This gets framed as a design question. It's really a maintenance question wearing a design question's clothes. Almost any platform can produce a decent-looking small business website today. What actually differs is what happens after launch — who fixes it when something breaks, and what it costs you in time or money to keep it running.
WordPress
Strengths: Enormous flexibility, huge plugin ecosystem, no platform lock-in — you genuinely own your site and can move it anywhere.
Trade-off: That flexibility means responsibility. Plugins need updating, security needs managing, and "it broke after an update" is the single most common support request we hear from small business owners who went the DIY WordPress route without ongoing support in place.
Squarespace, Wix & Similar Builders
Strengths: Genuinely easy to use, hosting and security are handled for you, good-looking templates out of the box.
Trade-off: You're renting, not owning — leave the platform and you're rebuilding from scratch. Customisation ceilings show up fast once your needs get specific (custom booking logic, particular integrations, non-template layouts), and page speed can lag behind more technical builds.
What We Actually Build On, And Why
For client and our own marketing sites, we lean toward a static-first approach (we use Astro) for the public-facing pages — it loads fast, holds up well for SEO, and doesn't carry the plugin-update baggage of WordPress. It's not the household name Wix or WordPress is, which is exactly why most business owners have never heard of it — it's a builder's choice, not a DIY one.
| Platform | Best For |
|---|---|
| WordPress | Businesses that want full control and have ongoing support in place (in-house or via an agency) |
| Squarespace / Wix | Solo operators who genuinely want to manage the whole site themselves, with simple needs |
| Static-first (Astro etc.) | Businesses that want speed, SEO performance and low ongoing maintenance risk, and are happy to have a developer handle changes |
The Real Question To Ask
Not "which platform is best" — ask "who is maintaining this in twelve months, and what happens the day something breaks." Answer that first, and the platform choice usually sorts itself out.
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