26 May 2026
Wix vs Squarespace vs webfascia for UK tradespeople — an honest comparison
Wix and Squarespace are great for some businesses. For UK plumbers, electricians and builders running one-person shops, they're usually wrong. Here's the honest comparison — cost, time, conversion.
If you’ve spent any time looking at building your own tradesperson website, you’ve hit Wix and Squarespace adverts about a hundred times. Both are massive companies, both build perfectly fine websites for some people, and both will cheerfully take £15-£40 of your money every month forever.
This post is an honest comparison between Wix, Squarespace and webfascia — written by us, obviously, but with our prejudices flagged up front. The conclusion isn’t “use us”; it’s “use the right one for what you actually do”.
Who Wix and Squarespace are built for
Wix and Squarespace are generalist tools. They’re designed so that anyone — wedding photographer, e-commerce store, restaurant, B&B, online course, magazine — can build something that looks good without hiring a developer.
That generality is the strength and the weakness. If you’re running an online shop selling vintage typewriters from your spare room, both Wix and Squarespace are excellent — they have built-in product galleries, Stripe checkout, abandoned cart emails, all the SaaS bits.
If you’re a one-person trade business — a plumber, electrician, builder, barber, mobile mechanic — that breadth is dead weight. You don’t need an online shop. You need a phone number that’s impossible to miss, three customer reviews, your areas covered, and a way to send leads to your phone. That’s it.
Two hours of Wix tutorials, twenty design choices, three theme decisions and a domain config later, you’ve still not finished the homepage.
The actual cost comparison
Pricing as of 2026, for the cheapest plan that’s realistic for a trades business (i.e. one that lets you use your own domain and isn’t plastered with platform adverts).
| Wix Light | Squarespace Personal | webfascia | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | £13.50/month | £15/month | £29.99/month |
| Annual price | £162 | £180 | £359 |
| Time to build your site | 8-20 hours (you) | 8-15 hours (you) | ~30 minutes (us, via chat) |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days | 30 days, no card |
| Custom domain included | No, +£10/year | No, +£20/year | webfascia subdomain included; custom +£99/year |
| Hosting + SSL | Included | Included | Included |
| Copywriting | DIY | DIY | Done for you |
| Photo sourcing | DIY | DIY | Done for you (or you upload) |
| Mobile-optimised by default | Sort of — depends on template | Generally yes | Yes, mobile-first |
| Lead-capture form | Free, basic | Free, basic | Wired in, branded, sends to your inbox + ours |
| Ongoing edits | You log in and edit | You log in and edit | Built-in dashboard, or email us for bigger asks |
On price, Wix and Squarespace are roughly half what we charge. That’s a real difference. The question is what you do with the time and money you save.
What you actually pay for (and don’t)
With Wix or Squarespace
You’re paying for:
- A platform that lets you build and host a website
- An OK selection of templates
- Domain and SSL admin
You’re not paying for:
- Anyone to build your site for you
- Anyone to write your copy
- Anyone to pick decent photos
- Anyone to make sure it actually converts
You’re doing all of that yourself. Most one-person trades businesses don’t actually do it — they spend 6 hours on a Saturday afternoon, get bored on page 3, leave it half-built, and the site quietly fails to send them any work for the next three years.
With webfascia
You’re paying for:
- Same platform, hosting and SSL
- A complete site built for you in 30 minutes — done by us, not by you
- Copy written by us based on a two-minute chat
- Photo sourcing matched to your trade
- Mobile-first design (we don’t have a desktop-first version)
- A free 30-day trial with no card up front — you genuinely can’t accidentally pay
You’re not paying for:
- A library of e-commerce features you’ll never use
- 800 fonts and 30 colour palettes you have to pick from
- A team of customer-success agents trying to upsell you premium plans
The time-cost nobody talks about
The honest comparison isn’t £15/month vs £30/month. It’s £15/month plus 15 hours of your own time vs £30/month plus zero hours.
What’s your time worth as a tradesperson? If you charge £40/hour for your actual work and you spend 15 hours building a Wix site, that Wix site has cost you £15/month + £600 of foregone earnings. That’s £775 in year one.
The £30/month webfascia option costs you £359 in year one. You’re £400+ ahead — and you have a finished site from day one, not a half-built one you swear you’ll finish next month.
The catch: this only matters if you actually value your time. If you genuinely enjoy designing websites and have nothing else to do on Saturday afternoons, build it yourself with Wix. We’re not for you.
Which one converts better?
This is the comparison that actually matters and the one Wix and Squarespace don’t talk about. A pretty site that doesn’t generate enquiries is worse than no site at all — it costs money and produces no leads.
Three things matter for tradesperson conversion. We optimised for these, Wix and Squarespace let you optimise for them but most people don’t:
- Phone number above the fold, big, tappable. Most Wix templates bury this in the contact page. Most webfascia sites have it as the first thing visible. This single change roughly doubles the call-through rate for mobile visitors.
- 3-second load on mobile. Wix and Squarespace are not slow, but they’re not fast either — typical Wix site loads in 4-6 seconds on 4G mobile. We aim for under 3 seconds. Google’s own data says 53% of visitors give up past 4 seconds.
- Reviews on the front page. Both Wix and Squarespace let you build this; almost nobody does. Every webfascia site is built with this assumed from the chat.
These aren’t features of the platform. They’re choices the builder makes. Most one-person trades businesses on Wix and Squarespace haven’t made them.
When Wix or Squarespace is the right answer
We’d be lying if we said never. There are cases:
- You’re a multi-trade firm with 5+ employees — you need a richer site structure, custom workflows, maybe internal portals. Squarespace handles that better than us at the moment.
- You sell physical products — toolboxes, parts, courses. Both Wix and Squarespace have proper e-commerce. We don’t.
- You enjoy building websites — genuinely. If you’re a tradesperson who wants to learn web design as a hobby, please don’t pay us — go DIY on Wix and have fun.
- You need very specific things — a booking calendar with deposit collection, a member-only forum, a service-area map drawn by hand. Both Wix and Squarespace have these via apps. We focus narrowly.
For the typical UK one-person plumber, electrician, builder or barber — webfascia is a better fit. For everyone else, we’ve got nothing against the alternatives.
The verdict
Wix and Squarespace are powerful generalist tools. They charge less because you do the work.
webfascia is a specialist tool — only for UK trades businesses. We charge more because we do the work.
If your time is worth more than ~£10 an hour, the specialist is cheaper. If it’s not, the generalist is.
If you’re undecided, the easiest test is the free 60-second website check. Drop the URL of any tradesperson site you like the look of — we’ll score it and tell you what’s working and what isn’t. No upsell, no email required. If after that you still think a DIY Wix or Squarespace site is right for you, go for it with our blessing.