Wix Vs Square Space Vs Word Press Which Is Best For Your Business?

In today's era, an online presence is the only way to boost your business. Businesses, whether large or small, are focusing on the importance of having a website. Be it personal websites, informational websites, or business websites, all can be created using website builders in combination with several digital products.

In this article, we will discuss the rivalry between the most popular website builders. So get ready for Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress. We will talk about each one individually, get to know the features and pricing as well as conclude how WordPress is the best choice in terms of website building features and marketing tools.

What Is a Website Builder?

A website builder is a program that enables you to design and build your website without having to know how to code. In other words, you don't need to learn HTML, CSS, or PHP to build a website using a website builder. Instead, you simply drag and drop elements onto your page.

Website builders allow you to create professional-looking websites within minutes. They also offer advanced functionality like email marketing, social media integration, SEO, analytics, and much more. Some even include eCommerce solutions so you can sell products on your website.

Let's compare the three most popular website builders which are

• Wix
• Squarespace
• WordPress

Wix

Wix is an online company that started in the year 2006 intending to provide a better way to create websites and apps. It is a web builder that is cloud-based, providing web hosting and designing services.

The Wix website builder is easy to use. It’s intuitive and doesn’t require any technical knowledge or programming skills. You can create a professional-looking website in minutes, without having to hire an expensive web designer.

You don't have to worry about installing anything or uploading files. All you need to do is select your desired template and start designing. The user interface is very clean and easy to understand. There are many pre-designed layouts and themes to choose from. There is a drag-and-drop design feature that makes it easier to change the layout of your website.

Features

Wix offers great features such as:

• Social Media Integration (SMI): Wix's social media integration allows you to integrate your website with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. You can easily share posts from your blog directly with these networks.

• Wix Email Marketing: We have been working on a new feature for our customers called Wix Email Marketing. This feature allows you to send emails to your subscribers.

• Responsive Design Feature: The Wix responsive design feature allows you to create a website that adjusts to the screen size of your visitors. The result is a clean, easy-to-read layout that looks great on any device.

• Analytics Feature: The Wix analytics feature is a powerful tool that allows you to track your website traffic, conversions, and more. It’s very easy to use and it can be used in conjunction with other tools like Google Analytics or Facebook Insights.

• Blogging Features: Wix offers very basic features for blogging with simple menu options.

Pricing

Wix segregates its pricing plans into two categories which are:

Website Plan- This plan starts from free to $39 per month.

Business & Ecommerce Plan- These plans range from $23 to $49 per month.

Advantages

Wix has many advantages over the other two website builders we mentioned above. Some of them include:

• Easy to Use: You don't need any technical expertise to set up a website using Wix. All you need to do is sign up for a free account, select a template, add content, and publish.

• No Technical Skills Required: If you want to create a professional-looking website but don't know how to code, Wix is the perfect solution for you. No coding skills are required to use this platform.

• Free Trial Option: Wix gives you a 14 day free trial period during which time you can test all the features of the platform. After that, you will have to pay $9 per month if you wish to continue using the service.

Disadvantages

• Wix's Drag & Drop Interface: While Wix makes it easy to create a website, there is no doubt that it lacks flexibility. For example, you cannot change the background color of a page or edit text once it's published.

• Ecommerce Features: Wix is not suitable for everyone. The e-commerce features of Wix are not fully functional to handle larger businesses.

• Blogging Limitations: You cannot add images to your post. You cannot embed videos. And you cannot link out to another website. If you want to include links to external sites, you must first upload them to Wix storage space, and then copy and paste the URL when you publish your post.

Another limitation is that you cannot edit your content once it has been published. So, if you want to change something after publishing, you will have to delete the old post and republish it.

There are many reasons why Wix is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to build a website. However, if you already have some experience with web development, you might prefer to use another platform instead.

Squarespace

Squarespace enables you to create a website, portfolio, or online store. It gives direction to your ideas by offering a wide range of professional templates to choose from. You can also customize the template according to your needs.

