The short answer
If you need a simple site this weekend, enjoy DIY, and money is the tightest constraint — a site builder is a legitimate choice, and we'll tell you so. If the website matters to how you get customers, WordPress (or hand-built code) wins on ownership, growth, and what happens when you outgrow the starter plan. The difference shows up in year two, not week one.
What Wix and Squarespace genuinely do well
They removed every excuse for not having a website. Hosting handled, templates included, drag and drop, one monthly bill. Squarespace templates look genuinely good. For a hobby, a side project, or a brand-new business testing whether it even is a business, that's real value — and anyone who tells you those platforms can't rank on Google at all is selling something.
Where they pinch as the business grows
- You're renting: stop paying and the site is gone — there's no site to take with you
- Leaving is painful: exports give you text and images, not a working website
- Feature walls: the thing you need next lives on a pricier plan, or doesn't exist
- SEO ceilings: the basics work, but the finer control serious SEO wants isn't all there
- Nobody local to call: support is a ticket queue, not a person who knows your site
What WordPress gives you instead
Ownership, mostly. The site is yours — files and database — and it moves to any host on earth. Powering roughly forty percent of the web means any feature you'll ever want exists, and no platform ceiling decides what your site can become. Our own client sites run on it for exactly that reason.
The honest cost: WordPress needs somebody. Updates, backups, security — either you learn them or you pay someone (that's what our care plans are). An unmaintained WordPress site ages worse than a builder site. Ownership means upkeep.
The question that actually decides it
Not "which platform is better" — it's "who does the work." A builder trades your evenings for the subscription price. Hiring a pro on WordPress costs real money and buys you a site built around getting found, plus your evenings back. If the website is how customers find you, that trade usually pays for itself; if it's a digital business card, it may not need to.
If you're switching later, do it carefully
Moving off a builder without a plan torches your Google standing — every page has an address, and abandoning them all at once tells Google your site vanished. The fix is redirects: every old address forwarding to its new page before the old site goes dark. We map them first on every rebuild we do. Rankings come along instead of starting over.
Common questions
Can you move my Wix or Squarespace site to WordPress?
Yes. Content moves over, the design gets rebuilt properly, and every old page address redirects to its new home so your Google standing survives the trip.
Will switching platforms hurt my rankings?
Only if the move skips redirects. Done right — every old address forwarded, launch checked — rankings carry over and usually improve on the faster site.
Is WordPress secure?
Maintained, yes — it runs banks and newsrooms. Neglected, no. Most hacked WordPress sites are ones nobody updated for years. That's the upkeep side of owning.
What does moving to WordPress cost?
A full from-the-ground-up rebuild typically starts at $2,200. If your current site mostly needs improving rather than replacing, we bill at $130 an hour — and four hours is often enough to make a substantial difference.