But what are the differences between them, and which is the best choice for your business?

In this article, I’m going to outline each platform’s main features, and take a detailed look at the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Before you read, you may want to ask yourself these four questions. The answers will ultimately help you choose which platform is best for your business!

• What is your budget for a website?
• How flexible and customizable do you need your site to be?
• Do you have any web coding skills, or are you willing to work with someone who does?
• Do you want full ownership and licensing rights to your website?

With those questions in mind, let’s get started with a comparison. First, I’m going to point out the major differences and similarities between all three of them. Then we’ll move onto an in-depth look at each platform individually.

Key Differences

• Wix and Squarespace are comprehensive website building tools. All you have to do is sign up for an account, choose a theme, and use their drag-and-drop editors to customize your site. They are paid services that cost an all-in-one monthly fee for your site, domain name, and web hosting. You won’t need any web coding skills for either platform, but customization is somewhat limited on both.
• WordPress is a free, open-source web building software. Instead of an all-in-one package, you’ll need to purchase a domain and hosting service separately before installing the WordPress software. Some web coding skills are helpful, but you’ll have essentially limitless site flexibility and customization options.

Key Similarities

• They all provide fully functional, aesthetic, and powerful websites
• Can be integrated with e-commerce
• Are all mobilized or responsive for mobile viewers
• They all offer a help community and/or support teams
• Have industry-specific features available
• Give you access to analytics and rich SEO
• They can all be integrated with social media and blogs

In short, while each of these platforms has unique features and offers it’s own set of pros and cons, each of them is fully able to run a powerful, effective website. Any one of these three will allow you to launch a clean, modern, and powerful website without the headache and complications of coding a site from scratch. Let’s take a closer look at the details!

Squarespace

Basic Features:

• Fully functional website building tool with free hosting and Squarespace subdomain
• No coding required with it’s visual drag and drop website designer
• E-commerce integration
• Responsive sites for mobile viewing
• 40+ clean, simple and modern themes and cover pages available
• Theme can be changed at any time without loss of content
• Multiple themes can be used for different pages of your site
• Provides a complete set of marketing tools
• Reliable 24/7 support handled by in-house team

Setup

Building a clean, aesthetic website couldn’t be easier! Squarespace guides you seamlessly through the design process by asking a series of questions and offering theme suggestions and layout tips that will help you develop an industry-specific design with fully optimized features. Creating, editing, and publishing content as you go is incredibly simple and intuitive through their well-organized dashboard.

Squarespace offers an incorporated e-commerce store, blog templates, social media integration and custom industry-specific features. You can also switch your theme at any time if you find it isn’t working for you or having the visual effect your looking for.

Flexibility

Because every Squarespace website is maintained, hosted, and overseen by the Squarespace team, there is limited flexibility with these websites. They are not an open-source platform and can’t be modified or added to by any third party coding. That said — these themes are modern, clean, aesthetic, and cohesively put together. They offer an excellent user experience to your audience, and have powerful, industry-specific features available. With your unique branding, content, and imagery in place, your site will have a unique look and be able to handle almost anything. So while customization is limited, these sites are so well designed that you may not miss it.

As an added bonus, Squarespace sites are based with CSS coding, and can be partially exported to WordPress coding if you ever decide to move on to a fully customizable platform.

User Support

Squarespace offers 24/7 user support through chat and email. Every issue that comes up is handled directly by their in-house team, so you can be sure of finding the right solution to any problem you may have.

Cost

Squarespace sites have a monthly price range of $12-$40. With their most basic website package at $12/month, you’ll get pages, galleries, and blogs with unlimited bandwidth and storage. You’ll receive 24/7 customer support, fully integrated e- commerce, and a custom domain.

Their advanced plan, costing $40/month, is perfect for online stores. It offers a mobile-optimized website and checkout system, integrated accounting, no transaction fees, and powerful commerce metrics.

With any of their plans, you’ll receive free hosting and a free subdomain. You can choose to register a custom domain, which is free your first year and then costs $20-$70 annually. You can also upgrade plans at any time as your business grows and changes!

A final note on cost — this subscription-based platform allows you to rent rather than own your design, site, and space. Squarespace maintains ownership, and can remove your site at any time for inappropriate content.

Conclusion

Squarespace is a great option if you’re looking for a well designed, powerfully built site without the head-ache of web coding or site hosting. Squarespace does everything for you. They handle website back-ups, speed, security and problem solving. If you have the budget to spend and don’t mind somewhat limited flexibility, Squarespace is the perfect solution for a simple set-up process and a clean, modern website.

Wix

Basic Features:

• Fully functional website building tool with free hosting and Wix subdomain
• No coding required or complicated plugins to install
• Drag and drop website designer
• E-commerce integrated
• Mobile-ready sites with advanced mobile editor
• 500 site themes and 250 apps available
• In-house phone support and Wix help center

Setup

Wix has an extremely intuitive and user-friendly design process. Much like Squarespace, they guide you through the design process by asking questions about your industry, business goals, and content type. They’ll only show you the themes that have the best features for showing off your specific work and services.

Whether you’re a photographer, a beauty coach, a blogger, a restaurant or an e-commerce store — Wix has over 500 themes and will help you find the one that’s best for you.

Your theme serves as the backbone of your site, and has a definite impact on the tone and layout. If you choose to use Wix, be sure to select your theme carefully! Once you’ve picked a theme, Wix doesn’t allow you to change it easily.

Wix has a variety of functional apps to choose from. You can show off your work with a gallery or portfolio, upload a video as a website background, pin an element to the screen so it’s always visible, add a blog, optimize SEO, and check your analytics. While Wix sites are not responsive, they are mobile friendly. Just use the mobile editor to pick and choose what mobile visitors will see on your site!

