Wix vs Squarespace: Which Is Better for Australian Small Businesses?

Wix vs Squarespace — it's one of the most common decisions for Australian small businesses starting their website journey. Both are legitimate, well-built platforms used by millions of businesses worldwide. The right choice depends on your industry, technical comfort, and what you actually need your website to do.

This guide compares both platforms specifically for Australian small businesses, including AUD pricing, Australian payment method support (Afterpay, Zip, Square), and honest assessments of where each platform excels and where it falls short. We've also included a third option that a lot of Australian business owners don't consider — one that may work out significantly cheaper over three years.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Wix	Squarespace
Entry plan (AUD/month)	~$17/month (Light)	~$23/month (Personal)
Business plan (AUD/month)	~$25/month (Core)	~$33/month (Business)
Free tier	Yes (wixsite.com subdomain)	No (14-day trial only)
Ease of use	Drag-and-drop, very flexible	Constrained but clean
Design quality	Good — depends on template choice	Excellent — consistently polished
Mobile quality	Good (separate mobile editor)	Excellent (responsive by default)
SEO tools	Strong — meta tags, structured data, SEO assistant	Good — clean markup, basic SEO controls
E-commerce	Strong — products, inventory, bookings	Strong — particularly for product-based businesses
Afterpay support	Yes (via Square integration)	No
Zip support	Limited	No
Australian payment gateways	Stripe, Square, PayPal — all supported	Stripe, PayPal — no Square
App integrations	250+ in Wix App Market	30–40 integrations
Blogging	Good	Excellent — purpose-built
Templates	800+ templates	~150 templates (higher quality)
.com.au domain connection	Yes — connect any external domain	Yes — connect any external domain
Customer support hours	24/7 live chat (English)	24/7 email, live chat Mon–Fri

Pricing correct as of May 2026. Both platforms charge in AUD for Australian accounts. Always verify current pricing directly before subscribing.

Who Wix Suits

Wix is the better choice when flexibility and functionality matter more than design perfection. The platform's drag-and-drop editor gives you fine-grained control over every element on every page — useful if you want a specific layout that doesn't fit neatly into a template.

Wix is particularly strong for:

• Businesses needing integrations: Wix's App Market has hundreds of integrations covering booking systems, live chat, CRM tools, event management, and more. If you need a specific piece of functionality, there's likely a Wix app for it.
• Businesses with Afterpay customers: Wix supports Afterpay through Square integration — critical for Australian retail and fashion businesses where buy-now-pay-later is a standard customer expectation. If you're selling homewares, clothing, or gifts to Australian consumers, this matters.
• Tradies and service businesses taking online bookings: Wix Bookings is a built-in appointment system well-suited to trades and service businesses — hair salons taking colour appointments, personal trainers managing session schedules, or mechanics offering service booking slots. The functionality is included at no extra cost on business plans.
• Businesses on tighter budgets: The Wix free tier lets you test the platform before paying anything. The Light plan at ~$17/month is cheaper than Squarespace's Personal plan at ~$23/month.
• Businesses with multiple service or location pages: Wix makes it straightforward to build out many pages with individual SEO settings. If you're a plumber covering multiple suburbs, you can create suburb-specific service pages with unique title tags, meta descriptions, and content for each — Wix handles this without needing to upgrade or install add-ons.

Wix's main weakness is result consistency. The enormous flexibility of the drag-and-drop editor means quality varies widely depending on who builds it. Two businesses using the same Wix template can produce very different results based on how much design experience the builder has. If you're building it yourself without a design background, you may find it takes longer than expected to get a result you're happy with.

Who Squarespace Suits

Squarespace is the better choice when design quality and visual consistency are the priority. The platform's constrained editor — you customise within defined parameters rather than repositioning elements freely — produces more consistently polished results because it's harder to make design mistakes.

Squarespace is particularly strong for:

• Design-forward businesses: Photographers, architects, interior designers, fashion brands, and any business where visual presentation is central to their value proposition. Squarespace's templates are genuinely beautiful and hold up well on mobile without extra work.
• Hospitality and food: Squarespace's restaurant and cafe templates are among the best available on any platform. A cafe or restaurant that needs to showcase food photography and present a clean, easy-to-read menu is a natural Squarespace fit. The platform handles reservations and online ordering integrations through tools like OpenTable and Tock.
• Bloggers and content creators: Squarespace's blogging tools are more sophisticated and better designed than Wix's. If content is central to your strategy — a nutritionist publishing weekly articles, an accountant sharing tax updates, a landscape designer sharing project portfolios — Squarespace handles this more elegantly.
• Non-technical business owners who want a polished result: The constrained editor makes it harder to produce a badly designed website. If you have no design background and want a professional result without hiring someone, Squarespace is more forgiving than Wix.

Squarespace's weaknesses are its higher monthly cost, the absence of a free tier, and limited support for Australian buy-now-pay-later options like Afterpay. The lack of Square integration is a meaningful gap for any Australian business that uses Square for in-store payments and wants their online and in-person sales in one system.

Setting Up Your Domain: .com.au on Both Platforms

Australian businesses typically want a .com.au domain, which requires an Australian Business Number (ABN) or ACN to register. Neither Wix nor Squarespace sells .com.au domains directly — you'll need to register your .com.au through an Australian registrar such as VentraIP, Crazy Domains, or Netfleet, then connect it to your platform.

