Should you use Wix or Squarespace?

A website builder is software you rent. You pick a design, type your own words into it, and pay every month for as long as the website exists. Wix and Squarespace are the two most people mean. Shopify is the same idea, for selling online.

When a builder is the right call

• You’re testing whether the business works at all. Don’t spend five thousand rand on a website for something that might not exist in six months.
• Your budget is genuinely a few hundred rand. A cheap site that exists beats a good site you can’t afford.
• You need something up this week, and it doesn’t have to be clever.
• You actually enjoy fiddling with it and you’ll keep it current. Some people do. If that’s you, a builder hands you the controls.
• It’s a side thing, not the thing that pays your bills.

If two or three of those are true, stop reading and go and sign up. I mean that.

What they cost

Here is what the three of them cost today, from their own pricing pages, shown the way a South African sees them.

• Squarespace starts at about R300 a month if you pay a year up front, or R430 month to month. It is the only one of the three that bills South Africans in rand. VAT is added at checkout.
• Wix starts at about $17 a month, billed a year at a time and paid up front. There is no month-to-month price on its plans page, and South Africans are billed in US dollars.
• Shopify, which is the one for selling online, starts at about $19 a month on a yearly plan, in US dollars, plus 15% VAT.

That last detail matters more than it looks. Two of the three bill you in a currency you don’t earn in, so your website bill moves with the rand.

Checked in September 2026 on each platform’s own pricing page, loaded from South Africa. Plans change often, and the cheapest advertised one is usually not the one you end up needing, so look before you sign up.

What it adds up to over three years

Squarespace’s entry plan at R300 a month is R3,600 a year, so three years is about R10,800, before VAT and before your domain. At the end of it you are still renting.

A website you own works the other way round. You pay once to have it built, then about R1,300 a year for hosting and your domain, which is roughly R3,900 over the same three years. Where the two cross depends on what the build costs you.

Work it out over the time you actually expect to be in business, not over the first month.

What people get wrong about them

You will be told that websites built on Wix or Squarespace cannot come up on Google. That is not how it works. A builder site with clear headings, honest page titles and words written for real customers will come up ahead of a hand-built website with nothing useful on it. The platform is rarely what holds a small business back. What is written on it usually is.

So if someone tries to talk you off a builder with search talk, ask them exactly what it cannot do. A specific answer is worth listening to. A vague one tells you what you need to know.

Where they do bite

• You’re renting, not owning. Stop paying and it’s gone — not "downgraded", gone.
• Moving off is genuinely hard. You can usually export your words and pictures, but not the site. Switching means rebuilding.
• They carry more weight than a built site, so they tend to load slower, and plenty of your customers are on mobile data with two bars of signal.
• You will look like the other businesses using the same design. Whether that matters depends on your trade.

There is one more, and it catches more people than all four of those together.

The question isn’t Wix versus custom. It’s whether the website ever gets finished.

The half-finished site problem

The most common outcome I see isn’t a bad Wix site. It’s an unfinished one. Somebody signs up on a Sunday, gets the home page looking decent, and then real work happens. Eight months later the about page still has the template’s placeholder text on it and the phone number is the old one.

A builder doesn’t remove the work. It moves the work to you — the writing, the photographs, the layout decisions, and keeping it current afterwards. That is the honest trade, and it’s a fair one if you’ll do it. If you know you won’t, the cheap option isn’t cheap. It’s an unfinished website you’re still paying for.

If you’re selling online

The sums change when there is money going through the website. Shopify charges its monthly fee in dollars, adds VAT, and on the entry plan takes another 2% of every sale if you use any payment system other than their own. That is on top of what your card processor charges you.

A shop that is built for you is a once-off, with the same hosting and domain behind it, and the card fees go straight to your payment provider. Which one is cheaper depends on how much you sell: Shopify’s cost climbs as your turnover climbs, and a built shop’s does not.

When to pay somebody instead

• The website is a real part of how the business gets work, not a box being ticked
• You’d rather spend your hours on your trade than on fonts and layouts
• You want to own the thing outright, files and all
• You need something a builder can’t do neatly — bookings, a shop with awkward delivery rules, a proper catalogue
• You’ve already tried, and it’s been "nearly done" for months

The real question

It isn’t Wix versus custom. It’s whether the site gets finished and stays current. A finished builder site beats an imaginary custom one every single time — and a finished custom site beats both. Be honest with yourself about which one you’re actually going to end up with, and choose for that.

If you’d rather own it and have somebody else do the work, see what that costs.