Is Wix or Squarespace Better for Portfolios?
A portfolio is a visual collection of work, such as drawings, photographs, art, or crafts that showcase ideas, skills, style, and method of work. If your line of work requires you to show potential clients a portfolio of your previous work, both Squarespace and Wix will get the job done, but there are some subtle and not-so-subtle differences that you may want to consider before deciding which web builder is right for you.
Both Squarespace and Wix have great, basic tools for creating and managing a portfolio that won’t require any knowledge of code, including pre-built portfolio & collection pages, gallery blocks, and a variety of image-editing tools (including orientation, shape, size, and aspect ratio). Squarespace beats Wix in terms of ease of use and functionality, but Wix beats Squarespace in terms of the number of pre-built portfolio layouts and gallery blocks to choose from.
Overview of Portfolio Options
Scroll through the table below to view everything.
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Better Overall
Squarespace
Get Started
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Wix
Get Started
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| Portfolio Pages | ||
| Pre-built Portfolio Pages | ||
| Pre-built Portfolio Pages | 3 Layouts | 7 layouts |
| Portfolio page list view | ||
| Portfolio page list view | ||
| Individual details page for each portfolio item | ||
| Individual details page for each portfolio item | ||
| Image editing tools (cropping, saturation, contract, brightness, etc.) | ||
| Image editing tools (cropping, saturation, contract, brightness, etc.) | ||
| Gallery Blocks | ||
| Gallery blocks/strips | ||
| Gallery blocks/strips | 4 layouts | 25 layouts |
| Lightbox Gallery images (image opens in full screen when clicked) | ||
| Lightbox Gallery images (image opens in full screen when clicked) | ||
| Image editing tools (cropping, saturation, contract, brightness, etc.) | ||
| Image editing tools (cropping, saturation, contract, brightness, etc.) | ||
| Video Pages | ||
| Upload videos directly to platform | ||
| Upload videos directly to platform | ||
| Add YouTube and Vimeo videos | ||
| Add YouTube and Vimeo videos | ||
| Pre-built Video Pages | ||
| Pre-built Video Pages | ||
| Individual details page for each video item | ||
| Individual details page for each video item | ||
Squarespace Portfolios
Portfolio Pages
A portfolio page is a pre-built collection page meant to showcase visual work. There are 2 parts of portfolio pages: the main list view where all of the portfolios are displayed, and the individual detail pages used to show ore details of specific projects.
Example of a portfolio page from Applet Studio which showcases the many websites created with their premium Squarespace templates. Applet Studio is a web design team specializing in creating templates and custom designs for the Squarespace platform.
3 Layouts
The Portfolio Page selection in Squarespace allows you to choose from 3 pre-made portfolio layouts: a basic image grid layout where the titles appear on hover, a grid layout with the titles below the images (like image captions), or a listview where full-width images appear on hover. To add a portfolio page in Squarespace, just add a page to your main navigation and select the “Portfolio” option.
From a User Experience perspective, the two Grid Layout options are much more user-friendly and flexible than the ones with the flashy hover effects that can be distracting, so I will only be reviewing those two layouts in this article.
With each item or project in the portfolio collections, you can create entire pages dedicated to single items, which is great for showcasing individual, more elaborate projects. Additionally, you can edit the column count of the grid layouts, the horizontal and vertical spacing between grid items, the width of the grid layout, and more.
Image Editing Tools
Squarespace allows you to edit the thumbnails on portfolio pages in three ways:
Changing the focal point of the thumbnails in the grid layout
Editing the image by cropping, saturation, contrast, brightness, filter, etc.
Changing the aspect ratio of the images in the grid layout
Changing the focal point of the thumbnails helps you put focus on the important part of the images, giving site users a clearer view of your portfolio. In addition to portfolio page thumbnails, Squarespace provides the ability to edit the focal point on all images. You can change the focal point of a thumbnail by clicking the 3-dot menu on an individual portfolio entry, and then clicking “Settings” to open the modal.
Click settings to change the focal point
Image focal point editor
Within the same Settings modal previously pictured, you will find the “Image Editor” option, which opens a secondary modal containing a plethora of customization options. These include the adjustment settings brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, blur, highlights, shadows; various cropping ratios, including 1:1 (square), 2:3 (portrait), 3:2 (landscape), and more; and a few different image filters.
Image adjustments
Image cropping
Image filters
Changing the aspect ratio of the thumbnails is another way Squarespace allows you to customize portfolio pages. There are 7 ratios to choose from so that you can decide which display best showcases your imagery. The 7 options include 1:1 square, 3:2 standard, 2:3 standard (vertical), 4:3 four-three, 3:4 three-four (vertical), 16:9 widescreen, and ultra widescreen.
Image aspect ratio
Video Pages
Video pages are a relatively new addition to the Squarespace 7.1 platform - they are not part of the Squarespace 7.0 platform.
Video pages are organized into two parts, the main video list view, and the individual video detail pages. Squarespace will allow you to upload up to 30-minutes-worth of videos directly to Squarespace and display them to your site visitors, or if you need more storage space, you can subscribe to Member Areas. You can even include YouTube and Vimeo videos in addition to uploading your own.
