wpSites is a great alternative to Wix and Squarespace for Marketers
Marketers and designers have their choice of website builders. Two lead the pack: Wix and Squarespace dominate thanks to massive advertising spending.
The many small business people, students, and non-profits we encounter every day deserve a lighter weight, more powerful website option, free from the worries of maintenance and security. They deserve to be supported. They deserve to be successful. And most of all, they deserve not to be viewed as a money metric. It’s why we created wpSites.
Is wpSites right for you? It took some digging, but we found enough info to help you compare wpSites against Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, GoDaddy, and even HubSpot Starter. Take a close look. Make an informed decision.
The website platform decision lies in what you intend to do with your website, if you need help creating it, and how skilled you are at building websites. All platforms provide customer website hosting via SaaS services. The quality of SEO optimization for each platform varies.
| wpSites | Wix | Squarespace | Weebly | HubSpot | GoDaddy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FREE ACCOUNT | ||||||
| Ad-free |  | | ||||
| Expiry | 14 Days | Gated info | 90 days of inactivity | |||
| HOSTING | ||||||
| SSL/HTTPS Security | | | | Manual | | |
| Separate Microsite | | | | | ||
| Unlimited Pages | | |||||
| E-COMMERCE | ||||||
| Online Store | Ecwid | Wix | Squarespace | Square | Shopify | eCommerce |
| DESIGN | ||||||
| Drag & Drop Design | | | | | | |
| Design Templates | | | | | | |
| Conversion Optimization | | |||||
| SUPPORT | ||||||
| Webmasters | | | | | | |
| Training | Bootcamps | Academy | Tutorials | Circle | Academy | How-To Videos |
| MARKETING | ||||||
| HubSpot CRM Suite Integration | HubSpot Plugin | App | Script | Script | Native | Script, App, Plugin |
| SEO | ||||||
| SEO Integration | RankMath SEO | Wix SEO | Squarespace SEO | Manual Checklist | HubSpot Optimize | GoDaddy SEO |
| Keyword Optimization | | | | | ||
| Ai Content Optimization | | |||||
| Browser Caching Controls/CDN | | |||||
| Cloudflare Integration | | | |
Uptime Check: wpsites.site
A quick way to find out if our website is up around the world (in this case, North America), and how fast it is in each location.
Uptrends’ Free Website Uptime tool tells more than forty of Uptrends’ 228 checkpoints to send a request to your website and checks each response. Check your own site. Uptrend generates a report based on your website’s availability and response time.
You’ll know if your site is available from each test city based on a green or red tile. Each tile tells you how long the test took. Hover over a tile to get the resolve, connect, download times, and response size.
See for yourself. Core Web Vitals scoring with Google Lighthouse: Mobile
See for yourself. Core Web Vitals scoring with Google Lighthouse: Desktop
Google Lighthouse scores on Mobile from best to least:
- 379 wpSites BEST
- 360 GoDaddy Websites
- 346 HubSpot CMS
- 332 Weebly
- 306 Wix
- 304 Squarespace
Google Lighthouse scores on Desktop from best to least:
- 381 wpSites BEST
- 364 Wix
- 341 HubSpot CMS
- 340 GoDaddy Websites
- 340 Weebly
- 328 Squarespace
Surprisingly, Wix scored pretty high on Desktop but completely flunked out on Mobile. HubSpot came in at the middle of the pack on both scores and Squarespace tanked everywhere.
This post is biased, though for good reason. Our team designed wpSites to be as good as or better than our biggest competition. wpSites is positioned to be an authentic alternative to Wix and the rest for small businesses, students, non-profits, and startups.
Google Lighthouse scores tend to vary slightly each time they are run. Should you want to check your own website scores, simply “Inspect” (Right Click) on a webpage. Select Lighthouse from the menu. Be sure you are viewing in an Incognito page so your browser extensions won’t interfere with the scoring. Lighthouse is a ‘lab’ simulation. Many factors impact website performance, so use as a guide only.
See for yourself. Speed visualization with GT Metrix.
