In July, Squarespace emailed customers that annual plan prices were going up. Basic went from $16 to $19 a month, Core from $23 to $29, Plus from $39 to $49. PetaPixel covered it on July 17. In August, Wix moved its Light plan from $17 to $19 on yearly billing.
What the two biggest builders did to annual plan prices in 2026
Monthly price when billed annually, before and after the change.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Squarespace Basic, before | $16 |
| Squarespace Basic, after (up 19%) | $19 |
| Squarespace Core, before | $23 |
| Squarespace Core, after (up 26%) | $29 |
| Squarespace Plus, before | $39 |
| Squarespace Plus, after (up 26%) | $49 |
| Wix Light, before | $17 |
| Wix Light, after (up 12%) | $19 |
Source: PetaPixel, July 17, 2026, on Squarespace's customer emails; UsagePricing, August 27, 2026, on Wix Light. Monthly-billing prices moved less and are in the sources.
None of those numbers will break a business. That is what makes them dangerous. Each one is small enough to ignore, and together they are a rent payment on a building you will never own.
I build websites that owners own. So I am not neutral on this. But I have also moved enough sites off builders to tell you plainly: the move is not hard, and the two ways people get hurt are both avoidable. They lose the domain, or they lose the rankings. Here is how to do neither.
First, decide with the whole receipt
The website builder is one line. The booking tool, the email tool, the texting app, the review tool, and the extras you bolted onto the builder are the other lines. Put them all in the Rent Receipt below and look at the yearly number before you decide anything.
Add up what the rented stack costs you now, before you decide
A price increase feels like a decision point, but the website builder is usually one line on a longer receipt. Put every monthly tool your business pays for into the Rent Receipt and see the yearly total, what one more round of increases does to it, and what you would own if the same money went into a build. It cannot tell you what a move costs in your case. It tells you what staying costs.
Your numbers
What that means
Includes the 8% a year they raise it on you.
Yr 1: $4,740. By Yr 10: $68,666.
$68,666 over ten years, and on the last day you own exactly nothing. That is the whole business model they are running on you.
This is not an argument against every subscription. It is an argument against renting the parts of your business you cannot afford to lose.
What this assumed
- Assumes the annual increase you enter compounds every year on the whole stack.
Runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
This is an estimate
This tool returns an estimate based on the numbers you entered. Your real result depends on your own costs, rates and conditions. Check it against your own records before you make a decision with it.
How to run it, step by step
- 1List every tool with a monthly charge. Website builder, booking, email marketing, texting, forms, reviews, CRM seats, scheduling, the extras you added to the builder. Pull them from your card statement, not from memory. Most owners find two they forgot.
- 2Use the price on your next bill, not the price you signed up at. Promotional first-year prices expire. If your renewal email shows a new number, use that one. If you are on a plan that just went up, use the new plan price.
- 3Set the yearly increase you have actually seen. The tool asks what you expect prices to rise per year. Look at your own history. If a plan went from $23 to $29 in one notice, that is 26 percent in a year, and planning on zero is how the receipt sneaks up.
How to read what it gives you
- The yearly total is the number to put next to a one-time build. A build you own costs once and then costs hosting, which is small and does not care how many visitors you had.
- The five-year line is where rented stacks get expensive. Each increase compounds on the last, and you never get the money back when you leave.
- If the yearly total is small and the site does its job, stay and spend your time elsewhere. The point is to decide with the number in front of you.
The tool is free, it does not expire, and you can put it on your own website if you want it there. Nothing on this page is locked.
Not ready to talk? Browse the rest of the free tools
If the yearly total is small and the site does its job, staying is a fine answer. If it is not small, keep reading.
What a rented site costs over five years if increases keep coming
A worked example: a $29 plan plus $40 of add-ons, rising 10 percent a year, against a one-time build on hosting you own.
You own nothing at the end of it.
Plus the one-time build, which you keep.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Year 1 rented ($69 a month) | $828 |
| Year 3 rented (after two increases) | $1,002 |
| Year 5 rented (after four increases) | $1,212 |
| Five years rented, total | $5,055 |
| Five years of hosting a site you own, at $20 a month | $1,200 |
Illustrative arithmetic only. Source: arithmetic in this article. The plan prices are real; the add-ons, the 10 percent assumption and the hosting figure are practice numbers for your receipt to replace.
