Wix vs Squarespace: Which Should You Use?

Choose Squarespace if you want a smaller set of polished template families and are comfortable working inside one template's design system. Choose Wix if you want a larger template gallery to start from, or Wix Studio if you specifically need finer layout control than either platform's basic editor gives you. Both are hosted, all-in-one builders: neither exports your design as code, and moving between them means rebuilding your site, not migrating it. This guide compares what actually differs — templates, ecommerce, blogging, domains and email, and SEO — using each vendor's own documentation, checked September 2026. For which one gives you more useful AI editing, see our dedicated comparison; this guide covers everything else.

How do templates actually work on each platform?

Squarespace organizes sites into template families, and the rules differ by version. On version 7.1, "all version 7.1 sites are part of the same template family, so every site has the same features and style options" — one flexible system, not separate templates with different capabilities (Squarespace). On version 7.0, each template family has its own style options and features, and you can switch a live site to a different 7.0 template, but Squarespace warns that "you can't mix and match features from different templates," since each has its own code (Squarespace). Day-to-day design changes go through the Site styles panel, which controls fonts, colors and spacing — and those "tweaks vary between templates" (same 7.0 article).

Wix takes the opposite approach to switching: once you commit, you commit for that site. Wix's help center states plainly, "once you select a template and start editing it, you cannot change it" — your only route to a different template is starting a new site and, if you want, moving your Premium plan and domain to it (Wix). Wix offers a much larger gallery — "2000+ website templates," described as "carefully researched and curated by our own designers" (same source) — and every one is "fully customizable," letting you "play with the design and layout, update and remove content, and add apps" (same source). Wix Studio is Wix's more advanced editor; our Wix Harmony vs Wix Editor guide covers how Wix's own editor family splits apart, since "Wix" alone isn't one single editing experience.

The practical difference: Squarespace lets you change a 7.0 site's template later, at the cost of losing template-specific features; Wix locks the template to the site permanently and expects you to start over on a new one. Neither lets you export the design as portable code — see our full export capability matrix for what each platform will and won't hand you if you leave.

Which one costs less to sell products on?

This is where the two diverge sharply, and the numbers are specific enough to compare directly.

Squarespace charges a store transaction fee that depends entirely on your plan. On the entry-level Basic plan, Squarespace applies a "2% commerce transaction fee" on top of a "2.9% + $0.30 Squarespace Payments fee on domestic cards." Moving up to Core drops that platform fee to "No commerce transaction fee," while the card-processing rate stays at 2.9% + $0.30. The Plus and Advanced plans keep the 0% commerce fee and lower the card-processing rate further, to 2.7% + $0.30 and 2.5% + $0.30 respectively (Squarespace, checked September 2026).

Wix structures ecommerce as a plan feature rather than a fee percentage: its plans page lists "Basic eCommerce," "Standard eCommerce" and "Advanced eCommerce" on different paid plans (Wix, checked September 2026); check that page for which plan includes which level in your location. Wix Payments' own fee page documents card processing at "2.9% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD" for standard cards and "3.7% of the transaction amount + 0.30 USD" for American Express, with no separate platform commission described on top of that (Wix, checked September 2026).

Put side by side: Squarespace's cheapest plan adds its own 2% on top of card processing that's otherwise identical to Wix's rate; Squarespace's Core plan and above match Wix on the platform-fee question. What differs afterward is what each ecommerce tier unlocks — check each vendor's current Squarespace plans page and Wix plans page, since both change over time.

Which one is better for blogging?

Both platforms bundle a real blog, not just a "news" widget, but they organize it differently. Squarespace treats a blog as a page type: you can "add as many blog posts to a blog page as you'd like," organize them with categories and tags, add a featured image per post, and "schedule the post to self-publish in the future" (Squarespace). On version 7.1, you can also gate posts behind "a paywall and pricing plan" (same source) — Squarespace's blog can be a subscription product, not only a marketing page.

Wix Blog is an app you add to a site. Wix's help center describes creating posts, adding categories, and managing comments "directly from your editor, dashboard, live site, or mobile device," plus multi-author roles so you can "assign different roles to your writers" (Wix). Functionally the two are close — categories, comments and multiple writers are covered on both — the difference is architectural: Squarespace's blog is a page type inside the same site-wide style system, while Wix Blog is an installable app with its own settings panel.

What do I get for a domain and email?

Squarespace-managed domains include a few things bundled at no extra cost: "a secure SSL connection at no added cost" and "automatic Whois privacy protection for free" on eligible domains (Squarespace). Free email forwarding comes with any Squarespace-managed domain — up to "100 email aliases," each redirecting to an address of your choice. Whether you can send from the alias depends on your email provider, per Squarespace (Squarespace). For a real mailbox, Squarespace sells Google Workspace directly, billed monthly or annually through your Squarespace account (Squarespace).

Wix also sells Google Workspace as its business-email product: "Wix has partnered with Google to offer Google Workspace plans within your Wix account," across three tiers, each including Google Calendar and "at least 30GB of inbox and Google Drive storage" (Wix). Wix's documentation covers forwarding within a Google Workspace business email and connecting an email address you already own elsewhere (Wix); it doesn't describe a free, standalone alias-forwarding feature for a bare domain the way Squarespace does.

Neither platform charges extra for the domain itself in year one: Wix lists "Free domain for 1 year" on every paid plan (Wix), and Squarespace's plan page lists a "Free custom domain for one year" (Squarespace). Read the renewal price on each vendor's own domain page before committing, since a first-year credit isn't the ongoing rate.

Which one gives me more SEO control?

Both generate a sitemap automatically and let you set a title, description and URL slug per page — Squarespace through a page's SEO tab in Page Settings (Squarespace), Wix through Pages & Menu → More Actions → SEO basics (Wix). Wix goes further, with a dedicated URL Redirect Manager, a robots.txt editor, and JSON-LD structured-data fields in the same panel; our Wix SEO settings guide covers the exact menu paths and limits. Squarespace's indexing controls, including the setting that blocks all search engines, are covered in our guide to builder sites not showing up on Google. Neither platform's basic SEO tools require a paid app.

Wix vs Squarespace: capability matrix

Who is each one not a fit for?

Squarespace is not a fit if you need to hand a developer full code access to the site; Squarespace's documentation doesn't describe a way to do that.

Wix is not a fit if you expect to change your mind about a template after you've built the site — that requires starting over, not switching in place.

Neither is a fit if what you actually need is design control over a marketing site or portfolio built from a Figma file rather than a page builder's blocks and templates. Figment publishes a Figma design as a live site through its Figma plugin — it isn't a CMS, blogging platform, or store, so if you need any of those, this comparison is the one that matters, not Figment.

Bottom line: Squarespace and Wix both lock your design inside a hosted editor with no code export, but they lock it differently — Squarespace lets a 7.0 site change templates later at a feature cost, Wix locks the template to the site permanently. Squarespace's ecommerce fee drops to zero starting at its second-lowest plan; Wix doesn't document a separate platform fee at any tier. Pick based on which trade-off you'd rather live with, not on brand familiarity.