Do you actually need Wix or Squarespace?

Let’s be fair to the builders: Wix and Squarespace are polished products. The templates are pretty, the editors are genuinely easy, and everything works out of the box. The question isn’t whether they’re good — it’s whether you need what the monthly fee actually buys.

What the subscription really buys

Strip away the marketing and a CA$21–28 (US$16–20) per month builder plan buys you four things:

1. A visual editor you can use without technical knowledge
2. Hosting (worth $0 for static sites in 2026)
3. A domain-ish arrangement (often free year one, then renewed at high rates through them)
4. Features: blogs, bookings, stores, member areas

The editor is the real product. Hosting is free elsewhere, domains are cheaper elsewhere, and the features only matter if you use them.

The five-question test

Answer honestly — “might someday” counts as no:

1. Do you change your site’s design or content more than once a month?
2. Do you sell products with inventory, shipping, or taxes on the site?
3. Do you take bookings/appointments through the site itself (not through a link to a booking app)?
4. Do you run a blog you post to regularly?
5. Does someone non-technical need to edit the site without help?

Zero or one “yes”: you have a brochure site. The $15/year stack does everything you need, and the roughly CA$250 (US$200) a year difference is pure savings.

Two or more “yes”: a builder may genuinely earn its fee — pick the cheapest plan that covers your actual yeses, pay annually, and register your domain separately at a real registrar anyway (here’s why). That last part matters even for happy builder customers: it keeps you free to leave.

The middle path people forget

Plenty of “I need to edit it myself” cases are really “I need to change my hours and swap photos twice a year.” With an AI-built static site, those edits are a two-minute conversation with Claude or ChatGPT and a drag-and-drop redeploy. Editing without a builder stopped requiring a developer a couple of years ago; the builders’ pricing hasn’t noticed yet.

If you’re already on a builder and want out

1. Don’t cancel anything yet.
2. Make sure you control your domain — if it’s registered through the builder, transfer it to a real registrar first (this is the step with a deadline: transfers are easiest while the subscription is active).
3. Rebuild the site as static (AI guide — pointing the AI at your existing site works well).
4. Deploy to Cloudflare Pages, point the domain, confirm everything works.
5. Then cancel. Your address never changed, so customers notice nothing.