Squarespace is a website-building tool that lets you easily create beautiful and functional websites without coding skills. With Squarespace's intuitive interface, you can manage your site's content, images, videos, blog posts, and pages — all while staying organized and focused on what matters. Whether you're looking for a simple landing page or a business website.

As compared to Wix, Squarespace is slightly technical. However, its new streamlined design and easy-to-use tools, including drag & drop site creation, live editing, and mobile apps help create websites faster.

Features

This is a list of features that are available on Squarespace. You can find more information about each feature in the documentation for that feature.

Basic Site Builder: The Basic Site Builder or style editor allows you to create and manage your site without any programming knowledge. This includes creating a homepage, adding pages, uploading media files, and setting up email addresses.

Advanced Site Builder: The Advanced Site Builder provides additional features such as:

• Adding social sharing buttons:
• Creating custom CSS stylesheets
• Adding Google Analytics code
• Creating and managing multiple domains
• Live Editing

With Live Edit, you can make changes to your site right away. The changes you make appear immediately on your site.

• Mobile Apps: With the Mobile App, you can access your site from anywhere using your phone or tablet.

• Custom Domain Name: If you need a custom domain name, you can purchase one through Squarespace.

Blogging Features: In the Wix vs Squarespace battle, Squarespace takes the lead by providing moderate blogging features; unlinking Wix with basic blogging features.

Pricing

Basic Plan- This plan costs around $16 to $26 per month.

Ecommerce Plan- The cost is between $30 to $46 per month.

Squarespace has the most expensive plans when compared to Wix and WordPress.

Advantages

• All-in-one platform: Website analytics, plugins, apps, and widgets all are in-built in Squarespace. This gives an edge in troubleshooting your website.

• Bundle Approach: Squarespace provides optimized hosting, backups, and redundancies. The subscription covers security, hosting, site, and redundancies so you don't require multiple service providers.

• User-Dashboard: With Squarespace, there is no more logging in and out of different accounts. Just log into your dashboard once and then access the same tools anytime you want.

• Complete Control: You get control over your site every step of the way. You can upload photos, videos, and documents directly to your site.

Disadvantages of Squarespace

Squarespace has some unsupported features, such as

• You cannot upload files larger than 2 GB in size. This means that you cannot upload large image files like JPGs, PNGs, etc.
• You cannot add widgets to your site. Widgets are small pieces of HTML code that allow users to display certain content on their sites. For example, they
• Limited Design Templates and Plugins. Squarespace offers beautiful design templates, but it is limited to 40 plug-and-play templates which are lesser than Wix offering 500 design options, and WordPress has an unlimited collection of free as well as paid themes.

• Restricted Usage. Square space has a section-based editor, making it more complex to use for websites than Wix.

WordPress

It is one of the oldest platforms available to the people. This software was first released in 2003. It allows you to publish content and share it with others. It provides the facility to add thousands of plugins to make it more powerful than any other website-building tool.

The major benefits of using WordPress are that it is free to use and install. It is compatible with almost every device. It is open-source and free to edit. It does not require any technical know-how to operate it.

Features

• WordPress Themes: The WordPress theme is easy to use and understand. It has a very simple interface, with only two main tabs at the top: Appearance and Settings. The Appearance tab includes all the options for customizing your site's look and feel.

The most popular blogging platform in the world. It's used by millions of people to create blogs and websites. WordPress powers more than 27% of all web content on the internet today.

• Range of Plugins: WordPress offers Premium Plugins as well as other suitable plugins such as

• WordPress Social Media Integration Plugin: This plugin integrates social media platforms into your WordPress website. It gives you access to popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can share your blog posts on these sites using widgets provided by the plugin.

• WordPress Backup & Restore Plugin: This plugin enables you to easily back up and restore your entire WordPress installation. It automatically backs up your database every hour and restores it when needed. You can schedule automatic backups at specific times.

• WordPress SEO Pack: WordPress SEO pack is a free plugin that makes sure your website is optimized for search engines. It checks your website and fixes issues found by Google.

