Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress are good tools. But they weren't built for authors. Here's an honest look at every option — and how to decide what's right for your books and career.
We're going to be straight with you: Squarespace is a beautiful product. Wix is remarkably easy. If you've never had a website before and you just need something live this week, a builder isn't the wrong choice.
The author website builder market has exploded in recent years — and for good reason. These platforms handle hosting, security, and updates automatically. They offer templates that look polished. And they cost $15–30/month, which feels like nothing compared to hiring a designer.
If you write occasionally, have one book, and aren't actively building an audience — a Squarespace template is probably enough. We'd rather you have something than nothing.
But most authors who find us aren't at that stage. They already have a builder site. They've had it for a year or two. And something isn't quite working — it doesn't look like them, it doesn't rank in search, and every time they want to change something they're back in a template editor fighting the layout.
For a debut author testing the waters, a builder is a perfectly reasonable first step. The problem is what comes next.
The same constraints that make builders easy to use are what hold serious authors back. Templates aren't designed for your voice — they're designed for everyone.
You don't own your design. Every Squarespace theme is shared by thousands of other websites. A reader who browses author sites regularly will recognise the template before they recognise you. Your brand deserves better than that.
SEO is limited by design. Builders optimise for simplicity, which means they generate bloated code, restrict metadata control, and limit your ability to implement the structured data that helps Google understand your books, your events, and your author profile.
You pay forever. A $25/month Squarespace subscription costs $900 over three years. That's before the annual domain renewal, the email marketing add-ons, and the premium templates. A custom site is a one-time investment that costs less than the builder alternative over time.
Publishers and agents notice. It's subtle — but a templated site signals that your online presence was an afterthought. A site built specifically for you signals a professional author who takes their career seriously.
Squarespace is the most popular choice among authors who want something that looks good quickly. And it genuinely does look good. The templates are beautiful, the editor is intuitive, and the design ceiling is higher than most builders.
Where Squarespace excels for authors is in portfolio-style pages. If you want a clean page showcasing your book covers with buy links and a short bio, Squarespace gets you there in an afternoon. The blogging tools are adequate, and the built-in image handling is excellent.
The problems surface when you want your site to grow with your career. Squarespace's SEO tools are limited — no custom schema markup, restricted access to page code, and a relatively slow load speed compared to hand-coded sites. An author with five books, a newsletter, an event calendar, and a blog will quickly outgrow what Squarespace's templates were designed to handle.
The other consideration: Squarespace is in the business of selling subscriptions, not in the business of making you look unique. Their commercial model depends on you staying inside their ecosystem forever.
Right for: debut authors who need something live now and will likely upgrade in 1–2 years.
WordPress powers 43% of the internet. Its SEO capabilities are unmatched among self-serve platforms. But "unlimited flexibility" comes with a cost that isn't measured in dollars — it's measured in time.
A well-configured WordPress site with the right theme and plugins (Yoast SEO, WooCommerce for direct book sales, newsletter integration) can genuinely outperform most custom sites in raw technical capability. Many professional author websites are built on WordPress for exactly this reason.
The challenge: WordPress requires maintenance. Core updates, plugin updates, security patches, backups. Themes break after updates. Plugins conflict with each other. Hosting configuration matters enormously. Most authors didn't get into writing to manage web servers.
Search volume for "author website WordPress" has grown +336% year-over-year — which tells us authors are curious about it. But the majority who try it end up either on a cheap shared host with a slow, insecure site, or paying a developer to maintain it anyway — at which point, a custom-built site starts to look like the simpler option.
Right for: technically comfortable authors willing to treat website management as a regular task, or those with a trusted developer relationship.
The sticker price on a builder subscription looks low. The total cost of ownership tells a different story.
| Cost item | Squarespace | WordPress | Intrepid Custom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initial build | $0 (DIY) | $0–$500 (theme) | One-time investment |
| Monthly platform/hosting | $23–65/mo | $10–30/mo hosting | Included · 1st year free, then $5/mo |
| Domain registration | $20/yr | $15–20/yr | 1–3 years included · then ~$15–20/yr to your card |
| Your time (setup + ongoing) | 10–40 hrs/yr | 20–60 hrs/yr | ~0 hrs |
| Premium plugins / features | $0–$200/yr | $100–$400/yr | Included |
| 3-year total (cash) | $830–$2,360+ | $660–$1,660+ | Get a quote → |
Estimates based on Squarespace Business plan, managed WordPress hosting, and typical plugin/add-on costs. Time cost not included in totals.
| Feature | Squarespace | Wix | WordPress | Intrepid Custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unique design — not a template | ✕ | ✕ | Partial | ✓ |
| Full SEO control + structured data | ✕ | ✕ | With plugins | ✓ |
| No ongoing subscription fees | ✕ | ✕ | Hosting only | ✓ |
| Domain registration included | 1st yr w/ plan | 1st yr w/ plan | ✕ | ✓ 1–3 yrs included |
| Domain ownership transferred to you | ✕ Platform-locked | ✕ Platform-locked | ✓ | ✓ Full rights |
| Domain renewal (after included period) | ~$20/yr if kept | ~$20/yr if kept | ~$15–20/yr | ~$15–20/yr to your card |
| Fully managed setup | ✕ (DIY) | ✕ (DIY) | ✕ (DIY) | ✓ |
| Genre-matched visual identity | ✕ | ✕ | Custom theme | ✓ |
| Newsletter integration | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| You own the site outright | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| No maintenance required | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Fast page load speed | Moderate | Moderate | Depends on host | ✓ Optimised |
| Publisher / agent credibility signal | Moderate | Moderate | Depends on theme | ✓ Strong |
I'd spent two years adjusting my Squarespace template trying to make it feel like me. Within a month of launching my Intrepid site, I had a reader email to say they'd found my book through Google. That had never happened before.An Intrepid Client Published Author, Literary Fiction
This isn't a binary choice between good and bad. It's about where you are in your career and what you need your website to do.
Tell us about your project. We'll let you know if we're a good fit — no pressure, no jargon, no obligation.
Fully managed setup — from domain to launch. We work with a limited number of authors at a time.
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