Wix vs Squarespace for Designers

The short answer.

Three things actually separate them. Wix publishes for free and Squarespace does not publish at all until you pay. Wix Studio imports from Figma and edits its breakpoints, where Squarespace gives you two layouts and no Figma path. And Squarespace hands a client a template that survives being edited, where a Wix page laid out by hand does not. Everything else on both feature lists is close enough to be noise.

Wix, in one line

Two products under one brand, one of which — Wix Studio — is a genuine designer’s tool with breakpoints and a Figma plugin. You have to know to choose it.
Squarespace, in one line

Stay on Squarespace if the site is a content or commerce business - a blog you actually publish to, a store, memberships, courses or client invoicing - and you would rather have a template that survives client edits than pixel control of your own layout.

What each one charges.

One caveat that applies to both, which is unusual: each vendor publishes an entry price in dollars and then serves the tiers above it by region. Wix’s own footnote says prices and currency vary by location and that USD is shown for reference only. Squarespace states no USD figure for Core, Plus or Advanced on a US-facing page. So the upper tiers below are in euros on both sides, quoted as each vendor presents them. Check the number from where you actually are.

Wix Editor plans

Free

Free

Publishes to a siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress address with Wix ads on the page. 500MB storage and 1GB bandwidth. No custom domain.
Light

$17.77per month, yearly subscription paid in full

Free domain for one year, 2 GB storage, 2 site collaborators. No payments and no e-commerce.
Core, Business, Business Elite

$29.77 to $159.77per month, yearly subscription paid in full

Where payments and e-commerce start. 50 GB then 100 GB then unlimited storage, 5 then 10 then 100 site collaborators, and basic then standard then advanced e-commerce. Business Elite adds the advanced developer platform.

Read off Wix's pricing page on 2026-09-04. Prices change; tell us if one is out of date.

Wix Studio plans, a separate ladder

Basic

EUR 12per month, EU price sheet

10 GB media, 3 site collaborators, 1,500 CMS items, free domain for one year.
Standard

EUR 20per month, EU price sheet

50 GB media, 5 site collaborators, 4,000 CMS items, accept payments.
Plus, Elite

EUR 32 and 149per month, EU price sheet

120 GB then unlimited media, 10 then 100 site collaborators, 20,000 then 10,000,000 CMS items. Wix serves this ladder by region and states no USD figure we could read.

Read off the Wix Studio pricing page on 2026-09-04. Prices change; tell us if one is out of date.

Squarespace plans

Trial

Free

There is no free plan. Every site starts on a 14-day trial, no credit card required.
Basic

$19per month billed annually

Custom domain free for the first year on annual billing, up to 1,000 pages, blog and portfolio pages, 2 contributors, 30 minutes of video. No code injection, no JavaScript, 2% store transaction fee.
Core, Plus, Advanced

EUR 18-69per month billed annually, EU price sheet

Adds code injection, unlimited contributors, a 0% store fee and more video storage. Squarespace serves its pricing page by region and states no USD figure for these tiers on a US-facing page, so the EU sheet is what we can verify.

Read off Squarespace's pricing page on 2026-09-03. Prices change; tell us if one is out of date.

Side by side.

Where a row says Wix Studio or Wix Editor, it means only that one. “Not documented” means we could not confirm it from a primary source and would rather leave a cell empty than guess.

Feature	Wix	Squarespace
Free plan that publishes a public site	Yes, to a siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress address with Wix ads on the page. 500MB storage, 1GB bandwidth, no custom domain	No. Every site starts on a 14-day trial, no credit card required, and then you pay
Cheapest plan that publishes to your own domain	$17.77/mo on Wix Editor Light, as a yearly subscription paid in full. Wix Studio starts at EUR 12/mo on the EU price sheet	$19/mo billed annually on Basic
What the upper tiers cost	$29.77 to $159.77 on Wix Editor Core, Business and Business Elite. Wix Studio Standard, Plus and Elite are EUR 20, 32 and 149 on the EU sheet	EUR 18 to 69 on Core, Plus and Advanced. Squarespace states no USD figure for these tiers on a US-facing page
How many editors you have to choose between	Two - the classic Wix Editor and Wix Studio, on separate price sheets with different plan names	One
Domain included	A free domain for the first year on every paid plan, both products	One custom domain free for the first year on annual billing, renewing at a TLD price Squarespace does not state
Figma import	Yes, in Wix Studio only. One-way with no re-sync, one page at a time, and no Studio-to-Figma direction	None. A design made in Figma is rebuilt by hand inside Squarespace's editor
What the Figma import will not carry	Menus and forms arrive as plain text and lose their functionality. Buttons convert only if they are text with a fill colour. Videos, galleries and input elements are not recognised	Not applicable - there is no import to carry anything
Responsive control	Wix Studio ships three breakpoints - desktop from 1,001px, tablet 751 to 1,000px, mobile 350 to 750px - and they are editable, with custom ones addable code-free. Not documented for the classic Wix Editor	Fluid Engine gives exactly two layouts, desktop and mobile. No tablet layout and no custom breakpoints
Site-wide animation	Not documented	Five presets with a slow, medium or fast speed control. No timeline and no scroll-scrub
Custom code and JavaScript	Not documented per tier	Not on Basic - no code injection, no JavaScript or iframes in code blocks, no Developer Platform and no third-party integrations. Core and above only
CMS and blog	Wix Studio carries 1,500 CMS items on Basic up to 10,000,000 on Elite. The Wix Editor pricing page does not break the CMS out per tier	A native blog with categories and tags, plus portfolio pages with project sub-pages and gallery layouts, from the cheapest plan up
Selling	From Core up on Wix Editor - basic, then standard on Business, then advanced on Business Elite	From Basic, with a 2% store transaction fee. 0% from Core up, plus subscriptions, memberships, courses, invoices and appointments
Getting the site out again	None. Wix states a site must run on Wix's servers. CMS collections come out as CSV and blog posts cannot be exported to another platform at all	One .xml file aimed at WordPress. Custom CSS and code, style settings, portfolio, index, cover, album and store pages and product blocks are all excluded, and it cannot be imported into another Squarespace site
Collaborators	Wix Editor: 2 on Light, 5 on Core, 10 on Business, 100 on Business Elite. Wix Studio: 3, 5, 10 and 100	2 contributors on Basic, unlimited from Core up
Hosting and SSL	Yes, included	Yes, included, with DDoS protection and 24/7 human support

