Somebody has probably told you that sites built on Wix or Squarespace cannot rank on Google. It is the single most repeated claim in this argument and it is not true, so let us clear it out of the way and then talk about the differences that are real.
Can a builder site rank on Google?
Google publishes exactly three technical requirements for a page to be eligible to appear in Search. Googlebot must not be blocked from it. The page has to work, meaning it returns a successful response. And it needs indexable content in a supported file type. Platform, builder and vendor appear nowhere in that list.
Google's own starter guide goes further in the direction people find surprising. On getting into search results it says you usually do not need to do anything except publish your site on the web, and that the vast majority of sites listed in its results are found and added automatically as it crawls. On content management systems it says that if you use one, you might not need to do anything technical to your titles beyond writing good ones, because most systems turn the title you write into the right piece of HTML for you.
We looked for any Google documentation naming Wix, Squarespace, Shopify or WordPress as limited or disadvantaged in Search, and there is none. Be careful how you read that. It is the absence of a restriction rather than an endorsement. Google has not blessed website builders. It has simply never said what people keep claiming it said.
The related claim about speed deserves the same treatment. Google's page experience documentation says there is no single signal, that its ranking systems look at a variety of signals, and, in a sentence worth remembering the next time somebody waves a speed score at you, that Google Search always seeks to show the most relevant content even if the page experience is sub-par. There is no published threshold to hit and no documentation tying platform choice to those scores. Speed is a page-level outcome, not a verdict on your platform.
What each platform actually lets you control
Here the platforms genuinely differ, and the differences are checkable in their own documentation rather than matters of opinion.
Editing titles and meta descriptions is available everywhere. Wix offers editable titles and descriptions with variables. Squarespace offers title formats and SEO descriptions, so the claim that Squarespace will not let you write a meta description is simply wrong. Shopify allows both. On WordPress.com descriptions are generated automatically, with custom control arriving through the additional SEO tools and plugins on its paid plans.
Editing robots.txt is where they split. Wix provides a dedicated robots.txt editor, with the honest caveat in its own documentation that Wix support cannot help you with changes you make to it. Shopify allows it through a template file, and is blunter still, describing it as an unsupported customisation, saying support cannot help with edits, and warning that incorrect use can result in loss of all traffic. Squarespace does not offer it at all, managing the file itself and adding rules when you use its crawler settings. On WordPress.com it depends on your plan, because it needs a plugin.
Structured data follows a similar shape. Wix lets you edit its presets and add your own. Squarespace generates it automatically for things like blog posts, events, local business and products, but does not hand you the controls. Shopify builds it into themes. WordPress.com routes it through plugins.
Canonical tags and redirects are worth one line each. Shopify generates canonical tags automatically and does not let merchants set them. Squarespace supports URL mappings where you choose whether a redirect is permanent or temporary. Wix redirects automatically when certain URLs change.
One honest note on Squarespace, which we mention because it is in their own documentation and it is the right attitude: they state that they cannot guarantee specific results like ranking changes or how your site appears in search results. Every platform should say that. One of them does.
The difference that actually matters, which is leaving
This is the part to weigh, because it is the part you cannot undo later.
Wix does not let you take your site with you. Its documentation is unambiguous: a Wix site is built with Wix's technology, it needs to be hosted and operated on Wix's servers, and the architecture does not support external hosting because it relies on Wix's own services to run. There is no export. If you build on Wix, you are building on Wix permanently, and moving means rebuilding from scratch.
Squarespace offers a partial export, and publishes the list of what does not come with you. You get one XML file containing layout pages, one blog page with its posts and comments, text blocks, image blocks and gallery pages. You do not get store pages, portfolio pages, index pages, cover pages, album pages, calendar pages or info pages. You do not get content in page-specific headers, footers or sidebars, more than one blog, drafts, style settings, custom CSS, or audio, video and product blocks. Read that list against your actual site before you assume you could move.
WordPress is the most portable of the group. WordPress.com offers an export of posts, pages, comments, categories and tags on all plans, with a separate download for your media library, and a full backup on its higher plans. Its export excludes your theme, your design customisations, your plugins and the image files themselves, which is why the separate media download matters.
What happens if you stop paying is documented too, and it is worth knowing. Squarespace states that a site stays visible to visitors and search engines for fifteen days while it retries the charge, and after that it is marked expired and is no longer visible to visitors or search engines. Shopify guarantees a deactivated store's information for two years in case you re-open, deletes data within fourteen days of a completed deletion request, and states that once deleted it is not recoverable and the store cannot be re-opened. Shopify also offers a paused plan that keeps the storefront visible while switching off the ability to buy.
On both Wix and WordPress.com, connecting your own domain requires a paid plan. A free site runs on a subdomain of theirs, which is a poor foundation for a business you intend to keep.
For a Nigerian shop, the platform question is a payment question
If you are selling online and collecting naira, this section decides it, and it overrides everything above.
Shopify Payments does not support Nigeria. Its list of supported countries contains no African country at all. Shopify's own instruction, for merchants whose country is not listed, is to use a third-party payment provider. That is workable, and Nigerian gateways do have Shopify listings, but understand what you are choosing: an extra integration, maintained by somebody else, on top of a platform that cannot take your payments natively.
Wix is more direct about Nigeria than any of the others. Its availability page lists the payment providers available in each country, and for Nigeria it names PayPal, Paystack, DPO Group and SeerBit, with dedicated setup instructions for Paystack and SeerBit. Wix's own payment product is not available in Nigeria, so you are using a Nigerian gateway either way, but Wix has documented the path.
Squarespace is the poorest fit, and the reason is not the gateways. The naira is absent from Squarespace's published list of supported store currencies. You cannot price a Squarespace store in naira. For a Nigerian shop selling to Nigerians, that is not a limitation you work around.
So how do you decide
If you need a straightforward site that says who you are, what you sell and how to reach you, and you want it live this month, a builder will do the job and Google will not hold it against you. Expect to pay for a plan to use your own domain.
If you are selling online in naira, let the payment question lead and the platform follow. Wix has documented Nigerian gateways. Shopify needs a third-party app because its own payment product does not reach Nigeria. Squarespace cannot price in naira, which takes it off the list.
If your site is a real part of how the business runs, if you need control over your robots.txt and your structured data, or if the thought of never being able to move your work is a problem, then a custom build earns its cost. Not because it ranks better, because Google publishes nothing to support that, but because you own it.
And whichever way you go, ask one question before you commit. If I want to leave in three years, what exactly do I take with you? The answers above are published by the platforms themselves, and they vary from everything to nothing.