarespace can seem relatively straightforward. They can all create good-looking websites, they all offer templates and editing tools, and they can all be used to build a perfectly respectable business website.

The differences tend to become more apparent later.

Choosing the right platform is an important part of planning a business website, because the decision can affect everything from design flexibility and SEO to hosting, maintenance and how easily the website can grow alongside your business.

There isn’t one platform that’s right for everybody. Wix and Squarespace can be excellent choices in the right circumstances, particularly for people who want to build and manage a relatively straightforward website themselves.

For businesses that need greater control, flexibility and room to develop, however, WordPress offers some significant advantages.

So, rather than simply declaring a winner, let’s look at WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace, where each performs well and where their differences really matter.

WordPress, Wix and Squarespace: what’s the difference?

The biggest difference isn’t really how the three platforms look. It’s how they work.

WordPress is open-source website software. You can install it with a hosting provider of your choice, choose how the website is built and move it elsewhere if circumstances change.

Wix and Squarespace are hosted website-building platforms. The editor, hosting and much of the technical infrastructure are provided as one service.

That all-in-one approach can make getting started easier.

But it also means your website operates within that company’s platform, features and rules.

With WordPress, the software and hosting are separate. That requires a little more consideration at the beginning, but provides considerably more freedom later.

It’s one of the main reasons I continue to recommend WordPress for professional business websites, which I explore in more detail in Why Choose WordPress for a Business Website?.

Wix: simple and convenient

Wix is designed to make building a website accessible to people without much technical knowledge.

Its visual editor allows pages to be assembled relatively quickly, hosting is included and many common website features can be added without having to think too much about what is happening behind the scenes.

For a sole trader, hobby business, event or small organisation wanting to create a simple website themselves, that’s a genuine advantage.

You don’t need to choose hosting, install WordPress or worry about software updates. Sign up, choose a starting point and begin building.

The trade-off is that you’re building within the Wix ecosystem.

As your requirements become more specific, the convenience that made Wix attractive in the first place can also become a limitation. You’re dependent on the features, applications and development options the platform makes available.

For a straightforward website, that may never become a problem.

For a business whose website needs to evolve significantly, it can matter considerably more.

Squarespace: polished and design-led

Squarespace occupies slightly different territory.

Like Wix, it’s a hosted platform that combines website building and hosting, but it has traditionally placed considerable emphasis on visual presentation and professionally designed templates.

For photographers, restaurants, consultants, creatives and smaller businesses needing a polished brochure-style website, Squarespace can be a very sensible choice.

A good template, strong photography and relatively simple content can produce an attractive website surprisingly quickly.

But the same fundamental consideration applies.

You’re working within Squarespace rather than owning an independently hosted website platform.

If the available tools do what you need, that’s perfectly fine.

If your requirements eventually move beyond them, changing direction can involve considerably more work.

WordPress: flexible and expandable

WordPress takes a different approach.

Rather than providing one closed website-building service, it provides the foundation on which a website can be built.

That distinction is important.

A relatively simple WordPress website can begin with a handful of pages and later expand to include landing pages, ecommerce, booking systems, membership areas, directories, integrations or custom functionality without necessarily requiring an entirely new website platform.

It can also be designed around the business rather than around the limitations of a particular template.

That flexibility is one of the reasons I use WordPress for my own website design services. The objective isn’t simply to make a website look different. It’s to create a structure, design and user experience around what the business actually needs the website to do.

For a deeper look at the platform itself, my Complete Guide to WordPress for Business Websites covers how WordPress works, where its strengths lie and what businesses should consider before choosing it.

Which offers the most design freedom?

All three platforms can produce attractive websites.

The difference is how far you can depart from the system you’re given.

Wix provides considerable visual freedom through its editor, while Squarespace provides carefully designed templates and layout tools that make it relatively easy to maintain a polished appearance.

For many DIY websites, that’s more than enough.

WordPress doesn’t impose the same kind of fixed design environment.

A professionally built WordPress website can be designed around the company’s brand, content and customers rather than trying to make those things fit an existing template.

That’s particularly useful when a business already has an established visual identity or when the website needs to accommodate unusual layouts or functionality.

It also provides considerably more scope for the website to change over time.

What about SEO?

WordPress, Wix and Squarespace can all be optimised for search engines.

None of them will automatically make a website rank well.

Good SEO still depends on things such as site structure, useful content, page titles, internal linking, performance, backlinks and whether individual pages genuinely answer what people are searching for.

Wix and Squarespace provide the basic SEO controls most smaller websites require, including editable titles, descriptions, URLs and image information.

WordPress provides those fundamentals too, but offers considerably greater control over the wider website.

That becomes increasingly useful when SEO moves beyond optimising five or six static pages.

A business might eventually want individual service pages, location pages, supporting articles, landing pages and more sophisticated internal linking. As the website develops into a larger source of useful content, WordPress’s flexibility becomes a significant advantage.

This is particularly relevant to local SEO for small businesses, where building useful content around individual services, locations and customer questions can create many more opportunities to appear in relevant searches.

The platform doesn’t do the SEO for you.

But it can either give your SEO strategy room to grow or make that growth more difficult.

Ownership and portability

This is one of the less glamorous differences, but arguably one of the most important.

With Wix and Squarespace, the website exists within their proprietary platforms.

You own your content, but you can’t simply download the entire website and install it with another hosting company while retaining the same system.

