WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace for a trade website

All three can give a trade business a decent website that gets calls. Wix and Squarespace are the quickest way to build something yourself, while self-hosted WordPress gives you the most ownership and control over speed, SEO and AI search, at the cost of needing someone to look after it. Unavoidable Marketing is a UK-wide, Leeds-based agency that builds WordPress websites for trades across the UK, and founder Andrew Heppinstall is on every strategy call.

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Last updated: 21 October 2026

The short version

We build on WordPress, so read this with that in mind. We have still tried to be fair, because the right answer depends on your business. A sole trader plasterer in Plymouth who wants a tidy, simple site this weekend has different needs from a heating firm in Leicester with several vans, a long list of services and plans to rank in every town they cover.

Wix and Squarespace are hosted website builders. You pay the platform, they look after the hosting, security and updates, and you drag and drop your pages into place. WordPress, in the self-hosted version from WordPress.org, is free software you install on hosting you choose. You get more freedom, but somebody has to keep it updated and secure. WordPress.com is a separate hosted service that sits somewhere in between.

Whichever you pick, the platform is only the toolbox. What gets a trade the phone call is what is built with it: a clear headline saying what you do and where, a phone number you can tap at the top, real photos, accreditations, reviews, and a page for each job you want more of. A brilliant platform with weak pages will lose to an average platform with strong ones.

Side by side

For pricing, check each platform’s current plans directly. They change often and depend on the features you pick.

Ownership: the question most trades never ask

When you build on Wix or Squarespace, the domain name can be yours and you can usually export some of your content, but the website itself, its design and layout, lives on their platform. If you ever want to leave, you rebuild. That is not a trick, it is simply how hosted builders work, and plenty of trades are happy with it.

With self-hosted WordPress, the files and database are yours. You can move to a different host or a different developer without starting again. That matters more than people think. We regularly speak to roofers and electricians who paid someone for a website years ago and now cannot get the login, or found out the domain was registered in the old web designer’s name. Whatever platform you choose, make sure the domain is registered to you and that you hold the main login.

Ownership also covers the boring bits that only matter when something goes wrong: who pays the hosting, whose email address the accounts are tied to, and who holds the backups. Write those down and keep them somewhere safe. If you fall out with a developer, or they retire, you want to be able to hand everything to someone new in an afternoon.

Speed on a phone

Most people looking for a trade are on a phone, often stood in a kitchen with water on the floor or a boiler that will not fire. A slow site loses that call to the next result.

Wix and Squarespace handle hosting for you and have improved a lot. You get decent speed without thinking about it, but you cannot tune much underneath. WordPress can be very fast or very slow. A lean theme on good hosting with compressed images flies. A bloated page builder stuffed with plugins on cheap shared hosting crawls. The platform is not the problem: the build is.

On any platform, the biggest speed wins are the same. Resize and compress photos before you upload them, because a picture straight off a modern phone is far bigger than a web page needs. Avoid autoplay videos and sliders at the top of the homepage. Keep the first screen simple: what you do, where you work, a tap-to-call button and a line of trust such as your Gas Safe or NICEIC details. Then test the site on your own phone, on mobile data, stood outside a customer’s house. If it feels slow to you, it feels slow to them.

SEO for local trade searches

All three platforms let you set page titles, meta descriptions and clean web addresses, and all three can rank. A well-written Wix site will beat a badly built WordPress site every time. Where WordPress pulls ahead is control. Trade businesses that grow tend to want a page for each service, a page for each town they really cover, job case studies, a blog answering real questions, and fine control over how each of those pages is set up. WordPress handles that kind of structure comfortably.

Wix and Squarespace can do service and town pages too, and for a smaller firm with a handful of pages they are perfectly capable. The difference tends to show as the site grows. Managing dozens of pages, each with its own title, description, schema and internal links, is simply easier on a platform built to be extended.

