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Bandzoogle vs. Wix

Bandzoogle vs. Wix, Squarespace, & More: Battle of the Band Website Builders

If you’re a musician or band thinking about building your own website, deciding which website builder to use (such as Bandzoogle, Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress) to create your website is…let’s be honest, a difficult and confusing choice. This is especially true if you’ve never designed or built a website before.

With that being said, I want to make the process as easy as possible so you can pick which option is best for you or your band and get back to what you really want to be doing: focusing on your music.

Having designed websites for my own bands, for friend’s bands, and even paying companies, I’ve worked in web design for a number of years and I’ve worked with all of the top website builders.

Bandzoogle, Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, I’ve used them all.

In this article, I compare all four of these top options, touching on the pros and cons of each, pricing, flexibility, ease of use, customization, and more. I’ll even share my own opinion on which platform I think is best and why. By the end, you’ll have a clear idea which website builder is best for you.

TL;DR Version

If you want to know which platform I think is best without doing too much reading, in my opinion, WordPress is the best option. While it may be slightly more complex than the other options, it’s really not that hard to learn and by going with a WordPress built website, you’ll have more control over the design, functionality, and you’ll even save money in the long run.

I wrote up a huge guide to building a band website using WordPress that covers everything step-by-step. So if you’re a first time WordPress user, you can follow along to this guide and build your website in no time!

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If you do go the WordPress route, you will need web hosting. This is what holds your website’s files. There are many web hosting providers out there but my recommendation is A2 Hosting. They’re a U.S. based company, have solid U.S. support (which can be rare among hosting companies), and have affordable pricing. Their lowest tiered plan (which would be fine for any startup to mid size band) starts at about $4/month (by the way, WordPress itself is free).

Now with all of that out of the way, let’s dive deeper and take a look at the differences between these website builders, starting with pricing.

How much does each website builder cost?

Bandzoogle Pricing

Bandzoogle’s pricing starts at $8.29/month if you pay for the year in total upfront. Otherwise, it’s $9.95/month. From there, it can be as high at $16.63/month if paid annually or $19.95/month paid monthly.

Bandzoogle Pricing

All of Bandzoogle’s plans include a domain name (your website name) and web hosting, which is a big plus. However, each plan is limited by the number of pages, tracks, and photos you can host on your website. Bandzoogle’s Lite plan only allows you to have up to 10 pages, 10 tracks, and 100 photos.

For many bands or solo musicians just starting out, this may be fine. But as you record more music, play more shows, and take more photos, you’ll likely find that you quickly need more space.

On the flip side, Bandzoogle’s platform is more of an all-around system for band marketing which means on top of having a website builder you will allso have access to an e-commerce store for selling your merch and email marketing features (so you can email fans/subscribers).

As a caveat, though, Bandzoogle’s Lite plan only allows you to have 100 fans/subscribers in your email list. Otherwise, you’ll need to upgrade to increase list size.

Conversely, you can use an email marketing platform like MailChimp for emailing fans and have up to 2,000 emails on their free plan. So to me, this isn’t a big draw.

Wix Pricing

Wix can technically be used for free. You can create a website for free and Wix will host it on their own domain. The problem with this is you won’t have your own domain name (for example, www.yourbandname.com).

Instead, your free website will have a domain address as follows:

https://yourbandname.wixsite.com/yourbandname

For one, this looks unprofessional. In addition, it’s tough to direct someone to a website like this. It’s too difficult to say and for someone to remember.

To use your own domain, you’d have to purchase a paid plan from Wix. The first paid plan starts at $14/month.

Wix Pricing

On Wix’s paid plans, you do get the domain name included “free” in your plan for one year. After that, this will be an additional cost (~$13/year for a “.com” domain).

Another thing about Wix’s free plan is that your website will have ads on it. If you want to remove the ads, you again will need a paid plan.

Lastly, Wix’s free plan restricts you from using Google Analytics with your website. Google Analytics is a free service that shows you data for your website such as the number of monthly visits. To integrate Google Analytics with Wix, you will need a paid plan.

At a glance, here’s how Wix’s free plan compares to their paid plans:

Wix Free vs Paid Plans

Squarespace Pricing

Similar to Wix and Bandzoogle, Squarespace also utilizes tiered pricing that requires you to purchase higher-priced plans for added features/functionality.

Squarespace’s pricing starts at $12/month if paid annually or $16/month if paid monthly. Their highest plan is $40/month paid annually, $46/month paid monthly.

Squarespace Pricing

Like Bandzoogle, your domain is included in the price of this monthly plan. Unlike Bandzoogle, though, you are not limited by the number of tracks, photos, or pages you can have on your website.

If you want to sell music or merch on your website, though, you will need at least the Business plan in order to add this feature.

