Squarespace vs Wix vs Weebly: Website Builder Pricing Playbook

A brochure site with no sales costs $156 a year on Weebly Personal, $204 on Wix Light, and $228 on Squarespace Basic — all on annual billing. Once the site starts selling, the order reverses: at $2,000 of monthly sales, Wix Core and Squarespace Core tie at $1,188 a year all-in, while Squarespace Basic costs $1,548. The subscription price is the least important number on the page. The fee on each sale decides the winner.

The prices, side by side

Squarespace's figures are from squarespace.com/pricing, Weebly's from weebly.com/pricing — both read 8 November 2026 — and Wix's annual figures from Wix's own cost guide, current as of November 2026. Wix's monthly figures are corroborated-secondary: its plans page renders prices in JavaScript and returned no price data to our fetch, so they are five-way corroborated 2026 figures.

Weebly is the cheapest paid plan at every tier with a counterpart: Personal at $156 undercuts Light by $48 and Basic by $72. Wix Core and Squarespace Core cost exactly the same $348 a year. Wix Business Elite at $1,908 costs $720 more than Squarespace Advanced at $1,188, and Weebly stops at Performance for $384: no tier above it.

What the monthly price hides

Annual billing is a loan you make to the vendor. Squarespace Basic saves $72 a year (24%) and Advanced $480 (nearly 29%); Wix Light saves $84 (about 29%) but Business Elite only $156 on a $2,064 monthly-billed total (under 8%); Weebly Professional saves $60 (25%) and Performance $48 (about 11%).

The domain is the second hidden line: all three include a custom domain free for one year on annual billing, renewing after that at the registrar's rate — Wix's blog puts a .com renewal at $13.35 a year (corroborated-secondary). The exit: Wix offers a 14-day money-back guarantee, stated on its own blog; Squarespace's trial is 14 days per multiple 2026 reads (corroborated-secondary). Weebly's free plan is the only free tier here that can sell — its plan table lists a shopping cart with unlimited items.

The fee layer: where the real price lives

A subscription is a fixed cost. A transaction fee is a percentage of revenue, and percentages scale with success — which is where Squarespace Basic becomes the most expensive plan for any store that grows.

Squarespace runs two fee schedules. The commerce fee — physical products, downloads, services, donations — is 2% on Basic and 0% on Core, Plus, and Advanced, per Squarespace's support article. The digital-products fee — courses, video pages, member sites — is 7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus, 0% on Advanced.

Card processing sits on top of both schedules. With Squarespace Payments in the US, standard cards cost 2.9% plus $0.30 on Basic and Core, 2.7% plus $0.30 on Plus, 2.5% plus $0.30 on Advanced; premium cards 3.2% plus $0.30 on every plan; international cards add 1.5%, conversion adds 1%, ACH costs 1.5% on Basic and 1% above — all from Squarespace's support article, read 8 November 2026. Most of that rate is interchange — the fee the cardholder's bank takes — and Visa and Mastercard publish the interchange schedules that set it.

Wix takes no cut of store sales: with Wix Payments in the US, standard cards cost 2.9% plus $0.30, American Express 3.7% plus $0.30, PayPal 3.49% plus $0.49, per Wix's own cost guide. Wix does take a cut on Pricing Plans subscriptions and memberships: 4% on Core, 2% on Business, 0% on Business Elite, and 2.5% on event tickets (corroborated-secondary).

Weebly checkout runs on Square, and Weebly's pricing page states no processing rate and no separate per-sale platform fee. Square's published online card rate is 2.9% plus $0.30, used in the worked examples below. Confirm the rate at checkout.

Worked example one: the small store at $2,000 a month

Take a store doing $2,000 of sales a month — $24,000 a year — across 40 orders a month at a $50 average, or 480 orders a year. The total annual cost is the subscription plus the platform fee on sales plus card processing on every order:

Processing on a $50 order at 2.9% plus $0.30 is $1.75, or $840 across 480 orders. Wix Core: $348 plus $840, or $1,188 a year. Squarespace Core: exactly the same $1,188. Squarespace Basic: $228 plus 2% of $24,000 ($480) plus $840, or $1,548. Weebly Performance: $384 plus $840, or $1,224.

The cheapest subscription is the most expensive store because Basic's 2% fee costs $480 a year, four times the $120 it saves on the subscription. Core costs $120 more and saves 2% of sales, so the plans tie at $6,000 of annual sales — $500 a month. Above $500 a month, Core pays for itself. That $500-a-month line is the most useful number in this guide.

