Knowing the Facts
A Real Comparison
You’ve heard all of Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder for websites and are thinking that you may need to start with them or switch to their platform. After all they are marketed as great inexpensive solutions for your needs. Are you trying to decide between Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder vs WordPress to build your website? We know that while WordPress is the most popular website builder in the world, it is not the only option and, let’s face it, Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder ll do a great job at advertising.
In this article, we compare Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder vs WordPress with their pros and cons and how we see them playing out for our clients. After all, as business owners we need to do what’s best for the future of our company and knowledge in that is key.
To make the comparisons easy we have combined the details about Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder into one overview as they are all very similar in the compared areas.
Note: This article compares Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder vs Self Hosted WordPress.org
Categories
1. Platform Costs
The cost of building and maintaining a website is an important factor when choosing your site builder platform. The total costs of developing and maintaining your site will entirely depend on your needs both currently and moving forward. Initial costs should include monetary value and time vs. cost comparisons.
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder offer a basic website builder for free and paid plans as well.
Free Package: This package often adds Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder branded advertisements on the top and bottom of your website. Also – with Wix you cannot use a custom domain name/URL for your site, so your website address will be: username.wix.com/sitename. The basic plan does not offer necessary add-ons such as Google Analytics, Favicons, eCommerce, etc. To remove ads and get additional features from their apps market, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the premium plans they offer.
Premium plans have different storage and bandwidth limitations. You can pay monthly or choose a yearly plan.
If you want an eCommerce store, then you need an upgraded eCommerce plan.
This cost does not include any apps that you later choose to buy to use on your website.
Wordpress
WordPress software is open source, and it is available for free for anyone to use on virtually any hopsting service they wish.
To use WordPress your will need your own domain name and web hosting to install it. The Image Stop ltd. / Penguin Hosting provides several great hosting packages that all work with WordPress website installations.
The cost of a WordPress site can increase if you decide to use premium WordPress themes or plugins (similar to apps in Wix). As a website development company The Image Stop ltd. has a great system for building greaty self-managfed sites. If you haven’t already built your own site – ask us about our website building system.
With WordPress there are thousands of free themes and plugins available that you can use to reduce costs. You can add any feature to your WordPress site using a plugin without upgrading your hosting plan.
iS / PenguinHosting
The Image Stop ltds / PenguinHosting builds almost exclusively WordPress based sites. We offer three different hosting packages that have been created to fit virtually any budget. This includes our newest hosting package (Pro) that offers daily backups and updates and keeps clients safe and websites fast. Our best value site hosting by far!
Conclusion
WordPress beats Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder with flexible plans available from both iS/PenguinHosting and a variety of web hosting companies. The cost depends on how many resources you use, and you are free to use your WordPress site in any way you want.
2. Ease of Use
Most beginners choose Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder or WordPress because they don’t want to hire a website designer. Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder and WordPress allow you to create websites without learning to code. Each of these platforms are also used by designers that specialize in that platform.
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder come with powerful and easy-to-use tools to build your own website. They offer a simple drag and drop interface where you can select any element on your site and start editing it in a WYSIWYG interface.
You can drag and drop items anywhere on your site, rearrange things on your pages, write content, and add media in a user-friendly environment. Many beginners would find this feature a blessing as it saves them from dealing with code.
Wordpress
WordPress as a base comes with a visual editor to write your content, and a theme customizer which allows you to edit your theme properties in a WYSIWYG environment. However, by default WordPress does not come with a built-in drag and drop page builder. (this is available with the iS/PenguinHosting system – see below)
To get the full control of the appearance, users will have to familiarize themselves with different sections like navigation menus, customizer, visual post editor, etc. This means that WordPress requires a small learning curve for beginners.
On the other hand, there are thousands of themes that make customization really easy.
iS / PenguinHosting
The Image Stop ltd. / PenguinHosting almost exclusively use a WordPress theme/builder that brings the drag and drop ability of website building into the users’ hands. This system makes building websites easier while still maintaining the ability for users to build further in the intermediate or advanced level and maintain full control of their sites.