That chart is practice arithmetic, not a quote. The plan prices are real. The ten percent a year is an assumption, and this year Squarespace Core beat it by a lot. The point is the shape: rent compounds, and ownership does not.
The move, in the order that keeps you safe
Step 1. Secure the domain before anything else. Find out where it is registered. If it is through the builder, confirm the registrant is you, not an agency or an employee who left. Unlock it, get the authorization code, and transfer it to a registrar you control. This takes days, so start now. A site can be rebuilt in a week. A lost domain can be gone for good.
Step 2. Save your email. If email runs through the builder, find out which provider it really is, export every mailbox, and move the subscription to a direct account if you can. Write down the mail records in your DNS (the MX, the SPF text record, the DKIM record) so they move with the domain. Do not cancel the builder until mail works from the new setup.
Step 3. Make the redirect map. List every page address on the old site. Decide where each one goes on the new site. Pages that no longer exist go to the closest page, not the homepage. This list is your rankings. Keep it.
Step 4. Export what you can and rewrite what you should. Builders export blog posts and images, usually badly. Take the export, then rewrite the pages that matter with a price, an area, a timeline and a next step on each. Half the value of a move is fixing the pages you have been meaning to fix.
Step 5. Build the new site somewhere you own. For us that means code in a repository the owner holds, hosting on a server or account in the owner's name, forms that post to the owner's own lead system, and no page that depends on a plugin someone can raise the price of. We wrote out the stack and what it costs in how AI actually builds and runs a business website in 2026.
Step 6. Switch DNS and set the redirects the same hour. Point the domain at the new site, publish the redirects from your map, and test ten old addresses on your phone. Then test email. Then test the form by filling it out yourself.
Step 7. Cancel the builder plan after the new site has been live for two weeks. Not before. Keep the redirects for at least a year.
What you own on the other side
The domain in your name at a registrar you control. The code. The hosting account. The forms and the list of people who filled them out. The Google Business Profile, which was always yours. The ability to add a page, a tool, or a calculator without checking a plan tier.
And a monthly bill that is hosting, which is small and does not go up because a company needs to hit a quarter.
What this does not fix
A site you own with no clear next step on it is a cheaper version of the same problem. The move is worth doing when the new site answers the questions customers ask, loads fast on a phone, and turns a visit into a call or a form that someone follows up. We covered why that matters more than the platform in your website gets visitors, why is nobody calling.
The bottom line
The increases are the reminder, not the reason. The reason to leave a builder is that you want to own the thing your business runs on. Secure the domain, save the email, map the redirects, build it right, switch, and cancel last. Do it in that order and you keep everything that mattered.
Questions people actually ask
If I cancel Squarespace or Wix, do I lose my domain?
Not if you act before the site plan lapses and the domain is in your name. A domain bought through the builder is a separate product from the site plan. Transfer it to a registrar you control, or at least confirm the registrant contact is you and not an agency, before you cancel anything. Transfers usually need the domain unlocked, an authorization code, and a few days. Do this first, because the domain is the one thing you cannot rebuild.
Will I lose my Google rankings when I move?
You can lose them if the old page addresses stop working, and you can keep them if every old address sends people and Google to the new page. That is a redirect map: a list of every old URL and where it goes now. Make the list before the move, set the redirects the day you switch, and keep them for at least a year. Rankings that were earned by the content follow the content when the redirects are right.
What about my email if it runs through the builder?
Builder-bundled email is usually Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 sold through the builder. Find out which, and whether you can move the subscription to a direct account before you cancel. Export the mailboxes either way. Then make sure the DNS records for mail move with the domain. An email outage on the day of a site move is the most common self-inflicted wound in this whole process.
Is a one-time build really cheaper than $29 a month?
Over one year, often not. Over five, usually yes, and the gap grows with every increase. The real difference is what you have at the end. After five years of rent you have a cancellation. After a build you own, you have a site, the code, the domain, the forms, and the list, and hosting costs about what one lunch does. Run your own numbers in the Rent Receipt before you believe either answer.
Where these numbers come from
- PetaPixel: Squarespace is increasing prices by up to 26 percent (July 17, 2026)
- UsagePricing: Wix price change, August 27, 2026 (August 27, 2026)
Our own figures come from the lead records of businesses we run systems for, counted in total and never by name.