Squarespace vs Wix vs WordPress: which suits an Australian service business?
Published plan prices, what the cheapest plans leave out, and who looks after the site: Squarespace, Wix and WordPress compared for Australian service businesses.
A service business such as a plumber, physio or bookkeeper is usually choosing a website platform to do a few plain jobs: say what the business does and where, and make it easy to call, enquire, book or pay. Squarespace, Wix and WordPress are three of the names on most shortlists. On their published plans, they differ in what the cheapest plan leaves out, which currency you pay in, and how much of the upkeep lands on you.
This comparison uses each company’s own pricing pages, checked on 10 October 2026 from Australia. It’s desk research. We haven’t built sites on these products for this piece, and we didn’t test support, speed or search performance.
First, “WordPress” is two different things
WordPress.com is a hosted service, like Squarespace and Wix. You pay a monthly or yearly fee and the company runs the site for you. Its pricing page says every plan comes “with hosting included” and that all plans include SSL and “managed WordPress updates”.
WordPress.org is the free software behind it. WordPress.org describes it as open source software licensed under the GPLv2, and says it is “the platform of choice for over 43% of all sites across the web”. You install it on hosting you rent yourself, or your web designer does.
The software costs nothing to download, but running it isn’t free. WordPress.com’s own comparison says a self-hosted WordPress.org site runs on a hosting server “which you pay for and manage separately”, and that “you are responsible for your own hosting, security, and maintenance”. WordPress.org’s requirements page recommends a host that supports PHP 8.3 or greater, MariaDB 10.11 or MySQL 8.0 or greater, and HTTPS. It warns that older PHP and MySQL versions still work but “may expose your site to security vulnerabilities”.
What the two cheapest plans cost
Prices are per month on annual billing, as each site showed them to us on 10 October 2026.
| Platform | Cheapest paid plan | Next plan up | Currency shown | Free plan or trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | Basic, A$17 (A$24 paid monthly) | Core, A$28 (A$39 paid monthly) | Australian dollars | 14-day trial, no card. No free plan |
| Wix | Light, $17 | Core, $29 | Not clear: see the Wix section | Free plan, no card |
| WordPress.com | Personal, US$4 (US$9 paid monthly) | Premium, US$8 (US$18 paid monthly) | US dollars, excluding taxes | Free plan with no expiry date |
| WordPress.org (self-hosted) | No charge for the software | You pay a host | Depends on the host | Not applicable |
Over a year, that is A$204 for Squarespace Basic and A$336 for Core. Wix Light comes to $204 and Core to $348. WordPress.com Personal is US$48 and Premium US$96, before tax. Those totals are our arithmetic from the monthly figures.
For self-hosted WordPress, the comparable cost is hosting. In our guide to website hosting costs in Australia, entry-level shared hosting from the providers we checked on 29 September ranged from about $4.39 to $22.55 a month, depending on the provider and how long you prepay, and introductory prices often rose at renewal.
Squarespace
Squarespace is the only one of the three hosted services that showed us prices marked in Australian dollars. (When we checked for our hosting guide on 29 September, it showed us US dollar prices, so look at the currency symbol when you visit.) It has four plans: Basic (A$17 a month on annual billing), Core (A$28), Plus (A$49) and Advanced (A$109). Paying month to month costs more: A$24, A$39, A$69 and A$149. The page doesn’t say whether those prices include GST.
Basic allows up to two contributors and can sell products and services, but it lists an online store transaction fee of 2%, “applied when selling online products, services, or donations”. Card processing rates are listed separately. Core lists that fee as 0% and allows unlimited contributors. Sending invoices is free on every plan.
Be careful with the card rates on the page. Squarespace lists rates “starting at 1.8% + A$0.30” on Basic and Core, available only with Squarespace Payments. The same page says Squarespace Payments is currently available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and 10 European countries. Australia isn’t on that list, so ask Squarespace which payment providers and rates apply to an Australian business before relying on that figure.
Annual plans include one year of free domain registration “on available domains on our cheapest pricing tier”, one per website, after which the domain renews “at our standard rate, plus applicable taxes”. Core and the plans above it list one Google Workspace email account that is free for the first year if you register or connect a domain. The offer is for new Google Workspace accounts only, and the account then renews at the standard rate, so budget for it from year two.
Squarespace says it “doesn’t offer a free plan”, but every site starts with a 14-day trial and no credit card is needed.
Appointment booking isn’t in the plan comparison. The pricing page links to a Scheduling page in its products menu and to Acuity Scheduling in its footer. We didn’t price either.
