Wix/Squarespace vs. a Modern Stack: When to Move and What It Costs
Website builders are fantastic—until they aren’t. If you’re bumping into performance ceilings, limited content structures, or marketing integrations that feel duct-taped, it may be time to graduate. Here’s a level-headed way to decide.
TL;DR
- Stay if your site is simple and works.
- Move for speed, custom data, or complex funnels.
- Budget for migration, redirects, and content clean-up—not just design.
FAQ
When a builder is the right choice
- You need speed to first publish. You’re pre-revenue or testing an idea.
- Your content is simple. A few pages, a contact form, and a phone number.
- You won’t maintain custom code. You want predictable tools.
When to outgrow it
- Performance matters: You’re losing conversions to slow load times.
- Content modeling: You need repeatable structures (case studies, locations, products/services) with fields you control.
- Marketing stack: You want flexible analytics, A/B tests, or integrations beyond what plugins allow.
- Scale & ownership: You want your content portable across platforms.
What you gain by moving
- Speed: Lean front-ends and CDNs improve Core Web Vitals.
- Flexibility: Custom content types (case studies, FAQs, locations) that editors can manage.
- SEO control: Clean URLs, metadata, schema, and faster pages.
- Workflow: Draft, preview, and publish without fighting a page builder.
Costs (real talk)
- Discovery & scope: Content inventory, URL map, success metrics.
- Design system: Components/slices to keep everything on-brand.
- Content migration: Manual review to fix old formatting and images.
- Redirects: 1:1 mapping from old URLs to new to protect rankings.
- QA & launch: Device tests, forms, tracking, and performance checks.
Migration game plan
- Measure baseline: Speed, top pages, conversions.
- Map URLs: Create a redirect spreadsheet (old → new).
- Inventory content: Decide what to keep, merge, rewrite, or delete.
- Build the essentials: Home, Services hub + top services, About, Reviews, Pricing, Contact/Book, FAQ.
- Migrate & rewrite: Fix image sizes, headings, and metadata.
- QA: Test forms, calendars, tracking; verify redirects; monitor speed.
- Launch & monitor: Watch search, calls, and form fills for 4–6 weeks.
Stay or move? A quick decision tree
- Is your current site loading fast and converting? If yes, stay.
- Do you need custom content types or multi-location pages? If yes, consider moving.
- Do your tools feel limiting (analytics, testing, payments)? If yes, moving pays back.