Wix and Squarespace are the two builders most small business owners end up choosing between, and on the surface their pricing looks nearly identical. Both start under twenty dollars a month, both bundle hosting, and both advertise a free custom domain for the first year.
The differences show up below the surface: how the tiers are structured, what triggers an upgrade, what each platform charges extra for, and how the monthly billing option quietly inflates the price. This article walks through all of it so you can compare real annual costs, not headline rates.
One note on figures before we start. Both companies adjust pricing periodically and run frequent promotions, so every number here is presented as commonly listed at the time of writing. Confirm current rates on the pricing pages before you commit to an annual term.
The plan lineups, side by side
Both platforms sell four main tiers. The names do not map neatly onto each other, but the price bands do.
Wix plans as commonly listed
| Wix plan | Typical price (annual billing, per month) | Who it targets |
|---|---|---|
| Light | ~$17 | Basic brochure sites |
| Core | ~$29 | Small business, basic selling |
| Business | ~$36 | Growing stores |
| Business Elite | ~$159 | High-volume commerce |
Squarespace plans as commonly listed
| Squarespace plan | Typical price (annual billing, per month) | Who it targets |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | ~$16 | Simple sites, no selling |
| Core | ~$23 | Small business, basic selling |
| Plus | ~$39 | Established stores |
| Advanced | ~$99 | High-volume commerce |
At the entry level and the mid tiers, the two platforms are within a few dollars of each other. The gap opens at the top: Wix's highest tier is commonly listed well above Squarespace's, though most small businesses never need either.
The practical takeaway is that the tier you actually land on matters more than the platform. Most owners who plan to accept payments end up on Wix Core or Business, or Squarespace Core or Plus, which puts realistic spend in the range of roughly $280 to $470 per year on annual billing.
Annual vs monthly billing: the quiet premium
Both platforms advertise their annual rates, then charge meaningfully more if you pay month to month. The monthly premium commonly runs 25 to 60 percent depending on the tier.
| Billing choice | Typical effect on cost |
|---|---|
| Annual, paid upfront | Advertised rate, free domain first year commonly included |
| Month to month | Commonly 25 to 60 percent higher per month, domain often excluded |
Monthly billing is reasonable while you are testing a platform. Once you have committed, staying on monthly billing is one of the most common ways owners overpay, because the premium compounds every single month and neither platform will prompt you to switch.
There is a flip side. Annual plans are typically paid upfront and refund windows are short, commonly around 14 days. If you are not sure the platform fits, one or two months of monthly billing is cheap insurance before you lock in a year.
What Wix charges extra for
The subscription is the floor of your Wix cost, not the ceiling. Three categories commonly add to it.
Apps
Wix's App Market is large, and that is both its strength and its cost trap. Features that feel core to running a business, such as advanced booking, review widgets, pop-ups, or loyalty programs, are often third-party apps with their own subscriptions, commonly $3 to $30 per month each. Two or three apps can quietly add more than the plan itself.
Commerce and payment costs
Wix does not typically add its own platform commission on sales made through its business tiers, but payment processing fees still apply, commonly in the neighborhood of 3 percent plus a small per-transaction amount through Wix Payments or a connected processor. Processing fees exist everywhere; the point is to remember they are not included in the plan price.
Domains and email
The free domain commonly covers the first year only, with renewal in the range of $20 per year. Business email is not included on either platform; a Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 seat commonly adds $6 to $14 per month.
What Squarespace charges extra for
Squarespace takes the opposite approach to Wix: more is built in, less is bolted on, but the platform recovers money in a different place.
Transaction fees on lower tiers
Squarespace commonly charges its own transaction fee on sales made from lower-priced plans, historically in the range of 2 to 3 percent, on top of standard payment processing. Higher commerce tiers commonly drop the platform fee to zero. This is the single most important line item to check, because for a store doing even modest volume, the fee can exceed the price difference between tiers.
A quick illustration with round numbers: on $2,000 of monthly sales, a 3 percent platform fee is $60 per month. Upgrading to a tier with no platform fee commonly costs $15 to $25 more per month. Past a fairly low sales threshold, the upgrade pays for itself.
Extensions and add-ons
Squarespace has fewer third-party extensions than Wix, which limits both the flexibility and the surprise costs. Email marketing, scheduling, and member areas are commonly sold as add-ons with their own monthly fees, typically $5 to $30 each depending on volume.
Domains and email
Same pattern as Wix: the domain is commonly free for the first year on annual plans, then renews around $20 per year, and business email is a separate subscription through a provider such as Google.
The cost neither pricing page shows: your time
On subscriptions alone, a mid-tier Wix or Squarespace site commonly lands between $300 and $600 per year once you include a domain renewal, email, and one or two add-ons. That is genuinely inexpensive as far as it goes.
The larger cost on both platforms is identical: your hours. Building a competent small business site on either builder commonly takes 20 to 60 hours for a first-timer, spread across template selection, writing, image sourcing, mobile checks, and setup of forms and payments. Neither platform has a meaningful edge here. Squarespace's templates are more constrained, which reduces decisions; Wix's editor is more flexible, which increases them. In practice the time investment tends to come out roughly even.
If you have not already priced your own hours into the decision, read our breakdown of the true cost of DIY website builders at the true cost of DIY website builders before choosing either platform. For many owners, the honest comparison is not Wix vs Squarespace but DIY vs hiring out, and the numbers for that decision live in our guide to how much a website costs.
Which platform fits which owner
Since the subscription costs are close, the deciding factors are structural, not financial.
Squarespace tends to fit owners who want a polished site with minimal decisions: consultants, restaurants, photographers, service businesses with a portfolio and a contact form. The built-in design quality is high, the add-on sprawl is limited, and costs are predictable. Check the transaction fee against your expected sales volume before picking a tier.
Wix tends to fit owners who need specific functionality: bookings with complex rules, multilingual sites, niche integrations, or layouts that do not match a standard template. The App Market can solve problems Squarespace cannot, but budget for the apps honestly, because they are where Wix costs drift upward.
Neither fits well when the site is central to how you win customers and you have no time to maintain it. At that point the subscription savings are consumed by your hours, and a professionally built site starts to compare favorably on total cost.
The bottom line
Priced plan against plan, Wix and Squarespace are close enough that the sticker price should not decide anything. The real comparison is in the second layer of cost: Wix's app subscriptions against Squarespace's transaction fees and add-ons, plus the monthly billing premium if you avoid the annual commitment.
Run the numbers for your specific situation. Estimate your monthly sales, check the current transaction fee terms, list the features you know you need, and price the apps or add-ons that provide them. On both platforms, that second layer commonly matters more than the ten-dollar difference between the plans themselves.