- Hey guys, what's up, my name is Christian, welcome back
to Craylor Made where I like to talk about building a brand,
building websites, and getting yourself online.
So today we have a battle between Wix and Squarespace,
arguably two of the most popular website builders
and both great options to easily build a website
without any technical knowledge.
So which one is right for you?
That's what we're gonna unpack in this video, stay tuned!
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Without further ado, let's get right into the video.
So let's start out with Wix.
Wix is a very popular and pretty friendly website builder.
I think a lot of people tend to choose Wix
because they have a free plan.
You can get started without having to pay anything.
You could actually build your whole website over on Wix and
let it sit there indefinitely without ever paying a dime.
Now you are gonna need to upgrade to the Wix combo plan,
I think they call it, or I'll have the name on the screen,
in order to hook up your domain name
and remove the Wix branding.
Please don't be that person that puts
mywebsite.wix.com/coolwebsite on your business card.
Just eh.
It looks unprofessional, so don't be that guy.
But my point is that you can completely build
an entire website on Wix without spending a dime.
So you can totally get a feel for the service and decide
if it's right for you without having like a 14 day trial
or something where you're tied into.
Now with Squarespace, you have a 14 day free trial,
and they don't make you put in a credit card,
which I really like.
So it's not like, oh, you better cancel
or you're gonna get charged.
No, they give you 14 days to have a full feel for
this service, try building a website, see if you like it,
so in that sense, I feel like both of these sites
are pretty much equal.
Now Wix is gonna give you a ton of options
for customizability.
When you start creating your website,
you are given the option of either doing it using
a template, doing it from scratch, or using Wix ADI,
which will ask you a couple questions, and it's kind of
like a wizard to build your website.
It uses AI and some questions it asks you to pick out
a theme for you, pick a color palette based on
your profile picture and your logo and other neat features.
I tried creating a website using both a template
that I hand-picked and Wix ADI, and they both gave me
a pretty decent looking website.
Now the Wix editor is so incredibly powerful.
You can drag and drop things wherever you want.
And I mean wherever you want.
Like if you want it one pixel further to the left,
you can do that with Wix.
If you want it two pixels up to the right
and one to the left, you can do that with Wix.
Wix does have a grid it can snap to, which is awesome,
so if you wanna center an object, you drag it
with your mouse, it snaps to that center line,
and you're able to just drop it there and know
that your item has been centered.
Now the Wix themes really give you plenty of options
of good looking designs, so you don't have to do
a whole lot of work if you don't want to.
However, if you build a site from scratch,
the possibilities are really endless.
But this is kinda where I started to have
a problem with Wix.
If you are not super tech savvy, I think you're gonna
have maybe a bit of a struggle using the editor.
It's not hard, don't get me wrong, you're not gonna need
any coding knowledge, and you're not gonna need
to be super tech savvy, however, there are some little
aspects you need to think about and kinda have
a technical brain to make sure that your website
is set up as you want.
For example, I picked this one template that had
a Facebook icon and the word Facebook,
an Instagram icon and the word Instagram,
links to social media, as is pretty standard on a website.
Now I noticed when I double-click Facebook,
I had to highlight the text and click the link button
to change the link to my Facebook page.
So if you're not really thinking about that,
you may not think to do that, and then it's linking
out to Wix's Facebook page.
Furthermore, I thought, wait a second, maybe this
Facebook icon is a separate element that's linked, it is.
So I had to double-click the Facebook icon in addition
to the text and change the link on that icon.
Now I'm a freelance web designer, I build websites
using WordPress, so I have that technical brain to think,
all right, we gotta link both of these objects out
to the same place, but if you're not thinking like that,
if you're just like, I wanna drag and drop
and build my website, and I don't wanna think about
the details, the little things like that
with Wix kinda bothered me.
Now another thing I dislike about Wix is the ability
to get support.
Wix has a lot of what I call dark patterns on their
support page to basically stop you from contacting them.
You can contact them, they have phone and live chat support,
so if you search like Wix contact on Google
or you do some digging, you will find that opportunity.
However, they go out of their way to make it very difficult
for you to get in touch with them,
and they have the contact us thing
as like a little link that you kinda miss
if you're not closely paying attention,
and they try to deflect you with their help articles.
Now they do have plenty of help articles out there,
so if you're just wanting something basic
like how to get started, they've got lots of tutorials,
and you're not gonna have any problems there,
but it really bothers me when companies try to prevent you
from contacting them, especially if you're a paid customer.
