Wix vs Squarespace: Which Is Best for Creators & Influencers?

Feature	Wix	Squarespace
Ease of Use	Flexible but can be overwhelming for beginners	Clean, guided editing ideal for non-designers
Creative Control	Full drag-and-drop freedom (no grid limits)	Grid-based layout with design guardrails
Templates	800+ templates across niches	200+ curated, modern templates
Mobile Responsiveness	Manual tweaks often required	Automatic mobile optimization
E-commerce Features	Advanced, scalable with no platform fees	Beginner-friendly, but adds 2–7% fees unless you upgrade
Digital Product Support	Yes, with app integrations	Yes, but transaction fees apply on lower plans
App Marketplace	300+ apps and tools for added features	Limited third-party support, mostly built-in
SEO Tools	Includes SEO Wiz for beginners	Strong built-in tools, streamlined setup
Blogging	Flexible layouts, feature-rich	Clean interface, better for pure content creation
Security & Hosting	Fully managed, no maintenance needed	Fully managed, no maintenance needed
Support	Live chat, email, and phone (on higher plans)	Live chat and email, no phone support
Starting Price	$17/month	$16/month
Best Plan for Creators	Core Plan – $29/month (No transaction fees)	Business Plan – $23/month (+2% transaction fees)
Free Trial	Yes – No credit card required	Yes – No credit card required
Overall Winner for Creators	More freedom, better scalability	More simplicity, better design polish

TL;DR:

Wix gives you more freedom and scalability, while Squarespace makes building and selling simpler with guided design and built-in tools.

• Wix: Maximum creative control, 800+ templates, advanced e-commerce with no platform fees, best for scaling a growing brand
• Squarespace: Cleaner editing, curated modern templates, simpler setup, best for creators who want polished design with minimal effort

Comparing Two of The Best Beginner Website Builders…

If you’re building a personal brand, launching a creator business, or just need a reliable home for your content, choosing the right website builder matters.

You’re literally spoilt for choice these days as well with options, both paid and free, like:

• Substack (newsletter-driven content platform)
• Medium (digital publishing platform; great for written content and thought leadership)
• Beehiiv (growth-focused newsletter)
• WordPress (.com)

But if you want a dedicated website for yourself or your brand, and you want something quick and simple, Wix and Squarespace are two of the most popular options for creators, side-hustlers, and influencers.

And on the surface, they look nearly identical.

Both offer drag-and-drop editing, e-commerce tools, built-in hosting, and clean templates.

But beneath that polished surface, these platforms work very differently, and the wrong choice could cost you time, money, and growth potential.

In this post, we break down how Squarespace and Wix compare specifically for creators and influencers.

Here’s what you need to know before choosing…

Features, Pros & Cons, Fees, and Running Costs

User Experience: Freedom vs Structure

Wix is one of the easiest website builders to use which is great if you have limited experience with website builders.

Its drag-and-drop editor is intuitive, giving you full control over where text, images, and other elements appear on your page.

You have control over EVERYTHING too, unlike with Squarespace, and this can be both a blessing and a curse because you can end up in choice overload mode.

Or, as many beginners often do, you try and do too much, add in too many features, and the template design becomes too busy.

The mechanics of how it all works is very, very straight-forward, though, with basically zero learning curves (compared to WordPress or Shopify which have significant ones).

Wix includes an AI-powered tool called Wix ADI which is there to help you quickly spin-up designs, templates, pages, and just about anything else inside the site builder.

By asking a few questions about your business or brand, it can generate a starter site in minutes.

It works, results are usually pretty darn good, and even if you’re not 100% happy with them it gives you a nice jumping-off point to start from.

Squarespace takes a more structured approach to design than Wix.

It’s more rigid and less customization options but I’d argue, for those looking for simplicity, this is actually a significant benefit of the platform.

It uses a grid system and smart design constraints that guide you toward layouts that look clean and professional.

Translation: there’s less room for error, so regardless of your level of design experience, the end result will look professional.

Personally, I prefer using Squarespace to quickly spin-up sites, either for my own projects or client-work, when a simple build is all that is required.

If all you want to do is sell digital products, start a membership site or create a place to house a portfolio of work, Squarespace keeps things nice and simple.

And with web-based stuff, simple is always best because it means you can move faster.

Templates: Quantity vs Curation

Wix offers over 800 templates across every possible industry. Whatever niche you’re in, there’s a template for it.

My only issue with Wix in this department is that, firstly, quite a lot of its templates are well… a little naff-looking, and, second, there’s just too many options.

