Wix, Squarespace or Shopify for a small business?

Most owners come to us having already looked at a site builder, and some of them should use one. This is the comparison we give in person, written down. It covers what each platform is built for, how the pricing works, where the costs hide, and the honest cases where a builder is the right call and where it is not.

Prices and fees change often, so we have linked to each company’s own pricing page rather than copying numbers in. Check the page on the day you decide.

What each one is for

Wix is a general-purpose builder with the most freedom over layout. You drag things around a page and they stay where you put them. That freedom is its strength and its trap: it is easy to make something that looks fine on your laptop and odd on a phone. Selling online is available on the higher plans. Its pricing page lists which plans can take payments and which cannot.

Squarespace is a design-led builder with strong templates and tighter guard rails. It is harder to make a mess, and easier to get something that looks considered without a designer. It can sell products, and it is well suited to service businesses, portfolios, restaurants and small shops. Its pricing page shows which plans charge a transaction fee on product sales and which do not.

Shopify is a shop first and a website second. If your business is selling physical products, with stock, delivery, discounts and returns, it is the most capable of the three by a distance. If you do not sell products, most of what you are paying for goes unused. Its UK pricing page lists the plans, the card rates, and the extra fee that applies when you take payments through a provider other than its own.

How the pricing really works

The headline subscription is the easy part. Four other things decide what you actually pay.

Monthly or yearly billing. All three show a lower figure when you pay for a year up front. The monthly figure is higher. Make sure you are comparing like with like, and note which one the page is showing you by default. A yearly plan is only cheaper if the site is still there at the end of the year.

Card fees. Every card payment costs a small percentage plus a few pence, whichever platform you use. On Shopify the rate improves as you move up the plans, and there is an additional fee if you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, which is explained on the pricing page. On Squarespace the cheapest plan adds a transaction fee on physical products that the higher plans drop. On Wix the fee depends on which payment provider you choose. None of these are large on one order; they add up on a year of orders, so work it out on your expected sales rather than ignoring it.

The free tier. Wix has a free plan. It shows Wix branding and lives on a Wix web address rather than your own domain, which is fine for trying it out and not fine for a business card. Squarespace and Shopify offer trials rather than a free plan.

Apps and plug-ins. The platform does the basics. Bookings, reviews, loyalty, advanced shipping rules, and many things you would assume are included come from an app marketplace, and most of the useful apps are a subscription each. A Shopify store with five apps can cost more in apps than in the plan. Decide what you need before you add things.

VAT. Pricing pages do not always say whether the figure includes VAT. If you are not VAT registered, assume it is on top, and check the first invoice rather than the page.

Where a builder is the right answer

We would rather tell you this than sell you something you do not need.

• You are testing an idea. A new business with no customers yet does not need a bespoke site. Put something up, see whether anyone wants what you sell, then invest.
• You enjoy this sort of thing. Some owners like tinkering with their site in the evening. If that is you, a builder gives you control and a low monthly cost.
• You sell products and have the time to run a Shopify store yourself. Shopify’s admin is good. If you are happy learning it, you can run a shop without anyone’s help.
• Your budget is the subscription and nothing more. A builder is a real website for a small monthly fee. That beats no website.

Where a builder is the wrong answer

• You have no time. Building a site properly takes evenings for weeks, and then the writing, the photos and the maintenance are yours forever. If you are already working six days, the site will be the thing that slips.
• You need to be found locally. Builders can rank in search, but the work of writing pages that match what people search, keeping the site fast on a phone, and linking it properly to your Google Business Profile is still work, and templates do not do it for you.
• Your business does not fit a template. A clinic with practitioners, treatments and prices that depend on both. A trade with twelve services across twenty towns. The template fights you, and you end up with a site that describes a generic business.
• You have been here before. Many of the people we talk to have a half-finished site on a builder, a subscription they are still paying, and no site they are proud of. The problem was never the tool. It was that building a good site is a job, and they already have one.

The question nobody asks: who looks after it?

A site builder is a platform you rent. If it goes down, you wait. If something breaks after an update, you search a help centre. If you want a change you cannot make yourself, you find a freelancer who knows that platform. Nothing is wrong with any of that, but it is worth noticing that the “who do I call” question has no answer. We wrote about what looking after a site actually involves in hosting and care, explained, and it applies whichever route you take.

Our honest position

We build shops on Shopify ourselves, because for selling products it is the best tool there is, and we would not try to beat it with something home-made. We do not build on Wix or Squarespace, because the sites we build are written and designed around one business, and a template gets in the way of that.

If you want a site that someone else designs, writes, builds and then looks after, with one phone number, that is what we do, and the quote is fixed in writing. If you want to build it yourself, pick Squarespace for a service business or a small shop, Shopify for a product business, and Wix if layout freedom matters more to you than anything else. Then put a reminder in your diary to check who owns the domain, because that is the part people get wrong on every platform.

For what a built site actually costs and what the quotes leave out, read how much a website costs in the UK.