The honest comparison: what each costs once you can take payments, how flexible they are, how big the app markets are, and where your enquiries end up.
Wix and Squarespace both charge $29 a month on annual billing for their first plan that handles money without taking a cut, so the headline price is not what should decide this. The real differences sit around that number: Wix Light at $17 cannot take payments at all, Squarespace Basic at $19 can sell but keeps 2% of every store sale, their app markets are very different sizes, and neither plan gives your enquiries anywhere sensible to land. Here is the comparison on the terms a small business actually feels, with prices checked in October 2026.
Price both properly and the decision rule is simple.
The rest of this guide shows the numbers behind that rule so you can test it against your own business.
Both companies lead with a cheap plan most businesses outgrow immediately.
Wix Light ($17) is a brochure plan: it cannot accept online payments. No deposits, no paid bookings, no store. The cheapest Wix plan that can take money is Core at $29, which also brings scheduling and services, 50 GB of storage and five staff accounts.
Squarespace Basic ($19) can sell, which looks like the better deal until you read the fee table: Squarespace keeps 2% of every store sale on Basic, and 7% on digital content and memberships. Its 0% store plan is also Core at $29.
So the honest starting price for a small business taking money online is $29 a month on either platform, on annual billing, at the time of writing (October 2026).
| Where it counts | Wix | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Light $17, cannot take payments | Basic $19, sells with a 2% store fee |
| Cheapest plan with no platform cut on store sales | Core $29 | Core $29 |
| Higher tiers | Business $39, Business Elite $159 | Plus $49, Advanced $99 |
| Fee on store sales | Card processing only on paid plans | 2% on Basic, 0% from Core up |
| Fee on digital content and memberships | No separate platform percentage published | 7% Basic, 5% Core, 0% Advanced |
| Appointments and bookings | Included from Core | Acuity Scheduling, a separate subscription |
| Email marketing | In the plan's marketing suite, graded by tier | Email Campaigns, a separate add-on |
| Apps and extensions | App Market, hundreds of apps | Extensions, 52 listed when we checked |
| Support | 24/7 customer care on every plan | Email 24/7, live chat weekdays, no phone line |
| Domain | Free for the first year on annual plans | Free for the first year on annual plans |
Squarespace is upfront about its cut, which is useful, but you have to do the arithmetic yourself. Put your own numbers through it:
Wix does not publish a platform percentage on store sales for its paid plans, so what comes off a sale is the processing fee. If you are selling physical goods in any volume, that makes Wix Core easier to forecast than Squarespace Basic.
Wix advertises more than 2,000 templates and an editor that lets you drop an element anywhere on the canvas, plus a separate mobile layout you tidy yourself. That is more control and more rope: a Wix site built in a hurry tends to look like a Wix site built in a hurry, especially on phones.
Squarespace does not publish a template count and its library is much smaller on purpose. Everything shares one design language and the editor keeps blocks on a grid. You get less pixel-level control and a much better floor: a careless Squarespace site still looks reasonable.
Both now draft a first version with AI, Wix through a conversational builder and Squarespace through its Blueprint flow. Reviewers generally rate Squarespace's starting point as the better looking one and Wix's AI toolset as the broader. Either way the words, prices and photos have to come from you.
A warning that applies to both: treat the template as a starting point, not a reversible decision. Once a site is built out, changing the underlying look means restyling and rebuilding pages rather than switching template in one click.
When we checked in October 2026, Squarespace's Extensions directory listed 52 extensions in total across four categories: Sales and Marketing (21), Inventory and Products (15), Shipping and Fulfilment (9) and Finance (7). Useful names are in there, including Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Printful, ShipStation and Weglot, but it is a short list.
The Wix App Market does not publish a single total, but it runs to hundreds of apps across marketing, selling, services and events, media, design and communication, from Wix itself and from outside developers.
This matters more than template counts, because one specific requirement will decide your platform for you: loyalty points, print on demand, staged deposits, class packs, local delivery slots, a regional payment gateway, multi-currency. Write your three non-negotiables down and search both markets for them by name before you pay for a year.
In fairness to Squarespace, plenty of small businesses never install an app at all, and a short curated list is less to maintain than a long one.
Two Squarespace add-ons catch people out:
Squarespace gives things back elsewhere. Invoicing is included free on all its plans, and abandoned cart recovery and customer accounts are listed on all of them too, which is more generous at the bottom end than its reputation suggests. The percentage is the catch, not the feature list.
Wix lists 24/7 customer care on every plan, including the free one, with callbacks available and priority handling on Business Elite.
