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Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy Website Builder are easy to set up and cost $15 to $30 a month. A professionally built contractor website costs more upfront. The question is not which one looks better — it is which one will generate calls from Google over the next 12 months. Here is an honest comparison.
By J. DiMare, Founder — Seed Value Marketing
If you are a local business where almost all of your customers come from referrals, word of mouth, or repeat business — and you just need a web presence that confirms you are real — Wix is fine. A portfolio page, a contact form, your phone number, and your service area. For a business not trying to win organic search traffic, the platform limitations do not matter much because you are not competing on Google in the first place.
The challenges start when you want Google to find you. Wix sites historically had poor Core Web Vitals scores — slow load times on mobile in particular — which directly affects search ranking. The platform has improved, but shared infrastructure means you have limited control over the technical variables that Google weighs. More importantly, Wix templates are not built for local search optimization: adding LocalBusiness schema, configuring city-level service area structure, and building the AEO content architecture that drives AI search citations requires either platform workarounds or third-party apps that add cost and complexity.
Wix and Squarespace offer built-in SEO tools and meta tag fields. What they do not offer is a structured way to implement the full schema graph that modern local SEO requires — Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, SpeakableSpecification, all linked by @id and deployed correctly across every page. Most contractor websites on these platforms have either no schema or incomplete schema generated by an SEO app that does not understand the full graph. That is a real ranking and AI-citation gap.
Page speed is a ranking signal and a conversion factor. A contractor site that takes 4 seconds to load on mobile loses a measurable percentage of visitors before they ever read a word. Wix's shared infrastructure gives you less control over load time compared to a custom build deployed to a performance-focused CDN. Google's PageSpeed Insights will show you your current score — anything below 70 on mobile is worth addressing if search visibility matters to your business.
Before deciding on a platform, ask: how do I expect to get most of my leads over the next two years? If the answer is Google search — people in your service area searching for what you do — the platform you build on will directly affect how competitive you can be. If the answer is referrals, social media, or paid ads where you control the landing page, platform matters less. The mistake most contractors make is choosing a platform based on price and ease of setup, then spending money on ads to a slow, unoptimized site that converts poorly and cannot be fixed without rebuilding.
Yes, though it is not as simple as a data export. Content, images, and page structure can be moved, but Wix URLs do not always match what you would choose for a custom build — meaning redirects need to be set up carefully to preserve any existing search authority. If you are planning to migrate, the right time to do it is before you have accumulated significant backlinks or ranking history, so the disruption is minimal.
WordPress gives you more technical control and a larger plugin ecosystem for SEO. The tradeoffs are maintenance overhead — WordPress sites require regular plugin updates, security monitoring, and occasional conflict resolution — and the need for more technical knowledge to implement advanced schema and performance optimization. A well-maintained WordPress site can perform very well. A neglected one with 40 plugins is often slower and more vulnerable than a well-built Wix site.
Professional contractor websites built for local search performance typically range from $1,500 to $5,000 for a foundation build, depending on the number of service pages, city pages, and technical scope. Seed Value Marketing's foundation build starts at $799 for the 'Merica Starter and $3,500 for a full build — same-day preview, 24-hour launch, full schema implementation, and GBP optimization included. The 15-phase audit at $2,000 is credited in full toward the build.
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The 15-phase audit scores your site's technical performance, schema implementation, GBP configuration, and AEO structure — regardless of what platform you are on. You get a scored report and a prioritized fix list before any rebuild decision is made.