What both platforms do
Before the differences, the honest overlap: Wix and Squarespace are both hosted, all-in-one website builders. You do not need to manage hosting, buy a separate SSL certificate, or hire a developer to get a working site. Both include a domain, templates, contact forms, and basic SEO controls at every paid tier.
Core features shared by both platforms:
- Drag-and-drop or block-based page editor
- Contact forms with email notification on submission
- Mobile-responsive templates
- Custom domain connection (free first year on annual plans)
- SSL certificate included
- Online booking tools (Wix Bookings / Squarespace Scheduling via Acuity)
- Basic e-commerce and payment collection
- SEO fields: meta titles, descriptions, alt text, sitemaps
- Analytics dashboard
For a salon, dental office, or HVAC company that needs a homepage, a services page, a contact form, and an online booking widget, both platforms get you to 90% of the same place. The real difference is in design quality, customization depth, and what happens when you want to extend the site beyond the basics.
"Most small service businesses do not need a complex website. They need a clean one with a working contact form, a phone number in the header, and booking that actually functions on mobile. Both Wix and Squarespace can do that — but they get there differently."
Quick comparison: Wix vs Squarespace
| Feature | Wix | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $17–$159/mo (billed annually) | $16–$65/mo (billed annually) |
| Template count | 800+ templates | ~180 templates |
| Design consistency | More flexible — easier to break the layout | More polished — harder to make it look bad |
| Editor type | Free-form drag-and-drop | Section-based block editor |
| Quick setup option | Wix ADI — AI-generated site in minutes | Blueprint templates, no AI builder |
| App marketplace | 250+ apps — larger, more varied | Smaller marketplace, tighter integration |
| Online booking | Wix Bookings (native) | Acuity Scheduling (via Squarespace) |
| E-commerce | Available on Core plan ($29/mo) and up | Available on Business plan ($23/mo) and up |
| Best for | Flexibility, custom features, faster setup | Design quality, restaurants, creative/service businesses |
Pricing breakdown
Wix's pricing runs from $17 per month (Light, no e-commerce) up to $159 per month (Business Elite). Most small service businesses land on the Core plan at $29 per month or the Business plan at $36 per month. Those tiers include Wix Bookings, payment processing, and access to the full app marketplace.
Squarespace runs from $16 per month (Personal, no e-commerce) to $65 per month (Commerce Advanced). For service businesses that need booking and payment tools, the Business plan at $23 per month is usually sufficient, though note that Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee on that tier. Moving up to Basic Commerce at $28 per month removes that fee.
Pricing note: Both platforms list prices based on annual billing. Month-to-month rates are roughly 20–40% higher. On annual plans, Squarespace tends to cost slightly less for the equivalent tier — but the difference is small enough that it should not be the deciding factor.
Wix deep dive
Wix is the more permissive of the two platforms. The free-form drag-and-drop editor lets you place elements anywhere on the page — not just within predefined content blocks. That freedom is genuinely useful if you have a specific layout in mind. It is also how you end up with a site that looks like it was built by someone who had too many ideas and not enough restraint.
The Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) feature is worth flagging. Answer a few questions about your business and Wix builds a starter site automatically. It is not going to win any design awards, but for an HVAC company or plumber who needs something live this week, it removes a lot of the blank-page paralysis.
Where Wix wins:
- More templates to start from — 800+ organized by industry. You are more likely to find something close to what you want before making changes.
- The app marketplace has over 250 apps including live chat tools, CRM integrations, email marketing connections, and specialized booking tools. If you need something specific, there is likely a Wix app for it.
- Wix Bookings is native and solid. Salons, fitness studios, and service businesses can set up online booking with staff scheduling, service duration settings, and payment collection without a third-party plugin.
- Wix ADI can get a usable site up faster than any manual build on either platform. Not ideal, but functional when time is the constraint.
- More flexibility in page layout for businesses with complex service pages or custom content needs.
- Wix has improved its Core Web Vitals performance significantly in recent years. The old reputation for slow Wix sites is less deserved now than it was in 2020.
