Best Website Builder (2026): WordPress, Wix or Squarespace?
What is the best website builder for you? If you are looking to establish your business online, you will quickly find that the market is flooded with different platforms. Choosing the right system from the start is crucial; if you build your house on the wrong foundation, it can be very expensive to move it later.
When looking for a reliable website builder online, the choice usually boils down to the three big giants: Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress. Which one is the best website builder for you?, depends entirely on what the goal of the website is, and whether you should build it yourself or get help from an agency. Here's a comparison of the three platforms.
Wix – A good choice for a very simple website
Wix is perhaps the most well-known DIY tool on the market. They market themselves heavily towards beginners who want to set up a site in an evening.
-
Advantages: Wix has an extremely visual drag-and-drop builder. Moving images, buttons, and text around is very intuitive. This makes it a great website builder if you only need a very basic website. simple website for a hobby or short-term project.
-
Disadvantages: The freedom of the drag-and-drop feature is also Wix’s biggest weakness. It’s easy for the design to look messy and unprofessional, especially on mobile screens. Plus, you’re locked into Wix’s system. You don’t own the source code, and if your business outgrows the platform, you can’t export your website to another system – you have to rebuild everything from scratch. SEO opportunities (visibility on Google) are also more limited here.
Squarespace – Beautiful for Portfolios, but Stiff for Ecommerce
Squarespace is particularly popular among creative professions such as photographers, artists, and interior designers, thanks to their strong focus on aesthetics.
-
Advantages: They offer incredibly beautiful, ready-made design templates. It's almost impossible to create an ugly website in Squarespace because the system forces you to stay within the strict confines of the template.
-
Disadvantages: For Norwegian businesses, Squarespace is often a challenge when it comes to extensions and online stores. Integrations with Norwegian systems (such as Vips, Klarna and Bring) are lacking or require expensive detours. The templates are also very inflexible; if you want a function that is not already in the template, it is often impossible to code it in.
WordPress – The Professional Industry Standard (Our Recommendation)
WordPress powers over 40% of all websites in the world. It's not a closed, leased system like Wix and Squarespace, but an "Open Source" platform that gives you endless possibilities.
-
Advantages: WordPress is the one by far best website builder for businesses. You own 100% of your own website and are free to choose your web hosting. It is superior when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), and you can integrate everything from Vipps Quick Checkout to advanced booking systems. With the right theme (like the Divi builder we use at Hjemmesiden.no), you get the best of both worlds: total technical freedom on the backend, and a user-friendly, visual editor on the frontend.
-
Disadvantages: It has a steeper learning curve. If you're setting up WordPress yourself from scratch, you'll have to deal with web hosting, SSL certificates, theme installation, and security updates.
Conclusion: What is the best website builder?
-
Select Wix or Squarespace if you want to do everything yourself and only need a temporary or very simple website.
-
Select WordPress If your website is a long-term investment for your business, you want to rank high on Google, and you want a solution that can scale and expand as your business grows.
Do you want the best system?
without doing the work yourself?
At Hjemmesiden.no we build 95% of the websites in WordPress. This means you get an SEO-optimized and customized website, while also receiving full training on how to easily replace text and images even after launch. If you buy a website through us, you get a lifetime license to Divi, sub-themes and extensions included, saving you thousands of kroner. We offer the best prices and has 100% satisfaction guarantee and best price guarantee. Contact us for a no-obligation chat!
