THE PLATFORM / WHAT YOU’RE REALLY CHOOSING
Wix, Squarespace, WordPress or a site built for you?
The platform decides three things you will live with for years: whether the site can leave with you, who has to keep it patched, and how much of it Google’s AI and ChatGPT can read. Here is how the four compare.
Side by side / Sourced
The four, compared on what you keep.
| Question | Wix | Squarespace | WordPress | Built by us |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Can you take the site with you? | No. Wix says a site has to run on its servers | Partly. The export is a WordPress-format file, and store, portfolio and index pages stay behind | Yes. Its files and database can move to any host | Yes. Plain files, and the domain in your name |
| Who keeps it patched? | Wix, on its own schedule | Squarespace, on its own schedule | You, or whoever you pay: the core, the theme and every plugin | No theme or plugins; hosting and care come with the build |
| What our scan found on an old site built on it | Harmony Tax Services, Sept. 24, 2026: no structured data, no meta description, 1,123 KB of page code | No client of ours came to us from Squarespace, so we have no reading | Southern Belle Construction, Sept. 24, 2026: AI crawlers blocked and an 18.4-second main image. Three Stone Roofing, Sept. 19: most pages noindexed | Our builds of those same sites: 97, 99 and 98 |
| Who it suits | A new business that needs a page up this week | A portfolio or a small shop that wants a polished template | A business with someone on staff to keep it updated | An established business that needs to be found, read and named |
W3Techs counted WordPress on 40.0% of all websites on October 14, 2026, Wix on 4.2% and Squarespace on 2.4%.
WordPress / From someone who built on it
Why we stopped building on WordPress.
We used to be big on WordPress. Michael’s words for why that changed: “slow, clunky, outdated and always being hacked and the designs were terrible.”
The hacking part has a number behind it. In 2025 Patchstack recorded 11,334 new vulnerabilities across WordPress, nine in ten of them in plugins and only six in WordPress itself. Nearly half had no fix from their developer by the time they were made public. A site is only as patched as its least-maintained plugin.
The slow part we see on our own scans. Southern Belle Construction’s WordPress site took 18.4 seconds to show its main image on a phone. Three Stone Roofing’s took 22, and most of its pages carried a tag asking search engines to stay away, a setting that is easy to switch on in WordPress and easy to forget.
None of that makes every WordPress site bad. A well-kept one, with someone watching its plugins, can do the job. In Michael’s experience most agencies still sell a theme with a stack of plugins, then never ask an AI engine whether it can read the result.
Wix and Squarespace / Easy in, hard out
Builders are a fine start and a hard place to leave.
A builder gets a new business online fast, and for that it is the right tool; our answer on building your own covers how to do it well. The cost comes later, when you want to move. Wix’s own help center says a Wix site needs to be hosted and operated on Wix’s servers. Squarespace exports a WordPress-format file, and its help center lists what stays behind: store and portfolio pages, extra blogs, video and product blocks, the styling.
The other cost is what the engines get to read. When we scanned Harmony Tax Services’ old Wix site, it had no structured data at all: nothing that told Google or ChatGPT the firm’s name, its towns or its services in a form a machine could check.
Built for you / What it means here
What “built for you” means when we say it.
Each page is written by hand for your business, from what you tell us about it, and published as a finished file on Cloudflare’s network, close to whoever opens it. The structured data, the llms.txt file and the crawler access go in from the first draft, not as a plugin added later. The forms save every inquiry before they send it, and the site reports its own traffic on a dashboard that belongs to you.
It costs more effort up front than dragging blocks around, which is why we do it for established businesses that need to be found, not for a page that only has to exist. Why owners pick us for it, and the scores before and after.
FAQ / Answers
Platform questions, answered
What is the difference between Wix and Squarespace?
Both are website builders that rent you the software and the hosting together, and you edit pages by moving blocks around. The difference that matters later is what you can take with you: Wix says its sites have to run on its servers, while Squarespace exports part of a site as a WordPress-format file and leaves the rest behind.
What is the difference between Squarespace and WordPress?
Squarespace is a hosted builder, so one company runs the software, the hosting and the updates. WordPress is software you install on a host you choose and extend with themes and plugins, which you or your designer must keep updated. A WordPress site can move anywhere; Squarespace exports only part of one.
Is Wix worth it for a small business?
For a business that needs a page online this week, yes. The trade-offs show up later: the site cannot leave Wix, and when we scanned Harmony Tax Services’ old Wix site on September 24, 2026, it had no structured data at all, which is what Google and the AI engines use to identify a business.
How often are WordPress sites hacked?
Nobody publishes a reliable count of hacked sites, but there is a count of the holes: Patchstack’s 2025 tally was 11,334 new WordPress security holes; nine in ten sat in plugins, and close to half were still unpatched by their developers on the day they were disclosed. Every plugin on a site is one more thing to keep patched.
How do I know if my website is WordPress?
Add /wp-admin/ to the end of your web address; a WordPress login page usually means WordPress. You can also view the page source in your browser and look for “wp-content” in the file paths. If you see neither, ask whoever built it, because you should know what your business runs on.
Can I move my Wix site to another host?
Not the site itself. Wix’s help center says a Wix site has to be hosted and operated on Wix’s servers, so moving means rebuilding the pages somewhere else. The domain can move, and so can your words and your photos.
NOT SURE WHAT YOU’RE ON?
Scan your site and see what it’s built on and what it’s missing.
The free scan reads your home page the way Google and the AI engines do and lists every gap with the fix. If you want a second opinion, send the form and Michael calls you back.
