Wix vs Weebly vs Squarespace: My Advice For Running Your Site in 2026

Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly have dominated the website builder industry for years, but Wix came out on top in our in-house testing. This conclusion is based on over 300 hours of data we collected when comparing website builders across 207 individual tasks.

In this review, I’ll compare Wix with Squarespace and Weebly, enabling your business to assess value for money, tool quality, and usability.

How Does Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace Compare?

Here are the key differences between Wix (best for promoting a brand), Weebly (best for selling for free), and Squarespace (best for creatives and service-based businesses):

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		Overall Rating	Today's best price	Free plan or free trial	Number of templates	Apps	Recommended for
BEST IN TEST
Wix	Squarespace	Weebly
4.8	4.5	3.4
$17 $15.30 with code “TAKE10”	$19 $17.10 with code “WBE10”	$13
Free plan	14-day free trial	Free plan
2,000+	190+	50+
800+	40+	350+
Businesses promoting their online presence	Creatives, portfolios and service-based businesses	Businesses selling for free

How Much Does Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace Cost?

Weebly’s pricing is the cheapest, with costs starting from $13 per month (billed annually). In comparison, Squarespace’s pricing start from $16 per month and Wix’s pricing starts from $17 per month.

While Weebly has the cheapest plan and enables you to sell for free, it’s not the best value builder. Wix and Squarespace have more advanced features than Weebly, including a free domain for your first year, AI-powered tools, and sophisticated marketing features.

Can I Build a Site for Free With Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly?

Wix and Weebly let you build a site for free, but Squarespace doesn’t. With Wix and Weebly, you’ll get to design, build, and publish a website without spending a dollar. However, in my experience, these free plans are fine for testing the platform, but not much else.

Free website builder plans aren’t sustainable for long. They come with limitations, such as:

• Ads on your site
• Limited storage space
• No custom domain

I recommend upgrading to a premium plan as soon as possible to unlock additional features and remove ads. It should take you between two to three weeks before you decide whether a builder is suitable for you or not.

Wix Is Best for Promoting Your Small Business

• Wix Starting price: $17 per month (save 10% with code TAKE10 at checkout)
• Wix review

Based on our research, we’ve crowned Wix the best-rated website builder for 10 consecutive years. Thanks to the unparalleled quality and quantity of Wix’s professional features, it’s the top choice for small businesses that want to effectively promote themselves online.

Is It Easy To Set Up My Website With Wix?

Wix’s AI website builder chatbot provides an easy, conversational setup experience, generating your website profile based on your responses to simple prompts. You provide all the information and Wix adds specific features based on your answers to build your dream website.

In my hands-on testing, Wix generated a professional-looking template. Though this method takes a lot of the design agency away from you, I had complete creative control once in the editor. So, be prepared to make some tweaks after using Wix’s AI builder to make the template truly your own.

If you prefer, you can also pick from Wix’s 2000+ template options. These templates are separated into industries, and some of these templates are very specific – from Beer Fan Club to Electrical Motor Repair Shop. Wix seemingly has a template for everything (or at least, one close to what you want).

If your Wix template doesn’t meet your aesthetic standards, you can use the editor to easily personalize your site. From my own experience, Wix’s editor is one of the most in-depth I’ve seen, but still super easy to use. Simply drag and drop the features and sections you want and place them on your site.

These design elements and built-in features are the best in the industry, giving small businesses all the tools they could need to succeed. For example, you can access the following Wix features from the dashboard:

• Contact forms for collecting leads
• Wix Menu for restaurants displaying their dishes
• Wix Booking for creating appointments
• Wix Events for selling and distributing tickets
• Analytics to see how your visitors are interacting with your site.

Wix also offers impressive marketing and Wix SEO tools to help you promote your business online. This includes major integrations with Google Analytics, Semrush, and Microsoft Clarity, as well as email marketing tools for creating campaigns and newsletters.

Can I Sell With Wix?

Wix ecommerce starts on the $29 per month Core plan with the most basic sales features, while advanced tools like automated sales tax and advanced shipping options require the $36 per month Business plan. The Business plan is expensive for a new business – and two-fold when compared to selling for free with Weebly.

