It’s 2022, if you have a brand or business a professional looking website is a must have for
success. For those with little to no coding knowledge, looking to save money or have a quick turn-around, website builders provide the answer.
Wix and Squarespace are the two largest website builders, together they power over 55% of websites built using a website builder.
Let’s start at the beginning, what is a website builder? A website builder is essentially a tool
that enables the construction of a website without the need for manual coding, often using
drag and drop design interfaces that are intuitive and user-friendly.
Design: Structured vs Unstructured
One of the main points of difference between Wix and Squarespace is the design of the
page editors. Although both are very intuitive and user friendly drag and drop design, the
level of editing capability differs. Wix uses what is termed an unstructured design tool, it
allows the user to move elements anywhere on the page and choose the positioning to the
pixel. Whereas, Squarespace uses a structured design tool which still allows the user to drag and drop elements on the page, but they can only be placed within predetermined rows and columns.
If you’re not looking to build your entire site from scratch, both Wix and Squarespace have a library of themes you can choose from. Wix has a vast range of template options with over 1000 styles to choose or draw inspiration from in various categories e.g. restaurant, blog, portfolio etc. However, Wix templates are not fully mobile responsive and you will need to manually edit the mobile site to be in the correct configuration. Squarespace on the other hand has around 100 templates to choose from, all of which are mobile responsive.
Features: What You Can & Can’t Do
Both Wix and Squarespace come with standard features such as galleries, forms and maps.
However, Wix provides some additional features that require a third party add on for an
equivalent feature in Squarespace.
Wix provides features for forums, live chat, takeout orders and ticketing & RSVP, all of which required third party software to use in Squarespace. However, the features that
Squarespace does provide can feel more intuitive and simpler to use.
Ecommerce
Squarespace and Wix both have surprisingly powerful ecommerce platforms that allow for
the sale of physical products, services and subscriptions. Wix also allows users to sell offline and accepts payment upon delivery, which is not currently a feature on Squarespace.
However, both are strong with a variety of ecommerce features, Squarespace seems more
mature in some features whilst Wix adds new features more frequently.
SEO
Rumour has it that website builders aren’t build for SEO, making ranking a website built with a website builder hard. However, website builders have come on leaps and bounds in recent years, with a wide variety of SEO features meaning you can definitely get your site to rank. Previously, Wix had a much larger selection of SEO features, however, Squarespace have since introduced a suite of new features, meaning both platforms are fairly even in regards to SEO capabilities.
SEO features of both website builders include: page title, meta description, customised
URLs, headings, image alt attributions, 301 redirects, ability to add Google Analytics, ability
to add Google Search Console, SSL encryption and more.
Blog Capabilities
WordPress is still undoubtedly the best platform out there for blogging, however, other
website builders are doing their best to catch up.
Wix has blogging tools, however, it’s not its strong point. Wix still lacks some features such
as social bars which need to be added by HTML, in addition their commenting feature is still
rather clunky. Comments can’t be pre-moderated so users are able to post directly to your
site, however, they have to have an account with Wix in order to be able to comment in the
first place which is an unnecessary difficulty.
Squarespace’s blogging tools are far stronger. Squarespace allows for blogs to be
categorised, scheduled and has a variety of integrations available. Further, users don’t need
an account to be able to comment and external services such as Disqus can be connected.
Summary
Overall, both Wix and Squarespace are strong options when choosing a website builder and
ultimately it comes down to your individual requirements as to which is best suited. If you’re wanting full customisation for your website with strong ecommerce functionality, Wix is better suited to you. If you’re looking to sell services online and blog frequently, Squarespace is your best bet.
Let us know which is your preferred platform in the comments.