With your theme and apps selected, it’s as easy as drag-and-drop to customize your website. Now you can rearrange website elements, install apps, upload media, add your content, and publish your site!

All in all, Wix makes the set-up process a breeze with no coding or design experience necessary.

Flexibility

Wix makes setting up easy and changing your mind hard. In other words—this is definitely not the most flexible web-building platform out there. Once you’ve chosen your theme, you can’t easily change it, and that theme can only be used the way the theme developer intended for it to be used. While they have a massive amount of themes available, there isn’t much customization that can be done within your chosen theme. So if you’re looking for a 100% unique, fully customizable site, Wix may not be for you.

User Support

Wix offers plenty of support through forums, tutorials, and support centers. You can reach their team directly by phone or email, and even set up a phone appointment. They’ll also send you emails after you initially register to help guide you through the design process and offer training tips and additional information.

Cost

Wix offers several packages beginning with their free hosting plan and going up to their $25/ month VIP plan.

With their free plan, you’ll get access to all of the themes, apps, and features available on Wix. You’ll also get 500 MB of storage, 500 MB bandwidth monthly, and access to the Wix help center. Aside from the storage and bandwidth limitations, the major downside of using this package is that you’ll also see the Wix branding prominently displayed on your site, and a web address that reads “your-username.wix.com/sitename/page-url”. While these can considerably damage your brand image long term, this free package with it’s easy building process is enough to get you started if you have absolutely no budget.

Wix’s most popular plan is only $14 a month, and offers unlimited bandwidth, 10 GB storage, a custom domain, and the removal of Wix ads on your site. If your budget allows, the perks to using this subscription package definitely outweigh the relatively minimal cost.

Like Squarespace, Wix maintains full ownership of your site and can remove it at any time if they view your content as inappropriate.

Conclusion

Wix is easy to set up and maintain, has good customer support, and is very budget friendly. It’s a great option if you don’t mind limited flexibility and want a modern, professional site at a low cost!

WordPress

Basic Features:

• Website building software, with domain name and hosting purchased separately
• Highly flexible and fully customizable platform
• Some web coding required for customization and installation
• E-Commerce integrated themes available
• Mobile-ready and responsive themes available
• Free, open source with hundreds of themes and plug-in designs added daily
• WordPress help community, online tutorials, and third-party support agencies
• Users have full ownership of domain and hosting, plus licensing rights to every theme and plug-in purchased

Setup

WordPress is by far the most complicated option on the list. Instead of an all-in-one  website building platform, WordPress is a software based program that can only be installed after you’ve already purchased a domain name and web hosting service. Because of it’s more complex installation and design process, having some coding skills are definitely helpful for using WordPress.

Let’s break down the set-up process into five major steps:

Step 1: Purchase a domain and set up a hosting service.

You’ll have to go to a third party site to purchase your domain and hosting. Only once you have these two features in place can you install the WordPress software and make your site live!

Step 2: Install the WordPress software.

Depending on your hosting company, you may have access to 1-click instal for the WordPress Software. GoDaddy and Dreamhost are two that offer this service.

Step 3: Select a theme.

Because WordPress is an open-source platform, there are literally thousands of themes and plug-ins to choose from. Many of these are free, or you can choose to pay for a premium feature-rich theme.

Step 4: Customize your theme.

Customizing your theme can be complicated at times and it definitely helps to have some web coding knowledge for this step. There is a huge variety of highly functional themes available on WP, and many of them are laid out very well and only require minimal customization.

Step 5: Go live and publish content!

Once the site is set up and live online, managing content is incredibly easy through a well organized dashboard. With it’s visual editor and accessible SEO tools, WordPress’s platform makes it simple to create, publish, and refine your content!

Flexibility

WordPress is undoubtedly one of the most flexible web-builders out there. You’ll find plug-ins for virtually everything. And depending on the theme you choose, you can usually adjust colors and font style, as well as change around the general layout to create an entirely one-of-a-kind site.

User Support

There is no in-house support team available to WordPress users. Instead, you’ll have access to the WordPress help community and a variety of articles and video tutorials. These are great resources that can help you solve a lot of problems, but they may not always be able to answer your specific question. If you run into a major issue with your site, you can get in touch with a third-party WP support agency.

Cost

WordPress sites can vary a lot in price. Initially, you have to purchase your domain and hosting. A domain is typically around $10-$15 yearly, while hosting is generally $5+ monthly.

Aside from those minimal costs, WordPress is, in itself, is a free platform. If you choose to use one of the thousands of free themes and plug-ins, you can potentially pay no more than $70 yearly for a flexible, powerful site.

If you have the budget, you may want to consider a premium WordPress theme. These themes typically start at a one time fee of $40, and often have cleaner designs, higher quality features, and a smoother installation and setup process. Premium plug-ins are also available for a fee, although most plug-ins have a free version available as well. If you choose to use a premium source, you could expect your site to cost around $100+ to build and $70+ yearly to maintain.

Whether you choose a free or premium theme, WordPress offers a relatively low-cost option.

Finally, WordPress allows you to maintain full ownership of your domain name and web hosting, and gives you licensed rights to every plug-in or theme you purchase.

Conclusion

Use WordPress if you’re comfortable with some basic coding and feel confident enough in your web skills to not rely on 24/7 in-house support. With this platform, you’ll have full ownership of your domain and hosting, licensed rights to every theme and plug-in you purchase, and a flexible, fully customizable web site. It’s an excellent choice if you want full control over what you do with your site and essentially limitless features, designs, and tools to incorporate.