You’ve had a look at Wix. You’ve had a look at Squarespace. Somebody’s told you a proper business site ought to be on WordPress, and now you’ve read four comparison articles that each crowned a different winner, which makes sense once you spot the sign-up link at the bottom of three of them.
So here’s mine, bias declared. I’m Luke, I build on WordPress for small businesses in Sunderland and across the North East, so I get paid when somebody hires me, not when somebody signs up to a builder. I’m still going to tell you where Wix or Squarespace is the right answer, because for plenty of businesses round here it is. This is split by situation, not by features.
TL;DR
- One page, no shop, nothing changing after launch? A builder is a sensible answer and I’d say so on the phone.
- A service business that wants to be found locally and keeps adding pages is where WordPress earns its keep.
- Bookings, stock or anything unusual: WordPress, or custom. The builders do simple versions and hit a wall at the awkward bit.
- The real difference isn’t the design. It’s what you keep if you stop paying, and who you ring when it breaks on a Friday night.
- Google ranks pages, not platforms. The gap is how much of the fiddly stuff you’re allowed to reach.
What Wix and Squarespace are genuinely good at
Start with the case for them, because the version of this post where I pretend they’re rubbish is no use to you. You can be live by Sunday afternoon without ringing anybody. The templates are good. Squarespace in particular is hard to make ugly, which matters if you’re the one doing the designing.
Hosting, the certificate, updates and backups are handled for you. For plenty of one-person businesses that’s the whole requirement, and I’ve told people to go and use a builder before now.
Situation one: a one-page shop window
Picture a mobile hairdresser, a joiner who gets his work through word of mouth and Facebook, a dog groomer with a van. What’s needed is one solid page. Who you are, what you do, which areas you cover, real photos, and a number that’s easy to hit with a thumb. It changes twice a year, if that.
Build that on a builder. Four figures for a page you’ll never touch again isn’t obviously the better deal, and the money does more good spent on photos and your Google Business Profile, where the enquiries come from at that size. My piece on the five things that actually move the needle for North East trades covers the rest. If you’d rather not do it yourself, a one-page site with me is £599, it’s yours to keep and the logins go in your name. The other bands are on my web design page.
Situation two: a service business that needs to be found
Different business now. A physio, an electrician covering three or four towns, an accountant who wants to be found for the specific things they do. The site isn’t a business card. It’s meant to bring work in, so it grows: a page per service, pages for the areas you genuinely cover, maybe a blog.
WordPress earns its keep here, and it’s less about SEO magic than about being allowed to change things. By page fifteen you’ll want to reorganise the menu, rename a service, split one in two. All of that is yours. Redirects show it: rename a page and the old address has to point at the new one, or you bin whatever Google had worked out. Thirty seconds on WordPress. On a builder you get whatever the platform exposes this year, and if the setting isn’t there, that’s that.
Situation three: bookings, stock or something odd
Both builders sell booking tools and shops, and for simple cases they work fine. One person taking half-hour slots. Twenty products, one delivery option, no variants. Don’t over-think that one.
The wall shows up at the awkward bit. Four staff with different availability and one treatment room. Trade pricing for account customers. Stock that has to agree with the till. You go looking for the setting, it isn’t there, and the platform isn’t yours, so that’s that. WordPress covers most of it with WooCommerce and booking plugins, and past that with code somebody writes for you: more work up front, more looking after, no ceiling you can’t get through.
What you keep if you stop paying
The builders are a rental. Your payment covers the software, the hosting and the tools in one go, and if you stop paying, the site comes down. That isn’t a scandal and it isn’t hidden. It only becomes a problem when nobody realised.
Your words and images come out in some form. The website doesn’t. The layout you spent a fortnight fiddling with was built with their tools and stays with them, so leaving means rebuilding.
A WordPress site is a folder of files and a database. Download the lot, hand it to another host or another developer, carry on. That’s the actual difference, and it’s nothing to do with how the site looks. Whichever way you go, register the domain in your own name and keep that login. If a package registered it for you, find out whose name it’s in. Today, ideally. There are more questions worth asking whoever builds it in a separate post, and ownership is the one everybody skips.