WordPress Pricing

WordPress is known as a CMS, or Content Management System. You can think of it as a website builder you store on your hosting. Basically, it’s the backend on your website.

Because it’s not a hosted option like Wix, Bandzoogle, or Squarespace, WordPress itself is free.

To use WordPress, you would install the files on your web hosting plan. Most web hosting providers have a 1-click install for this purpose to make it easy.

If you’re unsure what web hosting is and how it works, I created this guide with everything musicians should know about hosting.

With that said, it does mean you need to purchase your own domain name (your website name) and web hosting separately. In the case of Wix, Bandzoogle, and Squarespace, hosting is included in each of their plans.

This does give you plenty of options, though, since there are a ton of different hosting providers. My recommendation is A2 hosting. I wrote a whole blog post on my recommendations for hosting that you can check out here.

A2 Hosting is the hosting company I use for all of my websites. That includes this website and it loads fine even with 10,000 visits/month.

For most bands and musicians, A2’s Lite plan at about $4/month will be fine. For purchasing a domain name, you can do so with A2 at the time of purchasing your hosting plan.

No matter where you purchase your domain name, it’ll be roughly $15/year for a “.com” domain.

In total, that puts WordPress at $63/year. Bandzoogle’s lowest-paid plan would be just under $100 for the year when paid annually, Wix’s lowest-paid plan would be $168, and Squarespace’s lowest-paid plan would be $144 (again, paid annually).

Pricing Winner: WordPress

Ease of Use

For the purposes of this comparison guide I went through the process of building a website from scratch using Wix, Bandzoogle, and Squarespace in order to create a site similar to my artist website built on WordPress. Here is a screenshot of that site (the current design has been updated since originally posting this article):

Alter Heart Screenshot

I wanted to first see how simple each option was to use. But, I also wanted to see how well they would look and how much customization was allowed.

First, on ease of use, I’d have to admit Bandzoogle is the winner here.

When building a website using Bandzoogle, first you start out by picking a theme from a pretty large range of options. Then, the builder walks you through the process of creating your site.

After about an hour, here’s a look at the site I put together using Bandzoogle:

Alter Heart Bandzoogle Example

It’s not as complex as my site built on WordPress but it is workable as a band or musician website.

Moving on, I did find the editor to be a bit sluggish but nothing too unbearable. Overall, Bandzoogle was very simple to use.

However, while the level of customization will probably be enough for most bands, it’s still not anywhere near what you can do with WordPress (the same goes for Wix and Squarespace).

Take a look through the slider below for screenshots of my setup on Bandzoogle. One thing I did like is that Bandzoogle makes it easy to add a photo gallery, music player, etc. by selecting from a list of features to add. Then, you can drag them into place.

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Wix was fairly easy to use too. But, I would give Bandzoogle the advantage here. However, what’s nice about Wix is that when you create an account, Wix will walk you through creating the site and will automatically create a website layout based on the options you choose. See the slider below for a quick view of this process:

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After about an hour, here’s how far I got the site built using Wix.

Again, it’s not perfect and not as polished as the site built with WordPress but it does look fairly similar. After only about an hour of work, it’s not too bad. Of course, it needs to be customized further with my own content versus the dummy content from Wix.

Alter Heart Wix Example

You’ll also notice that there is a Wix ad that stays fixed to the bottom and top of the page. These are the ads that I referred to earlier in the section on pricing. You’ll need to purchase one of their paid plans to remove these ads.

Overall, Wix does a fairly good job of setting up the site on its own. From there, you can customize the site using the drag-and-drop builder and change the site’s colors, fonts, etc. The builder was a bit sluggish/slow at times. It even timed out a few times causing me to have to refresh the page.

Squarespace had a similar process that walks you through the process of setting up your website. You can select from pre-built templates that are broken down by category (ex. Photography, Blogs, Local Businesses, etc.). Missing from these categories was “Musicians”, though. So there wasn’t a clear cut template for me to choose that would fit best for a musician. I ended up going with a template for Podcasters called Paloma and building off that.

Ultimately, I was able to build something similar to the rest in less than an hour:

Squarespace Example

I found the editor to be similar to Wix’s website builder with the exception that it was cleaner and slightly easier to use.

Wix:

Wix Page Builder

Squarespace:

Squarespace Page Builder

WordPress would be the most difficult to use the bunch. But, it’s really not that hard to use. It’s just more complex.

What’s great about WordPress is that there are a ton of themes (both free and paid) to choose from. The ease of use largely depends on the theme. Some themes will be significantly easier to use. Especially when they include a drag-and-drop page builder. Many of the premium themes do include this feature, and in my guide here, I recommend a few that you can use to make creating your website much easier.

