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Designing a business webpage is absolutely vital to create an online presence for your company and obtain new customers. But what if you don’t know anything about web design?
Surely it’s incredibly complicated and you’ll need to hire an expensive web designer right? Before you shell out the big bucks for a web designer, you should finish reading this Squarespace review.
Squarespace is a webpage-building tool that can help even the least tech-savvy individuals to create their own webpage. In this Squarespace review, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about Squarespace, its tools and features and let you decide whether it’s the right choice to fit your needs.
Editorial Note: Comparewise is supported by our readers. When you find products and services through links on our site, we may earn commission.
Last Updated: Nov 25, 2023
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A good place to start this Squarespace review is at the beginning, and a logical beginning is an explanation of what Squarespace is.
Squarespace is a website building tool. Rather than just creating a boring plain-text page, Squarespace allows you to utilize ecommerce, marketing and other features, which allow you to get more out of your site.
You can even run an online store, email campaigns and video ads from a website created with Squarespace. Well cover all of Squarespace’s features and more as part of our comprehensive Squarespace review.
Before we continue our Squarespace review, we should cover what a Website Designer actually is.
Website designers are a collection of tools and services that make website creation more accessible to people who do not have any coding skills. Web design was typically challenging in the early days of the internet, requiring detailed understanding of HTML coding and computer networking to be able to construct properly.
This made it impossible for small businesses to market their services on the internet and caused many people to rely on more traditional forms of marketing, which can be quite costly. It also limited their potential customers to what was accessible locally, as online buying was uncommon at the time.
As of writing this Squarespace review, websites and online shopping have become an essential element of modern life. The products that can now be purchased online range from retail items such as clothing and shoes to cuisine from high-end eateries. In today’s market, you must have an online presence to compete, and website design services such as Squarespace help you achieve just that.
Squarespace’s website design services are available to anyone, group, or organization. Many artists use Squarespace to display their work and gain clientele. Several charitable organizations have also utilized Squarespace to design their websites, and after reading this Squarespace review, you’ll understand why.
An important part of any review is to learn how a company started, and learn what sort of reputation it has. So, we felt that it was important to add this information to our Squarespace review.
Squarespace was founded in 2004. It was created as a way to help people who lacked website development skills to build websites. There are now millions of websites all over the world that were built using Squarespace.
Squarespace had humble origins and began its life as a tool to build archaic “static” websites. Since then it has developed a more fully-developed toolset that allows you to create a more interesting webpage.
It has been estimated by Builtwith.com that 2.8 million live websites were created with Squarespace. This statistic means that Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders on the market today. And the company employs around 1,100 people currently.
Our Squarespace review wouldn’t be thorough if we didn’t discuss their repuation though.
Numerous tests and customer reviews have shown that Squarespace, while not perfect, is reliable and trustworthy as a webpage designer. Some users may experience speed issues or the occasional technical glitch, but their slogan of “Better websites for all” is honest and a promise we feel that they deliver on.
The issues we encountered aren’t exactly deal-breakers, and nothing about Squarespace’s services felt dishonest to us, so there’s not any shady dealing to be warned of in this Squarespace review.
As part of our effort to provide a thorough Squarespace review, we need to explain how the service works.
Squarespace is an online hosted website building solution. The tool runs on servers that Squarespace owns. Because of this, you don’t have to install software directly to your computer to use Squarespace.
Squarespace doesn’t work in the same way that old, outdated programs like Dreamweaver did. So you don’t install the program, open it and then write line after line of code until your website is fully designed.
Instead, you design your website online by using the design templates and editor provided by Squarespace. Nothing to install and you don’t need to learn how to write code. The only thing necessary to create a Squarespace webpage is a web browser and access to the internet.
Squarespace is is also a ‘software as a service” (SaaS) tool. This designation means that instead of paying for a copy of the product and installing it on your computer, you pay a monthly subscription fee for it.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a proper Squarespace review if we didn’t tell you about all of the features Squarespace offers. Here are a few of the features you can enjoy:
Almost everyone can agree that ease of use is one of the most important features to have in a website designer. Our Squarespace review wouldn’t really be thorough if we left this out.
Squarespace doesn’t have the most intuitive designer. It isn’t exactly as simple as a true drag-and-drop style editor and has extra layers of complexity that aren’t immediately obvious. They make up for this in terms of functionality.
Even if there is a slight curve, Squarespace’s features do provide more depth and functionality compared to most of their competitors. This creates a balance between how functional their services are, and how easy to use they are.
We think that Squarespace hits the sweet spot between these two metrics. Sure, other competitors may offer more features or have easier to use tools, but when you account for how important both things are it becomes clear that Squarespace gives you the best balance.
