Website builders · Comparison
Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress.com: WordPress.com 7.9, Wix 7.2, Squarespace 6.3; a small business site costs $4 to $19 a month
We read the pricing, trust, legal and help center pages of three website builders on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. What a small business site with a blog costs, where selling, editors and exports sit, and who should pick which.
On this page9 sections
On six indicators read from each vendor's public pages, WordPress.com scores 7.9 out of 10, Wix 7.2 and Squarespace 6.3. For our reference scenario, one small business site on a domain you already own, without the builder's branding or ads, with a contact form and a blog, for one editor, billed annually, WordPress.com Personal costs $4 a month, Wix Light $17 (US price) and Squarespace Basic $19. WordPress.com stands out for price, plugins and a portable export; Wix for multilingual, collaborators and a broad compliance file; Squarespace for selling products, services and memberships from its first plan.
All three are in the Good band, Squarespace near its lower edge at 6.3. The scores measure what the public pages commit to, not how the editors feel to use or how fast the sites load, and we did not sign up for any of them.
At a glance
| Wix | Squarespace | WordPress.com | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Drag-and-drop builder with business apps and multilingual | Template site that sells from the first plan | Managed WordPress with plugins and unlimited users |
| Free option | Free plan with Wix ads; 14-day money-back guarantee | 14-day trial, no card | Free plan with ads; 14-day refund on annual plans |
| Reference scenario (annual) | $17 on Light (US price) | $19 on Basic | $4 on Personal |
| Month to month | Offered, price not shown | $25 on Basic | $9 on Personal |
| Editors on the scenario plan | 2 collaborators | 2 contributors | Unlimited users |
| Selling online | From Core ($29) | Every plan (2% fee on Basic) | Payment buttons from Premium ($8), store from Business ($25) |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Both stated | Neither stated | Neither stated |
| Export | CMS and contacts to CSV; no blog or site export | WordPress XML of layout pages and one blog | Posts, pages and comments as XML; full site with a plugin |
| Score (public pages) | 7.2 Good | 6.3 Good | 7.9 Good |
What the public pages show
Wix sets prices by country. In the US, Light is $17 a month on yearly billing and covers a custom domain, a free domain voucher for a year, removal of Wix branding, 2 GB of storage and 2 collaborators. Payments, ecommerce, scheduling and memberships start on Core ($29). Wix Multilingual, site search and password-protected pages name no plan requirement.
Squarespace has no free plan but a 14-day trial with no card. Basic is $19 a month billed yearly ($25 month to month) and already sells products, services, courses and memberships, with a 2% store fee and a 7% fee on digital content; higher plans lower those fees and Core adds unlimited contributors and custom code.
WordPress.com Personal is $4 a month billed yearly ($9 month to month) and removes ads, adds a free domain for the first year and allows plugins. Forms, site search, paid content and unlimited users are on every plan; backups, staging, SFTP and the WooCommerce store start on Business ($25).
Strengths and things to know
Wix. Strengths: Wix Multilingual without an add-on fee; SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1 and a DPA in the terms; 2 collaborators and a site history that shows who changed what on Light; a 14-day money-back guarantee on yearly and monthly plans. Things to know: the site cannot be hosted elsewhere and blog posts cannot be exported; selling and memberships start on Core; the plans page shows only yearly prices, set by country.
Squarespace. Strengths: selling and memberships on every plan; a 14-day trial without a card; 2 contributors on Basic and unlimited from Core; unlimited bandwidth and storage. Things to know: the pages we read state no SOC 2 or ISO 27001; the export covers layout pages and one blog only; multilingual sites go through the Weglot integration; monthly plans are not refunded; and the page says paying annually saves up to 36%, while the listed prices work out to 24% to 29%.
WordPress.com. Strengths: the lowest price for the scenario; forms, search and paid content on every plan; plugins from Personal; a full XML export of posts and pages. Things to know: the renewal price is filled in by a script and is not in the page text; no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is stated and the DPA is requested by email; backups and staging start on Business; and the plan table lists one-click restores on Personal while the restore guide says Business or Commerce.
