Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, or a built site — what should a dental practice choose?

There is no universally best website platform, whatever anyone trying to sell you one says — and that includes web agencies. The honest answer turns on two things: what your site actually has to do, and who is going to run it day to day. A practice that has happily run a Wix site for ten years did not make a mistake; for a great many practices, a builder is exactly the right call. The job here is knowing when it is, and when it is not.

Start with the builders, because they are where most practices belong. Wix is the easiest of the lot — a free plan, a drag-and-drop editor, hosting, security and updates all handled for you, and over eight million sites running on it. Squarespace does the same job with more polished, fully responsive templates, which is why design-led businesses tend to favour it. Both let you edit the site yourself without touching code, and both are genuinely good enough to serve a practice well for years. If your website is mainly a findable, presentable place that you will tweak occasionally yourself, a builder is the sensible choice, full stop.

The trade-offs only start to matter when specific things do. Builders carry platform overhead: a typical Wix site loads several times slower on a phone than a lean hand-built one, which is fine for most practices but a real drag if you are competing on speed and search ranking in a busy town. They also lock you in — a Wix site cannot be exported, so leaving means rebuilding from scratch — and the monthly cost climbs as you bolt on booking, email and other apps.

WordPress sits in the middle: more powerful, with the strongest SEO tools and a vast plugin ecosystem, but a steeper learning curve and real upkeep — you, or someone you pay, maintains the hosting, security and updates. It suits a practice that wants more control and has someone to look after it.

A hand-built site is the far end again: the fastest, fully under your control, owned outright, and effectively free to host on modern static hosting. The catch is the mirror image of a builder's strength — you cannot drag-and-drop edit it yourself, so it needs a developer to build and to change. It earns its place when speed, search ranking, ownership or full control genuinely matter to how the practice grows, and you have someone to maintain it.

Matching the platform to your practice

• A builder (Wix or Squarespace) — if you want to edit the site yourself, want everything handled with no maintenance, and your site is mainly a presence. Squarespace if design matters most; Wix for ease and flexibility.
• WordPress — if you want more power and stronger SEO, and you (or someone you pay) will manage it.
• A hand-built site — if load speed, search ranking, ownership or pixel-level control genuinely move the needle for your practice, and you have a developer to build and maintain it.
• Whichever you choose — register and own your own domain, separately from the platform, so you are never locked in. And check the one thing that always matters: that it loads fast on a phone.

In the sites I audit, the most common platform-built practice site takes the better part of ten seconds to appear on a phone, against roughly a second for a lean hand-built one serving the same images. Most of those Wix sites, though, are serving their practices perfectly well, and that gap only costs them anything if they are fighting for ranking in a competitive area. If they are not, the right advice is to leave it alone.

So do not let anyone — me included — tell you that you must have a custom site if a builder is serving you well. The case for building one is specific, and worth making only when speed, ownership or control are genuinely holding you back. When they are, that is exactly what I do; when they are not, you already have your answer.

— Paul