• WordPress Security Plugin: This plugin protects your website against hacking attempts and malware attacks. It blocks malicious scripts and prevents hackers from accessing your files.

• WordPress Web Server Plugin: If you want to host multiple websites on one server then this plugin will be very helpful for you. It lets you install more than one version of WordPress on the same web server.

• WordPress Multisite Network Plugin: If you have multiple websites running on the same domain name then this plugin will make managing all those sites easier. With this plugin, you can manage your network of sites from a single dashboard.

• WordPress Theme Framework Plugin: A theme framework plugin is a collection of themes bundled together. This makes it easier to develop new themes without having to start from scratch. Themes built using a theme framework are usually better designed and offer more functionality.

• WordPress Theme Customizer Plugin: A customizer plugin adds a live preview feature to your WordPress admin area. This means that as you edit your website’s settings, you can see them in action immediately.

• WordPress User Management Plugin: With this plugin, you can add users to your website. You can set their roles and permissions. You can even assign different user groups to different levels of access.

• WordPress Video Player Plugin: With this plugin, you can embed videos on your website. You can choose between three different video players. These include YouTube, Vimeo, or HTML5 player.

• Blogging Feature: WordPress is the only platform out of the three offering an unlimited blogging feature.

Pricing

Basic Plan- WordPress offers a plan with a monthly cost starting from only $3.95.

Ecommerce Plan- The monthly cost of an eCommerce plan starts from $6.95.

WordPress Ecommerce

We’ve all heard of WordPress, but have you ever considered using it for eCommerce? It is a powerful platform that can be used to create an online store. In this article, we will look at some of the best WordPress eCommerce plugins available.

• WordPress Product Review Plugin: This plugin allows you to review products on your site. It has a drag-and-drop interface where you can select products from various categories. Once selected they appear on your page with reviews written by other customers.

• WordPress Ecommerce Plugin: This plugin offers many features including product reviews, ratings, price comparison, wishlist, coupons, etc. It also includes several payment gateways for online payments such as PayPal and Stripe

Why Choose WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system, which means that it allows you to easily create and manage your website. It’s also an open-source project, meaning that anyone can contribute to the development of this software. This makes WordPress one of the most flexible CMS platforms.

WordPress has a large community of developers and users. There are thousands of plugins and themes that allow you to customize your website to meet your needs. With so much support from the community, you don't need to worry about compatibility issues when installing new plugins or themes.

How Does WordPress Work?

WordPress works on the concept of templates. A template is a file that contains all the HTML code required to display a specific type of webpage. When someone visits your website, the server looks up the URL and finds the corresponding template. If the template exists, then the server displays the contents of the template.

If you choose to build your website using WordPress, you can make changes to the way your website appears without having to edit any HTML files. All of the changes are made through the WordPress interface.

WordPress is thought to be a platform for blogging only. It encompasses the features of a website builder, blogging tool as well as a content management system. The ease of creating different websites like informational websites, personal websites or business website makes it stand out in the list of popular website builders.

Its distinct and powerful features have made it the first choice of notable names like The New York Times, Disney, Sony, and Facebook to optimize its websites.

Here are the advantages of making WordPress your first choice

• WordPress is a Free Software: WordPress is a Free Software application that can be used to create websites or blogs with free usage, modifications, downloads, and installation. The only pre-requisite to installing WordPress is to have a domain name and hosting. Let's have a quick look at the domain name and web hosting.

•  Domain Name System: The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system that associates various information with domain names assigned to computers on the Internet. It was originally developed by the United States Department of Defense in 1983 and published as RFC 882.