Conclusion
In its basic form, Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder are the winner here. Users don’t need to spend much time learning the platform or install any plugins before they can start building their website. On the other hand, they will need to understand the individual builder basics and may need to install apps to build their site.
That said, there are many powerful WordPress page builder options that offer a lot more powerful features than the Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder. (as is used in the iS/PenguinHosting system)
This is why business owners use WordPress because it offers them greater flexibility.
3. Design Options
Your site’s design and layout play an important role in your success. Every site owner needs a design that’s not only good looking, but also one that fits their company, is user-friendly, and makes their overall brand stand-out.
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder come with many pre-made templates to choose from. With Wix, all designs are fully responsive and (at the time of this article being published) written in HTML5. Using the built-in tools, you can further customize your site design, change the layout, and rearrange items as you see fit.
There are designs available for every kind of site. Templates are divided into categories like business, eCommerce, hobbies, arts & crafts, personal, etc.
One big disadvantage is that once you have selected a template, you cannot change it. You can modify it and customize it as much as you want using only the built-in tools, but you cannot easily switch to another template.
Wordpress
There are thousands of free and paid themes available for WordPress. Free themes come with limited support, but they also go through a strict review process. Paid themes generally offer more features and come with premium support options.
WordPress themes range from small personal sites to full-fledged eCommerce sites. Most themes come with built-in customization options of their own. You can also use one of the many styling plugins to further style or customize your WordPress themes.
Users can download free themes from WordPess.org directory. For paid themes, there are several WordPress theme shops avilable as well.
iS / PenguinHosting
If you’d like, you can ask us at the Image Stop ltd. to quote on building your site for you. We are WordPress specialists and know how to utilize this platform as inexpensively as possible to get the most for our clients.
A great add-on…. the builder/theme we use enables making site-wide changes much easier than building a brand new website. Enabling clients to do an entire refresh of their site at less than 1/3 the cost of a new site.
Conclusion
WordPress has a much larger range of themes and design layouts than Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder. WordPress users can also easily switch themes or customize them as much as they want without any restrictions. Add-on our expertise and building system and WordPress is a definite win.
4. Add-Ons
Plugins and Apps are third-party extensions that you can use with these platforms to add more features. Wix calls them apps, and in WordPress ecosystem, they are called plugins.
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder come with nearly 200+ apps that you can add to your site. These apps offer a wide range of features like adding contact forms, galleries, comments, social media buttons, email marketing and so on.
Most apps are free or have a lite version. Other apps require monthly payments and vary in prices. Even though there is a limited collection of apps, they cover the most commonly requested features by site owners.
Wordpress
At the time of this article, there are more than 55,000+ free plugins available in the WordPress.org plugin directory alone. Not to mention, premium plugins available on other marketplaces.
The saying goes: if you can think of a feature, there’s probably a WordPress plugin that makes it happen.
Whether you want to create a contact form, install Google Analytics, build a membership website, or sell online courses, there’s a plugin for that.
You can do just about anything you like with WordPress. There are plenty of plugins both free and paid.
iS / PenguinHosting
Being WordPress specialists we know and use the best plugins available in the WordPress environment. Even moreso, if you have a larger project and require custom plugins, we work with some great developers that can make your customized plugin a reality.
Conclusion
WordPress easily beats Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder in this area as well. Even though Wix’s app library is growing, it is still limited in comparison to the huge choice available to WordPress users.
5. Blogging/Posting
Many users are looking for an easy platform to start blogging or posting news articles, specials etc... Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder and WordPress both can be used to create these. Let’s take a look at which one does it better.
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder allow you to easily add a blog section to your website. It has all the basic blogging features you’ll commonly use. For example, categories and tags, photos and videos, archives, etc.
However, Wix does not have a native commenting system (if desired) like WordPress. Instead, it uses Facebook comments and those comments are not portable.
Wix also lacks several features like featured images, backdating posts, creating private posts, and more.
The writing interface for blog posts is not the same as Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder. Instead, it uses a plain text editor which is limited in terms of formatting options.
