The answer to this question, like many questions in the world of business, is that it depends. All three platforms are excellent tools that can make building a professional website easier than the old-fashioned way of coding from scratch. However, WIX, Squarespace and WordPress are all targeting slightly different audiences and have designed and improved their platforms to offer distinct advantages to certain types of users. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each can help you select the right platform for your organization.
WIX: A Beginner’s Best Friend
If you’re just hanging out your shingle to start a new entrepreneurial venture and want to publish a professional, functional website quickly and easily, WIX may be the best choice for you.
Since WIX was introduced in 2006, the platform has grown to 180 million users around the world. Its claim to fame is an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface that makes building a website as easy as placing elements you didn’t even know you needed on your new site. During the last 15 years, the company has added a myriad of tools to help its customers automate their workflows, manage online payments, design branding materials and logos, create videos and improve SEO.
In fact, according to Forbes, WIX is “organized in a way that enables the company to develop new products that customers want to buy.”
Depending on what you need, WIX offers several pricing structures. If you’re just starting out, you’ll love the free version that provides all the basic tools you need. As you grow your business, you may want to upgrade to one of its premium plans, which are all available for a free 14-day trial period.
On the downside, WIX sites may load slower than its competitors, which can not only affect SEO but user experience. The attention span of website visitors is shorter each day, giving a business a smaller window to engage prospects. Although WIX offers basic SEO, it seems behind in terms of sophistication and performance with different browsers. In exchange for an easy, intuitive interface, WIX limits customization and coding options. And, the free version of WIX contains advertisements.
The bottom line is that WIX can be the best choice for smaller, entrepreneurial companies that want a professional website with the basics and plenty of room to grow.
Squarespace: A Designer’s Paradise
One of Squarespace’s core values is “protect creativity” and its platform reflects the company’s desire to help its customers nurture, develop and grow new ideas. Beautifully designed templates are frequently cited by its 4.1 million users as one of the platform’s many advantages.
Squarespace walks the middle ground when it comes to ease-of-use and customization. Although its drag-and-drop features are relatively easy to use to build a professional-looking website, the platform offers more options to insert custom coding than WIX. This allows companies who want more control over their sites to make them “more their own” without having to code from scratch.
That said, Squarespace considers itself an all-in-one platform because users can do everything needed to launch a website in one place. Register your domain name, host a website, obtain SSL certificates, ensure security, skip complicated plug-ins, design content, and analyze site performance, all while having access to round-the-clock platform support.
Although Squarespace does offer a free 14-day trial that you can access without providing credit card information upfront, the platform does not have a free version. Select from one of its four tiered pricing plans, paying for only the features you want. In addition, discounts for paying annually are available.
Like all platforms, Squarespace has its limitations. Although you have some customization freedom, the platform obviously cannot provide support for extra coding you might add to your site. If you’re looking for the ability to add things like a “back-to-top” button, other languages, membership options, or forms, these are not included in Squarespace’s repertoire. That said, Squarespace is continuing to develop demanded options with one of the most recent being a feature that allows users to develop a paywall to charge for selected content.
For design-heavy businesses, Squarespace may be a good choice. It’s easy to get started and use while providing some options for further customizations and enhancements.
WordPress: A Freedom-Seeker’s Partner
As you move along the spectrum of website building tools, you can forgo some of the ease-of-use features of WIX for ultimate control and customization in WordPress. According to the company, 39 percent of the web is built on a WordPress platform, making it one of the most popular website building options available. Like WIX, WordPress offers a free version with limited features and then a tiered pricing plan that increases the capabilities and price depending on what you’re seeking.
Since its inception in 2003, WordPress has developed a strong content management system because of its origins as a blogging tool. Over the last nearly two decades, the platform has added tens of thousands of free or inexpensive plug-ins, which allow users to enhance or customize a WordPress website. For example, one plug-in allows WordPress users to coordinate blog posts with related LinkedIn communities. Several others are focused on SEO best practices, which help visitors find WordPress websites more easily during searches.
Although WordPress lets you get started quickly, easily and for free, its beginner packages are a bit more difficult to navigate than WIX. Like the other platforms, WordPress is frequently providing updates and improvements to its user base. These can be disruptive or affect your website in unexpected ways, which may require professional assistance to navigate. Because the platform is open-source, allowing improvements and changes to be made and shared by anyone, WordPress can be somewhat vulnerable to hackers. Having someone to monitor security issues as well as updates and customizations may be beneficial.
For businesses and organizations that want a quick start with the ability to customize and grow with complete freedom, WordPress may be the best website building tool. In exchange for this freedom, however, WordPress users may want to work with a WordPress expert or consultant to ensure they are maximizing the benefits of this extremely flexible and popular platform.
Jen Kelly runs New Initiatives Marketing (NIM), the marketing team for businesses who don’t have a marketing team. With implementation and execution as NIM’s focus, we’ve been working world-wide remotely since 2009. NIM has supported marketing strategy execution in companies as large as the Fortune 50 and those as small (but growing) as $2M in annual revenue.
