Wix and Squarespace are two of the world’s most popular website builders. Both are excellent services that help everyday internet users design great-looking websites. Put simply, Wix is an amazing all-around website building tool for beginners to publish a site quickly . On the other hand, Squarespace is more designer-centric to create a visually stunning website over a little more time. However, there’s more to it than that. Let’s explore the six essential differences between these two major platforms.
1) Squarespace vs. Wix Editor
The main aspect of the web design experience is the editor.
With Squarespace, you can drag and drop content blocks around the page within limits. It’s a lot like coloring within the lines. You have to stay within a certain structure.
On the other hand, Wix allows you to drag content anywhere you want on the page without any underlying structure. Although this feels much freer, it can also cause unintended problems. For example, if you drag elements too near each other, they may overlap, disrupt formatting, or cause other issues. Fixing it can be very tedious, so most people just find it better to stay within a structure like Squarespace instead.
2) Elements
Elements are the different aspects of web pages. They may be text, images, videos, or different types of content. For beginner website builders, it’s much easier to use templates instead of creating code from scratch. This is another example of the openness of Wix and Squarespace set parameters. With Wix, you have millions of choices for Elements, which gives your freedom but can be very overwhelming.
Squarespace gives you a limited amount of well-designed options. Sometimes this helps, but you may not be able to present your site in just the way you want. If you have the energy, you can design something from scratch with Wix to get exactly what you’re looking for.
3) Price
Like many online services, both Wix and Squarespace offer you a much better deal if you subscribe annually. It’s difficult to determine the exact price difference. Wix has complex tiered pricing that ranges from very inexpensive, but limited service all the way to full service and security options. Squarespace is more straightforward and offers a smaller range of options. Overall, the price difference isn’t significant, so don’t let this be an overly determining factor.
4) Themes
Wix offers over 500 different themes. Squarespace has 70. However, Squarespace is design-focused. Themes are global, so they will go across your entire site from the main page to the blog and even the e-store.
With Wix, it can be difficult to keep a theme consistent across the entire site. You’ll have to go in and individually tweak some pages to get exactly what you’re looking for.
5) Blogging
Squarespace is the best blogging platform out there even when compared to other platforms like WordPress. If blogging is central to your site, just go with Squarespace. Wix has an adequate service, but everything in Squarespace makes blogging simple, elegant, and easy to do.
6) E-Commerce
This is another area where Squarespace easily excels. Once again, Wix has an okay service, but Squarespace just does it better. Squarespace is fully-featured, intuitive, and offers excellent options like personally editing receipts, mailing lists, and more. However, if e-commerce is your primary goal, you may want to check out Shopify which does an even better job than Squarespace.
Final Verdict: Squarespace
Wix is an excellent website builder, but it’s better suited towards more advanced users who are looking for tons of options. If you want to design a sleek, fully-featured, excellent website, Squarespace is the best all-around choice.
Whether you choose Squarespace or Wix, however, one final thing you need to consider is security. Both have some basic security elements, but designers need to take some precautions.
Websites contain so much personal and customer data. For that reason, when creating and maintaining your site, be sure to use the best VPN available both on desktop and mobile. A virtual private network protects your internet connection with the best encryption there is. More than design, and more than features, at the end of the day, that’s what your users care the most about. A VPN prevents hacks and keeps your users’ data private, ensuring they always feel comfortable using your website. And that’s something you can’t put a price tag on.