Pricing reality
Reference scenario: one small business website on a domain you already own, without the builder's branding or ads, with a contact form that collects submissions and a blog, for one editor, billed annually, at US list prices before tax, without online selling.
| Service | Plan | Monthly cost | A year | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress.com | Personal | $4 | $48 | Pricing page; assumes a block theme, on which the footer credit can be removed on any plan |
| Wix | Light | $17 | $204 | US price in the plans page's own price table and the archived US page of Oct 7, 2026 |
| Squarespace | Basic | $19 | $228 | Archived US pricing page of Oct 13, 2026 |
The yearly figures are 12 × the monthly price (our arithmetic). Month to month, Personal costs $9 and Squarespace Basic $25; Wix offers monthly billing but does not show its price on the plans page. All three include a free domain for the first year on annual terms, which then renews at the domain price.
The entry price is not the whole bill. Selling online is included on Squarespace Basic with a 2% store fee, starts on Wix Core at $29 and needs WordPress.com Business at $25 for a WooCommerce store (Premium at $8 adds payment buttons). For more people, WordPress.com allows unlimited users on every plan, Wix lists 2 site collaborators on Light and 5 on Core, and Squarespace 2 contributors on Basic and unlimited from Core.
How we scored them
Every product in this category is scored on the same six indicators, read from the vendor's own pricing, trust, legal and help center pages, with fixed formulas. The overall score is the plain mean. Our methodology page explains how these scores work.
| Indicator | Wix | Squarespace | WordPress.com |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing and plan clarity | 8 | 9 | 7 |
| Free plan, trial and refunds | 8.5 | 6 | 10 |
| Price for a small business site | 5.9 | 5.5 | 10 |
| Site features | 8.3 | 9.2 | 8.5 |
| Security and compliance | 9.3 | 3.3 | 3.3 |
| Ownership and exit | 3.3 | 4.8 | 8.5 |
| Overall | 7.2 | 6.3 | 7.9 |
WordPress.com leads on price, its free plan and exit, while its security score is held down because the pages we read state no SOC 2 or ISO 27001. Wix earns the highest security score in the comparison and loses most on exit, because neither the site nor its blog can be exported. Squarespace scores highest on features, with selling and memberships on its first plan, and lower on security and exit.
Also in this category
Webflow scores 7.6: a visual designer with a full CMS, site search, its own SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 and a code export path; a site with a blog costs $25 a month on Premium billed yearly, and extra editors are paid seats. Framer scores 6.2: a design canvas with a small CMS for $10 a month on Basic billed yearly and SOC 2 and ISO 27001 stated; editors and languages cost $20 a month each, and some pages disagree on domains, refunds and export.
Who should choose which
- Choose WordPress.com if you want a custom-domain site with a blog at the lowest yearly price, unlimited users and a portable export. Look elsewhere if a client asks for SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or you need a store on the entry plan.
- Choose Wix if you want bookings, payments and multilingual pages in one drag-and-drop builder, with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 stated. Look elsewhere if you may want to move the site or its blog to another platform later.
- Choose Squarespace if you want a designed template site that sells products, services or memberships from day one. Look elsewhere if you need a complete export or a vendor-stated SOC 2.
Bottom line
From public pages alone, WordPress.com leads at 7.9: a small business site with a blog costs $4 a month billed yearly, with plugins, unlimited users and a full export of posts and pages. Wix follows at 7.2 with multilingual, collaborators and the broadest compliance file, at the cost of lock-in. Squarespace, at 6.3, is the one that sells from its first plan. Check the renewal price and the plan that has the selling, editors or exports you need, not only the entry price.
How we checked
We read the vendors' pricing pages and plan tables, trust and security pages, legal terms and help center articles on Oct 16, 2026. Wix sets prices by country, so we took its US prices from the plans page's own price table and checked them against the Internet Archive copy of the US page of Oct 7, 2026; Squarespace's pricing page showed Korean won from our location, so we used its Internet Archive copy of Oct 13, 2026. We did not sign up, start a trial or publish a site. Facts the pages did not state, such as WordPress.com's renewal price, are left out rather than guessed. Every figure is on the vendors' pages as of that date or, where marked, computed from them.
