Pixiware vs Squarespace: the real pricing comparison

01Squarespace's headline plans (2026)

Squarespace publishes four core plans. Billed annually, they currently land at roughly:

• Personal: ~£13/month — basic site, no e-commerce.
• Business: ~£19/month — adds 3% transaction fees on sales.
• Commerce Basic: ~£26/month — no transaction fees.
• Commerce Advanced: ~£40/month — abandoned cart, subscriptions.

Pay monthly instead of annually and every plan jumps roughly 30%.

02The extras nobody quotes upfront

• Custom domain: free year one, then £20–£40/year.
• Email hosting: Google Workspace add-on, ~£5/user/month.
• Acuity Scheduling: £14–£45/month for bookings.
• Premium templates & plugins: £40–£150 one-off, sometimes recurring.
• Your time: 20–40 hours building it; ongoing hours every time something changes.

A "£13/month" Squarespace site for a local business typically lands between £35 and £60/month once it's actually doing the job.

03Pixiware: one price, everything included

• £0 to build. Custom-designed, not a template.
• £25/month, everything in. Hosting, edits, technical SEO, security, support.
• No transaction fees on bookings or sales.
• Real Bristol-based support — message us, we reply.
• Cancel anytime. No lock-in, you own your domain.

04Three-year total cost of ownership

Comparing a typical Bristol small business setup — site, bookings, custom domain, occasional edits:

• Squarespace Business + Acuity + domain: ~£1,400 over 3 years, plus your build/edit hours.
• Pixiware managed: £900 over 3 years. Zero build hours, edits handled for you.

And the Pixiware site is custom-coded — faster to load, easier to rank, no template lookalikes.

05When Squarespace is still the right call

Squarespace is good for a side project you want to build yourself, a portfolio you'll rarely change, or a personal blog. If you enjoy the platform and have the time, that's fine.

But if you run a local business, want to rank on Google, and would rather not spend weekends learning a builder, the maths almost always points the other way.