Both Wix and Squarespace support connecting an externally registered domain — the process takes around 24–48 hours for DNS propagation. This is a minor step, but worth knowing upfront: if your business name is important and you haven't secured your .com.au yet, register it before starting your website build. Domain names are separate to and independent of your website platform.

If you're not sure how to set up a domain, our guide on how long it takes to build a website covers this step in the broader context of launching a new business site.

SEO: How Do They Compare for Australian Businesses?

Both Wix and Squarespace have invested heavily in their SEO capabilities over the past few years. The old reputation of both platforms as "bad for SEO" is outdated — both now produce clean, indexable HTML and give you control over the most important on-page elements. That said, there are genuine differences:

Wix SEO

Wix offers a built-in SEO assistant that walks you through title tags, meta descriptions, and site structure. It also supports structured data (schema markup), which helps Google display rich results for local businesses. Wix's canonical URL structure is clean, and Google Search Console integration is straightforward. For local businesses needing suburb-specific pages — a plumber covering Parramatta, Blacktown, and Castle Hill, for example — Wix makes it easy to create individual pages with unique SEO settings for each location.

One limitation: Wix's URL structure can sometimes produce suboptimal paths (e.g., /services-1 instead of /services), though this is manageable with care during setup. Page load speed on Wix varies more than on Squarespace depending on how many apps and widgets you add.

Squarespace SEO

Squarespace's SEO is clean and technically sound — fast load times (its templates are lighter than many Wix templates by default), proper heading structure, and straightforward meta tag editing. The platform doesn't offer as many SEO-specific apps or third-party integrations as Wix, but for most small businesses, the built-in tools are sufficient. Squarespace's blog posts are particularly well-structured for SEO — clean URLs, good heading hierarchy, and consistent schema.

One limitation: Squarespace has less granular control over structured data than Wix for complex schema needs, and doesn't support as many third-party SEO tools.

The more important SEO factor

Neither Wix nor Squarespace has a significant technical SEO advantage for Australian local businesses when used correctly. The more important factor is the work you put in: adding suburb names to your copy, writing proper title tags, setting up your Google Business Profile, and building citations in Australian directories like True Local, Yellow Pages AU, and Hotfrog. The platform is the vehicle; the content and strategy are the engine.

E-commerce and Australian Payment Support

If you're selling products or services online, both platforms have e-commerce functionality — but with important differences for Australian merchants:

Wix e-commerce for Australian businesses

Wix's e-commerce capabilities have matured significantly. The platform supports Stripe, PayPal, and Square as payment gateways — all three are widely used by Australian businesses. Crucially, Wix supports Afterpay through its Square integration. For Australian retail and fashion businesses where buy-now-pay-later is a standard customer expectation, this is a meaningful advantage over Squarespace. Wix also supports multiple currencies, GST-inclusive pricing, and integration with Australian shipping providers including Australia Post and Sendle.

For more detail on setting up online payments in Australia, see our guide to online payments in Australia: Stripe, Square, and PayPal compared.

Squarespace e-commerce for Australian businesses

Squarespace's e-commerce is polished and particularly strong for product photography presentation — the product pages look excellent. Payment options include Stripe and PayPal, but Squarespace does not natively support Square, and Afterpay integration is not available out of the box. For Australian fashion, homewares, or lifestyle businesses where Afterpay is an important customer expectation, this is a meaningful gap. Squarespace does support GST-inclusive pricing and automated tax calculations for Australian merchants.

What to Expect When Getting Started

Both platforms are genuinely beginner-friendly, but the learning curve is different:

Wix: Plan for 10–20 hours to build a solid 5–8 page website if you're starting from scratch with no web design background. The flexibility that makes Wix powerful also means more decisions to make. Most business owners find the first website takes longer than expected, and a second version six months later tends to be significantly better than the first.

Squarespace: The constrained editor means fewer decisions and a faster initial build — most business owners can produce a clean 4–6 page website in 8–15 hours. The trade-off is less flexibility if you need a specific layout or functionality not covered by the template system.

Both platforms have extensive help documentation, tutorial videos, and community forums. If you run into trouble, Wix's 24/7 live chat support tends to resolve issues faster than waiting for Squarespace's email support on evenings and weekends.

For a broader look at platform options including free builders and AI tools, see our comparison of the best website builders for Australian tradies.

The Third Option: Neither

Both Wix and Squarespace require ongoing monthly subscriptions — $276–$480+ per year, indefinitely. For many Australian small businesses, a done-for-you professional website at a flat one-time fee is the more economical option over three years.

The maths is straightforward: a Squarespace Business plan over three years costs approximately $1,200. A Wix Core plan over three years costs approximately $900. newbusinesswebsite.ai is $999 once, with no recurring fees — ever. For any business owner who doesn't need or want to manage their own website, the comparison is clear.

Beyond the cost, there's the time factor. Building your own Wix or Squarespace website takes 10–20 hours — time that a tradie, retailer, or service business owner could spend on paying work. A professional done-for-you build removes that entirely.

Use our website pricing calculator to compare costs for your specific situation, or read our full guide to website costs in Australia for a breakdown of what you're actually paying for on each option.

Verdict Table

You should choose…	If…
Wix	You need flexibility, Afterpay support, booking system, or lots of integrations — and you have time to build and maintain it yourself
Squarespace	Design quality is your priority, you're in hospitality, photography or fashion, and you don't need Afterpay or Square
newbusinesswebsite.ai	You want a professional result without DIY effort, no monthly subscription fees, and a 7-day turnaround