What actually wins local searches is the same on any platform: a complete Google Business Profile, a page for each job you want to be found for, honest local pages, reviews that name the job and the town, and the same name, address and phone number everywhere online.

AI search: ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews

More people now ask an AI assistant who to call for a job. Those assistants build answers from sources they can read and trust: clear answer-first pages, consistent business details across directories, reviews, mentions on other reputable sites, structured data and named experts. Nobody can guarantee being named.

Wix and Squarespace add some structured data automatically. On WordPress you can add detailed schema for your business, each service, your reviews and your FAQs, and shape every page so the answer sits right at the top. If AI search is part of your plan, that extra control is useful. If it is not on your radar yet, a clear, honest site on any platform is still a good start.

A worked example: an electrician choosing a platform

Take an electrician in Cardiff who has worked for themselves for a year. Work comes mostly from word of mouth and a Google Business Profile. They want a website so customers who hear about them can check them out, and so they look properly registered for notifiable work under Part P.

For now, they need a homepage, a page on rewires and consumer units, a page on EV charger fitting, a page on fault finding, an about page with their NICEIC registration, a reviews page and a contact page with a short quote form. They are comfortable with a computer and have a few quiet evenings. Wix or Squarespace would let them build that themselves within a couple of weekends, with hosting and security handled for them. That is a sensible choice, as long as the domain is in their name.

Now picture the same electrician a few years later with several vans, an apprentice, and work across Cardiff, Newport, Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan. They want a page for every main service, honest pages for each area with real jobs done there, case studies, detailed schema for their business, services and reviews, and pages written answer-first so AI assistants can understand exactly what they do. At that point, self-hosted WordPress, built lean and looked after properly, gives them more room to grow without a rebuild.

A roofer in Newcastle or a plumber in Leicester faces the same choice. Start with what you need now, but think about where the business will be in a few years.

How to decide: questions to ask yourself

• Do I want to build and edit the site myself, or would I rather someone else did it?
• How many services and towns do I want pages for now, and in a few years?
• How important is it that I can move the whole site to a new host or developer?
• Who will handle updates, backups and security if I choose WordPress?
• Is ranking for each job and town a big part of how I want to win work?
• Does AI search, being named by ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI Overviews, matter to my plans?
• Is my current site actually the problem, or is it the pages, photos and profile?
• Is the domain registered in my name, with the login in my hands?

If most of your answers point to “simple and quick”, a hosted builder is fine. If they point to “grow, rank and own”, WordPress is worth the extra care.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Launching on a free platform web address instead of your own domain name.
• Letting someone else register the domain, so you cannot move it later.
• Picking a template full of stock photos of smiling people in clean overalls instead of your own jobs.
• One long page listing every service, rather than a page for each main job.
• Hiding the phone number at the bottom, or making it an image that cannot be tapped.
• Loading WordPress with heavy page builders and dozens of plugins, then wondering why it is slow.
• Never updating WordPress, its theme or plugins, and having no backups.
• Moving platform without redirecting old page addresses, and losing what Google already knew.
• Copying the same town page with only the town name changed.

Getting started on each platform

Getting started on Wix or Squarespace

• Register your domain in your own name, then connect it to the platform.
• Check the current plans and pick one that includes your own domain and forms.
• Choose a simple template and replace every stock photo with your own job photos.
• Build a homepage, one page per main service, an about page, reviews and contact.
• Add tap-to-call at the top, your accreditations and a short quote form.
• Fill in page titles and descriptions, then link the site from your Google Business Profile.

Getting started on WordPress

• Register your domain in your own name and choose reliable hosting.
• Install WordPress from WordPress.org with a lean, fast theme.
• Plan your service and town pages before anything is designed.
• Keep plugins to the ones you need, and set up backups and security from day one.
• Write each page answer-first and add schema for your business, services, reviews and FAQs.
• Agree who handles updates every month, whether that is you or a developer.

Which should you choose?

How we do it