Insights
We Tested More than 50 Real Small Business Websites to See How Fast They Actually Load
By E.M. Grey · Published Oct 29, 2026
Most website builders will tell you your page loads fast. We wanted to know if that was actually true, so we stopped trusting the number and started watching the screen instead.
We loaded 52 real small business websites, ten each on Wix, Squarespace, Weebly and Square Online, GoDaddy's website builder, and Jimdo, plus our own platform, over a simulated slow mobile connection. That's the kind of connection a customer actually has in a parking garage, a rural service call, or a packed event venue, not the fiber connection most of us are testing from at a desk. Then, instead of trusting each site's own self-reported "page is viewable" number, we recorded the whole load as a timeline of screenshots and read the text off the screen ourselves, frame by frame, to find out when a visitor could actually see something real.
When "Fast" Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means
The number a website reports as its load time isn't always the moment a visitor actually sees the page. On a surprising number of the sites we tested, that number got recorded the instant a logo or a loading spinner appeared on screen, while the real headline and photos didn't show up until much later.
Eight of the ten Wix sites we tested reported a fast load time, then made visitors wait anywhere from 17 to 40 more seconds for real copy to show up. One site's own number said 9.7 seconds. The real wait for readable text was 49.7 seconds. GoDaddy's builder told a similar story on 7 of its 10 sites, claiming a page view in 6 or 7 seconds while actual content took 17 to 33 seconds longer to show up.
Here's exactly what that looks like in real time, our homepage next to Wix's own official template demo, same connection, same running clock, no sped-up highlight reel.
Squarespace didn't even need this kind of digging to look bad. None of the 10 real Squarespace sites we tested loaded in under 37.7 seconds, full stop, and 3 of them never finished rendering at all inside our two-and-a-half-minute test window. Square Online (the platform Weebly merged into) had the same problem on 3 of its 10 sites, stuck on a loading spinner the entire time with nothing a visitor could read or buy.
Jimdo came out the most honest of the group, six of ten sites matched their reported speed to what visitors actually saw within a tenth of a second. Our own sites did too, both the ones we built and a client's, with the gap between "viewable" and "actually visible" never crossing a quarter of a second in any test we ran.
Why a Few Extra Seconds Matters for More Than Patience
Google has said plainly that good scores on these same load time metrics, known as Core Web Vitals, are something "our core ranking systems seek to reward." That's not a guarantee a fast site outranks a slow one on content alone, but it's one more reason speed isn't just a nice-to-have. Read our broader guide to small business SEO for the rest of what actually moves rankings.
The more immediate cost is simpler. A visitor standing in a parking lot with two bars of signal doesn't file a complaint when a site doesn't load, they just leave and call the next business on the list.
What This Means If You're Choosing a Platform
The fix isn't picking the platform with the best marketing claim, it's asking to see real load times on a slow connection before you sign anything. I spent years as a lead engineer on an enterprise platform team before starting Grey Mountain Software, and the gap between a dashboard metric and what a real user experiences is a problem I've chased down more than once. It's exactly why we built and tested this way instead of taking anyone's word for it, including our own.
If you want to see what that looks like on a real build, our portfolio has live examples you can test yourself, on your own phone, on your own connection. And if you're sizing up what a properly built site costs against what you're currently getting, our breakdown of what a Grey Mountain Software website actually costs is a good next read.
If you're currently shopping for a website builder or an agency, ask for a live link and open it on your phone with one bar of signal before you decide anything else. Or just reach out and we'll show you ours.
Sources
Core Web Vitals and search ranking
Google Search Central. "Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google Search results." 2026. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals Used for: the direct quote on Core Web Vitals aligning with what core ranking systems reward.
Chrome UX Report (CrUX), Google Chrome Developers. "Release notes." September 2026 dataset, published October 13, 2026. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux/release-notes Used for: industry-wide context on how many sites currently pass all three Core Web Vitals.
Our own benchmark
Grey Mountain Software internal testing, October 2026. 52 real small business websites across Wix, Squarespace, Weebly/Square Online, GoDaddy Website Builder, Jimdo, and Grey Mountain Software, loaded over a simulated slow mobile connection with screenshot-timeline verification of actual readable content versus each platform's self-reported load time. Used for: all platform-specific load time and readability-gap figures in this post.
