6 Squarespace Alternatives: Should You Make Space For Other Platforms?

If it all seems like too much, Wix can do most of the heavy lifting for you with its ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) feature. Simply fill out a small questionnaire and Wix will create a website based on your answers!

Wix continues to place importance on its in-house marketing, ecommerce, and internal functionality instead of having users download third-party apps or plugins. An example of this since last year’s round of testing is its increased SEO capabilities with Wix now having Semrush integration. Users can now keyword search and keep an SEO checklist from Wix, making it easier than ever to keep track of your site’s metrics. And for those wanting to grow their site internationally, Wix now supports 180 languages instead of 100, meaning there’s now very little separating your site from the rest of the world.

With a larger focus on delivering quality templates, Wix’s templates are now more easily-navigated with a life-long appeal. It has over 800 templates across 80 subcategories, with standouts including:

• Business
• Online Store
• Photography
• Blogging
• Portfolio and CV
• Restaurants
• Architecture
• Hotels and B&Bs

Squarespace’s domination of design used to be undisputed, but now Wix is closing the gap, making it an excellent alternative if design is still your number one concern.

• Light: $16 per month, billed annually
• Core: $27 per month, billed annually (Basic ecommerce)
• Business: $32 per month, billed annually (Standard ecommerce)
• Business Elite: $159 per month, billed annually (Advanced ecommerce)

Finally, the Enterprise plan can only be accessed by calling, in which developers will give you a personal quote depending on the size of your company.

Admittedly, Wix is on the expensive side of website builders, getting a 3 out of 5 overall for value of money. Quality-wise, you get what you pay for, so if you don’t mind splashing a bit of extra cash, Wix can make it worthwhile.

Our testers, who got hands-on experience with all the builders featured in this list, commented that Wix was:

“More straightforward than Squarespace”

This is more than likely due to Wix’s complete creative freedom within the editor, since its drag-and-drop function lets you place any element wherever you want. Be careful though, because sometimes this freedom can be a bit overwhelming for beginners and can result in a cluttered site.

The main factors behind the increase are its knowledge center and the amount of help on offer vs its price plan. In our research, we noticed an increased amount of articles were readily available for support queries, with clear, directional communication, leading to a jump in the knowledge center score from a 4 to a perfect 5 out of 5, which in turn increased its help and support vs pricing metric.

This increase is due to a massive jump in Wix’s TrustPilot score from 1.6 to 4.1, showing that Wix has done a lot in the past year to regain users’ trust.

Much of Shopify’s capabilities come from its app market, however. With over 6,000 apps to choose from, you’ve got plenty of options.

Shopify can technically still be used to build normal, non-ecommerce websites, but we don’t recommend it. You’ll be paying for a ton of sales features you never use, plus an editor that isn’t as good with features that aren’t designed for normal websites. We say if you’re using Shopify, stick to online stores.

The issues come in Shopify having only 86 themes, with only ten of them being free. You can expect to be paying anywhere between $150 to $350 for just a theme! You can still edit them to reflect your brand, but they don’t have the same creative freedom as other builders.

• Basic Shopify: $29 per month
• Shopify: $79 per month
• Advanced Shopify: $299 per month

There is also the aforementioned Starter Plan, a lightweight plan optimized for mobile selling on social media. At the other end of the scale, you have Shopify Plus+, an enterprise plan for high-volume businesses which can run you up to $2000 per month. The plan you need will depend on what type of store you want to run, so it’s always best to compare pricing with Shopify.

Shopify ties with Wix in our research with a value-for-money score of 3 out of 5, compared to Squarespace’s 4.6 out of 5. While you get a lot of really amazing sales features, Shopify does also include extra fees such as a 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee on all purchases, as well as having to pay for any extra apps or themes. Still, if you’re set on opening an online store, Shopify is absolutely the best alternative to Squarespace.

For those making online stores, it does a very good job of predicting merchant needs exactly when needed, especially in regard to product inventories, so you can never miss a potential sale again. Neat!

• 24/7 phone support
• Social media support
• 24/7 live chat support
• Community forum
• Email support
• Help center
• Video tutorials
• Advanced specialist support

With promising acquisitions and new methods (like the Starter Plan) being used to tackle new markets and avenues, Shopify seems to be gunning to become a one-stop-shop for all ecommerce needs, from selling to marketing and shipping.

As we mentioned, GoDaddy prioritizes its speed and ease of use over features. In fact, its site speed actually rose by 7% in our most recent testing, now giving it a “good” rating – the only builder to achieve it.

That’s not to say GoDaddy has no features. You still have access to all the basics like blogging, SEO, and even ADI functionality. In fact, GoDaddy’s SEO remains one of its standout features, and our research saw a 33.3% rise in its SEO from a 3 last year to a 4 out of 5 this year.

Other features added to SEO are custom headers and URLs, meaning you can make your site more easily found online. Other recent improvements since the last time we tested the platform include a logo maker and the ability to add customer testimonials to your site.

GoDaddy’s template designs aren’t bad. In fact, some are actually quite stylish and sleek. But GoDaddy cannot keep the same consistency of template designs and themes across its 100+ templates like Wix or Squarespace can. In our most recent testing, GoDaddy’s templates score fell -25% from a 4 to a 3 out of 5, and its overall design score also fell by -5.8% from 4.3 to a 4.1 out of 5.

• Basic: $9.99 per month, billed annually
• Premium: $13.99 per month, billed annually
• Commerce: $14.99 per month, billed annually
• Commerce Plus: $29.99 per month, billed annually

GoDaddy also has a free plan, meaning you can use the builder for free, though you will have to upgrade to get access to some features.

