Wix, Squarespace, Shopify or WordPress?
There is no best platform. There is a right one for what you are actually doing, and a wrong one that costs you either a fee every month forever or a rebuild in two years. Here is how we choose, including the times we tell people not to hire us.
Written by Ronnie Foster, who runs Fernvie. Last updated August 10, 2026. We have built and looked after work for Smith+Nephew, Hallmark Channel, Habitat for Humanity and the Downtown Memphis Commission, and for a lot of small shops and one truck outfits whose names you would not know.
The one minute answer
If you read nothing else, find your situation:
- Selling physical productsShopify. Not close. Everything else bolts a store onto a website, and it shows the first time you deal with inventory, tax or a refund.
- A service business, and you will edit it yourselfSquarespace. The editor is the one non technical people actually keep using six months later.
- A service business, and you will not touch it after launchA custom build. You stop paying a monthly fee for an editor you never open, and the site is faster.
- Publishing constantly, or you need it to do something unusualWordPress. Nothing else is as flexible, and nothing else asks as much of you.
- You have almost no money and need something todayWix or Squarespace, cheapest paid plan, and do it yourself. We will still tell you this even though it earns us nothing.
Prices below were checked in August 2026 and are the published rates on annual billing. Every one of these companies changes them. Check before you commit.
Shopify
What it is genuinely good at. Selling things. Inventory, variants, shipping rules, sales tax, discount codes, abandoned carts, refunds. Every one of those is a problem you do not think about until you have it, and Shopify has already solved all of them. The app ecosystem means most things you will ever want already exist.
Where it hurts. It is a store first and a website second. Building a normal page on it is more awkward than it should be. And the fee structure has a sting most people miss: Shopify charges an extra transaction fee, on top of your card processor, if you do not use Shopify Payments. That was 2% on Basic when we checked, which on $10,000 of monthly sales is $200 a month for the privilege of using your own processor.
What it really costs. About $39 a month on Basic, $105 on Grow, $399 on Advanced, with card fees around 2.9% plus 30 cents online. Apps add up faster than the plan does. A realistic small store runs $60 to $150 a month all in.
Best case: you sell physical products and want to stop thinking about the mechanics. Worst case: you sell one thing occasionally and are paying $39 a month plus app fees for a shop you could have run through a payment link.
Squarespace
What it is genuinely good at. Looking good with no effort, and staying that way. The templates are the most restrained of any builder, which matters: it is genuinely hard to make a Squarespace site ugly, and that is not true of the alternatives. The editor is the one we see non technical owners still using a year later.
Where it hurts. The restraint that keeps it tidy also means you hit a wall. When you want something the template does not do, the answer is often that you cannot. It is slower than a built site, and there is no meaningful way to fix that yourself.
What it really costs. Roughly $16 to $99 a month depending on plan, with the middle plans around $23 to $39. It does let you take payments on the cheapest plan, with a transaction fee attached, which Wix does not.
Best case: a service business, a handful of pages, an owner who wants to swap a photo themselves without calling anybody. Worst case: you needed one specific thing it will not do, and you find that out after the site is built.
Wix
What it is genuinely good at. Doing everything, in one place, cheaply. Bookings, restaurant menus, memberships, a basic store. If your business has an unusual requirement and you have no budget, Wix has probably shipped a feature for it. The free plan is real, which makes it the cheapest way to find out whether you like building a site at all.
Where it hurts. Two things, and both are structural. It is the slowest of the major builders, and page speed is now something Google measures and buyers feel. And you cannot take a Wix site with you. There is no meaningful export. Leaving means rebuilding from scratch, which is a decision you make at signup without knowing it.
What it really costs. About $17 a month for the entry plan, $29 for the one that lets you sell, $39 for the business plan. The free plan carries Wix advertising, which on a business site reads exactly as it is.
Best case: a very small budget and an unusual need Wix has a feature for. Worst case: you grow, you want to leave, and you find out the exit costs a full rebuild.
WordPress
What it is genuinely good at. Anything. It runs a large share of the web, every capability exists as a plugin, and you own the files outright. If you publish constantly, or you need the site wired into something specific, nothing else comes close.
