Which website builder should you use for your yoga business?

If you’ve been following our series, The Art of Marketing Your Yoga Business, you’ll know that we see your website as the heart of your online presence.

It’s the place you can send people to learn more about you, understand what you offer and take the next step; whether that’s booking a class, joining a retreat, signing up to your email list or simply getting in touch.

But before you can build your yoga website, there’s a fairly fundamental decision to make:

What should you build it with?

There are more options than ever. Wix and Squarespace make it relatively easy to build your own website. WordPress gives you much more flexibility and control. And now AI website builders can generate an entire site for you in minutes.

So, which is the best website builder for your yoga business?

There isn’t one answer that works for everyone. It depends on where your business is now, where you want it to go and what you actually need your website to do.

Let’s look at the options.

Before choosing a website builder, decide what you need

It’s tempting to start by comparing templates, features and prices.

But start with your business instead.

A newly qualified yoga teacher running a few local classes has very different website needs from a busy studio offering classes, workshops, teacher trainings and memberships.

You may only need three or four of these things.

And that matters. There’s no point paying for functionality you don’t need or building a complicated website simply because you might need it one day.

Equally, if your yoga business is already established and you know your website is going to play an increasingly important role, choosing a platform you can grow into may save you having to rebuild everything later.

The 3 website builders we’d consider for a yoga business

For most yoga teachers and wellbeing businesses, we think there are three main platforms worth considering:

Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.

They all allow you to create a professional, mobile-friendly website without building everything from scratch.

But they take quite different approaches.

None is universally ‘best’. The right choice depends on what you value most.

Wix: An easy and flexible DIY option

Wix is an all-in-one website builder, which means your hosting, website software and editing tools are provided in one place.

Its big attraction is ease of use.

You can choose a template or use its AI tools to get started, then edit your pages visually without needing to know how to code. Wix also has a large ecosystem of apps for adding functionality such as bookings, events, ecommerce and email marketing.

That makes it a useful option if you want to build your own yoga website but would still like plenty of freedom over how it looks and what it does.

There are limits to that flexibility, though. You’re still working within the Wix ecosystem, rather than having complete control over the underlying website. And as your requirements become more complicated, you may find yourself needing additional paid features or apps.

But if your priority is getting a good-looking website online yourself without becoming a web developer in the process, Wix is worth considering.

Squarespace: Simple, polished and low-maintenance

Squarespace is another all-in-one platform, but it’s traditionally put particular emphasis on clean design and simplicity.

Hosting, security and the website software itself are all managed for you. You can choose a starting design, add your own branding, photography and content and edit your pages visually.

For an independent yoga teacher with a relatively simple offering, that can be a very good fit.

Perhaps you teach a weekly timetable, run occasional workshops and retreats and mainly need somewhere attractive and professional to explain what you do and tell people how to join you.

You don’t necessarily need unlimited flexibility. You need a website that works.

Squarespace also takes care of the underlying software, so there’s very little technical maintenance to worry about.

The trade-off is that you’re working within a closed system. If your requirements become more unusual or complex as your yoga business grows, there are limits to how far you can customise or extend it.

If you’ve already narrowed your choice down to Squarespace and WordPress, we’ve written a separate WordPress vs Squarespace comparison for yoga teachers, looking in much more detail at SEO, costs, maintenance, flexibility, bookings and long-term growth.

WordPress: Flexibility, control and room to grow

WordPress is different from Wix and Squarespace.

Although there’s also a hosted service at WordPress.com, when we talk about WordPress here – and when we build websites for our clients – we mean the open-source software available through WordPress.org.

Rather than everything being provided by one company, you choose your own hosting and can extend the website using themes, plugins and custom development.

That makes WordPress a little less straightforward to set up.

But it also gives you much more control.

You can build a relatively simple yoga teacher website in WordPress, but you can also use the same platform for a large studio, retreat business, membership, online course library or website with hundreds of pages.

There are thousands of free and paid plugins available for adding functionality, and WordPress can connect with a huge range of third-party systems.

It also gives you greater control over the technical side of SEO, which can become increasingly useful if Google is an important part of how you plan to attract new students.

And WordPress maintenance isn’t as daunting as it once was. Plugins and themes can be set to update automatically and, in our experience, updates are generally much more reliable than they used to be. You still need decent hosting, backups and security, but a well-built WordPress website shouldn’t require constant attention.

At Wildheart, we build all our client websites in WordPress. Guy built his first WordPress yoga website, Ashtanga Brighton, back in 2006, so we’ve had plenty of time to see the platform evolve.

One of the reasons we still use it is that we don’t know what our clients’ businesses will need in five years’ time. WordPress gives us room to adapt.

Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress: A quick comparison

There are nuances behind all of those answers, of course.

Most importantly, all three can be used to create a good yoga website and all three can rank on Google.

Simply choosing WordPress won’t magically improve your SEO. And choosing Squarespace or Wix won’t prevent you from appearing in search.

The quality of the website, its content and the strategy behind it matter much more than the name of the platform.

What about AI website builders?

This is the biggest change in website building over the last few years.

Many platforms and hosting companies now offer AI website-building tools. Instead of choosing a template and starting with a blank page, you can tell the AI about your business and have it generate a website for you.