Local search: what actually differs
Nobody at Google cares what your site was built with. Pages get ranked, not platforms, and all three can set a page title, a description, alt text on your images and a sitemap. Anyone still telling you Wix “can’t do SEO” is a decade out of date.
What differs is how much of the fiddly stuff you’re allowed to reach. Structured data that spells out your address, opening hours and services in a format Google can read. Page speed, and what you can do about it when a page crawls. WordPress hands you all of it. A builder hands you most of it, and the missing part only matters on the day you need it.
None of it promises a ranking, and switching platform won’t shove you up the page by itself. It changes the size of the toolbox. For most local businesses the bigger levers are your Google Business Profile, real reviews, and being boringly consistent about your name, address and phone number wherever they appear.
Who fixes it at eight on a Friday night
On a builder, usually nobody has to. Nothing to patch, the platform updates itself, backups happen behind the scenes. When something is genuinely broken you join a support queue, answered by somebody helpful who has never heard of your business and won’t be ringing you back.
WordPress needs maintaining and I’ll not dress that up. Core updates, theme updates, plugin updates, then a check that nothing fell over. Either you do it, or you pay somebody, or nobody does and two years later there are eleven outdated plugins and a site that goes down by itself. That’s where the reputation came from, and it’s fair.
So the trade is simple. A builder takes the boring jobs off you and keeps the control. WordPress gives you the control and hands the boring jobs back. With me that’s two weeks of free support after launch, a care package after if you want one, and my number either way.
The test I’d actually use
Two questions, and neither needs any technical knowledge. Will you touch the site again after launch? And is it there so people can check you’re real, or is it meant to be out there bringing the work in?
If you’ll never touch it, pick the option with the fewest moving parts and put what you saved into photos and your Google Business Profile. Nobody hands out a medal for running WordPress. If it’s meant to bring work in, you’ll be changing it for years, and every ceiling you hit costs a workaround or a rebuild. That’s where being able to change anything stops being a technical nicety and becomes the reason you picked it.
FAQs
Can I move a Wix site to WordPress?
Yes, though it’s a rebuild rather than a transfer. Your words and images come across, and a blog usually has an export that saves you the typing. The design doesn’t come with you. Keep your page addresses the same where you can and redirect the ones that change, so anything Google has indexed doesn’t land on an error.
Is WordPress harder to use than Wix or Squarespace?
To build from scratch, yes, noticeably. To edit a site somebody has already set up for you, barely. Most people I build for change their own text and swap their own photos after a ten-minute walkthrough. Doing it all on your own? Then the builders are easier, and I’ll not pretend otherwise.
Is WordPress less secure?
Not by design. It runs a huge share of the web so it gets probed constantly, and the sites that get done over are nearly always the ones left un-updated for years, running plugins the author walked away from. Keep it patched and backed up and it’s fine. The builders take that job off you completely, which is a real advantage if nobody’s going to be looking after it.
Will Google prefer one platform over another?
No. Google ranks pages and has no interest in what you built them with. What matters is speed, behaving properly on a phone, saying clearly what you do and where you do it, and your Google Business Profile for anything local. All three can be quick. All three can be slow if the pages are stuffed with enormous images.
Can I start on a builder and upgrade later?
Yes, and it’s often the sensible order if cash is tight now. Two things to plan for. You’ll pay for the site twice in the end, and you’ll need to redirect any addresses that change so you don’t lose the ground you’ve gained. If bookings, stock or a stack of service pages are coming this year, starting on WordPress saves you the second bill.
You can work all of this out yourself, and if you’re in the one-page camp I’d rather you did and kept the money. If you’re not sure which of the three you’re in, tell me what the business does and what you want the site to bring in, and I’ll say straight which way I’d go, builder included. No jargon, no hard sell. Drop me a line and I’ll take a look.
