- Over 500 Professionally Designed Website Templates
- Drag and Drop Website Builder for Total Design Freedom
- Free Trial with No Credit Card Required
- Free to use with Google hosting included
- Comes with drag-and-drop editing, premade templates, and deep Google Workspace integration
- Adds real-time collaboration, access controls, and support for custom domains on Google Workspace
Quick Summary
Wix is the better choice for any genuine business website. Its Harmony AI generated a complete, published store in 35 minutes with actual content, navigation, and e-commerce ready to go, while Google Sites produced a basic info page in 12 minutes with no design flexibility, no e-commerce, and grid layouts that felt more like a Google Doc than a website.
Google Sites has one real advantage: it’s completely free forever and works well for internal company wikis, school projects, and simple documentation where functionality is not the point.
1. Pricing and Value for Money
Wix wins on pricing for business sites because its US$29 per month Core plan replaces multiple external tools with a single subscription, while Google Sites is free but needs paid third-party services as soon as you require any real business functionality.
Wix
Wix Core at US$29 per month includes full e-commerce with up to 50,000 products, abandoned cart recovery, booking and scheduling tools, email marketing, hundreds of app integrations, custom domain, hosting, and security.
A forever-free plan is available but displays Wix ads and uses a Wix subdomain. The Light plan at US$16 per month removes ads and connects a custom domain. For anyone selling products or collecting payments, Core at US$29 per month is the practical starting point, replacing what would otherwise require multiple separate paid tools.
Google Sites
Google Sites is included with any Google account and stays free forever. There are no paid tiers, no upgrades, and no add-ons. That simplicity is both its strength and its limit. The moment you need to sell products, you must bolt on external services. Shopify’s starter plan runs from US$39 per month.
Alternatively, you can patch together PayPal links, Stripe embeds, and Google Forms, but none produce a unified store experience.
A “free” Google Sites store that actually sells products costs at least US$39 per month and still lacks a native dashboard, inventory management, or integrated checkout.
2. Core Features and Capabilities
Wix wins on features because it’s a complete business platform with native e-commerce, booking, email marketing, and automation all included, while Google Sites is a documentation publisher with no commercial functionality.
Wix
Wix treats e-commerce as a core part of the platform. When I opened the product manager, I uploaded a product image, set a price of US$65, created size variants, tracked inventory, and published.
The product appeared on the storefront immediately with a working cart and checkout.
Abandoned cart recovery, automated tax calculation, multi-currency support, digital product sales, and secure checkout through Wix Payments, Stripe, and PayPal are all included on the Core plan. It functions as a genuine e-commerce system, not a workaround.
Google Sites
Google Sites has no native e-commerce tools. There is no product dashboard, no cart, no checkout, and no inventory management. I went through every menu and setting and found nothing.
Embedding a Stripe payment button is technically possible, but Google Sites wrapped the code inside a restrictive iframe that broke the layout and limited checkout behaviour.
Community discussions confirm this: Google Sites is not built for e-commerce. It’s designed for internal pages, informational sites, and lightweight documentation projects.
3. Ease of Use
Wix is easier for building business sites because its AI does most of the construction before you touch the editor, while Google Sites is quicker for basic pages but offers so little flexibility that ease of use soon becomes ease of limitation.
Wix
How Simple the Signup Process Is
After registration, Wix asked me to choose between Wix Editor and Wix Studio.
Wix Editor is aimed at small businesses and first-time site builders, emphasising drag-and-drop editing, built-in AI tools, and a straightforward visual interface.
Wix Studio targets agencies and professional designers with advanced layout controls and responsive breakpoints at the cost of a steeper learning curve. I chose Wix Editor, and Harmony AI launched immediately with no pressure to connect a domain or enter payment details first.
What the Dashboard Looks Like on First Login
Harmony asked five practical questions about my business type, products, brand differentiator, location, and main goal.
A few moments after submitting, Wix produced a complete website and showed me a preview alongside a brief explaining the visual style, typography, layout approach, and how the content was generated from my inputs. I could proceed with the design or ask the AI to regenerate it.
After accepting, I landed inside the editor with a fully built site already in place, including a homepage hero section, product grid, about section with sustainability messaging, contact form, Instagram feed, and footer, all with real relevant copy.
How Intuitive the Editor Feels
Changes felt instant. I clicked a headline, replaced it with “Urban and Organic,” and it updated on the spot. I selected the main call-to-action button, linked it to my product collection, and it was ready.
Wix generated a mobile version automatically, and I could switch to mobile view and visually adjust spacing if something looked off, with no breakpoints or code involved.
How Easy It Is to Edit Text, Images, and Layouts Without Tutorials
No tutorials were needed. Adding a product took a few minutes: upload image, set price, add size variants, click save, and the product appeared instantly on the storefront.
The experience moved from feeling like building a website to editing a finished product. Total build time from signup to published e-commerce site was 35 minutes.
Google Sites
How Simple the Signup Process Is
Google Sites asked no questions. I clicked “Blank Site” and the editor loaded in 1.8 seconds showing a white canvas with a header.
No setup, no AI, no onboarding. For an internal wiki or school project this is genuinely convenient. For a business site, it means everything starts from nothing.
What the Dashboard Looks Like on First Login
The Google Sites interface is minimal by design. A toolbar at the top provides Insert, Pages, and Themes options. The canvas is clean and uncluttered. There are no marketing tools, no e-commerce menus, and no app marketplace. What you see is all there is.
How Intuitive the Editor Feels
I dragged a Text Box onto the canvas and it snapped into rigid grid alignment. I tried dragging it to a specific position and it snapped back to the grid. Pixel-perfect positioning does not exist.