If you suffer from choice overload anxiety, this will trigger it. But I’m not going to stand here and say more choice is a bad thing because it ain’t.

It’s just Wix, in this context, is definitely leaning more in the direction of quantity over quality.

Squarespace has around 200+ templates, so a lot less. Most follow a similar design language too: minimal, polished, and professional-looking.

So, while there is less to choose from with Squarespace, its approach of quality over quantity works in its favor.

I much prefer the look of its templates; they’re clean, lightweight, and barely need touching in most instances.

Editor: Creative Control vs Safe Simplicity

Wix is ALL About The Customization…

Wix’s editor gives you almost complete freedom to design your site exactly how you want it.

Unlike some builders that lock content into fixed sections or grids, Wix lets you place elements anywhere on the page.

You can move text, images, and buttons freely, even outside of standard layout areas.

You can also layer items on top of each other to create unique designs and control how your site looks on desktop and mobile separately.

This level of creative freedom is powerful because it means your site doesn’t have to follow a template too closely; you can design something that feels custom and one-of-a-kind.

However, for beginners, this freedom can also be a little tricky.

Without design experience, it’s easy to end up with pages that look unbalanced or layouts that work on a desktop screen but break or look messy on a mobile phone.

If you’re new to building websites, Wix’s flexibility can be both a blessing and a challenge.

It gives you room to experiment, but you’ll need to double-check your design on different devices to make sure everything looks polished and professional.

Whereas Squarespace Keeps Things More Focused & Simple…

Squarespace uses a structured editor called Fluid Engine, which is based on grids.

Instead of placing elements anywhere on the page, you add content—like text, images, or buttons—into defined sections.

You can still move and resize items within those sections, but the platform sets clear boundaries to guide your design.

This structure is very helpful for beginners.

It prevents common mistakes like overlapping content, uneven spacing, or layouts that look fine on a laptop but break on a phone.

Because the grid keeps everything aligned, your site automatically adjusts to different screen sizes, which is essential since most visitors will be viewing your site on mobile.

While Squarespace doesn’t offer the same total freedom as Wix, the trade-off is consistency.

You can focus on your content and style choices without worrying about technical details like alignment or mobile responsiveness.

For many creators starting out, this balance of flexibility and structure makes it easier to build a professional-looking site quickly.

SEO: Both Are Fine, Wix Gives You More Granular Control

SEO has changed massively in the past several years. Google and other search engines, as well as AI search, are more sophisticated than ever at surfacing new content.

But the basics remain the same. You need coherent H1 tags, meta titles, descriptions, URLs, alt text, and sitemaps.

Both Wix and Squarespace have this covered, so I wouldn’t necessarily say one is better than the other. Google reads code, not the words on your pages.

But Wix, again, definitely comes with more “options” when it comes to SEO settings.

Case in point, all plans include a tool called SEO Wiz that guides you step-by-step through optimizing your site correctly.

Squarespace takes a more minimal approach.

The tools are there, covering the basics, but the platform doesn’t walk you through the process like Wix does.

This isn’t a problem because all of the core SEO attributes that matter (H1, title tags, schema, and whatnot) are hard-coded into the platform, so you don’t need to worry about them.

But if you want to control things like meta tags, URL structure, and structured data markup, you’ll need to go with Wix.

E-commerce: Simplicity vs Scalability

Squarespace Fees & Transaction Costs

Both platforms support selling products, services, digital downloads, and subscriptions.

But the way they handle e-commerce is very different.

Squarespace is best for simple e-commerce projects; think selling digital downloads, prints, code snippets, or e-books.

If that’s all you need to do, Squarespace is brilliant. Set-up is simple and it ships with all the e-commerce functionality you need to scale from $10 a month to $200,000 a month.

Product pages, inventory, shipping, and checkout are built into the platform. It’s insanely easy to set up and it looks polished by default.

Squarespace charges transaction fees on lower-tier plans: 2% to 7% depending on what you’re selling.

Want to avoid transaction fees on Squarespace? You’ll need to upgrade to the higher-priced Commerce plan.

Wix Fees & Transaction Costs

Wix doesn’t take transaction fees on its e-commerce plans.

When you sell something, you keep the money, apart from the standard processing fees charged by Stripe, PayPal, or whichever payment provider you use.

That setup makes Wix cost-effective if you plan to grow your store.

As sales increase, you won’t lose extra revenue to platform fees, which is something that catches people out on Squarespace.

You can also expand your store through Wix’s app marketplace.

There are apps for print-on-demand products, wholesale pricing, subscriptions, and loyalty programs.

These tools turn Wix into more than just a simple shop—they give you the flexibility to build something closer to a Shopify-style business without switching platforms.