Where Wix has limitations:
- The free-form editor is the double-edged sword. Without design experience or discipline, it is easy to build something that looks uneven — misaligned elements, inconsistent spacing, text that sits oddly on mobile. Squarespace's section-based editor prevents most of those mistakes by design.
- Once you pick a Wix template, you cannot switch to a different one without rebuilding the site from scratch. Choose carefully at the start.
- The dashboard can feel cluttered compared to Squarespace's interface. More options means more things to navigate.
- The free plan exists but it is not suitable for a business site. It includes a Wix-branded subdomain and Wix ads. Use it only for testing.
Squarespace deep dive
Squarespace has a clearer design philosophy than Wix. Every template is built around a section-based grid. You cannot place elements with pixel-level freedom, but that constraint is what makes Squarespace sites consistently look good. The platform does not let you break the layout, which is either a relief or a frustration depending on how specific your vision is.
For restaurants, salons, and professional service businesses where the site's visual impression matters as much as its functionality, Squarespace tends to produce a better result with less effort. The templates are fewer in number but higher in quality — more of them are actually worth using.
Where Squarespace wins:
- The design ceiling is higher out of the box. Squarespace templates are built by professional designers and the overall polish level is noticeably better than most Wix templates at the same stage of editing.
- The section-based editor makes it harder to produce a bad-looking page. Spacing, alignment, and typography are more consistent because the platform enforces structure.
- Squarespace's built-in font and color system keeps the design cohesive. Change your brand color once and it updates across the entire site.
- Better for photography-heavy service businesses — restaurants with food photos, salons with portfolio shots, med spas with before/after galleries. The image handling is cleaner.
- Squarespace Scheduling (powered by Acuity) is a mature booking tool with waitlists, packages, subscription bookings, and detailed appointment management. It integrates directly into the Squarespace environment but can also be embedded on any website.
- The interface is simpler to navigate, which matters if you plan to update the site yourself without ongoing developer help.
Where Squarespace has limitations:
- Fewer templates. About 180 compared to Wix's 800+. If you need something very specific, you are more likely to find it in Wix's library.
- Less flexibility in layout. If you have a very specific design in mind that does not fit Squarespace's section-based structure, you will hit walls.
- The app marketplace is smaller. Fewer third-party integrations and extensions compared to Wix. You are more dependent on what Squarespace natively supports.
- No AI site builder equivalent to Wix ADI. If you need a site up in an hour with minimal decisions, Wix is faster to get started.
- The 3% transaction fee on the Business plan is a genuine cost for businesses processing a lot of online payments. Worth factoring into the real price.
"Squarespace's templates are fewer, but most of them are actually good. Wix has 800 templates, which sounds great until you spend two hours scrolling through mediocre ones before finding something worth using."
Design and customization
This is the sharpest real-world difference between the two platforms.
Wix gives you more freedom. You can drag any element anywhere on the page. If you have a clear design vision and the patience to execute it, you can build something more custom with Wix than Squarespace allows. But that same freedom means more opportunities to make something that looks off on mobile, has uneven padding, or feels like it was assembled from three different design systems.
Squarespace gives you less freedom. The section-based editor means you work within columns, rows, and predefined block types. You cannot nudge an image 7 pixels to the left because you want to. What you get in exchange is consistency. It is difficult to make a Squarespace site look truly bad because the platform prevents most of the common layout mistakes.
For most small service businesses — dental offices, HVAC companies, cleaning services — the goal is a site that looks professional and credible, not one that wins a design award. Squarespace gets you to "looks professional" faster and with less risk of an embarrassing result.
Online booking: Wix Bookings vs Squarespace Scheduling
Both platforms include a booking tool. They work similarly at a high level — clients visit your site, pick a service, choose a time slot, and confirm. The differences are in the details.
Wix Bookings is native to the platform. It handles staff scheduling, multiple service types, payment collection, and basic calendar sync. For a salon with multiple stylists or a fitness studio with group classes, it covers the basics well. The booking widget embeds on any Wix page without extra setup.