=== Wix (10 sites) ===
Site 1: reported 18.7s | real readable 51.0s | gap 32.3s
Site 2: reported 8.9s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Site 3: reported 10.3s | real readable 26.8s | gap 16.6s
Site 4: reported 9.7s | real readable 49.7s | gap 40.0s
Site 5: reported 12.0s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Site 6: reported 14.8s | real readable 140.2s | gap 125.5s
Site 7: reported 14.7s | real readable 43.3s | gap 28.6s
Site 8: reported 12.4s | real readable 37.8s | gap 25.5s
Site 9: reported 23.7s | real readable 44.3s | gap 20.5s
Site 10: reported 11.6s | real readable 40.6s | gap 29.0s
Summary: 0 of 10 honest (gap under 0.2s). 8 of 10 lying by double-digit seconds
(median gap among those 8 is roughly 29s). 2 of 10 never rendered readable copy
in 150 seconds despite an early reported time.
=== Squarespace (10 sites) ===
Site 1: reported 43.7s | real readable 64.9s | gap 21.2s
Site 2: reported 114.6s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Site 3: reported 117.2s | real readable 163.6s | gap 46.4s
Site 4: reported 39.5s | real readable 141.1s | gap 101.6s
Site 5: reported 93.0s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Site 6: reported 37.8s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Site 7: reported 110.0s | real readable 110.4s | gap 0.4s
Site 8: reported 37.7s | real readable 49.8s | gap 12.1s
Site 9: reported 116.5s | real readable 133.9s | gap 17.5s
Site 10: reported 38.3s | real readable 49.1s | gap 10.8s
Summary: not one of the 10 sites reported a load time under 37.7 seconds, full
stop, regardless of the OCR gap question. 3 of 10 never rendered readable copy
in 150 seconds. The one "honest" result (Site 7) only reads that way because its
reported time was already a catastrophic 110 seconds.
=== Weebly / Square Online (10 sites) ===
Site 1: reported 44.4s | real readable 44.6s | gap 0.2s
Site 2: reported 41.4s | real readable 41.5s | gap 0.1s
Site 3: reported 44.9s | real readable 45.0s | gap 0.1s
Site 4: reported 44.7s | real readable 82.4s | gap 37.7s
Site 5: reported 48.2s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Site 6: reported 48.2s | real readable 48.4s | gap 0.2s
Site 7: reported 66.9s | real readable 67.1s | gap 0.2s
Site 8: reported 20.2s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Site 9: reported 40.6s | real readable 40.8s | gap 0.1s
Site 10: reported 40.6s | real readable never (within 150s) | gap n/a
Summary: 6 of 10 honest (gap under 0.2s). 1 of 10 lying by 37.7s. 3 of 10 never
rendered readable copy at all in 150 seconds, stuck on a loading spinner the
entire window on two independently verified examples during methodology checks.
=== GoDaddy Website Builder (10 sites) ===
Site 1: reported 7.5s | real readable 25.0s | gap 17.5s
Site 2: reported 6.8s | real readable 22.3s | gap 15.5s
Site 3: reported 6.1s | real readable 30.8s | gap 24.7s
Site 4: reported 6.1s | real readable 32.9s | gap 26.7s
Site 5: reported 6.9s | real readable 17.8s | gap 10.8s
Site 6: reported 6.3s | real readable 6.4s | gap 0.1s
Site 7: reported 6.8s | real readable 22.9s | gap 16.1s
Site 8: reported 6.7s | real readable 6.8s | gap 0.1s
Site 9: reported 52.1s | real readable 52.2s | gap 0.1s
Site 10: reported 6.6s | real readable 39.5s | gap 32.9s
Summary: posts the fastest-looking reported times of any platform tested (6.1
to 7.5s on 9 of 10 sites), but 7 of those 9 are false by 10.8 to 32.9 real
seconds. Only 2 of 10 are both fast and honest. If judged on the reported
number alone, GoDaddy would look faster than Grey Mountain Software; it isn't.
=== Jimdo (10 sites) ===
Site 1: reported 30.3s | real readable 43.9s | gap 13.7s
Site 2: reported 19.0s | real readable 19.1s | gap 0.1s
Site 3: reported 19.2s | real readable 28.8s | gap 9.5s
Site 4: reported 12.8s | real readable 12.9s | gap 0.1s
Site 5: reported 9.8s | real readable 17.8s | gap 8.0s
Site 6: reported 12.7s | real readable 12.8s | gap 0.1s
Site 7: reported 21.8s | real readable 21.9s | gap 0.1s
Site 8: reported 12.0s | real readable 12.1s | gap 0.1s
Site 9: reported 18.4s | real readable 47.5s | gap 29.1s
Site 10: reported 13.6s | real readable 13.7s | gap 0.1s
Summary: 6 of 10 honest (gap under 0.2s). 4 of 10 lying by 8 to 29 seconds.
Zero sites failed to render readable copy within the window, unlike Wix,
Squarespace, and Weebly/Square Online, which each had 2 to 3 total failures