One of the best examples of Squarespace’s ease of use is how straightforward their process is. Some of these features could be made more intuitive, but overall Squarespace’s building process is straightforward and easy to understand. You can also avoid scrolling though the lengthy lists of elements on your page and edit existing elements just by clicking on them.
Honestly, in this Squarespace review I don’t think we cover another service that comes close to matching the level of ease and function that Squarespace has achieved.
Having the option to use templates to help with the creation process is a great feature we want to discuss in this Squarespace review.
You can choose from over 140 different templates to build your website. They’re all quite nice and many people agree that Squarespace’s templates are better than the ones offered by other website building tools on the market.
In particular, Squarespace offers more free template choices than either Shopify or BigCommerce. But, to put it in perspective, they offer less than Wix (over 800) or WordPress (more than a thousand).
However, Squarespace is more concerned about the quality of their templates than the quantity. Many people who reviewed Squarespace’s templates are impressed by the quality of the design and the features and not just the fact that they’re pretty.
The templates come with different features and layouts, and templates designed for specific industries have features to match that industry. However, you can edit the templates so if you choose one and decide you don’t like the features it contains, you can change it up to suit your preferences.
One of the nice features of Squarespace’s templates is that they are all mobile responsive. This means that they will function the same way for mobile users. This feature is nice because statistics say that 74% of users are found to be more likely to return to a website that’s mobile-friendly, so you won’t lose any visitors with Squarespace.
Squarespace allows you a lot of creative control when it comes to the customization of templates, which is a definite plus worth mentioning in this Squarespace review. You can do things such as change the images, delete or add sections, add text, add and manage multiple pages at once.
Squarespace isn’t considered a true drag-and-drop website builder. However, it’s easy to drag elements around. You can also reformat image layouts by moving things around to create collages or simply overlap images.
If you have some coding skill you can use it to customize and change various elements such as colors, fonts or backgrounds. However, Squarespace recommends that you limit your personal coding to small cosmetic changes like this because editing the layout of your entire site could produce some unintended effects.
If you aren’t an experienced coder, it’s easy to customize the cosmetics of your website template and choose the fonts, backgrounds, colors, headings, text and images. You’re able to structure and manage your menu and add pages, as well.
When you use Squarespace to build your website, you gain access to Unsplash’s image library, which is an amazing feature we felt needed mentioning in this Squarespace review. Unsplash has tons of royalty-free images to choose from, and you can add them to your website.
There’s a “search for image” option that lets you choose an image from the search results and then add it to your page.
Squarespace is also partnered with Getty, so if the royalty-free images from Unsplash don’t cut it for you, you have the option to purchase images from Getty for $10. Using the Getty images is as easy as using Unsplash’s royalty-free images, and the process is nearly the same. The only difference is that there is an extra step with the Getty images that requires payment.
Squarespace offers you a surprisingly large range of fonts for your webpage. 1,000 come from Adobe and more than 600 come from Google, for a total of over 1,600 different font choices at the time of writing this Squarespace review.
No other competing website builder offers this many fonts, which is why we felt it needed special mention in our Squarespace review. Fonts seem like a small thing, but the larger the selection of fonts, the more likely you can match the font of your offline marketing materials to your website.
The level of social media use in our society means that whether or not a site-builder offers social media integrations has to be discussed in this Squarespace review.
Thankfully, it’s easy to link all of your social media accounts to your Squarespace website. They offer integration with more than 20 different social media platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
You can also use the Dropbox integration to access your photo collections or to import content from your Instagram, Twitter and other social media accounts to your website. It’s even possible to host a podcast on your website, as well as publish it to Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
In addition, you can add the feeds from your social media accounts on your website so visitors can get an update when they visit your site. We cover more Social Media Intregration features in a later part of this Squarespace review.
Businesses who use Squarespace agree that Squarespace has good SEO, so our Squarespace review covers this too. Squarespace provides you with all the tools to help you follow the best SEO practices. For instance, you have the ability to manage your titles, add alt text and keywords.
The problem with Squarespace’s SEO tolls is that they aren’t very beginner-friendly. If you’re new to the SEO game, you’re going to need to do some research.
They do provide guides to explain their SEO tools in the Squarespace support pages, which will provide you with a thorough understanding of SEO. But there’s so much information about SEO practices that it can really overwhelm newbies, so you should make time to read through all of it.
As far as their marketing tools go you have two options: integrate with MailChimp, or use Squarespace’s Email Campaigns tool for your email campaigns. If you choose the Squarespace option, this can help to unify your brand. And when you have a unified brand (matching homepage and marketing emails) as well as SEO tools and social media integration, you’ll notice that the internet will notice your site too.
Most of Squarespace’s features are made into the platform. However, there is an app store so that you can use additional features outside the scope of this Squarespace review. The Squarespace Extension store provides you with 24 third-party apps to use that will help you optimize, manage and grow your site.
