A hosted builder is a product you rent. The editor and the hosting come as one subscription. The working site stays on their servers.
A site you host is files plus accounts you hold. For a business with no engineer, those accounts sit in your name.
You need it live quickly. A template is enough. You want one login for writing pages and keeping them live. You accept that leaving later means rebuilding what people see.
Wix includes hosting on every Wix site, checked 9 September 2026. A custom domain needs a paid plan. Squarespace includes bandwidth and hosting on its plans, checked the same day. It does not host content built on other platforms.
Stay if that still matches how the business works.
Wix’s help, checked 9 September 2026, says a Wix site has to be hosted and operated on Wix’s servers. The words you wrote are yours. The live site still needs their product.
Squarespace’s export, checked the same day, is an XML file of certain pages and posts, in a WordPress format. Store pages and style settings stay behind. A trial site cannot be exported. You do not get a working site you can point at another host.
I do not use WordPress. If you leave, you keep the useful words and images, write what the business is now, and build in accounts you control. Check who holds the keys if you already have a site and you are unsure.
I have not timed a Wix or Squarespace build for this page. Open the vendor’s export page and read what you actually get.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre covers domain renewal, HTTPS, backups, and admin logins. That guidance was last updated 29 July 2024. I have not tested hosts against it.
Whose registrar holds the domain, and is auto-renew on?
Whose login and whose card are on the host? Can you download files you could run elsewhere?
Do the website DNS records sit apart from the MX records for email? Deleting MX records can stop mail.
Does the site use HTTPS, with a certificate that matches the host?
Can you restore a backup of the media and the pages, not only rely on the host’s copy? Do admin logins use multi-factor authentication, and do few people have them?
Who can change a page, and how, without a vendor editor?
Same test for analytics. If search matters, is Search Console verified?
If any answer is “I would have to ask”, write that down.
Squarespace says not to delete MX records when you point a domain at a site. Google prefers HTTPS unless the certificate is invalid. If addresses change, Google says to map old URLs and use permanent server-side redirects. Rankings can fluctuate while the new URLs are crawled. I do not promise they stay put, or that they rise.
Micky Sabat’s film and photography studio in Sydney. Referred people look the studio up. The previous site sat on Squarespace. Changing a page meant working around that platform.
I took it off so he could change the site without that constraint, and so he owns the domain, the code and the accounts. It is live at cinema7.com.au.
I plan, write, design and build it as one project. You get the files and the accounts. After launch you run it, or you stay on a subscription for additional work. You can cancel at any point. When you cancel, you get everything handed over. You do not need the subscription to keep the site live.
If a rebuild is the wrong job, I say so before you spend. How a rebuild runs.
Tell me about the website