Wix vs Squarespace: Battle of the Web Shops

Wix vs Squarespace: which online shopping platform is better? According to our in-depth research and user testing, Wix beats Squarespace in almost every way imaginable. Though priced similarly, Wix has a broader range of features at a lower price point, so it’s better value for money overall.

Both Wix and Squarespace are ecommerce platforms with website builders that allow you to sell physical goods, digital products, and services. However, we’ve found Squarespace is best suited to digital product sales over Wix.

In this comparison guide, we’ll weigh up Squarespace vs Wix and see who comes out on top across various categories. We’ll also break down our research across website features, sales features, value for money and customer support.

Wix vs Squarespace: A quick comparison

Wix vs Squarespace: Head to head

Wix comes out ahead of Squarespace in almost every way, though it’s worth looking into detail as to where and why. Wix has superior sales features, including more payment options than Squarespace – 11 in Australia when we last counted, compared to Squarespace’s four. Though you should be aware Wix doesn’t allow you to accept Apple Pay, whereas you can with Squarespace (for physical products).

When it comes to website features, Wix comes out on top again. Why? Wix has reporting tools, plus the ability to integrate a chat bot, and collect online customer reviews. All of which Squarespace lacks, sadly.

Both platforms are equally good value for money, given they both offer a free trial but no free ecommerce plan. In terms of customer support, Wix wins once more. While both platforms have restore options, only Wix has a built-in autosave feature. Given how easy it is to accidentally close tabs, we know the relief that comes with autosave as you’re building your web shop. Just think how much time and energy you’d save knowing your progress is backed up – even if you lose power, get distracted, or have to restart your computer.

Alright, let’s look at a quick summary of these features head-to-head, including their research scores. Remember, all scores are calculated from a number of sub-category questions to produce an overall score out of five.

Now, isn’t it clear as day which ecommerce platform is the top dog? It’s Wix, of course!

But how about the costs? Let’s take a look at the Wix vs Squarespace pricing plans.

Wix vs Squarespace: Pricing

Money-conscious business leaders needn’t worry about which platform is cheaper because both platforms scored the same in terms of value for money. Rather than making a purely money-motivated decision, this means you’ll benefit more by taking a closer look at the features, and which one is better suited option for for your business.

That said, you’re still going to be curious about costs, so let’s take a look at price plans:

We can see that pricing is similar for both Wix and Squarespace, although the latter comes out a few dollars cheaper each month. However, Wix’s $44-a-month Business Unlimited plan has abandoned cart recovery and the ability to sell subscriptions. You will only have access to these features on Squarespace when you upgrade to the $57.20 per month plan. It’s clear, therefore, Wix’s mid-tier price plan is better value for money than Squarespace’s.

It’s also worth noting that our research found Wix is especially good value for larger enterprises because it’s priced much lower than the market leaders Shopify and BigCommerce.

Wix web shops: Who, what, why?

Wix quick summary

What: Drag-and-drop website builder, plus reliable ecommerce platform
Who: Any small business leader looking to sell products or services online
Why: Great all-rounder for a reasonable price

Wix has the best website and sales features when compared with Squarespace. We’ll look at sales features first as this will be your greatest priority when setting up a web shop. First of all, multichannel integration is much better with Wix. What does this mean? While Squarespace recently introduced ‘Amazon blocks’ as a way to display and link to products on Amazon, Wix has had Amazon integration for years.

As long as you’re subscribed to Wix Business Unlimited, or above, you can sell on online marketplaces, including eBay and Google Shopping, which you can’t when using Squarespace.

Wix also has greater on-the-go creative capabilities: you can create a website from your smartphone, which you can’t do with Squarespace. Even better, Wix allows you to save changes to your mobile site without editing the desktop version. With Squarespace, you can’t.

Wix and Squarespace both have great SEO tools, which means you’ll be able to get your products found by shoppers using search engines. The same goes for blogging: both Wix and Squarespace will get you set up with a fully functioning blog section of your online store. That’s a boon for business leaders wishing to get seen online, as clever, creative content is a great way to attract highly interested buyers to your site.

We particularly like the inventory tracking options you get with Wix, allowing you to connect your online stocks with your real-world product availability. Wix stores come with product filtering, too; Customers can browse items by category, price, colour and weight. At the time of our testing, product filtering was not available with Squarespace.

Squarespace shops: Who, what, why?

Squarespace quick summary

What: Template-based website builder with a solid ecommerce platform
Who: Visual creatives, artists, life coaches, educational platforms, media websites
Why: Unlimited media storage space

Squarespace has a bunch of great features that make it a solid ecommerce platform: unlimited users, mobile-optimised websites, and 24-7 customer support. It’s reliable, reasonably priced, and works well – but it’s far from unique.

Its ecommerce templates are limited when compared with Wix, leaving you feeling restricted by the type of aesthetic you can create for your web shop. Its selling features are limited when compared with Wix, with drawbacks such as not being able to input separate shipping and billing addresses. You won’t be able to customise invoices to the branding of your business. Yet both of these features are available on Wix.

While Squarespace’s customer support is decent, it’s not perfect, and 3.9/5 is a lower score than Wix’s 4.3/5. Squarespace is also strangely defensive about not offering phone support which you can easily get with Wix.

One critical advantage of Squarespace over Wix, however, is you’ll enjoy unlimited storage space on your website. That means you can upload videos, images, pictures and audio to your heart’s content without worrying about running out of space. For that reason we’d recommend choosing Squarespace if you need to include lots of multimedia files on your web shop, for instance videographers, media-hosting platforms and online tutorial sites.

Thanks to its abundant storage space and focus on visual marketing, we recommend Squarespace for media creatives, designers and other visual creators. You’ll be able to run email marketing campaigns and integrate with social media platforms for greater publicity.

How We Compared Wix and Squarespace