You’re ready to get your Colorado Springs business online. You’ve heard of Wix. You’ve probably seen Squarespace ads. And someone’s told you to just hire a real web designer. The prices are wildly different and nobody’s giving you a straight answer about which one is actually right for your situation.
Here’s an honest comparison — written by people who build custom websites, so make of that what you will, but we’re going to give you the real trade-offs.
What Wix and Squarespace Actually Are
Wix and Squarespace are website builders — platforms that let you drag and drop a site together without writing any code. You pick a template, swap in your text and photos, and pay a monthly subscription to keep it live. Squarespace is generally considered more polished and design-forward; Wix offers more flexibility but that flexibility comes with more ways to make something that looks bad.
Both are legitimate tools. Neither is inherently wrong. The question is whether they’re the right tool for your business goals.
The Case for Wix or Squarespace
There are situations where a website builder genuinely makes sense:
- You’re just starting out and need something live this week with almost no budget
- Your business is a side project or very early-stage with no real revenue yet
- You want complete control to update the site yourself at any hour without calling anyone
- Your site is genuinely simple — a landing page with your name, what you do, and a phone number
Monthly costs run $16 to $49 for Wix, $16 to $49 for Squarespace, depending on the plan. If you cancel, the site goes away. If the company changes its pricing or shuts down, you’re starting from scratch.
The Real Limitations Nobody Tells You
Website builders have a ceiling, and for most growth-oriented businesses in Colorado Springs and Denver, they hit that ceiling quickly.
SEO is limited and harder to control. Wix has improved its SEO tools over the years, but it still generates heavier, slower pages than a hand-coded site. Google measures page speed as a ranking factor. A Wix site loading in 3–5 seconds will consistently lose to a hand-coded site loading in under one second, everything else being equal. Local search is competitive enough in Colorado Springs that this matters.
Templates mean your site looks like other sites. Wix has thousands of templates; so does every other business using Wix. There is a real chance that a competitor in your city is using the same template with different text. A custom-built site is built only for you.
You don’t own the platform. Your Wix or Squarespace site lives on their servers, under their terms of service. If they raise prices, change features, or shut down a plan you depend on, you have limited recourse. A custom site hosted on your own server is yours completely.
It’s not actually free. The subscription cost is ongoing forever. Over five years, a $25/month Squarespace plan costs $1,500 — with nothing to show for it if you ever leave. A custom site is a one-time build cost plus hosting, and the asset is yours.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Wix / Squarespace | Custom Website | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront Cost | $0–$500 setup | $698–$1,699 |
| Monthly Cost | $16–$49/month (forever) | $49.95/month hosting |
| Page Speed | Moderate (3–5 sec) | Fast (<1 sec) |
| SEO Control | Limited | Full |
| Design Uniqueness | Template-based | Built only for you |
| You Own It | No | Yes |
The Honest Recommendation
If you have no budget and need something live today to send to a potential client, a Squarespace site is better than nothing. Use it as a temporary solution.
If you’re serious about your business and want a website that ranks on Google, loads fast, looks unique, and is something you actually own — build a real one. At Milestone Web Design, a single-page site starts at $698 with hosting, and a 5-page site starts at $1,299. That’s less than two years of a Squarespace subscription, and you get something built for your business instead of adapted from a template.
The businesses in Colorado Springs and Denver that show up consistently in local search results aren’t running Wix sites.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I migrate from Wix to a custom site later?
Yes, but it’s a rebuild, not a migration — Wix doesn’t export clean code. Your content (text, images) can be moved over, but the site itself has to be rebuilt from scratch. It’s better to start with a custom site if that’s where you’re headed anyway.
Is Squarespace better for SEO than Wix?
They’re comparable. Both have improved their SEO tools significantly in recent years. Both still produce heavier, slower pages than a hand-coded site. Neither gives you full control over your site’s technical SEO the way a custom-built site does.
What about WordPress?
WordPress is a step above Wix and Squarespace — it’s open-source, you own the installation, and there are thousands of plugins. But WordPress sites tend to be slow when loaded with plugins and themes, and they require ongoing maintenance to stay secure. We wrote a separate article on why Colorado Springs and Denver businesses are moving away from WordPress.
How long does a custom website take compared to a builder?
A website builder can be live the same day. A custom website takes two to four weeks. That two-to-four-week wait produces a site that will outperform the builder site for as long as both are live — so for most businesses, it’s worth it.