“Free” website builders are marketed as a business starting point, not a business platform. The free plan is designed to convert you to a paid plan, and the paid plan is designed to keep you on the platform indefinitely. Here is the actual cost — including the parts they don’t advertise — broken down by year.
Cost Layer 1: The Upgrade You’ll Always Need
The free plan is not a viable option for a business. Wix’s free plan puts a Wix.com subdomain on your site, displays Wix branding on every page, and doesn’t allow a custom email address. No business should present a yourname.wixsite.com URL to customers. The minimum usable tier — Wix Business plan — costs $33/month, or $396/year, and still imposes storage limits and excludes certain e-commerce features.
Squarespace’s free trial lasts 14 days. After that, the Business plan is $33/month (billed annually at $396/year) and includes a 3% transaction fee on all sales. To remove the transaction fee, you need Commerce Basic at $36/month ($432/year) or Commerce Advanced at $65/month ($780/year).
The price you see advertised is not the price you’ll pay. Plan for the tier you actually need, not the tier in the headline.
What You Still Won’t Get at Mid-Tier
On Wix Business ($33/month) you don’t get: subscriber management for email lists, advanced analytics, and priority support. On Squarespace Business, you don’t get: advanced shipping, real-time carrier rates, product reviews, or the removal of transaction fees. The features you need to run a business are typically one tier above where you start.
Cost Layer 2: The Add-Ons That Aren’t Included
Platform plan costs are the base. The actual operating cost is higher once you add what the plan omits.
Custom Email
Your platform plan does not include business email. Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar, Drive with your domain) costs $6–$18/user/month, depending on tier. At the base tier, one user costs $72/year. A team of 3 costs $216/year. This cost applies regardless of which website builder you use — it’s a business operating expense, not a platform fee. But it’s frequently omitted from “how much does Wix cost” comparisons.
App Marketplace and Extension Fees
Wix App Market and Squarespace Extensions charge separately for most functionality beyond the basics. A chat widget: $9–$25/month. An advanced booking system: $20–$40/month. A customer loyalty program: $15–$30/month. An abandoned cart recovery tool: $10–$20/month. These are standard features for a business website, and on a builder platform, they’re individually priced.
A business using 4–5 apps from the Wix marketplace adds $50–$100/month to the platform cost. That’s $600–$1,200/year on top of the plan cost.
SEO Tools
Neither Wix nor Squarespace include an SEO tool that matches WordPress’s Yoast or Rank Math for technical SEO control. Meta tags, schema markup, redirect management, and canonical tags are accessible on both platforms, but with significant limitations compared to a self-hosted WordPress install. Third-party SEO tools (Semrush, Ahrefs) that you might use to fill those gaps cost $100–$500/month — but those are business expenses regardless of your platform.
Cost Layer 3: E-Commerce Transaction Fees
If you sell anything online, transaction fees are where free website builders become expensive quickly.
Squarespace Business plan charges 3% on every transaction. If your store does $5,000/month in sales, you pay $150/month — $1,800/year — in transaction fees alone. At $10,000/month, that’s $300/month or $3,600/year. The Commerce Basic plan removes the transaction fee but costs $36/month ($432/year). The break-even point is $1,200/month in sales — above that, upgrading pays for itself immediately.
Wix charges 0% transaction fees on paid plans, but charges processing fees through its Wix Payments gateway (typically 2.6% + $0.25 per transaction on domestic cards) — which is competitive with Stripe and Square. The Wix transaction fee structure is more transparent than Squarespace’s, but it still applies.
For a business doing $50,000/year in online sales on Squarespace Business, the 3% transaction fee costs $1,500/year — on top of the plan cost. That’s a fee most business owners don’t calculate before signing up.
Cost Layer 4: The SEO Performance Gap
This is the cost layer that’s hardest to see on a spreadsheet and most damaging to your business long-term.
Page Speed and Core Web Vitals on Builder Platforms
Wix pages average over 150 HTTP requests and score 30–50 on Google’s Lighthouse mobile performance test. Squarespace is somewhat better — 80–110 requests, scores 45–65 on mobile. Both are significantly below the 90+ target for Google’s Core Web Vitals “Good” rating. WordPress pages built on a lean custom stack score 85–98.
The LCP gap between a Wix site and a hand-coded WordPress site is typically 2–4 seconds on mobile. LCP above 2.5 seconds puts you in Google’s “Needs Improvement” category for Core Web Vitals, which is a ranking signal. Your competitors on faster sites have a structural advantage for the same search queries.
What the SEO Traffic Gap Costs in Leads
A site dropping from position 3 to position 8 for a keyword with 500 monthly searches loses approximately 200 organic visits per month. At a 2% conversion rate, that’s 4 leads per month — 48 leads per year — that a faster-ranking competitor captures instead. At a typical service business value of $500 per lead, that’s $24,000/year in pipeline that slow performance is costing you. This is an invisible cost — you don’t see a line item for it, but it’s real.
To understand why Core Web Vitals affect rankings specifically, read our Core Web Vitals business impact guide.
Cost Layer 5: When You Outgrow the Platform
Builder platforms are designed to retain customers. Leaving is expensive by design.
What a Wix or Squarespace Migration Actually Costs
Wix does not export your site’s design. If you leave Wix, you export your content (text and images in a ZIP file) and start from zero on design and development. The site must be rebuilt from scratch in the new platform. A full Wix-to-WordPress migration for a 10–15 page site typically costs $1,500–$4,000 for a professional rebuild with SEO mapping.