Wix and Squarespace details checked on 2026-09-04 against www.wix.com, support.wix.com, www.squarespace.com, support.squarespace.com. Prices change; tell us if a cell is out of date.

Pick Wix if…

You have nothing to spend yet
The free plan puts a real page on the public internet, with Wix ads and a wixsite.com address. Squarespace has no free plan at all - every site starts on a 14-day trial and then you pay.
The design starts in Figma
Wix Studio has a Figma import, with real limits. Squarespace has none of any kind, so an approved Figma file is reference material you rebuild by hand.
You want breakpoints you can edit
Wix Studio ships three and lets you change them or add your own, code-free. Squarespace Fluid Engine gives you two layouts, desktop and mobile, with no tablet and no custom breakpoints.
The content model has to get big
Wix Studio runs from 1,500 CMS items on Basic to 10,000,000 on Elite. Squarespace's blog and portfolio pages are unlimited but the structure they give you is fixed.

Pick Squarespace if…

A client will be editing it
The template handles responsive behaviour, spacing and type. Three added paragraphs and a photo will not break the layout, which is where a hand-positioned page fails.
You want one product, not a choice of two
Squarespace has a single editor. Wix makes you pick between the classic Wix Editor and Wix Studio before you start, on separate price sheets with different plan names for the same tiers.
The site is content-led from day one
A blog with categories and tags, plus portfolio pages with project sub-pages, on the cheapest plan. Wix's Editor pricing page does not break the CMS out per tier at all.
You want a way out, however partial
The .xml export is thin and excludes most of what you built. It is still more than Wix offers, which is nothing.

Four documented Wix limits.

Each one links to a dated Wix support article. These are product limits Wix publishes about itself, not opinions about it.

There is no way off Wix
Wix states that a site "must run on Wix's servers" and that "the SaaS architecture does not support external hosting since it uses Wix's proprietary technology". There is no HTML, CSS or code export. CMS collections come out as CSV and blog posts cannot be exported to another platform at all.
Source
The Figma import is Studio-only
The Figma plugin works in the Wix Studio Editor, not the classic Wix Editor, so which Wix you signed up for decides whether you have it. It is one-way with no re-sync, one page at a time, and there is no Studio-to-Figma direction.
Source
Half the design arrives as text
Menus and forms import as plain text and lose their functionality. Buttons only convert if they are text with a fill colour, so anything with a shape or an icon does not. Videos, galleries and input elements are not recognised and are rebuilt by hand in the editor.
Source
Two products, two price sheets
Wix Editor bills on Light, Core, Business and Business Elite. Wix Studio bills on Basic, Standard, Plus and Elite. Different names, different ladders, different editors, and Wix's own pricing footnote says prices and currency vary by location and that USD is displayed for reference only.
Source

And four documented Squarespace limits.

Same standard, same kind of source. A page that listed only one vendor’s limits would be a verdict dressed up as a comparison.

You cannot take the design with you
Export is a single .xml file aimed at WordPress. Custom CSS and code, style settings, portfolio pages, index pages, cover pages, album pages, store pages and product blocks are all excluded, and Squarespace states you cannot import that export into another Squarespace site.
Source
Custom code is paywalled
On Basic there is no code injection, no JavaScript or iframes in code blocks, no Developer Platform and no third-party integrations. All of it needs Core or above, which is the tier whose USD price is not published on a US-facing page.
Source
Two layouts, five animations
Fluid Engine gives exactly two layouts, desktop and mobile, with no tablet layout and no custom breakpoints. Site-wide animation is five presets with a slow, medium or fast speed control - no timeline, no scroll-scrub.
Source
No Figma path at all
There is no Figma import. A design made in Figma is rebuilt by hand inside Squarespace's editor, so the file you already approved is reference material rather than a starting point.
Source

What the money actually buys.

