Comparing website builders is hard because most comparisons are written by someone earning a commission on the link. I make a living building custom sites, so I have the opposite bias, which is why I’ll also tell you when hiring me doesn’t make sense.
The right question isn’t which one is best
It’s which of three resources you have to spare: money, time or patience. Every platform does the same job with a different mix of the three.
Wix
Cost: about $17–$39 a month. Learning curve: the easiest.
The good: you can publish in a weekend with no experience. The editor is free-form: drag things anywhere.
The bad: that freedom is the trap. What looks neat on a computer breaks on a phone and has to be rearranged separately. And you can’t take the site with you: if you leave, you start over.
For: businesses just starting, tight budget, someone with spare time.
Squarespace
Cost: about $16–$49 a month. Learning curve: easy, with less freedom than Wix.
The good: it’s nearly impossible to make something ugly. Templates are well designed and look good on phones without effort.
The bad: it looks like Squarespace. If competitors use the same three templates, everyone looks alike. Customizing beyond what’s planned becomes a fight.
For: businesses where looks matter: photography, design, wellness, restaurants.
WordPress
Cost: hosting $60–$150 a year, plus a theme ($50–$80 once) and paid plugins. Learning curve: the steepest.
If you go this way, hosting matters more than with any other option: WordPress is heavy and cheap servers make it slow. Hostinger plans with WordPress preinstalled are among the best value for speed for a small business.
Disclosure: the Hostinger link is an affiliate link. If you sign up there, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I recommend it because it’s where I host the sites I build.
The good: it does everything. A huge share of the web runs on WordPress, and there’s a plugin for anything you can imagine.
The bad, and it’s serious: it’s the only one on this list that truly needs maintenance. Updates, backups, security. A WordPress site left alone for two years is a hacked site waiting its turn. And every plugin you add slows it down.
For: people who already know it, or who’ll pay someone to maintain it.
Shopify
Cost: from $29 a month plus transaction fees. Learning curve: medium.
If you sell physical products with inventory, shipping and payments, stop comparing: this is it. Nothing else here runs a store with less pain.
If you sell services, it’s not for you: you’d be paying for an inventory engine you won’t use.
Custom development
Cost: from $349 one-time, plus hosting. Learning curve: none, because you’re not building it.
The good: the site weighs only what it needs (no pile of plugins), the structure is designed around the words people use to find you, and the code is yours. It can move to another server without being rebuilt.
The bad: it costs more upfront than a month on a builder, and you depend on someone else’s schedule for big changes. Text and photo edits, no: you can do those yourself.
For: businesses already earning, where the site is a sales channel rather than a checkbox.
The comparison in one table
| Wix | Squarespace | WordPress | Custom | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-year cost | ~$250 | ~$250 | ~$300 | from $349 |
| Five-year cost | ~$1,250 | ~$1,250 | ~$1,500 | ~$700 |
| Your hours | 20–40 | 15–30 | 40–80 | 3–5 |
| Speed | Medium | Medium | Depends | High |
| You can take it with you | No | No | Yes | Yes |
The row nobody looks at is year five. A builder isn’t cheaper: it’s cheaper at the start, and then it charges forever.
How to decide in two minutes
- Zero budget and plenty of time → Wix or Squarespace. Seriously. Publish this week and improve later.
- You sell products with inventory → Shopify.
- You already have WordPress and it works → don’t migrate for fun. Pay someone for maintenance and move on.
- The site is where your customers arrive and every month it doesn’t sell costs money → custom.
The worst decision isn’t picking the wrong platform; it’s spending six months comparing and still having no site. If you’re starting from zero, the full process is in how to build a website step by step.
If you’ve decided not to build it yourself, here’s how I build websites and the prices, published with no sales call required.