• Web Hosting: Web hosting is the service that allows you to publish your website on the internet. It is a service provided by web hosts, which are companies that offer space and resources for websites. The company will provide you with a domain name (the address of your site), email addresses, databases, and other services. You do not own these things; they belong to the host.
• Simple Setup: setting up a WordPress site is simple. All you need is FTP software such as Filezilla. Once installed, you can upload files directly into your website's root directory.
• Multiple Languages: WordPress supports multiple languages. You can create multilingual websites
• Ease of Use: WordPress is easy to use and a great platform for building your website. Its ease of use makes it an attractive option for many people who want to build their blog or business site, especially for beginners. There are many resources available online to help you get started quickly. Having a simple dashboard with multiple options in the sidebar allows creating a web page or post, customizing your website as well as adding navigation menus.

• WordPress Updates: Talking about ease of use, the WordPress Updates can be installed with a click.

• WordPress Plugins: WordPress has a range of plugins that can be updated by the click of a button too. Plugins are required for backups, most of the backups are free as well. The plugins enable an auto backup set up, which stores back up in either Google Drive or Dropbox.

• WordPress Security: WordPress helps make your website secure, through best practices.
• Flexible Content Management System: WordPress allows you to change almost everything about your website including its look and feel. You can change fonts, colors, images, and layout. It has thousands of themes to choose from for all kinds of websites.

Drag and drop builders like SeedProd are also available for full customization to create all sorts of landing pages.

Plugins allow you to customize your WordPress site even further. Plugins are similar to applications. They're software programs designed to extend the functionality of websites by adding new functions such as membership area, analytics, and contact forms.

There are premium plugins as well as free plugins available for you to choose from. To keep it simple for you let's discuss a few basic plugins.

• WordPress Contact Form Plugin: The WordPress contact form plugin is a free and easy-to-use contact form for your website. It allows you to create an unlimited number of forms with different fields, send them to the email address specified in each form or to any other email addresses you specify. You can add a captcha code to prevent spamming.

• WordPress Search Engine Optimization Plugin: This plugin provides you with some useful features to help improve the search engine optimization of your WordPress website.

• WordPress Analytics Plugin: The WordPress analytics plugin is a free and open-source tool that allows you to track the performance of your website. It helps you monitor visitor activity on your site, including how many visitors are landing on each page, where they come from, and how long they stay on each page. You can also see how many visits your posts receive and how much time users spend reading your content.

• Easily Manageable: WordPress offers a wide range of features that make managing content fast and efficient. You can manage posts, pages, comments, categories, and tags.
•  Ideal for SEO: WordPress facilitates search engine optimization to drive more traffic to your website. The codes used by WordPress enable the websites created with it to rank higher. It is advisable to use the search engine optimization plugin as it includes:

• Keyword Research Tool - Find out what keywords are being used to find your website.

• Meta Tag Generator - Generate meta tags for your website.

• Page Speed Optimizer - Improve the speed of your website.

• XML Sitemap - Create an XML

•  Secure Platform: Security is one of the most important aspects of running a successful website. WordPress comes with built-in security features that protect against hacking attacks. It is a safe platform to develop and deploy your web applications and is being used by millions of people around the world to build their websites.
• WordPress is an Open-Sourced Software: It is not owned by any company or organization but developed by an individual or group of individuals who are willing to share their work with others. Also, open-source software can be used for free.
• Easy To Upgrade: If you want to upgrade your website to a new version, all you have to do is download the latest version from WordPress.org and install it.

Disadvantages

• If you want to be able to solve any problem that comes up when using WordPress, then you must learn at least basic HTML/CSS code.
• To get full functionality from WordPress, you may sometimes need to install plugins.
• You might want to consider a paid plan if you're going to use a large volume of storage.
• WordPress isn’t the most secure blogging platform out there. That’s because it doesn’t come with built-in security measures like those found in some other blogging platforms.

Conclusion

Now that we know about the distinguishing factors of each website builder. It is the right time to choose the website builder which offers premium themes while being cost-effective according to your needs. WordPress offers advanced features with a user-friendly dashboard and installation at a click. It provides design flexibility as well as extra features to make your website stand out from the competition. That is why we believe that Word Press is the superior builder.

Osborne Digital Marketing is your one-stop solution for WordPress setup and installation. We help create professional websites through our web design services. We will take care of your search engine optimization through our unique SEO strategies.