I dragged an Image Carousel block below the text and it appeared instantly, but customisation was minimal: add images, set captions, choose transition speed. When I tried adding e-commerce, I found nothing.
I pasted Stripe embed code as a workaround and Google Sites sanitised it and trapped it inside an iframe, where the button appeared inside a fixed box rather than functioning as a seamless checkout.
How Easy It Is to Edit Text, Images, and Layouts Without Tutorials
Google Sites requires almost no learning. Editing text is as simple as clicking and typing. Adding blocks is drag-and-drop.
The trade-off is that the ease reflects the limitation: there’s very little to learn because there’s very little you can do. Total build time was 12 minutes to create a basic three-page information site with zero business functionality.
4. Design Quality and Templates
Wix wins on design quality and templates because its library of 2,000-plus options includes deep element-level customisation and genuinely modern designs at its best, while Google Sites offers 17 generic layouts with customisation limited to basic colour and font selection.
Wix
Wix has a massive template library spanning nearly every industry. I browsed Business and Services, Online Store, and Creative portfolios. At its best, Wix delivers excellent design: modern layouts, clean typography, and high-quality photography that feels current. The problem is consistency.
For every strong template I found, several others felt stuck in the past, with heavy drop shadows, dated gradients, and layouts that looked awkward in mobile preview. I had to scroll through roughly 20 templates before narrowing down to three worth considering.
Customisation at the element level is strong: you can click almost anything and change spacing, layout, and design visually without code. Template lock is a significant drawback: once you publish using the Standard Wix Editor, switching to a different template requires rebuilding the site manually.
Google Sites
Google Sites offers 17 templates. Each shows a basic preview covering categories like Portfolio, Project, Event, Help Centre, Team, and Class.
The templates are functional but visually generic. Variation between them is minimal, essentially 17 different arrangements of the same header, subheading, and content blocks.
Template switching is available at any time without losing content, which is an advantage Wix’s Standard Editor cannot match.
Customisation is limited to basic colour selection via hex codes and font family choice from a preset list. You cannot control font sizes globally, create overlapping layers, or move elements outside the grid.
5. Performance and Reliability
Wix delivers stronger performance for public-facing business sites with CDN delivery, automatic image optimisation, and a consistently high Core Web Vitals standing, while Google Sites produces fast-loading pages but lacks the technical SEO infrastructure needed for commercial visibility.
Wix
Wix manages performance automatically. Images are optimised, pages are served through a CDN, and lazy loading is applied without configuration. Mobile layouts are generated automatically, though some templates require manual spacing adjustments.
For small business owners uninterested in performance tuning, Wix’s automatic handling covers the essentials. Its standing among top CMS platforms globally for Core Web Vitals reflects consistent investment in site speed and technical quality.
Google Sites
Google Sites loads quickly, which makes sense given it runs on Google’s own infrastructure. Pages are lightweight by design because the feature set is minimal. Mobile responsiveness is automatic and reliable, requiring no manual adjustment.
However, Google Sites lacks schema markup, 301 redirects, and meaningful performance controls. Pages load fast but are technically thin, limiting how well they perform in competitive search environments.
6. SEO and Marketing Tools
Wix wins on SEO and marketing because it provides guided optimisation, automatic schema markup, and built-in email and marketing tools, while Google Sites offers only the most basic meta tag editing with no structured data, no redirects, and no marketing capability of any kind.
Wix
Wix’s SEO Wiz provides a personalised checklist based on business type and goals, walking through business location, target keywords, title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, and Google Search Console connection.
Each step opens a plain-English panel. When I edited a meta title, Wix showed a live character counter, warned me if it ran too long or too short, and suggested AI-generated alternatives based on my content.
Schema markup is generated automatically for products, events, articles, and local business details without plugins or manual JSON-LD. Built-in email marketing and abandoned cart recovery are included from the Core plan.
Google Sites
Google Sites allows editing a page title and basic description. That is the extent of the SEO tooling. There is no schema markup, no structured data, no 301 redirect management, and no sitemap customisation.
Google Sites pages can rank for branded searches, meaning someone searching your company name directly, but they cannot realistically compete for commercial keywords. There are no marketing tools of any kind: no email, no automation, no analytics beyond basic Google Analytics integration via embed.
7. Integrations and Ecosystem
Wix wins on integrations because its 800-plus app marketplace covers every major business function natively, while Google Sites has no app marketplace and supports only basic Google Workspace embeds and manual code embeds that the platform frequently sanitises.
Wix
Wix’s 800-plus app marketplace covers e-commerce extensions, CRM tools, booking systems, email marketing platforms, social feeds, and more. Payment processing supports 90+ processors.
Most relevant apps were already installed when Harmony AI generated my site because the platform anticipated what a clothing store would need. For most small businesses, the integrations inside Wix handle everything without requiring external platforms.
Google Sites
Google Sites integrates natively with Google Workspace products. You can embed Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Maps, and Calendar directly into pages without any configuration, which is genuinely useful for internal wikis and team documentation. Beyond the Google ecosystem, integration options are severely limited.
Custom code is sanitised and wrapped in iframes, which breaks most third-party embeds.
There is no app marketplace, no payment processor integration, and no marketing tools. The platform is designed to work within Google’s ecosystem and doesn’t extend meaningfully beyond it.
The Bottom Line
Wix is the clear choice for any genuine business website. The AI site builder, 35-minute build time, native e-commerce at US$29 per month, and comprehensive SEO and marketing tools make it the practical choice for anyone building a commercial site. Google Sites is a documentation publisher that happens to be publicly accessible.
It works well for internal wikis, school projects, and basic informational pages where “completely free” matters more than functionality, but it is not a website builder in any meaningful commercial sense.
