“Why not just use Wix?”
It’s a great question. With Wix or Squarespace you’re renting your website, and renting works well for lots of people. It just gets tricky when you want to move out or remodel. Here’s what that means in practice, with the platforms’ own help pages as the source, and where they really shine.
By Dan Horn · Checked against Wix and Squarespace documentation, October 2026
You can leave, and take it with you.
Wix is clear about it: your content belongs to you, but the site has to run on Wix’s servers. Squarespace will export your basic pages and one blog as a WordPress file, and leaves the store, the portfolio pages, the design and any custom code behind.
Either way, moving on means rebuilding. That’s no problem for many people, but if the price goes up, a feature you rely on changes, or you outgrow the plan, it can mean starting the whole website over.
Everything I build is ordinary files you own. Move it to any host you like, hand it to another developer, or keep it with me. The monthly plans are month to month for exactly that reason, so you’re always free to choose.
Search is about control, not a magic switch.
A Wix site can rank, and plenty do. Where the builders can feel limiting is the ceiling: the parts of search you aren’t able to adjust.
Moving a business with years of history onto a new site? Every old address needs a redirect, and the builders cap and simplify those. Want your pages named the way people search? Some sections keep a fixed prefix. Want Google to read your service area, hours, menu and reviews exactly right? Wix caps the markup per page; Squarespace adds its own, which you can’t edit or remove. Squarespace won’t let you edit robots.txt at all.
None of that matters much for a five-page site on day one. It matters more two years in, when you’re hoping to reach customers in the next town over.
It does the job your business actually does.
Colter’s catering page works like a quote: pick the location, the package and the headcount, and the estimate updates as you go. Sugar Pops runs custom orders through its own intake, quote pipeline and calendar. Froggy’s has a catering CRM the owners log into every day.
On a builder, each of those is usually an app from a marketplace, with its own monthly fee and its own way of doing things, when one exists. Built by hand, it’s part of the site and it works the way you already do.
It grows right along with you.
Builder plans are priced by tier and they go up. Squarespace runs from $19 to $99 a month billed yearly, takes 2% of store sales on its Basic plan, and keeps code injection off the cheapest plan entirely. Wix runs from about $18 to $160 a month billed yearly, with storage capped on most plans and online payments starting from the Core plan.
A hand-built site doesn’t have tiers. Ten pages or a hundred, two locations or six, a booking system next year: it’s the same site, simply extended.
Side by side
| Built by hand (me) | Wix | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can you move the site to another host? | Yes. It’s your files, on any server. | No. It has to run on Wix’s servers. | Partly. Basic pages and one blog export; store, portfolio, design and custom code don’t. |
| Page addresses (URLs) | Whatever you want. | Blog posts and products carry a prefix (/post/, /product-page/) you can rename but not drop. | Store products sit under a fixed /shop/p/ path. |
| Redirects from an old site | Unlimited, with patterns. | Up to 5,000. | About 2,500 lines, no patterns, no image or file redirects. |
| robots.txt (what Google may crawl) | Fully editable. | Editable. | Not editable, only on/off switches. |
| Structured data (what Google reads about your business) | Anything, on any page. | One block per page, capped at 8,000 characters. | Built-in markup you can’t edit or remove; your own only through code injection on Core and up. |
| Server settings (caching, security headers) | Full control. | None. | None. |
| Custom tools: quote calculators, order systems, CRMs | Built into the site. | Apps from the app market, usually a monthly fee each, or code in Velo. | Extensions and embeds. |
From each platform’s own help pages and pricing, October 2026. Plans and limits change; the sources are at the bottom.
Two things they do really well.
Speed isn’t the argument any more.
Wix passes Google’s Core Web Vitals on 81% of mobile sites, ahead of Squarespace at 71% and well ahead of WordPress at 48% (HTTP Archive, September 2026). If anyone pitches custom on speed alone, it’s fair to ask for the numbers on sites they’ve built.
A builder is a great fit for some businesses.
Just starting out, on a tight budget, and happy to build it yourself on a Sunday? Wix or Squarespace is a smart choice. I’d love to help when you’re ready for the site to bring in more work.
Curious how your own site measures up? Run the free speed test, or see how a build goes, week by week.
Custom vs. builders: common questions
Not on its own. A Wix site can rank, and Wix pages are fast. The limits tend to show up later: capped redirects, fixed URL prefixes on blog posts and products, a cap on the structured data you can add to a page, and no access to the server. Those matter most when you’re moving an established business or trying to rank in more than one town.
It handles the basics well. Where it can feel limiting is control: robots.txt can’t be edited, its built-in schema can’t be edited or removed, redirects are capped at roughly 2,500 lines without patterns, and custom code needs a Core plan or above.
Yes, gladly. Since neither platform lets you take the whole site with you, I rebuild it by hand, keep the words and photos that work, and redirect every old address so you keep what Google already knows about you.
You own your domain, content, photos and data from day one. Want the site files outright? I’m happy to do one-time builds too. Either way, it runs on any server, not just mine.
WordPress you can take with you, which is a real point in its favour. The tricky part is the thirty plugins most WordPress sites run on, each updating on its own schedule. It passes Core Web Vitals on fewer than half of mobile sites, the lowest of the big platforms.
Sources
- Wix: Exporting or embedding your Wix site elsewhere
- Squarespace: Exporting your site
- Wix: Customizing your pages’ URL structure
- Wix: Redirects (5,000 limit)
- Squarespace: URL mappings
- Wix: Editing your site’s robots.txt file
- Squarespace: Asking search engines and AI crawlers not to crawl
- Squarespace: SEO checklist (built-in schema)
- Wix: Troubleshooting structured data markup (size limits)
- Squarespace: Using code injection (Core and above)
- Squarespace pricing
- Wix plans
- HTTP Archive: Core Web Vitals Technology Report
On Wix or Squarespace now?
I’d be glad to take a look. Send me the link and I’ll tell you honestly whether moving is worth it for your business, and if it isn’t, I’ll happily say so.