“It was easy to use. I could find everything I needed to find. If I needed to make a simple website for a business this is the one I would choose.”

While GoDaddy may be super easy and lightning quick, don’t expect much in the way of leveling up your site beyond anything other than a simple website. The ability to scale and the overall functionality just isn’t on the level as say Squarespace or Shopify is.

You can now contact GoDaddy for help and support via email, and the GoDaddy knowledge center now has articles for video, GIF, and image tutorials.

We especially like its Google Analytics functionality, a really great feature included for such a smaller builder comparatively. In our research, its SEO actually rose a whole 100% in our rankings from a 2 to a 4 out of 5. That being said, its marketing and ecommerce functionalities could use some more love.

Due to its other life as a hosting provider, you can expect all the main hosting features to be included, such as a free SSL certificate and a free domain name.

Hostinger’s templates have really improved too, with over 130 templates covering a wide range of occupations and businesses. Its Smart Layout function was previously locked to its Adelina template but is now available on all its templates. Its grid-based layout lets you see all the live elements at once, making sure your design remains consistent even as you add new features.

Hostinger keeps things simple and streamlined. It may not be able to reach the heights of Squarespace, but sometimes less is more.

A single-plan website, you can get a combined web-hosting and website builder plan for $2.99 per month (billed annually).  For that price, you get 100 websites, unlimited traffic, 24/7 help and support, and a free email and domain ($7.99 value).

“It’s definitely improved since the last time I tested it. It was a lot easier to navigate.”

All the negatives were about its lack of advanced features and creative control as found on other builders like Squarespace.

Our testers did notice that finding articles through the knowledge center was more challenging than in previous years, resulting in a -33.33% fall in our rankings from a 3 to a 2 out of 5 for knowledge centers.

This is more than likely due to the whole rebrand from Zyro confusing a number of customers. Overall, Hostinger scores 2.8 out of 5 for customer satisfaction.

The reason for so few in-built features is because of WordPress’s primary focus on blogging. The tools you get included are:

• Social bookmarking
• RSS feed
• Archives
• Comments
• Search feature

While WordPress can certainly be used for things other than blogging, it’s a lot harder to twist into shape if you are just relying on in-built features. That said, we did notice a massive increase in WordPress.com’s marketing capabilities, a whole 300% increase from a 1 out of 5 to a 4 out of 5!

WordPress has over 300 themes but sadly you will have to pay for the majority of them, since they price anywhere from $30 to $80.

The free plan includes visitor stats, contact forms, spam protection, and 1GB of storage. If you think you’ll need more you can upgrade to the premium plans:

• Personal: $5 per month, billed annually
• Premium: $8 per month, billed annually
• Business: $25 per month, billed annually
• Commerce: $45 per month, billed annually

WordPress also has an Enterprise plan which starts at $25,000 and is used by Disney, Facebook, and CNN!

“You are initially presented with so much to do that I became flustered. I couldn’t work out how to do the simple things because there was so much in the way.”

That being said, it did rise 7.1% from last year, from 2.8 to 3 out of 5.  There is a knowledge center and community forums for frustrated builders, but with extremely limited topics and suggestions.

However, major losses in the opinion of its UX (as can be attained by our testers), dropping by -50% from 2 to 1 out of 5 have left WordPress.com leaving its customers less than satisfied.

It has no ADI, app market, or ecommerce capabilities, definitely making the scope for those who would be interested in this builder limited. However, it has added blogging since the last time we tested. Although not the best blogging (we rated it 3 out of 5), it shows that IONOS is committed to improving in the areas it’s lacking. Other improvements include its SEO and marketing.

IONOS’ greatest feature strength is its internationalization features. If you want your website to appeal to audiences all over the world and need it to be in multiple languages, then you’re in luck. Available on all plans, IONOS’ multilingual abilities stretch to over 60 languages. In our research, we awarded it a 5 out of 5, beating out Squarespace who we only awarded a 2 out of 5.

“Such a limited range of templates and they look really dated.”

The template design rose by 33.3% from a 3 to a 4 out of 5 in our research. However, the editor is still clunky to use and the choices of stock images aren’t great either. If you love Squarespace’s designs and want a similar aesthetic from your new builder, we don’t recommend choosing IONOS

• Starter: $1 per month for 12 months, then $5 per month
• Plus: $5 per month for 12 months, then $10 per month
• Pro: $10 per month for 23 months, then $15 per month

As you can see, IONOS still remains on the cheaper side. In fact, it used to beat Squarespace for value for money last year in our rankings, with 4.2 out of 5 to Squarespace’s 4. However, since last year Squarespace has improved its value score to 4.6, while IONOS has dropped to 3.1. All the builders have put up their prices, but not necessarily their included features to match. IONOS is a builder that, even though cheap, doesn’t provide enough value for money that a slightly more expensive builder could provide.

On top of that, IONOS has no free plan or free trial. If you want to take it for a test drive, you’re going to have to pay upfront.

“IONOS’ editor was pretty easy-to-use and intuitive – it had some really nice elements and flexibility when designing”

However, all felt that there was something lacking in the editing of IONOS. Unlike Squarespace, many of our testers felt there was no creative feeling in the design and ease of use, that everything felt very clinical and matter-of-fact. If you have a real eye for design, IONOS might not be the alternative for you.

The knowledge center especially was a large improvement, adding more articles covering a range of options plus refining their clarity for all readers.