Where it hurts. It is the only one on this list that is genuinely yours to maintain, and most small businesses discover what that means the hard way. Plugins conflict. Updates break things. An unmaintained WordPress site is the most commonly hacked thing on the internet, and we have cleaned up more than one. It needs somebody, either you or a paid plan, permanently.
What it really costs. The software is free. Hosting runs $5 to $30 a month for a small site, plus premium plugins and a theme, plus maintenance. Budget $30 to $60 a month realistically, more if somebody else looks after it.
Best case: a content heavy site, or a business with a genuinely specific requirement, and somebody who will keep it updated. Worst case: a five page site nobody has logged into for two years, quietly out of date and one plugin flaw from being defaced.
A built site, which is what we do
So you know where our interest lies, plainly. We build sites as code and host them on infrastructure that costs us almost nothing, which is how a build is $995 rather than $8,000.
What it is genuinely good at. Speed, ownership and cost after launch. There is no monthly platform fee, nothing to update, and no company that can change its pricing on you. You get the files. If you never speak to us again, the site keeps working.
Where it hurts. You cannot drag a section around yourself. Text, photos and hours, yes, we show you. Rearranging a page means asking somebody. If you are the kind of owner who likes to fiddle with the layout on a Sunday, you will find that frustrating and you should buy Squarespace instead. We would rather say that now than after you have paid.
Best case: you want it right, then you want to get back to running your business. Worst case: you actually did want to redesign it yourself every few months.
The four things nobody mentions until it is too late
- Can you leave?Ask before you sign up, not after. WordPress and a built site come with you. Shopify and Squarespace let you export your content. Wix effectively does not, and that is a rebuild you have already agreed to without being told.
- The fee on top of the feeShopify's extra charge for not using its own payments is the clearest example, but every platform has something. Read what happens when you use your own processor.
- Speed is not cosmetic any moreGoogle measures it and buyers feel it on a phone on cell data. Builders are heavier than built sites, and there is a limit to how much of that you can fix from inside one.
- Who actually owns the account?If an agency set it up under their own login, you do not own your website. Get it transferred into your name while everyone is still getting along.
What we would move, and what we would leave alone
We get asked to migrate sites constantly, and the honest answer is often no.
- Worth movingA Wix or Squarespace site that has outgrown what the platform will do, or one that is slow enough to be costing you customers. A WordPress site nobody has maintained in years.
- Not worth movingA tidy Squarespace site that does its job. Moving it gets you a faster page and a smaller bill, and it will not by itself get you more work. Spend the money on being findable instead.
- Move for the right reason"I am tired of looking at it" is a real reason and we will not pretend otherwise. It is just not the same reason as "it is costing me money", and the two deserve different budgets.
Not sure which one you are even on?
Our free check reads your front page the way Google does and tells you what it is built on, along with what is working and what is not. About eight seconds, no logins, and it will tell you plainly whether the platform is your problem or whether something else is.
Run the free check it names the platform too
Check my site freeCommon questions
Is Wix bad?
No. It is the cheapest way to get a real site up, and for a business with no budget that is worth a lot. The problem is not quality, it is that leaving is close to impossible, so the decision you make on day one is more permanent than it looks.
Can I move from Wix to something else?
Your content, yes, by hand. The site itself, no. There is no export that produces a working site elsewhere, so a move off Wix is a rebuild. That is worth knowing before you start, and it is why we ask what you are on before quoting anything.
Do I need Shopify to sell a few things?
Probably not. If you sell a handful of items occasionally, a payment link on a normal page does the job for nothing a month. Shopify earns its fee once inventory, shipping and tax become real work.
Is WordPress safe?
Maintained, yes. Unmaintained, it is the single most commonly compromised software on the web, because it is the most common. The security question is really a maintenance question, and the honest version is whether anybody will be doing it.
Which is best for Google?
None of them, and any answer claiming otherwise is selling something. Google ranks pages, not platforms. Speed and structure differ enough to matter at the margin, and a well set up Squarespace site beats a neglected custom one every time.
What do you build on?
We write sites as code and host them on infrastructure that costs almost nothing to run, which is why a build is $995 rather than $8,000. We also work on WordPress, Shopify, Wix and Squarespace, so when we say a platform is the right answer for you, it is not because it is the only one we know. See what a website actually costs.