Which Website Builder Is Safest? Who Protects What on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Shopify and Webflow

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Why did every hacked site we cleaned up run WordPress?

Because self-hosted WordPress puts the most on the owner's plate. You choose the host, install the plugins and keep everything updated. Plugins carried 91% of the 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities found in 2025, and heavily targeted ones were first exploited after a weighted median of 5 hours (Patchstack, 2026). That is a lot of doors to keep shut.

This is the fifth guide in our series on hacked websites. The four sites behind the earlier guides, a professional services firm, a real estate brokerage, an art gallery and a plumbing company, all ran self-hosted WordPress. Our cases are not a survey; they are the sites that came to us. But the pattern matches what WordPress security researchers report.

Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025. Of those, 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes, with "only 6 vulnerabilities reported in the WordPress core", and 46% were not fixed in time for public disclosure (Patchstack, 2026). WordPress itself is not the weak point. The add-ons are, and on self-hosted WordPress, managing them is your job.

WordPress's own handbook says it directly: "The most important thing to do for WordPress security is to keep WordPress itself and all installed plugins and themes up to date" (WordPress security handbook, 2026). It also says security "is also about making sure your hosting environment is secure", which is the other half of the owner's job.

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Who protects what on each website builder?

Hosted builders protect the platform: servers, patches, encryption and attack mitigation. Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and Webflow all describe that on their security pages. You still own your password, two-step login, apps and domain. Self-hosted WordPress hands you the platform too. WordPress.com sits in between, with scanning and a firewall included.

The hosted builders are clear about the platform side. Wix promises "fully managed, 24/7 site protection" (Wix Trust Center, 2026). Webflow lists a "Global CDN with DDoS protection and built-in rate limiting for all sites" and "Automated patches and updates with no customer maintenance" (Webflow, 2026). Shopify says it "is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant" (Shopify, 2026). Squarespace says domains on its sites "are automatically protected with free SSL certificates" (Squarespace, 2026).

WordPress.com, the hosted version of WordPress, adds services the self-hosted version leaves to you: "Jetpack Scan checks every WordPress.com site daily for dangerous plugins, themes, malware, and other vulnerabilities," and its firewall "examines incoming traffic to all WordPress.com sites" (WordPress.com, 2026).

GoDaddy is different again. Its malware scanning and firewall come as a separate Website Security product, and on the Standard tier, "Malware Cleanup and Blacklist Removal" is listed as "Once per year" (GoDaddy Help, 2026). Check what your plan actually includes.

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What stays your job on every platform?

Your logins, your add-ons and your domain. Wix, WordPress.com, GoDaddy and Webflow all describe two-step login on their security pages. Every one lets you add apps or extensions it did not write. And none of them controls your domain registrar account, which decides where your visitors end up. WordPress.com puts it plainly: security "is really up to you" (WordPress.com, 2026).

Logins come first. WordPress.com says the security of your password and your website "is really up to you" (WordPress.com, 2026). Wix says it offers "two-factor authentication via email, SMS or authenticator app" (Wix Trust Center, 2026). GoDaddy says "Strong passwords and 2-step verification are the best ways to protect your account" (GoDaddy Help, 2026). Wherever your platform offers it, turn it on for everyone with access, today.

Add-ons come second. Apps from a marketplace, plugins and custom code are written by someone other than the platform. WordPress.com tells owners to "Delete plugins and themes that are no longer required for your site" (WordPress.com, 2026), and the same advice holds for apps on any builder. We could not find a statement on Wix, Shopify or Webflow's security pages about who is responsible for third-party apps, so assume it is you.

The domain comes third, and it sits outside every builder. In our cleanup guide, a plumbing company's domain settings were reset at the registrar and visitors were sent to an old hacked server for almost 17 hours. No builder could have stopped that. Two-step login on the registrar account, and knowing who holds it, is the defense.

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Can you put a Cloudflare edge in front of any website builder?

No. Wix says it "does not support proxied DNS records for domain connections" (Wix Help Center, 2026). Shopify's help center says Cloudflare proxy setups "aren't supported", although Cloudflare documents a setup that works. Webflow works through Cloudflare's Orange-to-Orange setup. Squarespace is documented only by Cloudflare. Self-hosted WordPress can always be proxied.

A Cloudflare edge works by sitting in front of your site. Cloudflare explains that when a record is proxied, "Cloudflare sits between your visitors and your server" (Cloudflare proxy status docs, 2026). That is where firewall rules, bot filtering and any managed layer on top of Cloudflare do their work. If a platform will not allow the proxy, none of that can sit in front of it.

Wix is the clearest: "Currently, Wix does not support proxied DNS records for domain connections" (Wix Help Center, 2026). Shopify's help center says "Cloudflare proxy setups, including Orange-to-Orange, aren't supported" (Shopify Help Center, 2026), while Cloudflare's own Shopify guide says "Shopify uses O2O, which allows proxied records to work correctly" (Cloudflare Shopify guide, 2026). When two vendors disagree, we follow the platform's own help and treat it as unsupported.

For Webflow, Cloudflare says "Webflow customers can enable O2O on any Cloudflare zone plan" (Cloudflare Webflow guide, 2026). For Squarespace, Cloudflare's vendor page says "All A records should be Proxied", and warns that Squarespace's own panel will then report a settings problem, which Cloudflare calls expected (Cloudflare vendor DNS records, 2026).

This matters for any edge protection, including the RankShield edge, which runs on Cloudflare. It can sit in front of a site only where the platform allows Cloudflare's proxy. RankShield, our founder's security company, runs that kind of layer on Cloudflare, which it describes as "a managed filtering layer on Cloudflare's global network that sits in front of your whole site". It is $39 a month, added on top of a RankShield plan; details are on the RankShield edge page. It is an option we offer, never a condition of working with us.

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So which website builder is safest?

It depends on what you need, but the trade is consistent. Hosted builders take the platform off your hands and limit what you can add in front. Self-hosted WordPress gives you full control and the full job. A static site on Cloudflare removes the server, the plugins and the site login entirely, and keeps the edge in front.

If you sell products, Shopify's PCI DSS Level 1 certification handles a hard problem, card data, that most small businesses should never handle themselves (Shopify, 2026). If you want a site you can edit yourself with little upkeep, Wix and Squarespace take patching off your plate, at the cost of what you can put in front of them.

If you run self-hosted WordPress, you can make it much safer: fewer plugins, updates on, two-step login, a proxy in front and origin access locked to that proxy. Our guides to plugins as the attack surface and auditing your WordPress site cover that work. It is real, ongoing work, and the four sites in this series show what happens when it slips.

There is a fourth option, and it is the one we build most business sites on now: a static site on Cloudflare. There is no server-side code at request time, no plugins and no site admin login to steal, and the whole site sits behind Cloudflare's network. We explain how it works, and its limits, in why we build sites as static pages on Cloudflare.

We recommend the platform that fits the business, not the one we prefer. Our website design services page shows how we decide, and our free SEO audit is a good place to start if you are weighing a move.