Squarespace allows XML content export (blog posts, products) but not page layouts or design. The new site is a fresh build. Same cost range.
SEO Recovery Time After a Forced Migration
A platform migration — even when handled correctly with 301 redirects — causes Google to re-evaluate your site. Rankings fluctuate for 60–90 days post-migration as Google processes the new URLs. If the migration is handled poorly (missed redirects, URL structure changes without mapping), traffic losses of 30–40% in the first 90 days are common, with a 3–6 month recovery window.
The migration cost and recovery period are predictable and should be part of your long-term cost calculation when choosing a platform.
The 3-Year True Cost Comparison
| Cost Category | ”Free” Builder (Wix) | Squarespace Business | Custom WordPress (Designodin) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform / build cost | $396/year ($1,188 over 3yr) | $396/year ($1,188 over 3yr) | $697–$8,000 (one-time) |
| Business email | $72–$216/year | $72–$216/year | $72–$216/year |
| App add-ons | $600–$1,200/year | $300–$600/year | $200–$600/year (plugins) |
| Hosting | Included | Included | $360–$1,800/year |
| Transaction fees (e-commerce) | $0 | $1,800/year at $5k/mo sales | $0 |
| Migration at year 2–3 | $1,500–$4,000 | $1,500–$4,000 | $0 |
| SEO traffic loss (est.) | $3,000–$15,000/year | $2,000–$10,000/year | Minimal |
| 3-year total estimate | $8,000–$25,000 | $8,000–$20,000 | $4,000–$15,000 |
The custom build looks more expensive at line 1. Over 3 years, the platform costs, add-on fees, migration costs, and SEO performance gap regularly make builders the more expensive option — particularly for businesses competing on search.
When a Builder Platform Is the Right Choice
To be direct: builders have a legitimate use case. Pre-revenue businesses validating a concept. Non-profits with no development budget. Businesses where 100% of customers come through referrals and the site is a credibility check rather than a lead source. Side projects. Event pages.
For a business actively competing for customers on Google, selling online, or positioning through website credibility — the economics of builder platforms typically don’t hold up past 18–24 months.
For the full comparison of custom WordPress vs template options including builders, see our custom WordPress vs template post. For the transparent pricing of a professional alternative, see our custom website cost breakdown. You can check your current site’s performance score at honest.designodin.com before making any platform decision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Wix actually free to use for a business?
No. Wix’s free plan uses a Wix.com subdomain, displays Wix branding on every page, and doesn’t allow custom email. The minimum usable business tier — Wix Business — costs $33/month ($396/year). At that tier you still don’t get email hosting, some analytics features, or priority support. Budget $396–$600/year for the platform itself, before add-ons and extensions.
Does Squarespace charge transaction fees?
Yes. Squarespace’s Business plan charges 3% on all online sales. At $5,000/month in revenue, that’s $1,800/year in fees on top of your plan cost. The Commerce Basic plan ($36/month) removes the transaction fee — the break-even point is $1,200/month in sales. Above that threshold, upgrading from Business to Commerce Basic immediately saves money.
Can a Wix or Squarespace website rank on Google?
Yes — builder sites do rank. The limitation appears in competitive queries where performance and technical SEO matter as tiebreakers. Wix pages average 150+ HTTP requests and Lighthouse mobile scores of 30–50. A custom WordPress site scores 85–98. That performance gap translates to LCP differences of 2–4 seconds, which affects Core Web Vitals rankings. Builder sites are at a structural disadvantage in competitive local search.
How much does it cost to migrate from Wix to WordPress?
$1,500–$4,000 for a professional migration of a 10–15 page site. Wix exports content only (text and images) — the design must be rebuilt from scratch. Budget for a 60–90 day SEO recovery period after migration as Google processes the new URLs and site structure. If you’re planning to migrate eventually, factoring this cost into your platform choice upfront avoids sticker shock later.
What features do you lose on a free website builder plan?
On Wix’s free plan: custom domain, removal of Wix branding, custom email address, e-commerce functionality, and site analytics. On Squarespace’s free trial (14 days only): after the trial, all access is restricted until you pay. Neither platform’s free tier is usable for a business presenting itself professionally to customers.
What is the cheapest legitimate website option for a small business?
A self-hosted WordPress install on shared hosting with a quality free theme (GeneratePress, Kadence) runs $60–$120/year in hosting. It requires technical setup and ongoing maintenance — it’s not plug-and-play. For businesses with the technical ability to manage it, it’s significantly cheaper than builder platforms over time. For businesses without that ability, our WordPress Starter package at $697 is a professionally built alternative at a fixed price with full handoff.
Are website builders worth it long-term for a growing business?
For businesses that compete on search, sell online, or need custom functionality — builders typically become a constraint rather than a platform by year 2–3. The migration cost, SEO recovery time, and performance limitations make the “start cheap and migrate later” strategy expensive. If you’re confident you’ll need more capability in 2 years, plan for custom WordPress now rather than paying twice.
The “free” label on website builders is a pricing tactic, not a description of your actual cost. Add the upgrade, the add-ons, the email hosting, the e-commerce fees, the SEO performance gap, and the inevitable migration — and the number looks different. If you’re at the point where you’re calculating that math, our fixed-price packages and custom WordPress development are the transparent alternative with no hidden escalation.