Wix vs Squarespace vs GoDaddy vs a Custom Website: What a Canadian Small Business Actually Pays

I build custom websites for a living, so you’d expect me to tell you to skip the builders. I won’t. Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy are good products, and for some businesses they’re the right call.

What I see go wrong is that people pick one based on the price on the pricing page. That price isn’t what the site ends up costing you. Below is what each one costs in Canada right now, what that adds up to over three years, and how to tell when it’s time to stop building it yourself.

What each builder costs in 2026

I checked these prices on October 26, 2026. They change often, so check each provider’s site before you buy.

Squarespace’s prices come from its Canadian pricing page. Wix’s come from its plans page, which displayed USD for reference, so your price in Canadian dollars may differ. GoDaddy’s range comes from Website Builder Expert’s GoDaddy pricing breakdown.

What you pay over three years

Three years is a fair window, because that’s roughly how long most small businesses keep a website before they want something new. Here’s the subscription alone, on annual billing:

On subscription price alone, the builders win. GoDaddy’s entry plan costs a fraction of a custom site.

That table leaves out a few costs, though. Booking, reviews and fancier forms are often paid apps or need a higher plan. A free domain usually only lasts the first year, and business email is extra. And then there’s your time, which is the biggest cost of all.

The cost that isn’t on the pricing page: your time

A builder doesn’t build your website. You do.

Picking a template is quick. Writing every page, finding photos, making it work on a phone, figuring out what Google wants in a page title and fixing the layout that broke when you added one more sentence takes longer. For most owners I talk to, it’s a few weekends, usually spread over a couple of months, because the business keeps getting in the way.

So put a number on your evenings. If an hour of your time is worth $50 to $100 to your business and the site takes you thirty hours, you’ve spent $1,500 to $3,000 before paying for the plan. Add that to the subscription and the gap with a custom site gets a lot smaller.

Wix vs Squarespace

This is the most common head-to-head, and it mostly comes down to how much control you want.

Wix lets you drag anything anywhere on the page. That freedom is great if you have a good eye and frustrating if you don’t, because it’s easy to end up with a layout that looks fine on a laptop and messy on a phone. Wix also has the larger app market, so it’s easier to add features later.

Squarespace gives you less freedom and better defaults. Its templates look polished out of the box, and the editor keeps things lined up for you. If you want a site that looks good with the least fuss, Squarespace is usually the safer pick.

My take: Squarespace if design matters and you’ll mostly leave the layout alone, Wix if you’ll keep tinkering and adding features.

Wix vs GoDaddy

GoDaddy is built for speed. Its AI builder can put together a basic site in minutes, and if you already bought your domain there, everything lives in one account. The trade-off is design: you get far fewer ways to make the site look like yours.

Wix costs more but gives you a lot more room to grow, both in design and in features.

If you need a simple online presence this week and won’t touch it again for a year, GoDaddy is fine. If the site needs to sell for you, Wix is the better of the two.

Squarespace vs GoDaddy

Same story with a different winner on looks. GoDaddy is cheaper and faster to set up. Squarespace takes more effort but produces a noticeably more professional site. For a business where first impressions matter, like a salon, a restaurant or a contractor doing high-end work, I’d pick Squarespace over GoDaddy.

Can a Wix or Squarespace site rank on Google?

Yes. Plenty of builder sites rank, especially for local searches with little competition. All three builders let you edit page titles and descriptions, and they handle the basics like sitemaps.

The limits show up when you compete for searches that matter. Builder templates carry code for features you may not use, which can slow pages down on a phone. You also have less control over the technical side, like schema markup and how pages are structured. None of that stops you from ranking. It just makes it harder to beat a competitor whose site is faster and better built.

You can check your own site in a couple of minutes. Run your homepage through Google’s PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score. If it’s in the red, that’s worth fixing whatever you’re built on.

When a custom website makes sense

A custom site starts to pay off when the website has a job to do: bring in calls, bookings or quote requests from people who’ve never heard of you. That’s usually when the “free” hours of building it yourself start costing you real work.

That’s what we build. Our small business websites are hand-coded, animated and set up for SEO from day one, and they’re tested to score 90+ on Lighthouse before launch. They cost $2,000 to $5,000, go live 14 days after you approve your final content, and you own the result. Hosting is billed monthly, and we handle it.

For the full picture on pricing, our website cost guide for Canada breaks down what affects the price.

When a builder is the right call

I’d point you to a builder if:

• You’re just starting out and need something online this month for under a few hundred dollars.
• Most of your customers find you through referrals or social media, and the website just needs to look legitimate.
• You enjoy building it, and you have the time.

If that’s you, pick one from the comparisons above and don’t overthink it. You can always move to a custom site once the business outgrows it.

Not sure which camp you’re in? Our free website check will tell you what your current site is doing well and what it’s costing you.