We have built or rebuilt sites for UK trades on all four of these platforms. Sometimes because the client insisted, sometimes because the existing site was already there. Each has a real shape. Each has a real failure mode. Here is the unvarnished version.
Squarespace
Best for: solo traders who want a passable, brand-light site live in two days with zero technical lift. £20-30/month. Drag, drop, type, publish.
The catch: every Squarespace site looks like a Squarespace site. Templates are recognisable. Fonts and spacing are constrained. Page speed is acceptable but not great — 3-4 second loads on mobile is typical, which costs you 10-20% of organic traffic at the search-result click. SEO is fine for low-competition keywords. It will not win you a competitive local search.
Wix
Best for: nobody, in our opinion. We have tried hard to like Wix. The drag-drop is more flexible than Squarespace, the AI builder is genuinely impressive at first run, and the ecosystem is broad. But Wix sites consistently load slower than the alternatives, the SEO output is hit-and-miss, and migrating off Wix later is painful.
If you are already on Wix and it is working, do not move for the sake of moving. If you are choosing today, choose something else.
WordPress
Best for: businesses with a real content strategy or genuine ecommerce needs, plus the budget for ongoing maintenance. £15-50/month hosting plus theme and plugins.
The honest pros: enormous flexibility, every plugin imaginable, mature SEO tooling, total control of output. The honest cons: maintenance is real work. Plugins break. Updates conflict. Security patching matters. We will not build a WordPress site for a trade business unless the client commits to a managed-host arrangement, because we have seen too many abandoned WordPress sites get hacked into spam farms two years post-launch.
Custom (React / Next.js / Vercel)
Best for: trades who care about conversion, speed, and a site that looks bespoke. Our default. £500-3,000 to build, £20/month to host.
The pros: blazing fast, every pixel is intentional, perfect Core Web Vitals, schema where you want it, animations that feel premium. Conversion is measurably better — we see 20-40% lift over the equivalent Squarespace template on the same traffic. The con: if you want to edit copy yourself, you need either a CMS layer (which adds cost) or you accept that copy edits go through us.
The decision in one paragraph
- , Solo trader, no budget, need it live this weekend → Squarespace
- , Already on Wix and it works → leave it
- , Heavy content / blog strategy or real ecommerce → WordPress on a managed host
- , Trade business serious about local search and conversion → Custom build
What people get wrong
The mistake we see most often is overspending on a custom build for a business that does not yet have the lead volume to justify it, or underspending on a template for a business whose competitors all have custom sites. Match the platform to the stage of the business, not to your aesthetic preferences.
The right platform is the one that makes the next 18 months of the business easier, not the one that wins on a spec sheet today.
Luca Planchais
One renovator client came to us on a tired Squarespace site. We rebuilt them custom in 36 hours. The same business on the same domain went from 4 booked visits a month to 17 in the first quarter. Platform was not the only variable, but it was the one that unlocked the others.