The Best Website Platform for Small Business: An Honest Comparison
I've built over 300 websites in the last 25 years, and the question I get more than any other is some version of: "Should I just use Squarespace?" or "My nephew said Wix is easy."
So let me save you some time and money. Here's how WordPress, Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace actually stack up. Not the marketing version, the version you live with two years later.
The short answer: three of these are walled gardens you rent, and one is a house you own. That distinction matters more than any feature list.
Squarespace and Shopify: beautiful, but you're in a box
I want to be fair here, because both of these are genuinely well-made products. Squarespace makes good-looking templates. Shopify is a legitimately excellent platform if your entire business is selling products online.
But both are closed, enclosed environments. You're not building on your own land. You're renting a nicely furnished apartment, and the landlord decides what you can change.
What that means in practice:
- You can only do what they let you do. Need a custom feature, an unusual layout, a specific integration? If it's not in their toolbox, you're out of luck, or you're paying for a clunky third-party app that may break on the next update.
- You don't truly own your site. If they raise prices, change terms, or sunset a feature you depend on, you have no recourse. Ask anyone who's been through a forced platform change.
- Moving off is painful. Your content, your design, your store, it's all built in their system. When you outgrow it, you're not migrating, you're rebuilding from scratch.
Shopify in particular is worth a note: it's purpose-built for e-commerce, and if you're running a serious online store, it's a defensible choice. But the moment you want your site to be more than a store, with real content and a blog that ranks and custom pages, you start fighting the box. Squarespace has the same problem in reverse: fine for a simple brochure site, frustrating the second your needs get specific.
You can do a lot in these platforms. You just can't do anything. And you won't know which limit you've hit until you hit it.
Wix: I'll be blunt
I don't recommend Wix. I'll be honest where a lot of designers won't.
The drag-and-drop feels easy at first, and that's the trap. Underneath, Wix produces bloated, messy code that's slow to load, and speed is a real Google ranking factor, not a nice-to-have. Its SEO has improved over the years, but "improved" is still playing catch-up.
The dealbreaker for me: you cannot export your site. None of it. If you build your business on Wix and later decide to leave, you don't take your website with you. You start over. Completely. That's not a platform, that's a hostage situation.
Easy to start is not the same as good to grow on. Wix is the former and not the latter.
WordPress: you own it, and you can do anything
WordPress runs roughly 40% of all websites on the internet, and there's a reason it's lasted 20+ years while trendier platforms came and went.
It's open-source and self-hosted, which is the whole point:
- You own everything. Your site lives on hosting you control. No landlord, no surprise rule changes, no platform deciding your fate.
- There are no real limits. Custom design, custom features, any integration, any layout. If you can imagine it, it can be built. You're never stuck saying "the platform won't let me."
- It's built to rank. With the right setup, WordPress gives you full control over the technical SEO details, like page speed, structure, schema, and metadata, that the closed platforms keep partly out of your hands.
- It grows with you. A simple five-page site today, a full e-commerce store or membership site in three years, same foundation, no rebuild.
The honest tradeoff: WordPress is more powerful, so it benefits from someone who knows what they're doing to set it up right and keep it maintained. That's not a downside. That's the difference between a site you rent and an asset you own. (It's also, full disclosure, what I do for a living.)
So which one should you actually use?
| If you're... | Best fit |
|---|---|
| A small business that wants to own its site and never hit a wall | WordPress |
| Running a basic, products-only online store | Shopify (just know the limits) |
| Wanting a simple brochure site with limited features | Squarespace |
| Looking for the cheapest, easiest start | Honestly? Still WordPress done right. Skip Wix |
The cheapest platform today is rarely the cheapest over five years. The real cost shows up when you outgrow a closed system and have to rebuild everything you've built: your content, your rankings, your store.
If you'd rather build on something you own from day one, that's exactly the kind of thing I help Bellingham and Whatcom County businesses get right. I'm right here in Fairhaven, happy to talk it through before you commit to a box you can't get out of.
If you want a site you actually own and can grow with, that's how we build every custom WordPress website.