That can include layouts, pages, images and even draft copy.

And it can be genuinely useful.

If you’re starting a yoga business and need a simple online presence, an AI-assisted builder can get you surprisingly far, surprisingly quickly.

But we wouldn’t really describe AI as a fourth website platform alongside Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.

Increasingly, AI is simply another way of building a website within a platform. Wix has AI website-building tools, for example, while hosting companies are incorporating similar technology into their own website builders.

And however clever the technology becomes, there’s still an important distinction between building a website quickly and building the right website.

An AI builder can create a homepage.

It can’t automatically give you clarity about who you most want to teach, what makes your approach different, how your classes should be positioned or what a potential student needs to understand before they feel ready to book.

It can give you words to put on a page. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're the right words.

So, we see AI website builders as useful tools, particularly for getting started. But the easier website building becomes, the more important the thinking behind the website becomes.

What about the cost?

This is another area where it’s difficult to declare a winner.

Wix and Squarespace charge subscriptions, with costs increasing depending on the features and functionality you need.

WordPress itself is free, but you need to pay for hosting and may choose to pay for premium plugins or other software.

For a straightforward website, WordPress can actually be very inexpensive. Many common tasks can be handled by free plugins, which may be perfectly adequate for a small yoga business.

The same principle applies whichever platform you choose:

The more complexity you need, the more your website is likely to cost.

Scheduling, ecommerce, courses, memberships and other specialist functionality can mean upgrading your plan, buying additional services or paying for plugins.

So, rather than comparing headline prices, make a list of the functionality you actually need and compare the total cost of achieving it on each platform.

And remember that the biggest difference in cost is often not the website builder at all. It’s whether you build it yourself or pay someone to build it for you. We explore the different options in our guide to three ways to create your yoga website.

So, what’s the best website builder for your yoga business?

Still not sure? It might help to think about where you are in your business rather than comparing feature lists.

You’re newly qualified and just need somewhere to show your classes

Keep it simple.

You may only need a few pages, a timetable or booking link and a way for people to contact you. Wix or Squarespace could both do that perfectly well, and an AI-assisted builder may help you get started even faster.

There’s no need to build a complicated website before your business needs one.

You’re established but want to build the website yourself

Wix and Squarespace are both worth exploring.

If you think your requirements are likely to grow substantially, WordPress is worth considering too, particularly if you’re comfortable learning the platform or getting occasional technical help.

If your decision has come down to the latter two, read our WordPress vs Squarespace for yoga teachers: an honest comparison next.

You run a yoga studio, retreats, teacher trainings or several different services

This is where WordPress starts to become particularly useful.

More services usually mean more pages, integrations and different journeys through the website. You might need teacher profiles, event listings, searchable timetables, online courses or connections with several external systems.

The flexibility of WordPress gives you more scope to build around those requirements.

You want Google to become an important source of new students

All three platforms can rank.

But as your SEO strategy becomes more sophisticated, WordPress gives you greater control over site structure, technical SEO, structured data, redirects, internal linking and other elements.

The platform is only one part of SEO, though. You’ll still need a strategy based on what your potential students are actually searching for.

You just need something online quickly

This is where the newer AI-assisted website builders can be genuinely useful.

Just resist the temptation to ask AI to make every decision for you.

Before you type your first prompt, get clear about who the website is for, what you offer and what you want someone to do when they arrive.

The technology can help you build it.

The thinking still needs to come first.

We’ve been designing WordPress websites for yoga teachers, studios and wellbeing businesses for many years, from relatively simple teacher websites to much larger sites with events, courses, multiple teachers and custom functionality.

We choose WordPress because it gives us the freedom to design around the needs of each business rather than making the business fit around the limitations of a particular website builder.

But that doesn’t mean we think everyone needs WordPress.

A simple website on Wix or Squarespace that clearly communicates who you are, what you offer and how to join you is far better than an unnecessarily complicated WordPress website with no clear strategy behind it.

The platform comes second. Clarity comes first.

When is it worth getting professional help?

Building your own website can be a great option when you’re starting out.

It keeps costs down, teaches you how your website works and may be all you need for several years.

But there often comes a point when DIY starts costing you something else: time.

Perhaps you’re spending evenings trying to make pages look right instead of planning classes. Perhaps the business has outgrown the website you originally built. Or perhaps you know the website needs to bring in more students, but you’re not sure what needs to change.

That’s usually when professional help starts to make sense.

At Wildheart, we build WordPress websites for yoga teachers and other wellbeing businesses. We start with the business itself – your audience, your offering, your message and what the website needs to achieve – before we start thinking about pages and design.

Find out more about our New Website Package.

Continue The Art of Marketing Your Yoga Business

Choosing your website builder is only one part of creating an effective yoga website.

In the next post in The Art of Marketing Your Yoga Business series, we look at how to structure your yoga website, including the pages you need and how to organise them so potential students can easily find what they’re looking for.

Or go back to The Art of Marketing Your Yoga Business to explore the full series.

And if you’re planning a new website, you might also like Yoga website design: 8 steps to digital nirvana, which takes you through the wider process from planning to launch.