Wix and Squarespace are genuinely good at what they were built for: beautiful websites, assembled visually, no code. Both later added online stores. The question for a seller is whether "a website that can sell" is the same thing as "a store" — and where you will feel the difference.

The short version

If your site is mostly content — a portfolio, a studio, a restaurant page — with a handful of products on the side, Wix or Squarespace will serve you well. If selling is the point, a commerce-first platform pays off quickly: catalog depth, order workflows, payment methods your customers actually use. That is what CommerceOS is — and it starts at ₹699/mo, which the builders cannot match on their commerce plans.

What they cost

At the time of writing, Squarespace's annual-billing plans run about $16–$99 a month with commerce features from the mid tiers, and Wix's commerce-capable business plans start around $39 a month (entry website plans are cheaper but cannot take payments). Both charge in dollars; over a year, a commerce-capable plan lands roughly in the ₹40,000–₹1,00,000 range depending on tier and exchange rate.

CommerceOS : ₹0 commission on sales, no commission, your gateway's published processing rates and nothing else.

Where the builders shine

  • Design polish. Squarespace templates in particular are beautiful out of the box.
  • Content pages. Blogs, galleries, scheduling — mature and pleasant.
  • All-purpose sites. When commerce is a minor feature, simplicity wins.

What a store needs that a website does not

Selling is workflows, not pages: inventory that cannot oversell, order statuses a packing bench can follow, discounts that stack correctly, abandoned-checkout recovery, and a checkout tuned for how your buyers pay. Commerce-first platforms live and die by these; website-first platforms treat them as features on a list.

CommerceOS pages are still assembled visually — 80+ drag-and-drop sections with a live preview — so you give up nothing on the "build it yourself" front. But underneath, everything is shaped around the sale.

The India test: UPI, COD, GST

This is where global builders struggle most for Indian sellers. UPI-first checkouts, Cash on Delivery order flows, and GST-friendly pricing are not their home turf. On CommerceOS, UPI and COD are core: your own Indian gateway (Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree and others) at its published rates, COD built into order management, and no commission on sales stacked on top.

Which should you pick?

Choose Wix or Squarespace if the website is the product — content-heavy, design-led, with incidental sales — and dollar pricing does not bother you.

Choose CommerceOS if the store is the business. You will get the visual editor you wanted from a builder, with the commerce engine and India-first payments the builders were never centered on — from ₹699/mo.