Squarespace vs Wix vs Webflow vs a Custom Build

Every price and plan name below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, read on 15 October 2026, in the currency the page showed us. Platform prices change often and can differ by country, so check them again before you buy. Nobody paid to be included. We build custom sites in Next.js, so we have a stake in the last row of every table; the section on where a custom build comes out worse is there for that reason.

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Treat this as a starting point, not a rule. A one-lawyer firm with no interest in touching the site again might be better served by a custom build on a care plan, because never thinking about the site is worth paying for. A growing accounting practice that wants to publish a new service page every month without waiting on anyone might be happier on Webflow than on a custom build that routes every structural change through a developer.

It's also worth looking at what your competitors use, not to copy them, but to see the baseline. If most firms in your area run dated templates, a clean, fast Squarespace site may be enough to stand out. If they've moved to fast, well-structured custom sites, matching that floor matters more.

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Notes on the table: Squarespace showed us Canadian dollars. Webflow's pricing page states its prices in USD per site, plus taxes at checkout; the monthly-billing figures come from Webflow's 13 May 2026 pricing announcement, which merged its CMS and Business plans into Premium. Webflow also sells Workspace plans (for seats and staging) separately from Site plans. Framer's page lists Basic at $10 and Pro at $30 a month with a yearly billing toggle, but did not name the currency. Wix's page said its prices are shown for reference and vary by location, so we haven't quoted them.

Sticker price is the wrong comparison; total cost over the time you'll run the site is closer. Here is the subscription alone, at the annual-billing prices above:

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The platforms look cheaper because the number you see covers hosting and editing rights only. It assumes you or someone on staff does the design and content work for free. A custom build looks bigger because the design and build labour is priced up front: one fixed quote, agreed before work starts, paid in two instalments of 50% to start and 50% at launch. Our care plans are month-to-month, and you can cancel any time. Compare like for like: what does it cost, all in, to get a finished site that loads well and that someone maintains?

Squarespace and Wix. Both are good products. The limit is customisation: you're working inside someone else's system, so anything outside the template, such as a non-standard integration, is either impossible or needs a paid app that adds its own scripts. On Squarespace, code injection is available on Core, Plus and Advanced, not Basic. Wix says a Wix site must run on Wix's servers: you can move your domain and content, but not the site.

Webflow. Real design freedom and a CMS good enough for a serious blog or case-study library. The trade is a steeper learning curve than Squarespace or Wix, so someone on your team needs to learn it or you'll pay for every change. Seats and staging sit on separate Workspace plans, and Premium bandwidth add-ons cost extra, which makes the sticker price easy to underestimate.

Framer. Fast to work in, with clean defaults and AI-assisted design tools that help a small team move quickly. Its CMS and permissions are simpler than Webflow's, so it's a weaker fit for a large content operation or complex data. UXPro's own site has run on Framer, and we would use it again for the right brief. It's a marketing-site tool, not a web-app tool.

A custom Next.js build is what we sell, so here is where it loses:

• It isn't self-serve. Editors can change content through a content management system, but a new page layout or a new kind of content needs a developer. If you want to create a new page at 9 pm with nobody else involved, a page builder suits you better.
• It costs more up front. You're paying for the build instead of renting a template.
• It doesn't make a site fast by default. In HTTP Archive's September 2026 data, 35.7% of Next.js origins passed Core Web Vitals on mobile, below every platform in this article. That figure includes large web apps, but it means the speed comes from how a site is built, not from the framework's name. We accept a build at Lighthouse 95 or higher on mobile; it is an acceptance target, not a published measurement.

Not on the field data. In HTTP Archive's Core Web Vitals Technology Report for September 2026, mobile origins passing all three Core Web Vitals were: Wix 80.9%, Webflow 71.3%, Squarespace 71.0%, WordPress 48.3% and Next.js 35.7%. Hosted builders control image delivery and hosting tightly, so a typical user can't make the site slow by accident.

What that data doesn't show is the ceiling. A carefully built custom site has more room to improve when you need it: no app-marketplace scripts you didn't choose, and no template CSS you don't use. If your site will stay simple, the platform gap barely matters. If it will grow, the ceiling does.