Compare
On Squarespace, you rent. With KBD, you own.
An honest, line-by-line look at how we stack up against the DIY builders — ownership first, because that’s the one that bites later.
The short version. DIY builders like Squarespace and Wix are good at one thing: handing you software and letting you build it yourself. KBD does the building and the migrating for you, on a backend you actually own — and we stay reachable if you ever want to hand the work off. Here’s the head-to-head, claim by claim.
Side by side
How KBD compares to Squarespace / Wix
Read each row straight — it's a factual claim about how the two approaches differ, not a tagline.
| What matters | KBD Systems | Squarespace / Wix |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | You own the site outright — your content lives in a real database you can export anytime, and we hand over the source on request. | You rent access. Cancel your plan and the site goes offline; you cannot take the underlying site with you. |
| Migration | Done for you. We move up to 20 pages or products from your current site so you launch with your content already in place. | Do-it-yourself. You rebuild every page by hand. |
| Real backend | A professional stack — a PostgreSQL database and Payload CMS on Neon and Vercel — the same tooling developers use. | A closed, proprietary platform. No database access and no code to take elsewhere. |
| Pricing | One published price: a one-time setup plus a flat monthly. No per-feature surprises. | Subscription tiers, with paid add-ons for extra features and, on some plans, transaction fees on top. |
| Upgrade path | Start DIY and hand us the wheel anytime — Do It With You or Do It For You, same site, no rebuild. | DIY only. Outgrow it and you start over somewhere else. |
Why ownership is the row that matters most.
A rented site feels fine right up until the day you want to leave — that’s when owners find out the pages, the design, and the data were never really theirs. We build on a real database and hand you the keys: export your content anytime, get the source on request, and keep your site even if you stop working with us.
See exactly what you get on the FAQ and How It Works.
See it — don’t take our word for it
Every KBD demo is a live site running on the exact platform described above.
Browse live demosReady to own your site?
We build, migrate and run it. You own it.