Which is cheapest: Wix, Squarespace or Shopify?

For a basic non-selling site, Squarespace and Wix start around $17–$19 USD/month on annual billing. For selling products, Shopify Basic at $29 USD/month is the strongest, but real Shopify costs often double once apps and payment processing are counted. All three bill in USD, so Canadian cards pay the exchange rate on top.

Do I own my website on Wix, Squarespace or Shopify?

No — you rent it. Wix has no site export at all; Squarespace exports only partial content; Shopify exports product data but not your store design. Stop paying and the site goes dark. That lock-in is the biggest structural difference from a custom-built site, where you own every file.

Are website builders bad for SEO?

Not inherently — all three handle SEO basics. The honest limits are page speed (builder pages carry weight that slows mobile load) and schema control. For local service businesses where Google rankings drive revenue, a fast hand-coded site has a measurable edge; for a portfolio or hobby site the difference rarely matters.

When is a custom website worth it over a builder?

When the website is a lead engine rather than a brochure. Over five years, a builder plan plus apps costs $2,000–$5,000 anyway — comparable to a $4,500 one-time custom build that loads faster, ranks with full control, has no monthly rent, and is an asset you own.

Wix vs Squarespace vs Shopify: Honest 2026 Answers

Every week a Calgary business owner asks some version of: "Should I just use Wix? Or Squarespace? My cousin says Shopify." They've usually read three affiliate blogs that all conclude "it depends" and recommend whatever pays the highest commission.

Here are the actual questions, answered with 2026 numbers and no affiliate links — including the answer builder companies don't advertise and web designers oversell.

Which one is cheapest, really?

Sticker prices (USD, annual billing, 2026): Wix from ~$17/mo, Squarespace from ~$19/mo, Shopify Basic $29/mo. To actually sell things: Wix Business ~$23+, Squarespace Commerce ~$27+.

Now the parts the pricing pages soft-pedal:

You pay in USD. Add roughly 35–40% for Canadian dollars.
Year-one promos expire. Domains and plans both renew higher than the price that got you in.
Shopify's real cost is the subscription × two. Once you add the apps most stores need and payment processing, $29 becomes $60–$80/mo in practice.
It never ends. That's the structural one. $23 USD/mo is about $1,900 CAD over five years — for the entry tier, before apps and domain renewals.

Which is best for what?

The honest sorting, free of "it depends":

Selling physical products online? Shopify, and it's not close. Checkout, inventory, shipping, the app ecosystem — it's built for exactly this, and it's genuinely good at it.
Design-first portfolio — photographer, studio, architect? Squarespace. The templates are beautiful and the audience expects exactly that look.
Testing an idea this weekend on zero budget? Wix. Fastest from nothing to something, free tier included (with Wix ads on your site).
Local service business that needs the site to produce leads? This is where the builder pitch gets weakest — keep reading.

Do I own my website?

No. This is the question builders hope you never ask. Wix has no export — there is no way to take a Wix site elsewhere; you rebuild from scratch. Squarespace exports partial content (some pages and posts), not your design. Shopify exports your product spreadsheet, not your store. In every case: stop paying, site goes dark.

The renting test: ask what happens to the site if you cancel. If the answer is "it disappears," you're not building an asset — you're paying rent on one. Sometimes rent is the right call. It should just be a decision, not a surprise.

Are builders bad for SEO?

Less bad than web designers claim, worse than builders claim. All three cover the basics — titles, metas, sitemaps, mobile rendering. Google does not penalize a site for being built on Wix.

The real limits are speed and control. Builder pages ship a lot of code, and on a phone on Deerfoot with two bars, that's a slower load — which costs both rankings and the visitor's patience. And fine-grained control (schema markup, page structure, the things that win competitive local searches like "electrician calgary") is limited. For a portfolio, irrelevant. For a business living off Google leads, it's the difference between page one and page two.

What's the five-year cost against a custom build?

The comparison nobody runs, because the timescales feel different:

Wix/Squarespace business tier: roughly $2,000–$3,000 CAD over five years, plus your evenings building and maintaining it
Shopify with typical apps: $4,000–$6,000+ CAD over five years
Custom build: from $4,500 one-time — hand-coded, fast, local SEO built in, hosting essentially free, optional care from $100/mo. In year six, it's still yours and still costs nothing.

Similar money either way. The differences are who does the work, how fast the site loads, how it ranks — and whether you own anything at the end.

So what's the honest recommendation?

If you're selling products, take Shopify and don't look back. If it's a portfolio or a side project, a builder is the right amount of website — spending $4,500 there would be silly. But if the site's job is generating customers for a service business, run the five-year math before defaulting to DIY: the subscription path costs about the same and leaves you renting a slower site. That math — not anyone's sales pitch — should make the call.

Your website is the tip.

I build what sits underneath it: the booking, the follow-ups, the payments and the admin you retype every week.

Book a free 30-min call with Chen →

Free. You keep the one-page plan either way