WIX AND SQUARESPACE, COMPARED
Wix and Squarespace get a business online in a weekend.Tome is for the one that hit the ceiling.
If your site is on Wix or Squarespace, it was probably the right call when you built it, and for a lot of businesses it still is. This page is for the one that hit a wall: members who need roles, a course that needs progress and certificates, a CRM with a pipeline, bookings past the cap, or a feature the builder won't let you write. What each side gives you, what a year costs when a professional does the work, what you can take with you, and when the builder is still the right answer.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Under the ceiling, or past it.
Choose Tome
You've hit the ceiling: members with roles, a course with progress and certificates, a CRM with a pipeline, or a feature the builder can't be made to do. Install the packs into a Payload project, or have us build it. If what you need is a plain site that rarely changes, our Static site at $2,750, yours outright, is the closer match than anything else on this page.
Choose Wix
Wix fits the owner who edits everything, keeps the site to pages and a contact form, and needs it live this week. Light is $17 and Core $29 a month, billed yearly.
Choose Squarespace
Squarespace fits the site that’s the design and the blog, with bookings through Acuity from $16 a month and email priced by the send. Core is $29 a month billed yearly, $39 monthly.
THE TABLE
Three ways to run a small-business site.
| Feature | Tome | Wix | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | One platform: pages and blocks, with members, courses, checkout and CRM as engines that share one database | A drag-and-drop builder with hosting, a built-in contacts tool, scheduling from Core, and an app market for the rest | Templates and hosting, a store, member sites and courses, bookings through Acuity, email by the send |
| How it gets to you | npm install into a Payload project, or we build it: a Static site $2,750 outright, an MVP platform $25,000, platforms from $55,000 | A plan: Light $17, Core $29, Business $39, Business Elite $159 a month, billed yearly; Wix shows no monthly price | Basic $19, Core $29, Plus $49, Advanced $99 a month billed yearly; $25 to $139 monthly |
| Members and courses | Learning engine, $300 a year; in a platform build, roles that follow your org chart; no fee on a sale | Pricing Plans and Online Programs on a premium plan; a fee of 4%, 2% or 0% of each sale by plan, per pricing guides (Wix's own pages don't state it) | Member sites and courses on any paid plan; 7%, 5%, 1% or 0% of each sale by plan, plus card fees; up to 10 gated areas per pricing plan |
| CRM and email | CRM & Marketing engine, $400 a year: contacts, pipeline, campaigns, intake forms | Built-in contacts, inbox and automations, by marketing-suite tier; email pricing isn't published where we could find it; Mailchimp from the app market when you outgrow it | A contacts panel; Email Campaigns priced by sends with unlimited contacts, $14 a month billed yearly for 5,000 sends |
| Checkout | Commerce engine, $400 a year, set up with us; your Stripe at its own rate | Wix Payments at 2.9% + 30¢; a store from Core | 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic and Core, 2.5% on Advanced; a store fee of 2% on Basic, 0% above |
| Custom code | It's your code | Velo scripting on any plan, inside Wix's data and compute limits | Code injection from Core up; checkout pages don't take code, and support won't help with it |
| Design | 161 blocks, a token-based design system, your design | Free templates; once a site is built it can't move to another template, per the guides we found | Templates included; the style editor |
| What you can take when you leave | The code and the database | Nothing that runs: the site "must run on Wix's servers." Copy the text, download the images, export the contacts | One blog as a WordPress-format file, with text and image blocks; not store pages, other page types, styles or CSS |
| Year one, doing it yourself | $950 for the library, Learning and CRM; $1,350 with Commerce | $468 on Business, plus the fee on each sale and an email tool | $516 on Core with 5,000 sends a month, plus 5% of member and course sales |
| Built and kept by a professional, year one | A Static site $3,950 all in; an MVP platform $25,000 plus $300 to $700 a month | Roughly $4,600 to $14,500 from the published ranges; a membership build $8,000 to $15,000 and up | Roughly $4,650 to $14,500 from the published ranges |
Sources for every cell are at the bottom of the page.
PAST THE CEILING
The four things a builder caps.
01
The ceiling is a feature list; on Tome it's a data model
A builder's memberships are an app with a fee: Squarespace charges 7% of each sale on Basic and caps a pricing plan at ten gated areas; Wix's run through its Pricing Plans app on a premium plan. Its courses are the same app wearing a different name. On Tome a member is a record with a role, the course is an engine that remembers her progress, and the CRM pipeline reads from the same database as the page she signed up on. The running version is on the Vanguard study.
See the Vanguard study →02
You can take it with you
Wix's own help page says the site "must run on Wix's servers" because "the SaaS architecture does not support external hosting." Squarespace's export page lists what leaves: one blog, text and image blocks; and what doesn't: store pages, every other page type, style settings and custom CSS. A Tome site is Payload and Next.js source in your repository, with your content in your own database. Any shop that knows the stack can run it, with or without us.
03
One install, all of it
Everything starter.wabbit.com does, it does on one install: the course, the store, the directory and the org chart. Try any of them. It's the same foundation we build client platforms on.
Open the demo →WHERE A BUILDER WINS
Simple site, simple tool.