Worked example two: the growing store at $10,000 a month

Now take $10,000 a month — $120,000 a year — across 200 orders a month at $50 average, or 2,400 orders. Processing is $1.75 an order, or $4,200 a year. Wix Business: $468 plus $4,200, or $4,668. Squarespace Plus: $588 plus processing at 2.7% ($1.65 an order, $3,960), or $4,548. Advanced: $1,188 plus $3,720 processing, or $4,908. Weebly Performance: $384 plus $4,200, or $4,584. Squarespace Basic: $228 plus 2% of $120,000 ($2,400) plus $4,200, or $6,828.

Plus leads at $4,548, then Weebly Performance at $4,584, Wix Business at $4,668, Advanced at $4,908. Advanced costs $360 more than Plus while saving only $0.10 an order, so the break-even is 6,000 orders a year — 500 a month, or $300,000 of annual sales at a $50 average. The formula:

For course sellers the arithmetic changes: the digital-products fee falls from 1% on Plus to 0% on Advanced, so at $120,000 of annual course sales that 1% is $1,200 — twice the $600 gap. Wix's trap runs the other way: a membership site on Core pays 4% of subscription revenue, or $4,800 a year at $120,000 — more than ten times the Core subscription.

The decision table

A course seller crosses to Advanced at $60,000 a year of digital sales, when 1% equals the $600 gap to Advanced. Run the formula at your own numbers: the upgrade looks expensive and the fee looks small, and the fee is the one that scales.

What each tier actually gates

The cheapest tier that does the whole job is the cheapest tier.

Squarespace Basic is a brochure plan with a shop attached: a custom domain free for one year on annual billing, unlimited bandwidth, SSL, and basic analytics — but every sale carries the 2% commerce fee and the 7% digital-products fee. Core removes the commerce fee. Plus adds abandoned-cart recovery, subscriptions, and the 2.7% rate. Advanced adds commerce APIs. Abandoned-cart recovery on Plus is the gate that matters: recovering 5% of abandoned carts at $2,000 a month recovers $100 a month.

Wix Light is a brochure plan that cannot accept payments — the first plan that takes payments is Core at $29 a month on annual billing, with basic ecommerce and 50 GB of storage. Light carries 2 GB and 2 collaborators. Business adds the marketing suite and 100 GB; Business Elite adds unlimited storage. The payment gate matters most: a Light buyer who later needs to take one payment must jump to Core, a $144-a-year step.

Weebly's tiers gate far less. Every plan, including free, includes a shopping cart with unlimited items, free SSL, and unlimited storage, per the plan table on weebly.com/pricing. Personal connects a custom domain; Performance adds item badges and quick shop. No abandoned-cart tier, no developer platform — a ceiling for a growing one. Compare with WordPress in our Wix vs WordPress comparison and the Webflow vs Framer vs WordPress pricing guide.

Who should not buy each one

Squarespace is the wrong choice for a store selling mostly courses and memberships on a low tier: 7% on Basic and 5% on Core on every digital sale is a revenue share, not a fee, and it applies before card processing.

Wix is the wrong choice for a membership business starting on Core: the 4% Pricing Plans fee applies to the revenue line the business is built on. The first selling tier is $348: the free plan and Light cannot take payments. And it is the wrong choice for a buyer who will not read the renewal terms: first-year promotions roughly halve year one, and the renewal lands at full price.

Weebly is the wrong choice for a store that expects to outgrow a simple catalogue: no tier above Performance at $32 a month, no abandoned-cart recovery, no advanced shipping engine, no developer platform. Sophisticated discounting, subscriptions, and merchandising sit on Squarespace Plus or Wix Business. It is also the wrong choice for a business that needs its processing rate in writing before launch.

The payments and entity paragraph

For the record: all three vendors bill in USD and settle through a payment processor — Squarespace Payments, Wix Payments, or Square — so the money path runs through an API into your bank account, and the settlement report arrives as a CSV your CPA can reconcile against your books. A US seller operating as an LLC or a C-Corp needs an EIN before the processor releases payouts; an S-Corp election changes nothing about the builder's fees. Cross-border sellers should watch the FX line: Squarespace adds 1% for conversion and 1.5% for international cards, Wix adds 1.5% cross-border and 1% for conversion, on top of the card rate. ACH Direct Debit is the cheapest way to take a large domestic payment — 1.5% on Squarespace Basic, 1% on Core and above.

The switch, step by step

1. Write down your real numbers: monthly sales, average order value, orders a month.
2. Run the total-cost formula at those numbers for two tiers on each vendor. Use our website cost calculator.
3. Find your break-even line: divide the subscription gap by the fee difference.
4. Sell on the free tier first: Weebly's free plan takes orders, and Wix's free plan lets you build before you pay.
5. Confirm the processing rate at checkout: premium and international cards cost more than the headline rate.
6. Check the domain renewal before year two: the free first year ends, and the renewal is a separate line.
7. Choose annual billing only after the 30-day check: if the site is live, selling, and on the tier you need, pay annually and take the 11% to 29% saving; if not, stay monthly.