Now Wix does have an app, which I think is pretty cool.
They allow you to publish blog posts directly
from the mobile app or even set up your website in the app
where other users can download the Wix app, add your website
in the app, and basically see your blog posts,
almost like your website has its own app, which I think
is pretty cool, it's maybe a little bit gimmicky,
but it is cool that Wix offers you that option.
Okay, let's talk about Squarespace.
My experience at Squarespace was vastly different
from what I had at Wix.
If I had to describe the two services in a nutshell,
Wix is kinda like Android.
It's super customizable, and you can do whatever you want
with it, but the support is a little bit difficult to get,
you kinda have to just know what you're doing.
Squarespace on the other hand, is a little bit
less customizable, it's more expensive,
but support is there to help you every step of the way,
and everything just works.
Squarespace does have a drag and drop editor,
and you can move elements around but not to the degree
that you can on Wix.
Overall you just have less options on the editor.
You still have plenty of templates to choose from,
and Squarespace also has an AI-type wizard, similar
to Wix ADI that can help you pick a template and ask you
some basic questions for your website, so as far
as creating a website, they both are basically even.
So the editor is a little bit more scaled down,
you have less options, you have less freedom
to move stuff exactly where you want it,
but it's little bit harder to screw up than Wix,
and I think overall you're gonna have a better
mobile-friendly website with Squarespace because
they're kinda optimizing things and pointing you
in a direction that everything is going to scale correctly
on mobile versus on Wix, I have concerns that
if you drag something to a far side of a page,
it's gonna look a little bit funky on mobile.
When it comes to the available templates,
I tend to prefer Squarespace.
I think that their templates look a little bit
more modern and less cheesy.
They scream website builder a lot less and in fact I go
to a lot of Squarespace websites that I think
are professionally designed through WordPress
or even custom coded, and then I dig into the code,
and I'm like, wow!
It's a Squarespace site!
On the other hand, I have never seen a Wix site
that doesn't scream Wix to me, and I see it immediately,
and I'm like, this has to be a Wix website.
It looks a little bit amateur.
And I look in the code, and yes, it is Wix.
Squarespace makes it super easy to get help and support.
They have a support tab on the top of their website,
and as soon as you click that, there's a contact us button
right there, and they are not hiding the contact info
from you at all.
Squarespace offers live chat support and email support,
which is a little bit less satisfactory than Wix 'cause
Wix actually offers phone support, which is nice
if you wanna just talk to a person and
have them walk you through how stuff works.
However, I am pretty confident that Squarespace
is gonna take of you and they have adequate support.
And to me it's almost worth it to be able to actually access
that support easily and not have phone support
than have phone support with Wix but have to jump
through a bunch of hoops just to get to it.
Now Squarespace does have a pretty cool app
that allows you to edit your website on the go.
You can publish blog posts, and unlike Wix,
you can also edit pages and even the site's logo
all from your phone.
It is really powerful.
Now there's no public facing app for Squarespace
meaning people can't download the Squarespace app
and find your website and read your blog through the app,
but if you ask me, that's kind of a gimmick anyway,
and I'm not sure how many users would really do that
with Wix for your blog versus just seeing, oh, hey,
you got a new blog post on Facebook, tapping the link,
and reading it in their mobile browser.
So let's take just a minute to talk pricing.
When I recorded this video,
Squarespace was more expensive than Wix.
But in a rare occurrence, Wix has actually changed
their prices between me filming the video and editing,
and Wix is actually now more expensive.
So the base plan on Wix is $17 a month if you pay
month to month or $13 a month if you pay annually,
so if we do the math on that, that comes out to $156 a year.
Now Squarespace is $16 a month paid month to month or
$144 per year, meaning that Squarespace is actually cheaper.
The only exception is if you pay for two
or three years of Wix.
Two years, you can get it for $10.50 a month,
of course paid in a two year block, or for three years
you can get it for $9 a month times 36.
But I think the majority of users are gonna pay
month to month or yearly.
And with that being said, this is just another reason
to check out Squarespace.
So in the end, if you are all about customizability
or price is your only concern, and you want as many options
as possible to build your website, Wix is probably
gonna be right for you.
However, if you want a system that just works with support
that's there to help you all the time, and websites that,
in my opinion, end up looking a little more professional in
the end, I would highly recommend checking out Squarespace.
So which website builder do you use?
I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments down below,
and if you liked this video, please do be sure to hit
that subscribe button, and click the bell
so you don't miss when I release new videos.
With that said, I will catch you guys next time.