Pages and a phone number
The site is pages and a phone number. A restaurant, a salon, a contractor: hours, services, a form, edited by the owner. Wix Light at $17 a month or Squarespace Basic at $19 does it this week, and nothing on Tome would get used.
Bookings are the whole backend
Bookings are the whole backend. Acuity from $16 a month, or Wix's scheduling from Core, handles times, deposits, reminders and packages. A custom booking system is a build you don't need.
You're testing an idea
You're testing an idea. At $17 to $49 a month with templates included, you can find out whether anyone wants the thing before you spend build money on it. If they don't, you've lost a few hundred dollars.
The membership is small and simple
The membership is small and simple. One paid tier, a course with a few hundred students, sold now and then. A few percent of modest revenue costs less than a build and its upkeep, and the crossover only comes when the sales are large enough that the fee would have paid for the platform.
A simple site belongs on a simple tool, and our own /static-site page says the same. Tome starts where the caps do.
WHAT IT COSTS
The software by the year, the work by the job.
The blocks
Free
$0
Marketing Starter and Content Writer, 19 blocks. A free account, no card, no trial.
Craft Library
$250/yr
Every paid pack and theme. Stop whenever you like: what you've installed keeps working; you just stop receiving new releases.
The engines · added per project, on any plan
Learning
$300/yr
Courses, lessons, and progress.
CRM & Marketing
$400/yr
Contacts, pipeline, campaigns, and intake forms.
Commerce
$400/yr
Catalog and checkout, set up with us because it touches payments.
Agency
$4,800/yr
Every engine included, for studios running many client sites.
Cheap to start, until the add-ons.
Tools only means you run the builder yourself and pay its fees on top. Built and kept means a professional builds it and stays on to patch it.
About $468 a year, plus 4%, 2% or 0% on membership and course sales
Business plan billed yearly; add 2.9% + 30¢ card processing, and Wix doesn't publish a price for its email tool.About $516 a year, plus 5%, 1% or 0% on membership and course sales
Core at $348 plus $168 for 5,000 Email Campaigns sends a month; add 2.9% + 30¢ card processing.Roughly $4,600 to $14,500
Designers charge $25 to $49 an hour; a small-business build runs $3,000 to $8,000, a membership build $8,000 to $15,000 and up, plus maintenance of $95 to $500 a month.$3,950, and the site is yours outright
$2,750 for the site and $100 a month for Care, which keeps it patched and current.$25,000 fixed, plus $300 to $700 a month
The retainer is roughly 15% a year and covers security patches, platform updates and backups.From $55,000
Always scoped first in a $5,000 Architecture Sprint that's credited to the build.A builder is cheap to start and the add-ons are where the bill grows. Tome costs more on day one and the same on day four hundred, and the code and the database are yours.
FIVE STEPS
From a builder to a running platform.
- STEP 01
Export what exports, and budget a day for the rest.
Squarespace gives you one blog and its text and image blocks as a WordPress-format file. Wix exports nothing that runs. On both, contacts come out as CSV, and the pages come out by hand.
- STEP 02
Model the operation, not the site.
The Architecture Sprint is two weeks and $5,000, credited to the build: the data model, the phases, the risks, and an exact price. If you don't build with us, you keep the architecture.
- STEP 03
Build it, or install it.
An MVP is $25,000 fixed; a full platform starts at $55,000. If you have a developer and a Payload project, the packs and engines install with one npm install and a free account, and the get-started guide takes about an hour.
- STEP 04
Move the domain and keep the URLs.
Both builders release a domain with a transfer code; Squarespace says the transfer can take up to 15 days, and any registrar holds a domain for 60 days after a change. The addresses you've earned rankings on redirect to their new homes.
- STEP 05
Launch, then keep it current.
Care is $100 a month for a site; the platform retainer runs $300 to $700 a month. Security patches, platform updates and backups are ours to do, and the code stays yours.
WHERE TO NEXT
See past the ceiling.
Browse the blocks
All 161, with live previews.
Two packs are free with a no-card account.
Browse the blocks →See it running
One Tome install doing all of it at once.
starter.wabbit.com
Open the demo →Have it built
If you've hit the ceiling, a platform shaped to your operation is what we do; if you haven't, a Static site is $2,750.
How we build →Checked 25 September 2026.
If something here has gone out of date, tell us and we'll fix it.
wix.com/plans (plans) · Wix Studio plans (plans) · Wix Payments service fees (card fees) · Pricing Plans (memberships) · Online Programs (courses) · Wix's developer docs (Velo) · wix.com/ascend/crm (the contacts tool) · Export or embed your site (export) · LitExtension's guide (the Pricing Plans fee) · Theoriq's guide (the template rule)
squarespace.com/pricing (plans and fees) · Acuity Scheduling pricing (bookings) · Email Campaigns (email pricing) · Member Sites (members and courses) · Code injection (custom code) · Exporting your site (what leaves) · Transferring a domain away
Clutch's web design pricing (designer rates) · Marta Lebre (Squarespace designer pricing) · Wallis Williams · BeKnown
/blocks (the live block count) · /subscribe (plans) · /platform-builds (builds, Sprint, retainer) · /pricing