Wix
Wix has a free plan and four paid ones. On 10 October the page showed us Light at $17 a month, Core at $29, Business at $39 and Business Elite at $159, for yearly subscriptions “paid in full at the time of purchase”.
The currency needs checking. Each price was labelled “Price includes GST”, which suggests an Australian price. But the page’s footnote says: “Prices and currency vary by location. USD prices displayed for reference only.” It adds that prices “do not include applicable taxes” and that the final price appears on the purchase page before you pay. Read the currency and total on that purchase page before you commit to a year.
The plan you choose matters more with Wix than the headline price suggests. Light’s plan card lists 2 GB of storage, two site collaborators and a free domain for a year. It doesn’t list accepting payments or scheduling. Those appear on the card for Core, which lists “Accept payments”, “Basic eCommerce” and “Scheduling and services”, with 50 GB of storage and five collaborators. Business raises that to 100 GB and 10 collaborators. On the published plan cards, a service business that wants customers to book or pay online should price Wix from Core.
Wix says creating a site is free, and that a Premium plan is what lets you “connect your own domain” and “remove Wix branding from your site”. It says most Premium plans include a one-year free domain voucher, which is only valid for a new domain bought from Wix and can’t be used to renew or extend one you already own. The page advertises a 14-day money-back guarantee.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com priced everything in US dollars, “excl. taxes”, so the Australian cost moves with the exchange rate. Billed yearly, Personal is US$4 a month, Premium US$8, Business US$25 and Commerce US$45. Paying monthly costs US$9, US$18, US$40 and US$70. Two-year and three-year terms are cheaper again.
The free plan has no expiry date. It gives you a wordpress.com subdomain and 1 GB of storage, shows WordPress.com ads to your visitors, and doesn’t allow a custom domain or plugins. That makes it a way to try the editor, and limited for a business that wants its own web address.
All paid plans remove the ads and allow plugins. WordPress.com says annual and multi-year plans include a free custom domain for the first year, and that monthly plans don’t. Personal has 6 GB of storage and Premium 13 GB. Premium adds payment buttons for PayPal and Stripe. Business has 50 GB and adds real-time backups with one-click restores, priority support and a business email account, powered by Titan, that is free for one year.
Self-hosted WordPress
Self-hosted WordPress isn’t tied to one company’s hosting. WordPress.org’s requirements page says “any server that supports PHP and MySQL will do”, so on our reading you can change hosts without changing platforms.
The cost is responsibility. On Squarespace, Wix and WordPress.com, the company runs the hosting. With self-hosted WordPress, the hosting, security and maintenance are yours to arrange. If that someone is a designer or agency, agree in writing what the monthly fee covers, and make sure the hosting and domain accounts are in the business’s name. Our guide to getting website and domain logins back from a former web designer shows what goes wrong when they aren’t.
How to choose
These suggestions are our reading of the published plans, not the result of testing.
- You want a brochure site priced in Australian dollars: Squarespace Basic, or Core if more than two people will edit the site or you want the 0% online store fee.
- You want customers to book and pay on the site, from one subscription: Wix Core lists payments and scheduling together. Confirm the currency and total at checkout.
- You want the lowest yearly fee for a hosted site with your own domain: WordPress.com Personal, or Premium if you want payment buttons, remembering the price is in US dollars before tax.
- A designer is building the site, or you expect to need custom features: self-hosted WordPress, with a written agreement on updates and backups and the accounts in your name.
If you already have a site that mostly works, switching platforms may not be the fix. Our guide on what to check before you rebuild your website covers that decision.
Checklist
- List what the site must do. Write down whether customers need to enquire, book or pay online, then check which plan on each platform lists that feature.
- Price the plan you’ll actually use. For Wix, start from Core if you need payments or scheduling. For Squarespace, compare Basic’s 2% fee on products and services sold online with Core’s higher price.
- Confirm the currency and tax at checkout. Read the currency symbol and the total on the purchase page before paying for a year: WordPress.com lists US dollars excluding taxes, and Wix says prices and currency vary by location.
- Ask Squarespace about Australian card rates. Its pricing page doesn’t list Australia among the countries where Squarespace Payments is available.
- Look up the year-two costs. Note when the free domain year ends and, if your plan includes a free first year of email, when that ends, then check the renewal price of each.
- Try before you pay for a year. Use Squarespace’s 14-day trial or the free plans on Wix and WordPress.com to build one real page, such as your main service page.
- Put the accounts in the business’s name. If a designer or agency sets up self-hosted WordPress, make sure the hosting and domain accounts belong to the business.
- For self-hosted WordPress, name who does the updates. Agree in writing who applies WordPress updates and keeps backups, and how often.
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