For businesses that have a need to showcase their work through video (short films, videography, video editing, etc.), Squarespace’s Video Pages are a great option.
Gallery Blocks
Gallery blocks are individual blocks of images that you can add anywhere to any page in Squarespace. There are a lot of customization options we will be covering in this section including the width and height of the gallery block, the aspect ratio of the images, and the layout.
An example of a full-width carousel gallery block in Squarespace is used to showcase a company’s development work. This website was designed by Christy Price, a Squarespace designer specializing in web design for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
4 Layouts
Squarespace provides 4 gallery layouts to choose from, all of which work well for showcasing visual work. The layouts include Slideshow, Carousel, Grid, and Stacked.
Gallery block layouts
Gallery Block Image Editing Tools
Squarespace allows you to edit the thumbnails of gallery blocks in three ways, similarly to portfolio pages:
Changing the focal point of the thumbnails in the layout
Editing the image by cropping, saturation, contrast, brightness, filter, etc.
Changing the aspect ratio of the images in the layout
Changing the focal point of the thumbnails helps you put focus on the important part of the images, giving site users a clearer view of your portfolio. In addition to portfolio page thumbnails, Squarespace provides the ability to edit the focal point on all images. You can change the focal point of a thumbnail by opening the gallery settings modal and moving the small circle that appears when hovering over an image.
In the image pictured above, you will find the pencil icon in the popover menu. Selecting that opens a secondary modal containing a plethora of customization options. These include the adjustment settings brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, blur, highlights, shadows; various cropping ratios, including 1:1 (square), 2:3 (portrait), 3:2 (landscape), and more; and a few different image filters.
Image adjustments
Image cropping
Image filters
Changing the aspect ratio of the thumbnails is another way Squarespace allows you to customize gallery blocks. There are 7 ratios to choose from so that you can decide which display best showcases your imagery. The 7 options include 1:1 square, 3:2 standard, 2:3 standard (vertical), 4:3 four-three, 3:4 three-four (vertical), 16:9 widescreen, and ultra widescreen.
Image aspect ratio
Examples of Portfolios Built with Squarespace
Material Girl Quilts showcases their handmade quilts using multiple gallery blocks to separate the quilts by year.
IAmSashR uses a masonry gallery block to display full bleed images that showcase her social media photography portfolio.
Kopfer Taylor Interiors showcases their interior design work using a portfolio page that features portrait (vertical aspect ratio) images.
Tessa June Photography uses Squarespace’s gallery block to showcase photos taken for a farm wedding.
Wix Portfolios
Project Page Layouts
A project page in Wix is a pre-built collection page meant to showcase visual work.
Unlike Squarespace which has a project list view and individual details view for each project, Wix’s template pages do not include separate detail pages for each project, so you will have to create your own individual pages if you want to show more elaborate details for each project. So, although Wix wins this area in terms of the number of layout options for project pages, Squarespace’s Portfolio pages win in terms of functionality and ease of use.
7 Layouts
The Project Page selection in Wix allows you to choose from 7 pre-made portfolio layouts: Basic, Side by Side, Single Project, Showcase, Masonry, Featured Project, and Minimalist. To add a project page in Wix, navigate to “Menus & Pages,” select “Add Page” at the bottom of the overlay menu, and choose from the “Projects” tab selection.
Wix’s collection of project page layouts
Editing the Layout
Unlike Squarespace which uses more structured and concrete layout options (grid column count, image aspect ratio, grid vertical and horizontal spacing, etc.), Wix’s editor is more flexible because it allows you to drag and drop the image and text blocks into whatever position you want. This way of adding content is ideal for people who prefer more freedom and creativity with the layout options, but it can get a little overwhelming if you’re not very design-centered and just want a simple portfolio layout that will allow you to easily add more projects.
Image Editing Tools on Project Pages
Both Wix and Squarespace have pretty similar capabilities when it comes to editing images but in terms of Wix’s pre-built project pages, they are really just regular pages that have images and text blocks formatted on a page. If you want much more flexibility in editing the layout, your best bet is to use Wix’s Pro Gallery Blocks which I’ll go over in the next section of this blog post, but here are your editing options for images:
Editing the image by cropping, saturation, contrast, brightness, filter, etc.
If you click on an image, you will find a popover of the various settings you can change, including the adjustment settings brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, blur, highlights, shadows, and animations; and you can also crop each image to your preferred ratio.
Gallery Strips
Gallery strips in Wix are the equivalent of Gallery Blocks in Squarespace; they allow you to add captivating photos to almost any page you want. In terms of the number and variety of Gallery strip options, Wix beats Squarespace.
25 Layouts
Wix provides a wide variety of Gallery layouts to choose from, all of which fall into the categories of Pro Galleries, Grid Galleries, Slider Galleries, and More Galleries that take more artistic approaches.
Image Editing in Gallery Strips
Similar to Squarespace, Wix allows you to edit the images in Gallery blocks. The most versatile gallery strips are the Pro Galleries. They allow you to edit the focal point of each image, as well as edit the cropping, enhancements, filters, and adjustments (brightness, contrast, highlights, saturation, shadows, temperature, exposure, and more).
