WordPress vs Wix vs Shopify for a South African business
For most South African small businesses: WordPress if you want to own it and rank, Shopify if you are seriously selling products, Wix or Squarespace only if you will genuinely maintain it yourself.
The honest comparison
Wix pricing, Squarespace website pricing and Webflow pricing all read cheaper on the signup page than they turn out to be — the plans are quoted in dollars, the rand moves, and the apps you end up needing are extra. The table below is what these platforms actually cost a South African business per month, all in.
| Platform | Real monthly cost | Best at | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | R60 – R400 | Owning your site outright, content and SEO, no platform fee. | Needs maintaining. Updates and backups are on you or your provider. |
| Wix | R250 – R550 | Doing it yourself with no technical help at all. | You cannot export the site. Leaving means rebuilding from scratch. |
| Squarespace | R300 – R700 | Design-led sites where visuals carry the business. | Same lock-in as Wix, and priced in dollars — the rand exposure adds up. |
| Shopify | R700 – R1 500+ | Serious product selling, stock, multi-channel. | Monthly fee plus app fees plus transaction costs. Expensive at low volume. |
| Static / hand-built | R0 – R100 | Speed, security, brochure sites that rarely change. | Not for you to edit daily. Changes go through a developer. |
The lock-in question nobody asks until it is too late
The most important difference on that table is not price. It is whether you can leave with your site.
WordPress and static sites are files you own — move them to another host and they keep working. Wix and Squarespace are closed platforms: there is no meaningful export and a rebuild is the only route out — the monthly rand cost of each is compared in website builders in South Africa. That is a fine trade if you are genuinely happy there forever, but it is a decision you are making on day one, usually without realising it, and reversing it in year four costs you the entire build again.
Shopify sits in between — your product data exports cleanly, your storefront design does not.
The South African wrinkle: payments
This changes the answer for online stores specifically. Stripe, which most international platform comparisons assume you will use, still does not serve South African businesses the way it does elsewhere.
That means your platform needs to work properly with PayFast, Yoco, Ozow or PayJustNow. WooCommerce on WordPress has mature, well-maintained plugins for all of them. Shopify supports the major ones through gateways, though Shopify adds its own transaction fee on most plans for using an external gateway — check that before committing, because on thin margins it matters.
The detail is in accepting online payments in South Africa.
We pick the platform for your brief, not our convenience. Every website design package includes that decision, and we will tell you plainly why we chose it — including when the honest answer is that you should set up a Wix site yourself and save the money.
Where we build websites
Every build is done remotely, so the whole country is covered at the same price. We keep dedicated pages for the metros most enquiries come from: Cape Town · Johannesburg · Pretoria · Durban · Sandton · Port Elizabeth · Bloemfontein · Polokwane · Centurion · East London · Nelspruit · Pietermaritzburg · Vanderbijlpark · Somerset West · George · Stellenbosch · Paarl. The full picture — packages, prices, industries — starts on the homepage.
Common questions
Is WordPress still the right choice in 2026?
For a South African small business that wants to own its site and rank in search, generally yes. The main argument against it — that it needs maintaining — is real, and is why care plan exists.
Is Wix bad for SEO?
Not any more; that criticism is dated. Wix sites can rank perfectly well. The real arguments against Wix are cost over time and the fact that you cannot take the site with you.
What do you build on?
Static, hand-built sites for brochure briefs — they are faster, cheaper to host and effectively impossible to hack. WordPress where you need to edit content yourself regularly, and WooCommerce or Shopify for stores. We pick based on your brief and explain why.
Get a fixed price for your website
Tell us what you need and we will send a fixed quote, usually the same working day.