You chose a hosted builder so you would never have to think about servers, plugins or updates. The site looks the way you wanted, it was quick to make, and then someone runs it through PageSpeed Insights and shows you a page of warnings. Or a customer mentions finding your Wix website slow to load on their phone, and when you try it on mobile data, they are right. The tool suggests things like “reduce unused JavaScript” and you have no idea where you would even do that on Wix or Squarespace.
Much of the speed advice you find online is written for WordPress: install a caching plugin, change hosts, defer scripts. That is the honest difficulty with hosted builders. You have far less control than on a self-hosted site, so most standard advice does not apply. You still have some levers, and they matter more than people assume. Here is what you cannot change, what you can, how to test properly, and when moving to WordPress is genuinely worth considering and when it is not.
Why hosted builders can feel slow
Wix and Squarespace look after hosting, delivery, security certificates and the software that builds your pages. That is a real benefit: you do not need to configure caching or update anything. The trade-off is that the platform decides how your pages are put together. A drag-and-drop builder has to support a very wide range of layouts, effects and features for every customer, and some of the code it sends to visitors supports features your particular page may not use. You cannot strip that code out, because you do not have access to it.
On top of that sits everything you added: images, galleries, video, animations, apps, fonts, embedded widgets. On many slow builder sites, that second layer is where most of the weight comes from, and it is the part you control.
What you cannot change
- The server, its location and how quickly it responds.
- The platform’s own scripts and styles, and how they load.
- Caching and delivery rules for your pages.
- The structure of the code the editor produces.
Both platforms allow some custom code to be added, depending on your plan, but custom code can only add things to a page. It cannot replace how the platform builds and serves it. So if a test tool blames the platform’s own files, there is not much you can do about those, and it is worth not losing sleep over them.
Wix website slow? What you can change, on Squarespace too
Work through these in order. Most need no technical knowledge, just willingness to remove things.
Images
Both platforms process the images you upload and serve resized versions, which helps. It does not help with everything. Pages with many large photos, full-screen image backgrounds on every section, or galleries showing dozens of images at once will still be heavy. Use fewer images on key pages, especially near the top, and avoid placing important text inside images, because text in a picture is slower to load and cannot be read until the image arrives.
Video and motion
Background videos are one of the heaviest things you can put on a page, particularly at the top of the homepage. If the video is decorative, a still image usually serves the same purpose. Our post on background video and website speed explains the trade-off in more detail. Scroll effects, parallax and entrance animations also add work for the visitor’s phone, so use them sparingly.
Slideshows and galleries
A slideshow at the top of a page loads several large images where one would do, and often shifts the layout as it starts. Why sliders slow websites down covers alternatives. Galleries further down the page are less of a problem, but keep them to the photos that matter.
Apps, extensions and embeds
Apps from the Wix App Market and Squarespace extensions, plus embedded widgets such as booking tools, chat, social feeds, review badges and maps, each bring their own scripts. Some load on every page. Go through the list of what is installed, remove anything you no longer use, and ask whether each remaining one needs to be on every page or only on one.
Custom code and tracking
Code added through the site’s custom code or code injection settings, such as analytics, pixels and chat scripts, loads on top of everything else. List what is there, remove duplicates and anything from tools you stopped using, and check that each remaining script is placed only where needed.
Fonts
Builders make it easy to use several typefaces in several weights. Each one is extra to download. Two font families is usually enough.
Page length and sections
Very long homepages with many sections, each with its own images and effects, are slow on any platform. Consider moving some content to its own page and linking to it.
Testing a hosted builder site properly
Test the published site, not the editor preview. The editor loads its own tools and is not representative. Then:
- Test the homepage and two or three important inner pages with PageSpeed Insights on mobile, several times each, and note the results.
- Open the same pages on an ordinary phone over mobile data and note how long until you can read the main message and tap a button.
- Make one group of changes, republish, wait a little, and test the same pages the same way.
Be realistic about scores. On a hosted builder, the platform’s own code sets a ceiling you cannot get past, so a mobile score that stays modest after you have done everything above is not necessarily a failure. What matters more is whether real visitors find the site usable, which is what the field data at the top of PageSpeed Insights reflects when your site has enough traffic. For a wider explanation of how these measurements fit together, see our site speed guide, and for how speed links to enquiries, the section’s lead post on speed and lost customers.
When moving to WordPress is worth it
Moving platforms for speed alone is usually the wrong first step. A WordPress site is not automatically faster; built with a heavy theme, a page builder and twenty plugins, it can easily be slower than a tidy Wix site. And moving brings new responsibilities: hosting, updates, backups and security become yours or someone you pay. If you are weighing the platforms more broadly, Wix versus WordPress for small businesses sets out the general trade-offs, and choosing a website builder for a small business compares the wider options.
| Probably stay | Moving may be worth it |
|---|---|
| You have not yet tried trimming images, video, apps and embeds | You have trimmed the site and real-user data still shows it failing on mobile |
| The site is small, mostly information, and enquiries are steady | Speed matters a great deal to the business, for example paid traffic or online sales |
| Nobody would look after WordPress updates and backups | You need features or control the builder does not offer, and speed is one reason among several |
| A redesign is not on the cards anyway | A redesign is already planned, so the move can be combined with it |
One practical point: content on Wix and Squarespace does not move to WordPress cleanly. Text and images can be carried across, but pages generally have to be rebuilt rather than imported, and links need redirects so existing visitors and search rankings are not lost. Plan it as a rebuild, not a copy.
If you do rebuild, it is the moment to set the site up lean from the start: a light theme, few plugins, sensible image sizes and caching in place before launch. Otherwise the new site can repeat the old problems.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my Squarespace site slow when Squarespace handles the hosting?
The hosting is only one part of speed. When a Squarespace site is slow on phones, the usual causes are heavy images or video near the top, many sections and effects, embedded widgets or added scripts. The platform also loads its own code, which you cannot change, so the parts you add are where improvements come from.
Can the platform’s support team make my site faster?
They can help if something is wrong on the platform side, such as a feature misbehaving or a wider service problem, and their help pages explain the built-in options. They will not usually trim your pages for you. Decisions about images, video, apps, embeds and layout are yours, and that is where most improvements come from.
Will my Google rankings drop if my builder site scores low on PageSpeed?
Not because of the score alone. Google uses real-user page experience signals as one factor among many, and relevance of content matters far more. A modest lab score on a builder site with acceptable real-user data is common and not a reason for alarm.
Can I move only my slowest pages to WordPress?
Technically you could run part of a site elsewhere, for example on a subdomain, but it splits your design, navigation and analytics across two systems and complicates maintenance. For most small businesses it is cleaner to either improve the builder site or move the whole site at once.
Done what you can on the builder and decided to move? Our WordPress migration service rebuilds Wix and Squarespace sites in WordPress on a staging copy first, with redirects for any address that has to change.
Next in this series: Website Speed Optimization Cost: What Drives the Price