Squarespace Scheduling is powered by Acuity Scheduling, which Squarespace acquired. Acuity is a more mature booking product — it has been around longer and has more configuration options, including intake forms on booking, package and subscription bookings, waitlists, and more detailed client management. If you want to compare Acuity's standalone version against Calendly for booking, we covered that in our Calendly vs Acuity comparison.
For most small service businesses, either booking tool is sufficient. If appointment management is central to your business model — if you are a med spa with multiple providers and complex scheduling rules — Squarespace Scheduling's Acuity foundation gives you more room to grow.
SEO: which platform ranks better?
Both platforms cover the fundamentals. You can set custom meta titles and descriptions on every page, add alt text to images, connect Google Search Console, and submit a sitemap. Neither one will hold you back on the basics.
Squarespace has historically had cleaner page code and better default Core Web Vitals scores. Wix used to be notably worse in this area, but has made real improvements. Today the gap is smaller than it was and unlikely to be the determining factor in whether your business ranks in local search.
For local service businesses, what matters more than the platform's technical SEO baseline is the content on the page and how well your Google Business Profile is set up. An HVAC company that writes a clear, specific page for each service area and maintains an active GBP will outrank a competitor on the superior platform with thin, generic content. Platform SEO is a secondary concern.
Who each platform is actually for
Choose Wix if: You want more flexibility and control over your site's layout, your business needs specific apps or integrations not available in Squarespace's marketplace, you want to use Wix ADI to get a site live quickly, or you have a design vision that requires placing elements exactly where you want them.
Choose Squarespace if: You want the site to look polished without extensive design work, your business relies heavily on imagery (restaurant food photos, salon portfolios, med spa before/afters), you are updating the site yourself and want a simpler editing interface, or you want the more mature booking functionality that Acuity Scheduling provides.
Either works well for: Most small service businesses that need a homepage, services page, contact form, and booking widget. Neither platform will be the reason a potential customer does not call you. The quality of the site content and the speed of your follow-up matter more.
The automation gap that neither platform fills
Here is the part neither Wix nor Squarespace mentions on their pricing pages.
Both platforms send you an email when someone fills out a contact form. That is the extent of the automation. What happens next is on you.
The lead sitting in your inbox does not get a follow-up text in the first five minutes — the window when people are most likely to respond. No platform-native tool triggers that. Your customer who just had a dental cleaning does not automatically get a review request two days later. Your HVAC customer who got a quote but never booked does not get a re-engagement message three weeks later. Someone who booked an appointment online does not get a reminder the day before to reduce no-shows.
None of that happens automatically on Wix. None of it happens automatically on Squarespace. This is not a knock on either platform — they are website builders, not customer communication systems. But for a salon where no-shows cost real money, or a HVAC company where a five-minute lead response time triples conversion rates, the gap between what the website does and what your business needs is significant.
That gap exists regardless of which platform you pick. It is not a Wix problem or a Squarespace problem. It is a missing layer problem. Aplos AI builds that layer — lead follow-up sequences, appointment reminders, review request campaigns, and re-engagement flows that run on top of whichever website platform you already have. No switching required.
Your website takes the inquiry. What happens to it after that is the real problem. We audit exactly where leads are falling through the cracks and build the automations that stop it — on top of Wix, Squarespace, or whatever you are already running.
Get a Free Automation Audit →The verdict
Pick Squarespace if design quality and consistency matter to your business. Restaurants, salons, med spas, dental offices, and any business where the website's visual impression directly affects whether someone books — these businesses tend to get a better result from Squarespace with less effort.
Pick Wix if you need more flexibility, a larger app ecosystem, or a faster path to something live via Wix ADI. It is a better fit for businesses with non-standard layout needs or specific integrations in mind.
Do not spend more than an hour deciding. Both platforms will give you a functional, professional website for your service business. The decision that actually moves the needle is what happens after someone fills out that contact form — and that part has nothing to do with which builder you chose.