A beautiful website that nobody finds on Google is an expensive business card. The platform your website is built on affects your page speed, your Core Web Vitals score, your ability to add structured data, and how easily Google can crawl your pages. This is not theory — Google has confirmed that Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, and our own testing confirms that faster platforms consistently outrank slower ones for the same content. This guide is for Indian businesses that care about appearing in Google search results. We tested each platform for mobile page speed, SEO capabilities, and real-world ranking performance — not just marketing claims.
How we chose
Custom-built (Next.js / React)
Best for SEO — periodA custom-built website on Next.js delivers the fastest page loads, perfect Core Web Vitals, and complete control over every SEO element. This is what Foresights builds. Hosting on Vercel is free for small business sites and $20/month for production with analytics. Google's own documentation uses Next.js as an example of good web architecture.
Verdict: If SEO rankings are your priority, nothing beats a custom-built site. The speed advantage alone is worth 2–3 ranking positions over slower platforms. Hosting costs are close to zero.
WordPress + Performance-optimised setup
Best SEO plugin ecosystemWordPress with Yoast or Rank Math gives you powerful SEO tools. But it requires significant optimisation (caching, image compression, good hosting) to achieve competitive page speeds. Most WordPress sites load in 4–8 seconds on mobile without expert tuning.
Verdict: Good SEO tools, but you'll fight the platform on speed. Budget for a developer to optimise performance.
Webflow
Best design-focused builder with decent SEOWebflow generates clean code and has built-in SEO controls. Page speed is better than Wix and Squarespace but slower than a custom build. Good for design-conscious businesses that also care about rankings.
Verdict: Best compromise between design flexibility and SEO. Slower than custom, faster than Wix/Squarespace.
Wix / Squarespace
Weakest for SEO — use only if you mustBoth platforms have improved their SEO capabilities, but they still generate heavy code that loads slowly. Reddit threads in r/smallbusiness and r/webdev consistently report frustration with Wix and Squarespace SEO limitations. Users who switch from these platforms to WordPress or custom builds report significant ranking improvements.
Verdict: Acceptable for MVPs. If you plan to compete on Google, you will eventually outgrow these platforms and need to rebuild.
If Google rankings drive your business, invest in a custom-built or well-optimised WordPress site from day one. Rebuilding later because your Wix site can't rank is more expensive than building right the first time.
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