Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, or Custom: Which Should You Use?

Every comparison of website platforms is written by someone selling one of them. This one is written by a studio that hand-builds sites, so read the last section with that in mind — there are plenty of businesses for which our answer is genuinely "use Squarespace."

Here is what each option actually gives you and what it costs you.

DIY builders: Wix and Squarespace

What you get. A visual editor, hosting, SSL, templates, and a support team, for a monthly subscription. You can have something published the same afternoon without writing any code.

Where they are genuinely good. If your budget is close to zero, you have time to learn the tool, and your requirements are simple, these are a reasonable place to start. A working Squarespace site beats a perfect custom site that never got commissioned. They are also fine for businesses whose customers come from somewhere other than search — referrals, a physical location, a marketplace.

What it costs you. Time first: the design, the writing, and the upkeep are all yours. Then flexibility — you work within the template's assumptions, and complicated requirements tend to hit a wall. Then performance: these platforms ship a lot of JavaScript and CSS on every page regardless of whether the page needs it, which is difficult to fix from inside the editor.

The part people miss. Your site depends on an active subscription. Stop paying and it goes away. You can export content, but not the site — there is no "download my website" that produces something you can host elsewhere.

WordPress

What you get. The most widely used content management system, a very large ecosystem of themes and plugins, and — unlike the hosted builders — software you can move between hosts.

Where it is genuinely good. Content-heavy sites with multiple authors, publications, sites that need a real editorial workflow, or any project where a specific plugin does exactly what you need. If you plan to publish frequently and want non-technical staff editing pages, WordPress remains a sensible answer.

What it costs you. Maintenance, permanently. Core updates, theme updates, plugin updates, and security patching are ongoing obligations, not optional. A neglected WordPress site is a liability. Page builders like Elementor and Divi make editing easier and pages heavier, often considerably.

The part people miss. "WordPress is free" is true of the software and untrue of the site. Hosting, a premium theme, several paid plugins, and either your time or someone else's on maintenance add up every year. Maintenance costs are worth planning for before you choose the platform, not after.

A hand-built site

What you get. HTML, CSS, and only the JavaScript the page actually needs, built for your specific business rather than adapted from a template. No plugin stack, no database on the critical path, no platform lock-in. It loads fast because there is very little to load.

Where it is genuinely good. Service businesses that want search visibility, sites where speed and clarity affect whether the phone rings, and anyone who wants to own the thing outright. For a five-to-fifteen page business site, this is the option with the fewest ongoing compromises.

What it costs you. An upfront build cost, and a dependency on someone technical for structural changes. If you want to redesign the homepage yourself at midnight, this is not the option that lets you.

The part people miss. Editing content is often assumed to be impossible on a static site. It does not have to be — text edits are usually quick, and they can be scoped as ordinary hourly work rather than a subscription.

Five-year cost, honestly

Comparing a monthly subscription to a one-time build only makes sense over a realistic horizon. Rough figures, and they will vary with your choices:

• Squarespace or Wix: roughly $20–$45 a month for the plan, plus your own time. Over five years, call it $1,200–$2,700 plus whatever your hours are worth.
• WordPress: hosting from around $10–$40 a month, a theme, some paid plugins, plus maintenance — either your time or roughly $50–$150 a month to someone else. Five-year totals commonly land between $3,000 and $9,000.
• Hand-built: the build up front, then hosting and domain, which are cheap. Ours is $49.99 an hour for the build with optional managed care at $50 a month. Changes are hourly rather than a permanent subscription.

The subscription options look cheaper in month one and stop looking cheaper somewhere in year two or three. That is not an argument against them — it is an argument for knowing which curve you are on.

The right question is not which platform is best. It is which constraint you would rather live with: monthly cost, maintenance burden, or a dependency on someone technical.

Ownership and portability

This is the difference that matters most and gets discussed least.

With Wix or Squarespace, you own your content and your domain. You do not own the site. Moving means rebuilding.

With WordPress, you own the site files and database and can move hosts. You are still tied to whatever theme and plugins the site was built on.

With a hand-built site, you own the code. It runs on any static host, and moving it is a file copy. If you use an agency that builds on their own proprietary platform, you own nothing and cannot leave — avoid that arrangement regardless of which of the above you pick.

So which should you choose?

Choose Squarespace or Wix if your budget is very small, you enjoy doing it yourself, and search traffic is not how you get customers.

Choose WordPress if you publish frequently, need several people editing, or depend on a plugin that solves a specific problem — and you have budgeted for maintenance.

Choose a hand-built site if you want speed and search visibility, your page count is modest, and you would rather pay once and own the result than subscribe indefinitely.

If you are still weighing the numbers, the pricing guide covers what each budget tier actually buys, and this piece covers the qualities that matter regardless of platform.