Squarespace's own contact page lists email support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and live chat Monday to Friday, 4am to 8pm US Eastern. There is no phone line, and when chat is closed the page asks you to email and promises a reply within 12 hours.
Translate that chat window into your own time zone before deciding whether it matters. Roughly, it is 9am to 1am in the UK, 10am to 2am in central Europe, 5am to 9pm in Brazil, and 1:30pm to 5:30am in India. If you work Indian or Australian office hours, Squarespace live chat is shut for most of your working day and you are on email instead.
Both platforms will collect an enquiry. Wix gives you contacts, an inbox, forms, price quotes and invoices, tasks and automations as part of its business tools. Squarespace gives you contacts and free invoicing, with email campaigns bought separately.
What neither gives you on a $29 plan is a pipeline: leads scored and sorted, deals with stages, follow-up tasks that appear on their own, invoices that chase themselves, bookings and enquiries in one list. For most small businesses that is the expensive gap. The website is rarely the bottleneck. The enquiry nobody answered on Tuesday is.
That is the problem our own platform was built around, so weigh what follows accordingly. WebNewBiz drafts a complete site from a plain description of your business and lets you change it by chatting to an AI Copilot. Starter at $29 includes the online store, which puts it level with Wix Core and Squarespace Core on price. Growth at $79 adds the AI CRM: it reads and scores leads, holds deals, tasks and bookings, chases its own invoices, and turns website enquiries and store buyers into contacts automatically. Hosting, a full WordPress CMS, SSL and 24/7 chat support are on every plan, the store can run on WooCommerce, Shopify or our own engine, and every plan is $1 for the first month (the rest is on our pricing page). If a built-in CRM is the main thing you are shopping for, our guide to choosing a website builder with a CRM goes deeper on the trade-offs.
Where Wix and Squarespace are clearly better: both are older and much bigger. Bigger template libraries, a far bigger app market, and thousands of freelancers who already know the platform and can take your site over if you lose interest. We are younger, our ecosystem and community are much smaller, there is no free plan, and the CRM only starts at $79, so a simple one-page brochure site is not where we are the obvious answer. Our AI first draft is a draft, same as theirs.
If you have already ruled one of them out, our round-ups of Wix alternatives and Squarespace alternatives compare the rest of the field on the same terms. And if you want to see what an AI draft of your homepage looks like before paying anyone, the free AI Website Preview designs one from a single sentence about your business.
Is Wix or Squarespace better for a small business?
Neither wins outright. Squarespace is the better pick for a design-led site with a small catalogue, because its defaults look good with little effort. Wix is better when you need flexibility and apps: awkward booking rules, a bigger store, print on demand, a specific payment method. Price them both at $29 and decide on features, not on the entry price.
Is Squarespace Basic at $19 cheaper than Wix Core at $29?
Only if you barely sell anything. Basic takes 2% of store sales, and the step up to Squarespace Core is $10 a month, so 2% of roughly $500 of monthly sales cancels the saving. Above about $500 a month, Core costs you less than Basic. On courses and memberships the 7% fee on Basic bites much sooner.
Can you take payments on Wix's cheapest plan?
No. Wix Light at $17 cannot accept online payments, so no store, no paid bookings and no deposits. Core at $29 is the first Wix plan that can take money, and it includes scheduling and services as well as a store.
Do Wix or Squarespace include a CRM?
Not in the sense a sales-led business means. Wix includes contacts, an inbox, forms, price quotes and invoices, tasks and automations as part of its business tools. Squarespace gives you contacts and free invoicing, with email campaigns sold separately. Neither gives you lead scoring, a deal pipeline or invoices that chase themselves on a $29 plan.
Which is better for SEO?
Both cover the basics: editable titles and descriptions, clean URLs, sitemaps, redirects and mobile layouts. Wix exposes more technical settings and a step-by-step SEO checklist, while Squarespace exposes less but ships tidy defaults and is usually measured as the quicker of the two. For most small business queries the builder is not the deciding factor; your pages, your reviews and your Google Business Profile do more work.
What happens if I pick wrong and want to move later?
Your domain and your content (text, images, product data, posts) will move. The layout will not: you rebuild the pages on the new platform. That is true in both directions, and true of our platform too, so build one real page in a trial before you commit to a year of billing.
Wix and Squarespace are both solid choices and plenty of businesses are well served by either. Pick Squarespace for a design-led site, Wix for flexibility and apps, and in both cases budget $29 rather than the advertised entry price.
If the part you keep tripping over is what happens after the enquiry arrives, spend an hour with our AI website builder instead: describe your business, read the draft it writes, and see whether the store and CRM side fits how you work. The first month is $1, there is no contract and you can cancel any time. Start for $1.