$1.23 a month apart. The differences that matter are not on the price page.

The free plan is the biggest single difference

Wix will put a page on the public internet without taking any money. It carries Wix ads and a wixsite.com address, storage is capped at 500MB and bandwidth at 1GB, and there is no custom domain — but it is live, and it stays live. Squarespace has no free plan of any kind. Every site starts on a 14-day trial, no card required, and at the end of it you either pay or the site goes away.

For anyone testing an idea, or for a student, that is not a tie-breaker. It is the whole decision.

Wix is two products and you choose before you start

The classic Wix Editor bills on Light, Core, Business and Business Elite. Wix Studio bills on Basic, Standard, Plus and Elite. Different names, different ladders, different editors, and the things a designer cares about — editable breakpoints, the Figma plugin, the CMS with published per-tier limits — live in Studio only.

So most Wix comparisons are wrong by construction, because they compare Squarespace against whichever Wix the writer happened to open. If you are choosing Wix as a designer, you are choosing Wix Studio, and the classic Editor ladder above is not your price list.

Neither one lets you take the design

Wix states that a site must run on Wix’s servers and that its architecture does not support external hosting. There is no HTML or CSS export at all. CMS collections come out as CSV and blog posts cannot be exported to another platform.

Squarespace does export, technically: one .xml file aimed at WordPress. It excludes custom CSS and code, style settings, portfolio pages, index pages, cover pages, album pages, store pages and product blocks, and Squarespace states it cannot be imported into another Squarespace site. So what you get out is roughly the text.

Squarespace wins this on a technicality and both answers are bad. If there is any chance the site outlives the platform, neither of these is the safe choice, and that is worth knowing before the second year of a subscription rather than after it.

The Figma question decides it for most designers

Squarespace has no Figma import of any kind, so an approved design is reference material you rebuild inside its editor. Wix Studio does import from Figma, and it is worth being precise about what that means: one-way with no re-sync, one page at a time, no Studio-to-Figma direction, menus and forms arriving as plain text and losing their functionality, and buttons converting only if they are text with a fill colour. Videos, galleries and input elements are not recognised at all.

A partial import you finish by hand still beats no import. But if the phrase “rebuild it in their editor” is what you were trying to avoid, note that both of these end there, just at different distances along the way.

Frequently asked.

Is Wix or Squarespace better?

For a designer working from a Figma file, Wix Studio, because it imports the design and lets you edit the breakpoints and Squarespace does neither. For a site a client will maintain, or one that is content and commerce first, Squarespace, because its templates hold their layout when someone who is not a designer edits them. For anyone who cannot pay yet, Wix, because it is the only one of the two that publishes for free.

Is Squarespace cheaper than Wix?

No, and not by enough to matter either way. Squarespace Basic is $19 a month billed annually; Wix Editor Light is $17.77 a month as a yearly subscription paid in full. Both vendors then serve their upper tiers by region, so a like-for-like comparison above the entry tier is not something either page will give you in one currency.

Does Squarespace have a free plan?

No. There is a 14-day trial with no card required, and then you pay. Wix does have a free plan, which publishes to a wixsite.com address with Wix ads on the page.

Can I move my site from Wix to Squarespace?

Not as a design. There is no HTML or CSS export from Wix and no importer on the Squarespace side, so the site is rebuilt page by page. Wix blog posts cannot be exported to another platform at all, which is the part that catches people with years of writing behind them. Get CMS collections out as CSV and take your own copies of images and copy before you cancel anything.

Which one is better for a portfolio?

Squarespace if the portfolio is case studies you keep adding to and you want it looking decent immediately — portfolio pages with project sub-pages are on the cheapest plan. Wix Studio if the portfolio is the design work itself and it has to look like nothing else, because you get the Figma import and editable breakpoints. Our personal website examples page covers what the good ones have in common either way.

Can I use custom code on either one?

On Squarespace, not on Basic: no code injection, no JavaScript or iframes in code blocks, no Developer Platform and no third-party integrations until Core or above. For Wix we could not confirm a per-tier answer from a primary source, so we are not stating one.

If neither answer fits, read this bit.

We make a Figma-to-web builder, so treat this section as what it is.

Both products above are small-business platforms that also build websites, and you pay for the whole platform whether or not you open the parts that sell things. If what you actually have is a designed set of pages with nothing to manage, Siter.io imports the Figma frame and publishes it from $7/mo billed yearly, priced per plan rather than per project: Plus at $12 a month publishes 3 sites.

The gaps are wider here than on most of our pages, because both products above have things we do not. No CMS or blog. No e-commerce — listed as upcoming, with no date. Three fixed breakpoints, which is fewer than Wix Studio gives you. The free plan builds and previews privately; publishing needs a paid plan, so Wix beats us outright on that one. What we do have is the Figma plugin on every plan including the free one, and an HTML download on Pro — which is more than either product above will give you.

If the site needs a content model or a store, pick one of the two above. Our Wix comparison and Squarespace comparison set out where each trade falls.

More honest comparisons

Also useful: Webflow vs Wix, Framer vs Squarespace, and Webflow vs Squarespace.

Wix vs Squarespace, from a designer’s point of view