Wix, Squarespace or a web designer, an honest comparison

Wix or Squarespace costs less up front and suits you if you have the time to build and look after a site yourself. A web designer costs more at the start, but does the work for you, and the difference that matters most later is what you can take with you: a Wix site cannot be moved to another host, Squarespace only exports some of your content, and a site I build is plain files that are yours once the final invoice is paid.

I sell websites, so I am not neutral. Every figure below is one you can check on the company’s own website, and I have said where each one comes from.

What each one costs

Wix has four paid plans, at £9, £16, £25 and £119 a month, priced for a year paid up front, with VAT added on top (Wix plans, checked October 2026). Its free plan puts your site on a wixsite.com address with Wix ads on it, and you cannot connect your own domain without a paid plan (Wix help, checked October 2026).

Squarespace has no free plan, but every site starts with a 14 day free trial. Its plans cost between £16 and £89 a month paid monthly, or between £12 and £79 a month paid yearly (Squarespace pricing, checked October 2026). Its listed prices do not include VAT (Squarespace help, checked October 2026).

My prices are fixed and paid once: £500 for up to three pages, £1,500 for four to eight, and Custom builds from £2,500. Half books your start date and the rest is invoiced when the site is ready to go live. After that, you pay around £10 a year for the domain, and hosting for a normal site costs nothing.

To compare a monthly fee with a fixed one, multiply it out. Wix’s £16 plan, for example, is £192 a year before VAT, or £576 over three years, and that is before the hours you spend building it. How much does a small business website cost in the UK? sets the routes out side by side.

How much of the work is yours

With Wix or Squarespace, all of it. You choose the template, write every page, take or find the photos, connect the domain, set up the email, and keep it all up to date. Some people enjoy that, and if you do, it can be the right choice.

With a web designer, the part only you can do is still yours: what your business does, who it is for, what it costs, and your photos. I send a page by page list once the deposit is paid, which asks plain questions about each page, so you are filling in answers rather than writing a website. The rest is my job: the layout, the wording tidied into something that reads well, the domain, the email, the forms, and your Google Business Profile set up to match.

What you can take with you

This is the difference worth checking before you start.

Wix is clear about it. Its help pages say a Wix site has to be hosted on Wix’s own servers to work, so you cannot move it to another host, although the content you build belongs to you (Wix help, checked October 2026). A domain you bought through Wix can be moved to another company (Wix help, checked October 2026). If you ever leave, you rebuild the site somewhere else.

Squarespace lets you export some content as a file in WordPress format. Its help pages list what does not export, including store pages, product blocks, video blocks, your style settings and custom CSS (Squarespace help, checked October 2026), and say images cannot be exported in bulk (Squarespace help, checked October 2026). Moving a domain away from Squarespace does not move the site with it (Squarespace help, checked October 2026).

A site I build is plain files that any developer can pick up, with no database and no plugins. The domain and hosting are in your name from day one, and the site and its code are yours once the final invoice is paid. If you ever want someone else to look after it, they can pick it up as it is.

Changing things later

On Wix or Squarespace you can change anything yourself, any time, which is a real advantage if you like doing it.

With me, Business includes a simple editor for your text, prices and news, so the everyday changes are still yours to make. On Starter, or for anything bigger, you send me the change and I price it before I do it, from £10 for a small edit to a site I have built. There is no monthly fee for being able to ask.

Which should you choose?

Choose Wix or Squarespace if you have more time than budget, you enjoy building things, you are testing an idea that might change, or you want to change things daily.

Choose a web designer if you would rather spend the time running your business, you want it right the first time, you need it to work well on a phone without learning how, or you want the domain, the hosting and the files in your own name with nothing tying you to one platform.

There is no wrong answer between the two, only a wrong fit. If you are not sure which you are, send me a message and I will give you a straight answer, even if it is to build it yourself.