How Secure Are Wix Websites?

Your website will be safe with Wix, since it comes with key security features. This includes:

• A free SSL certificate
• Anti-fraud protection to prevent false transactions
• PCI compliance, meaning that it adheres to security standards for businesses that store credit card information

Squarespace Is Best for Creatives and Service-Based Businesses

• Squarespace starting from: $16 per month (get 10% off with code WBE10 at checkout)
• Squarespace review

Squarespace is recommended for its impeccably-designed templates and super accessible editor – all powered by Squarespace’s Fluid Engine. These tools enable you to design the best-looking website and showcase your brand’s creativity and skills to potential clients, making it ideal for creatives or service-based businesses.

Is It Easy To Set Up My Website With Squarespace?

Squarespace provides a seamless setup experience, since its drag-and-drop editor enables you to experiment with design without messing up the readability or UX of your website. The editor lets you place any element or section where you’d like, while also seamlessly integrating it into your site.

Skip to 00:57 in the video below if you want to see Squarespace’s editor in action:

Squarespace’s 900+ templates aren’t as industry-focused as Wix’s, but they’re all professionally designed, modern, and responsive, so will give your business an edge design-wise. If you’re looking for something more specific, you can use Squarespace’s Blueprint AI website builder to generate a unique design based on your business’s overall look and feel.

Squarespace’s built in Acuity Scheduling booking tool makes it the best website builder for artists and service-based businesses. Based on our research, this scheduling tool is currently the best on the market, since it allows clients to book sessions directly from your website.

However, it costs an additional $16 per month on top of the website builder, making it another tool to factor into the budget.

Can I Sell With Squarespace?

You can sell on all of Squarespace’s plans, starting at just $16 per month (billed annually). While its ecommerce capabilities aren’t as strong as Wix’s, you can still run a small online store on this Basic plan, making it a good starting point. For more advanced ecommerce tools, you’ll need to upgrade to the Core plan for $23 per month.

Artists on Squarespace can sell both physical and digital products on its plans, meaning you aren’t limited by your chosen medium.

How Secure Are Squarespace Websites?

Squarespace is a reliable option if you want to keep your website and customer data safe from external threats. Like Wix, the platform is PCI compliant and comes with a built-in SSL certificate.

Weebly Is Best for Selling Online for Free

• Weebly starting from: $13 per month
• Weebly review

Weebly hasn’t received regular platform updates since 2019 after being acquired by Square. That said, Weebly’s main advantage is its free ecommerce plan that neither Wix nor Squarespace offer.

Is It Easy To Set Up My Website With Weebly?

Building a website with Weebly wasn’t straightforward. It first asked me whether I wanted a “business website” or a “personal website.” Clicking business redirected me to Square Online to use its ecommerce tools instead, which is confusing because you can make a business site with Weebly since not all business sites require ecommerce.

When choosing a Weebly template, there are no AI tools that generate a personal template for you, which is disappointing as AI website builders like Wix and Squarespace have become almost industry-standard over the past year or so.

The templates to choose from didn’t soothe my disappointment either. Receiving no updates since 2019 has left Weebly’s templates looking outdated and bland by today’s standards. And with only 50 to choose from, I couldn’t get the same variety as Wix or the design quality of Squarespace.

I also felt disappointed when browsing Weebly’s limited range of features. It only has basic SEO, no built-in social media, and an email marketing feature that limits you to two email sends even if you’re on the free plan. These features don’t compete with Wix or Squarespace’s advanced tools.

Can I Sell With Weebly?

You can sell unlimited products with Weebly on its free plan and above – a unique feature that Wix and Squarespace doesn’t have.

However, Weebly’s ecommerce is limited. Its free and lower-tier plans don’t support digital goods, shipping tools, or PayPal. For these features, you’ll need the $29 per month Performance plan.

How Secure Are Weebly Websites?

Though Weebly’s plans come with free SSL security, the platform isn’t as safe as Wix or Squarespace in 2026. Due to the lack of updates, it’s unlikely that Weebly’s security has been kept up to date either. Because of this, I recommend using one of the other two options instead.

