The cheap, easy choice gets expensive.
WordPress vs Wix or Squarespace is the question behind a lot of the first conversations we have around Wolverhampton. The builders are brilliant at one thing: getting a website live this afternoon. Pick a template, drag a few boxes in, pay monthly, done. For a lot of the clinics, trades and small brands we talk to, that is how the first website happened.
Then the business grows and the website doesn’t. Since spring 2025 we have moved three clients off those platforms and onto WordPress: a dance academy off GoDaddy, a sports therapy clinic off Squarespace and a perfume brand off Shopify. If you are weighing up WordPress vs Wix or Squarespace, here is why we build on WordPress, and what happened to each of them.
You own it, you don’t rent it
WordPress is open-source software. Put it on any host you like and the whole site, design, content and database, is yours to move, back up or hand to another developer. It runs 39.4% of all websites (W3Techs, November 2026).
A builder is the opposite. Wix’s own help centre says a Wix site has to stay hosted on Wix. Squarespace’s export guide lists what comes across to WordPress (layout pages, one blog, text and images) and what doesn’t (store pages, product blocks, dropdowns, headers and footers). Outgrow the template and you start again from a blank page. That is the heart of the WordPress vs Wix question: who holds the keys.
Stourbridge Dance Academy had 40 years of history and a GoDaddy site-builder page that could not hold it. We rebuilt the site on WordPress this autumn, with classes, NATD exams, the SD Squad and a dancewear shop in one place. Online enquiries are up 32%, and Katie at the academy now updates it herself. It is hers.
Built to be found, on Google and in ChatGPT
Most of our work is getting businesses found, so this is where Squarespace vs WordPress stops being a design question for us. WordPress gives us control of everything a search engine reads: page speed, URL structure, headings, schema markup, redirects and the server itself. A builder site can rank, but you work inside the template’s limits, and when something technical is holding you back the answer is often “that isn’t possible”.
Hekas Sports Therapy in Manchester came to us in April 2025 on a Squarespace site sitting on page 8 of Google for the searches that matter to a clinic. We rebuilt it on WordPress, did the local SEO properly and added booking automations. Hekas now sits in the top 3 on page 1 for its main local searches, enquiries are up 50% and the reminders have cut no-shows by 30%.
The same control matters now that people ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews instead of scrolling results. Fast, clean, well-structured pages are what those systems pull from.
It grows with the business
A WordPress site is never finished, and that is the point. Booking, a members’ area, a quote calculator, a shop: there is a plugin for each, and when none fits, we build one. We have written our own WordPress and WooCommerce tools, including WC Product Quiz, which helps shoppers find the right product in a few taps. On a closed platform you take what the builder offers and wait.
Levant Perfume came to us in November 2025 with a beautiful product and a Shopify store that was not doing it justice. We rebuilt it on WooCommerce, carrying products, customers, orders and reviews across with a migration tool we wrote ourselves, then refreshed the brand and built a welcome sequence and an abandoned-cart flow. Sales are up 60% and the email list gained 1,000 subscribers in two months.
WordPress vs Wix and Squarespace: the real cost over three years
A builder looks cheaper on day one. But a Wix or Squarespace business plan is a monthly bill for the life of the site, set by a platform you cannot leave, and every serious feature sits on a higher tier.
With WordPress you pay for the build once, then for hosting and care. Our Get Found plan looks after the website, Google listing and reviews for £59 a month, with no contract. At the end of three years you hold an asset you can move, sell or hand over, not a subscription.
When a builder is fine
Wix vs WordPress is not always a contest. A one-page site for a side project, a portfolio that never needs to rank, something to hold a domain for six months: a builder is fine for those, and we will say so. The trouble starts when a real business with real competitors tries to grow on one.
Ready to own your website?
If your site is on Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy or Shopify and it has stopped pulling its weight, we will check it for free. Ten minutes, no obligation, and we will tell you if a move is not worth it.