If you start small but expect to scale, Wix has the structure to support you from day one.

Blogging: Clean Editor vs Custom Layouts

Squarespace: Clean, Less Distractions

If you’re a creator who wants to blog regularly, both Wix and Squarespace can handle it.

Squarespace makes the writing process especially smooth.

Its editor is clean and distraction-free, so you can focus on your words instead of hunting through menus.

You can also organize posts with tags and categories, which makes it easier for your audience to find related content.

The whole setup feels like it was built with writers in mind, which is why many people (myself included) find it more enjoyable to use than Wix’s busier interface.

Wix: Busier, More Features

Wix has come a long way with its blogging tools; the content editor used to be clunky as hell. Nowadays, it’s much improved.

I still prefer writing content inside Squarespace’s editor. It’s cleaner-looking, the design is less busy, and there are fewer distractions.

For focused writing sessions, Squarespace is the winner here. But for overall features and options, Wix takes the biscuit.

You can customize the look of your blog feed, as well as your individual posts, to match your brand and even drop in third-party widgets or tools to extend what the editor can do.

If you want to create more dynamic and interesting blog posts, using things like widgets and other types of elements, Wix gives you the tools to do this.

For content-first sites, all these bells and whistles might not be necessary. It all depends on the type of content you want to do and the direction you plan on taking your project.

Apps and Integrations: Built-In vs Expandable

Wix has an app marketplace with over 300 third-party and Wix-built tools.

You can add features like live chat, booking tools, custom forms, and more with just a few clicks.

In this respect, Wix is more like Shopify and WordPress: it comes with loads of features and capabilities built in, but you have the option to expand its functionality massively with third-party tools.

Squarespace takes the opposite approach to Wix. It doesn’t have a third-party app store or marketplace.

That makes the platform less customizable in terms of features, but it also keeps things simple.

You won’t find yourself juggling dozens of plugins or paying extra monthly fees for add-ons.

Most of the tools you’ll need are already built in. If you want more advanced integrations, you can connect Squarespace to services like Zapier or Make.

And if you’re comfortable experimenting, you can add custom code to extend your site further.

With AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude, writing small snippets of code is easier than it sounds, even if you’re not technical.

Security and Maintenance: No Headaches Either Way

Both Wix and Squarespace include built-in hosting, security updates, and backups.

You don’t need to manage plug-ins or worry about patches like you would on WordPress.

Verdict:

• It’s a tie. Both platforms offer excellent security and low-maintenance websites.

Customer Support: Self-Help vs Full Coverage

Wix offers live chat, email, and phone support (on higher-tier plans).

Its help center includes video tutorials, walkthroughs, and guides for nearly everything.

Squarespace offers live chat and email only but its documentation is excellent, detailed, and well organized.

Verdict:

• Wix is better if you want more hands-on support.
• Squarespace is excellent if you prefer to solve issues on your own.

Pricing Breakdown: Which Offers Better Value?

Plan Name	(USD/month)	(USD/month)
Free	$0	N/A
Basic / Light	$17 (Light)	$16 (Basic / Personal)
Core / Business	$29 (Core)	$23 (Core / Business)
Plus / Advanced Ecommerce	$36 (Business)	$39 (Plus / Commerce Basic)
Highest Tier	$159 (Business Elite)	$99 (Advanced / Commerce Advanced)

Both platforms start around $16–$17/month for a basic site and include a free domain for the first year when paid annually.

But once you start selling, the differences matter.

• Wix Core Plan: $29/month with no transaction fees
• Squarespace Business Plan: $23/month with 2% transaction fee
• Squarespace Commerce Plans: $49–$99/month to remove fees and unlock more tools

If you’re selling digital products, those extra fees from Squarespace can add up.

Over time, they can quietly eat into your revenue if you stay on a lower-tier plan.

Final Verdict: Which Platform Should Creators Use?

Both platforms are capable, modern, and beginner-friendly but there are differences that you need to take into account before you commit to one.

In this respect, they’re similar to how iOS and Android differ; one is less flexible but is more aesthetically pleasing and easy to use (Squarespace), while the other is more flexible but also slightly more complicated to use (Wix).

If you just need a fast, beautiful website with all the payment and community features you could possibly need, and you want to avoid complexity, Squarespace is the one to go for.

But if you think you’ll need:

• More flexibility with design and customization options
• More advanced e-commerce features (physical products) and more options with payment settings.
• Lower transaction fees.

Then Wix is the better long-term choice for most creators who plan on growing and developing their site into a much bigger, more complex web entity.