WordPress, Squarespace or custom-built: which suits a service business?
Choosing a website platform feels like a technology decision, but it's really a decision about who looks after the site and what you need it to do beyond showing up in a browser. WordPress, Squarespace and Wix are popular for good reason, and each suits a particular kind of business. Here's how they compare for an Australian service business, and where a custom-built site earns its higher price.
Start with what the website actually has to do
A brochure site that tells people who you are and how to call you is a different job to a site that takes bookings, sends quotes or lets a customer log in and check progress. The platform that's right for the first job can struggle with the second.
Before comparing prices, it helps to know roughly what a website should cost for your situation. Our guide on what a website costs in Australia covers that in more detail.
WordPress: free software, but someone has to run it
WordPress comes in two versions that get confused constantly. WordPress.org is free, open source software you install on your own hosting, where you control everything and are responsible for everything. WordPress.com is a hosted service built on that same software, with plans that handle the technical side for you.
Self-hosted WordPress.org needs a domain name and hosting. In Australia, a .com.au domain through VentraIP runs about $9.95 in the first year on promotion, renewing around $22.95 a year, and hosting starts from about $5.50 a month on promotion (regularly around $11 a month). WordPress.com's own hosted plans are priced in US dollars, from about US$4 a month (Personal, billed annually) up to US$25 a month (Business, billed annually).
- WordPress.org: free software, but you (or someone you pay) handle updates, security, backups and fixing anything a plugin breaks.
- WordPress.com: the hosting and updates are handled for you, for a monthly fee, with fewer of the plugin headaches.
- Either way, WordPress is popular because it's flexible. It runs 39.7% of all websites, a 58.4% share among sites built on a known content management system, so there's no shortage of themes, plugins and people who know it.
Budget for someone to maintain it, even if that's only a few hours a year. Most WordPress problems we see are sites nobody has touched since the day they were built.
Squarespace and Wix: pay monthly, everything's handled
Squarespace and Wix are page builders you rent. There's no software to install and nothing to update yourself. The trade-off is a monthly fee for as long as the site exists, and less flexibility than code gives you.
Squarespace's Australian dollar plans run from about $17 a month on the annual Basic plan up to $109 a month on the annual Advanced plan (paying month to month costs more). Wix only publishes pricing in US dollars on its own site, from about US$17.77 a month for its entry Light plan, so if you're comparing it to an Australian dollar quote, check the exchange rate on the day.
Both are genuinely good for a simple site you'll edit yourself: a new team member, a price change, a fresh set of photos. Where they get strained is bookings, quoting or anything that needs to talk to the rest of your business, because you're working inside their templates and their limits, not open code.
Custom-built: when the website needs to run part of your business
A custom-built site is written specifically for your business rather than assembled from a template. It costs more upfront and there's no monthly platform fee, just hosting (about $40 a month for a typical tool) and a domain in your own name.
This is the right call once your website needs to do real work: take a booking with a deposit, generate a quote, let a customer log in and check where their job is up to, or talk to your calendar and your accounting software. Our online booking, quoting and invoicing and tradie quoting pages show what that looks like in practice, and custom software or SaaS: how to choose goes deeper on the upfront versus ongoing trade-off.
A standard custom website like our Essential package (up to 11 pages, a fixed $5,000 + GST) takes about 4 to 6 weeks. A more complex build with bookings or logins is closer to 12 to 18 weeks.
At a glance
| Upfront cost | Monthly cost | Who maintains it | Bookings and quotes | Ownership | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress.org (self-hosted) | Low (design and setup time) | Domain plus hosting, from about $5.50/mo | You, or whoever you pay | Possible with plugins, patchy for anything complex | Yours, though exports depend on your theme and plugins |
| WordPress.com (hosted) | Low | About US$4 to US$25/mo, billed annually | Handled by WordPress.com | Limited, especially on lower plans | Content is yours; moving off still takes work |
| Squarespace | Low | About $17 to $109/mo AUD, billed annually | Handled by Squarespace | Basic forms and scheduling only | Exports to one XML file; some features and bulk images don't export |
| Wix | Low | From about US$17.77/mo | Handled by Wix | Basic booking apps only | Cannot be exported; sites must stay on Wix's servers |
| Custom-built | Higher, fixed price agreed upfront | Hosting only, about $40/mo | You own the code; we or another developer can maintain it | Built to do exactly what you need | You own the code, design and content once paid |
What happens if you ever want to leave
This is the part people don't think about until they try to do it. Squarespace can export your content, but only as a single XML file, and some features plus bulk image or video export aren't supported, so a straight copy and paste to a new platform rarely works. Wix is more restrictive again: Wix itself says sites cannot be exported or moved, they have to stay on Wix's servers for as long as you use them.
A custom-built site doesn't have this problem. Once it's paid for, you own the code, design and content outright, and there's no lock-in contract. That's worth weighing against the lower starting price of a rented platform, especially if you expect to outgrow it.
If you can picture a staff member confidently editing the site themselves next year, a page builder is probably the right call. If you can't picture anyone in the business doing that, factor ongoing help into whichever platform you choose.
Our take
There's no universally right answer here, it depends on what the site has to do and who's going to look after it. Squarespace or Wix suit a straightforward brochure site you'll keep updating yourself, and there's no shame in that, plenty of good businesses run on them. WordPress earns its popularity through flexibility, provided someone, not nobody, is responsible for keeping it maintained. Custom-built is worth the higher upfront cost once the website needs to actually run part of the business, bookings, quotes, logins, rather than just describe it.
If the upfront cost of a custom build is what's holding you back, there's a middle path: our Growth Plan puts a complete custom website, hosting and monthly changes into one fee of $450 plus GST a month on a 12-month term, with no setup fee. It also covers phone answering, review requests and your Google profile, so it suits a business that wants the site looked after rather than another job to manage.