How We Test Website Builders

To accurately assess Wix vs Weebly vs Squarespace, I referred to our latest round of in-house website builder research. Spanning over 300 hours of data collection and covering 207 areas of investigation, this data-backed research is referenced in our articles.

All the website builders we’ve tested were assessed according to six key criteria. We then weighted the criteria based on their importance to business owners:

1. What can I add to my website? (30%): We looked at the quality and quantity of built-in website features, including AI tools, marketing tools like email marketing and SEO, bookings capability, and app integrations.
2. How professional are the website designs? (25%): To determine the best website designs, we looked at the number of templates to choose from, the output quality of AI design tools, customization options in the editor, and template responsiveness.
3. How much does the builder cost? (15%): We assessed the pricing of each builder, examining the balance of features vs price, the value for money of each subscription plan, and any free plan or trial options.
4. How easy is the builder to use? (15%): We examined the ease of use of each builder by conducting 54 individual user tests. This involved monitoring 1,200+ tasks, such as how easy it is to design a website or make webpages SEO-friendly.
5. Is help and support easy to access? (10%): We looked at the range of customer support options available, the accuracy and response times of built-in AI assistants, and expert assistance routes.
6. Is the platform trusted and credible? (5%): We inspected the popularity of each platform online by analyzing third-party review scores, search volumes, online comments, the number of websites built, and user recommendations.

I’ve also spent hours testing each website builder myself, creating my own websites from scratch, exploring editors, testing features, and using the different support channels provided. These first-hand experiences have informed my recommendations in this article.

Wix vs Weebly vs Squarespace: Which Website Builder Is Best?

Out of Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace, Wix is the best website builder overall in 2026. It’s super easy to use, very customizable, and offers the widest range of features to help you successfully promote your small business online.

Squarespace is also a fantastic option for small businesses, especially if you’re running a creative or service-based business. It has the most stylish designs, an intuitive editor, and a scheduling tool that seamlessly integrates with your website.

Unfortunately, Weebly can’t compete with Wix or Squarespace due to a serious lack of updates, so I recommend avoiding this platform completely. Though Weebly’s main USP is that you can sell for free, I recommend using its sister brand, Square Online, instead for its free ecommerce plan.

Need a little bit more help choosing a builder? Try our quiz below:

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Written By

Holly Choules

Holly Choules is a Writer at Website Builder Expert with a background in researching and crafting engaging content for digital platforms. In previous roles, she has demonstrated her wordsmith skills by writing for public facing brands in a range of industries. After gaining hands-on experience using leading website builders, like Wix and WordPress, she is now keen to share her findings through informative, easy-to-follow articles that help small business owners get online and grow their presence.

Since joining the team in 2024 and transitioning into the tech sphere, Holly is passionate about applying her three years of content writing experience and upholding Website Builder Expert’s position as an authoritative source on website builders, ecommerce, and digital marketing.

You can read Holly’s articles below, or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Reviewed By

Natasha Willett Lead Researcher

Natasha brings her expert credentials – a BSc, Ma, and MMRS – to Website Builder Expert. Natasha has qualifications in Advanced Statistical Analysis, MRS certificate in Market Research, Brand, Finding the Story in the Data, and Big Data: Measuring and Predicting Human Behaviour. These have allowed her to carefully analyze over 64 providers across website builders, ecommerce web builders, and hosting.

Natasha began building websites when studying sports science, originally using Weebly to create websites to help students learn in a more interactive way. During her first week at Website Builder Expert, she realized that website builders would become important in giving business owners full control over their websites. She began creating a rigorous methodology of research that centered around testing providers and products against a large set of mixed criteria turned into quantitative findings, comparing value for money, design, ease of use, and more. All to provide the most honest and objective insights rather than just looking at their claimed features.

In five years at Website Builder Expert, Natasha has attended multiple expos in her field, including ESOMAR, MRS, eCommerce Expo, Ad World, Digital Customer Engagement Summit, and IMRG, just to name a few. Natasha has also worked alongside website builders directly to share her research with them, so that they might improve their products for users.

She’s clocked an impressive 9,600 hours of product research and testing, pulling data from multiple sources and providing the Website Builder Expert team with the scores and product details they need to give you the best recommendations to succeed online.

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