If you decide to leave the platform, content can be exported to varying degrees, but the website itself generally needs to be rebuilt elsewhere.

WordPress is different.

Because WordPress is open-source software, a complete WordPress website can be moved from one compatible hosting provider to another.

You’re not permanently tied to the company currently hosting it.

For a hobby website, that distinction might not matter very much.

For a business investing thousands of pounds and potentially many years into its website, content and search visibility, I think it matters rather more.

Hosting, maintenance and security

This is an area where Wix and Squarespace have a genuine advantage for DIY users.

Hosting is built into the service. Platform updates and much of the underlying technical maintenance are handled for you.

With WordPress, hosting is separate and the software, theme and plugins need to be maintained.

That can sound like additional work — because it is.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean the business owner has to do it.

A professionally managed WordPress website can provide much the same hands-off experience while retaining the flexibility and independence of WordPress.

My WordPress website care plans cover hosting, updates, backups and ongoing maintenance so clients don’t have to spend Monday morning wondering whether fourteen plugin updates are about to improve their website or turn it into modern art.

Whichever platform you choose, the important thing is that somebody is taking responsibility for keeping the website secure, current and working properly.

Which is best for ecommerce and additional functionality?

All three platforms can sell products and services online.

For relatively straightforward ecommerce requirements, Wix and Squarespace provide integrated options that can be easier to configure than assembling a more customised system.

WordPress can use WooCommerce and numerous other ecommerce, booking and payment solutions.

The advantage again is flexibility.

If the requirement is simply sell these ten products online, any of the three platforms could potentially be suitable.

If the requirement eventually becomes sell hundreds of products, connect them to another business system, introduce unusual delivery rules, create trade accounts and integrate a booking system, the ability to extend and customise WordPress becomes much more valuable.

The same principle applies beyond ecommerce.

It’s not always what your website needs today that separates the platforms.

It’s what it might need three years from now.

Which costs more?

This is difficult to answer with a simple price comparison because the three platforms are sold differently.

Wix and Squarespace use subscription models, with different features available at different price levels.

WordPress itself is free, but you’ll need hosting and potentially commercial themes, plugins, development or ongoing maintenance.

A DIY WordPress website can therefore be inexpensive.

A professionally designed WordPress website can cost considerably more than signing up for Wix or Squarespace.

But those aren’t really equivalent products.

The meaningful comparison isn’t simply:

Which platform has the cheapest monthly price?

It’s:

What does it cost to create and operate the website the business actually needs?

A £20-per-month platform isn’t particularly good value if you eventually have to replace the entire website because it can no longer do what the business requires.

Equally, spending thousands on a custom WordPress website would be difficult to justify for somebody who simply needs a three-page website for a temporary project.

Context matters.

Which is easiest to manage?

For somebody building their first website without professional help, Wix is probably the easiest of the three to get started with.

Squarespace isn’t far behind, particularly if the website fits comfortably within one of its established layouts.

WordPress has a slightly steeper learning curve because there are more choices.

But there’s another distinction worth making here.

Easy to build and easy to manage aren’t necessarily the same thing.

A professionally designed WordPress website can have a very straightforward editing experience. Clients don’t necessarily need access to every setting, plugin or technical control simply because WordPress makes those things possible.

A good WordPress build should make everyday jobs such as changing text, adding images or publishing articles simple while leaving the complicated machinery safely behind the curtain.

Which is best for a small business?

If you’re building the website yourself, have relatively straightforward requirements and want everything bundled together, Wix or Squarespace can both make sense.

I’d particularly consider them where:

• the budget is very limited
• the website is small
• the functionality is straightforward
• you’re happy to build and manage it yourself
• you’re unlikely to need significant customisation later

WordPress becomes more compelling when the website is expected to play a larger role in the business.

If you’re investing in professional design, building a substantial SEO presence, creating lots of content or expecting the website’s functionality to develop, choosing a platform with fewer long-term restrictions becomes increasingly important.

Which is best for a growing business?

This is where I’d generally favour WordPress.

A growing business rarely knows exactly what its website will need several years from now.

New services appear. Marketing strategies change. Search content expands. Online booking becomes useful. Someone decides the website needs to communicate with the CRM. Then somebody else arrives on Tuesday morning with an even better idea.

A platform that allows those requirements to be accommodated without repeatedly starting again has obvious advantages.

Professional WordPress website design and development provides a foundation that can begin relatively simply while leaving considerably more room for the website to evolve.

That doesn’t make WordPress automatically right for every business.

It makes it particularly strong when flexibility and longevity matter.

WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: the verdict

There isn’t a bad platform among the three.

Wix is a strong choice for people who value convenience and want to build a relatively straightforward website themselves.

Squarespace is particularly good at helping people create polished, visually led websites without starting completely from scratch.

WordPress requires a little more thought, particularly around hosting, maintenance and how the website is built.

In return, it provides considerably greater control over design, functionality, hosting and the future direction of the website.

For a small DIY website, those advantages may be unnecessary.

For a professionally designed business website expected to generate enquiries, build search visibility and grow alongside the company, they’re much harder to ignore.

Wix and Squarespace make it easier to build a website. WordPress makes it easier to build the website your business actually needs — particularly when those needs become more demanding over time.

And for a business website that you may still be relying on five or ten years from now, I’d rather begin with room to grow than discover later that the walls can’t be moved.