Wordpress
WordPress started out as a blogging platform and evolved into a full-blown CMS (Content Management System) or website builder. Today it powers nearly 33% of all websites on the internet.
It has all the blogging features you will need like a native commenting system and all other advanced features that are missing from Wix.
Most importantly, you can extend your blog using plugins and add any feature that you can think of.
iS / PenguinHosting
We cannot say enough – using or builder system (which utilizes the Divi Theme/Builder) Blog entry and customization is limitless.
Conclusion
WordPress totally outshines Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder as a blogging platform. Wix blogs are basic and lack several important features. If you are designing a website for starting a blog or want to incorporate blog entry into your site, then Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder doesn’t even come close to WordPress.
6. Ecommerce
Selling things online is another important feature that many clients look for. Let’s see how WordPress and Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder compare in eCommerce.
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder offer eCommerce with their paid plans. This means users with the free plan cannot run their eCommerce store on Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder without upgrading to a paid plan. For Wix – with the WixStores, you can only accept payments using PayPal or Authorize.net.
There are a few third-party apps that you can use for selling things online, but those apps cost you more money with their monthly fees. You will have limited payment gateways and functionality.
Wordpress
WordPress makes it super easy to create your online store using WooCommerce, which powers more than 42% of all eCommerce websites in the world.
There are many other eCommerce plugins available for WordPress that you can use to sell physical or digital goods, services, events, subscriptions, and more.
Most eCommerce plugins for WordPress even have their own dedicated themes and add-on plugins.
There are also many payment gateways available through WordPress eCommerce plugins and systems. You are not limited to the few as you would be with Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder.
iS / PenguinHosting
We have built several eCommerce sites and the customization abilities within WordPress are amazing. Everything from look and feel to how payments are processed is customizable and can be fine-tuned to your company brand/experience.
Conclusion
If you want to build a solid online store that is scaleable and ready for growth, then WordPress + WooCommerce offers much more flexibility, freedom, and choices when compared to Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder.
7. Ownership Myth
Who really owns your site? Portability allows you the freedom to move your content away when you need it. Here is how Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder and WordPress help you move your content away if you need.
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder
Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder come with very limited options to move your content to another platform. You can only export your blog posts in XML format. You’ll have to manually download your pages, images, videos, and other content.
According to Wix and the other builders’ documentation, all your content is hosted exclusively on their servers and cannot be exported elsewhere as-is.
This makes it very difficult to move your content to another platform if needed. It can still be done… but most designers would agree that it is like building a new site when needing to move a site built on the other platforms.
Wordpress
WordPress makes it extremely easy to export your content. It comes with a one-click exporter that allows you to download all your content in XML format.
Since it is a self-hosted platform, you can also create complete WordPress backups, download your media files, and even manually export your WordPress database.
You can then easily move your WordPress site to a new host if you are not satisfied with your current WordPress hosting company.
iS / PenguinHosting
This is a BIG one in our opinion. With Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder you are tied to their hosting and their platform. You cannot take a Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder site and move it to any other hosting service you would like… so we hope you like their service. If you want to move… you’ll need to build a new site.
Conclusion
WordPress is a lot better when it comes to downloading and moving your data. Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder, on the other hand, make it quite difficult to move your content away from them.
8. Summary
Based on these comparisons, WordPress is far superior to Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder as a web publishing platform for any kind of website. While Wix/Squarespace/GoDaddy Website Builder offer an ease of use angle to their services, you can accomplish a lot more with WordPress over the long run which sets up a company for growth and future advancement.
It should be noted that, as a company, we are committed to servicing our clients with the best possible advice and customer service. These are not just words but how our company functions every day. Many may view our review as self-serving, however, we stand by our analysis even if clients are not using us for their website building or hosting. We recommend clients not use services like Wix or Squarespace. Their platform limitations and constraints are too large and we truly want the best for clients. If only for the reason that with self-hosted WordPress sites you are in control of your sites. With Wix or Squarespace, you are stuck with using their services only.
If you’d like to know more about how we can help you with your new website build and creating your new site please reach out and contact us today.