Ease of Use Winner: Bandzoogle

Customization and Flexibility

When it comes to customization and the flexibility to add pretty much any added functionality to your site, WordPress is the hands-down winner here. There’s just no contest.

While you can change the colors, theme, and layout of your site using Wix, Bandzoogle, or Squarespace, you can do so much more with WordPress. You can build any layout and look that you want, you’re not confined to a set number of options.

There are thousands of themes to choose from and each theme usually has a bunch of different pre-built layouts you can use to make creating the site easy.

Additionally, if you want to add functionality to your website, you don’t need to pay for an upgraded plan like you would with Bandzoogle, Wix, or Squarespace. There are a ton of free plugins you can download to add extra features to your site like a music player, an events calendar, an Instagram gallery, etc.

Example:

WordPress Music Player Plugins

WordPress Instagram Plugins

You can even add functionality that Bandzoogle, Wix, and Squarespace simply don’t have.

Want to add a social feed to your website that grabs your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter posts and displays them on your website in one feed? You can do that with a free WordPress plugin (Feed Them Social). Want to set up a store on your site where you can sell digital downloads and physical merch in the same shop? You can do that with a free plugin (WooCommerce).

Almost anything you can think of, you can add it to your site via a plugin that someone has already developed. All you have to do is install it and set it up.

The contest isn’t even close, if you want to create a fully customized website that’s truly unique, then WordPress is your best bet.

Customization Winner: WordPress

Conclusion: Which Website Builder Should You Choose for Your Band Website?

If you’re serious about your music career and about your website, then to me the choice is clear, the best option is WordPress.

For one, it’s a cheaper option. If you build the website yourself, even when you consider the cost of purchasing a web hosting plan and domain name, building your website using WordPress will still be cheaper than Bandzoogle, Wix, and Bandzoogle. Remember the price comparison from earlier:

  • WordPress + $4/month web hosting + $15/year domain name (billed annually) = $63 per year
  • Bandzoogle at $8.29/month (billed annually) = $99.48 per year
  • Squarespace at $12/month (billed annually) = $144 per year
  • Wix at $14/month (billed annually) = $168 per year

If you extrapolate the cost of each option year-over-year, WordPress becomes even more cost-effective. This is a huge thing to consider as a musician who is serious about their career. Making money as a musician isn’t easy. You need to keep your costs as low as possible.

In addition, WordPress is much more powerful. You have the ability to build any layout you want and add just about any functionality you want via free and paid plugins.

Overall, with WordPress, you’ll save more in the long run and have the ability to create a completely custom site.

For those of you who just need a simple website, and want it up fast, then go with Bandzoogle. But for those of you who are serious about your music career, and want a website that will be suitable in the long-term, choose WordPress.

Lastly, if you’re worried about building a website with WordPress, I created this huge 14-step guide to building a band or musician website. The guide will walk you through each step of building your website with screenshots to help you follow along. Additionally, if you have any questions, you can always ask away in the comments below or in that guide.

Thanks for reading!

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9 thoughts on “Bandzoogle vs. Wix, Squarespace, & More: Battle of the Band Website Builders”

  1. Great overview, and especially helpful considering you personally tested each in writing this! We’ve been with Bandzoogle for several years, and yes, they’re easy to use; however, thinking we are ready to graduate to Word Press soon. Will check out your guide!

  2. Thanks for this – I have been using bandzoogle for about 5years and its great. People always comment on the look and you can change the theme every 6months or so to freshen it up. However, having paid someone to do some SEO work on it they have found a huge problem with the home urls. Bandzoogle are aware of it but that was 6months ago and they have done nothing to change it. I have now been suggested to start again with word press which has led me here. I don’t understand the problem fully but I believe I have 4 home pages which are https://www.sixfingeredmusic.com/ The only one we should have

    https://sixfingeredmusic.com/home

    https://sixfingeredmusic.com/

    https://www.sixfingeredmusic.com/home/

    and there may be others!

    Just putting that out for other people

  3. I made a website with Bandzoogle. Is it just me or are they skimping on the sound?

    It seemed to me the sound quality of the player is lacking. Like maybe playing at smaller bitrate? Not sure that’s the right term.

    I listened to tracks on their demo site and heard the same problem.

    What’s your impression? And do you have advice?

  4. Thanks for the information! I’m curious what would the process be if I am building a website/epk for another artist using WordPress.

    When it comes to the domain name fees and the hosting, would that be something they pay me to deal with, or would that be handle on their end and I just build the website itself?

    1. Hi Will,

      It just depends on how you want to handle the fees for hosting and the domain I guess. You could tell the artist they need to purchase this on their end first or bake the cost of hosting and the domain fee into your prices (you would then need to charge them for hosting and they domain when they renew).

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