Wix, Squarespace or your own website? An honest comparison

Wix and Squarespace make getting a site up genuinely easy, and for some people they're the right answer. But the easy on-ramp hides two costs that only show up later: what you pay over time, and what you're allowed to take with you if you leave. Here's an honest look — including where our own option fits and where it doesn't.

The monthly price isn't the real price

All-in-one builders charge a monthly subscription that quietly adds up — and the cheapest tiers often come with limits (their branding on your site, no online store, caps on storage) that push you to a dearer plan once you're serious. Add a custom domain and any paid apps and the yearly total is usually a good deal more than running your own site on standard hosting. It's not that builders are a rip-off; it's that “a few pounds a month” reads cheaper than it works out.

The cost nobody mentions: lock-in

This is the big one. On a closed platform, your site is built in their system — and you generally can't export it and host it elsewhere. If their prices rise, their features change, or you simply outgrow them, your options are to stay or to rebuild from scratch somewhere new.

• Wix: there's no meaningful way to export your site; leaving means rebuilding.
• Squarespace: you can export some content, but the design and much of the structure don't come with you.
• Shopify: you can export your products as a CSV, but the storefront itself is tied to their platform.
• Your own site (e.g. WordPress on standard hosting): fully portable — you can pick it up, files, database and all, and move to any host you like.

Lock-in is invisible while you're happy and expensive the moment you're not. The question to ask any platform is simple: if I want to leave in two years, can I take my site with me?

When a builder is the right call

Be fair to them: if you want a single brochure site up this afternoon, you'll never touch a setting, and you value hand-holding over control, an all-in-one builder is a perfectly sensible choice. The trade-off only bites if you grow, want to control your costs, or care about owning your platform.

The own-site route, without the faff

“Run your own site” used to mean wrestling with servers. It doesn't any more: a domain, hosting with one-click WordPress, free SSL and email on your own address gets you the ownership and portability of the DIY route with much of the convenience of a builder — usually for less per year, and with no lock-in. That's deliberately how Centaur is set up: plainly priced, your data stays yours, and we'll help you move in — and out again if you ever need to.

Compare the numbers yourself

Don't take our word for it — put your own figures in. The free platform cost & lock-in comparison shows the real yearly cost of Wix, Squarespace and Shopify versus your own site at your sales volume, with the portability of each laid out plainly. And if you're still naming the thing, start with the domain name generator.