The four categories that Squarespace divides its apps into are:
Some of these apps include Quickbooks, TaxJar, ShipStation and Printful. There’s a mixture of both paid and free apps to choose from at the time of this Squarespace review. And although there aren’t many apps to choose from, the apps that are there should benefit your website.
The domain is the web address that people use to find your website. It’s typically something like “yourpage.com” and are incredibly important to a business’s brand identity. With how vital they are to site design, we need to discuss this as part of our Squarespace review.
You can buy a domain from Squarespace directly from Squarespace as part of the design process, or if you’ve already got a domain you can connect it. This is useful, as some other designers require you to purchase a URL directly from them, which can make transferring your website difficult.
When you sign up for Squarespace’s annual plan you get a free domain for a year. As that implies this is only free for a year, after which you will be required to pay for the domain.
The domains provided by Squarespace range from $20-$70. It’s worth pointing out that these rates are more expensive than other third-party sites. It’s only worth those rates if you value the convenience of purchasing both the domain and the website-building tools from Squarespace.
Squarespace has some great security features worth mentioning in this Squarespace review. It has security built into the platform to protect against bugs and malware. It also provides DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service.
This is a type of cyber attack that involves flooding your site with lots of traffic so that other users can’t access it.) protection to keep your site free of malicious traffic.
Your domain, whether you purchase it through Squarespace or a third-party company, comes with an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer. This is a type of encryption that is applied to information that users send through the website.) certificate. This is critical for sites that have online stores or who take payments because it means that your customer information remains safe.
There isn’t an autosave feature in Squarespace’s editor, which does hurt the overall score of this Squarespace review. As a Squarespace user, you’ll need to save your projects regularly because of this.
You do have the ability to restore any deleted pages or blog posts for up to 30 days, however. Squarespace creates backup copies of your entire website, then stores the copies on its servers.
Furthermore, if you’re editing from your mobile phone and lose internet connection, you won’t lose your progress.
Many of Squarespace’s users design their websites with booking or event planning services in mind, so this is another feature we decided to cover as part of our Squarespace review
Squarespace bought out Acuity Scheduling (an online platform for booking) in 2019. Then, in 2020 the Squarespace Scheduling feature was added. This adds Acquity’s booking features into your Squarespace site.
The Squarespace Scheduling feature makes it easy for your clients to book appointments, events, or classes. Visitors can easily see when you’re available, which is quite convenient.
Some people want to create a website for the sole purpose of blogging, so it makes sense to include the blog features in this Squarespace review. Here’s a look at some of the blogging features that users love, as well as some of the more problematic features you need to know about before you choose Squarespace as your blogging platform.
| Pros of Squarespace | Cons of Squarespace |
| + Unlimited blogs + Stylish blocks + Tags & categories + AMP for blog posts | – No revision history – No draft versions – Can’t change templates |
Pros of Squarespace
First of all, you’re allowed to have as many blogs as you want on your Squarespace website. This means that you can create multiple blogs to cover different content. If you don’t want to create multiple blogs, you can use tags and categories to separate your posts.
The summary blocks you’re able to create on Squarespace are quite stylish and attention-grabbing. Even better, you can drag and drop them onto any of your website’s pages. You can then filter these blocks so that they only display certain types of information. If you’re going for a magazine layout style, this will be great for you.
You can use both tags and categories on Squarespace. This is convenient because many of Squarespace’s competitors only permit you to use either tags or categories, but not both or the combination of them. So you have more flexibility in the way you can present your content on Squarespace. Plus, your readers will be able to filter through your blog posts in different ways.
You can enable AMP on your blog posts, which will make them load faster on mobile browsers and give you better SEO rankings.
Cons of Squarespace
Unfortunately, there’s not an autosave feature on any of Squarespace’s editing tools as of writing this Squarespace review, which is a major drawback for bloggers who don’t want to lose their content.
Squarespace doesn’t offer a revision history feature. At the time of this Squarespace review either, which is not great.
There isn’t a way to create a draft version of an existing blog post to update it. Instead you’re forced to update the live post.
Many users also experience speed issues when dealing with frontend site edits, which can be a hassle.
Even though they offer over 100 templates, you aren’t able to change templates in version 7.1, which isn’t ideal. Unless you feel comfortable rebuilding from scratch, you’re locked into a template once you start building.
One of the things you’ve likely been wondering while reading this Squarespace review is whether this service is right for you. Don’t worry, we’ll break that down for you as part of our Squarespace review too.
Squarespace is great for anyone who wants to show off their work in a visual way. Here’s a list of some of the industries that are best suited for Squarespace:
Squarespace is full of blogging tools, so it wouldn’t be fair to leave that out of this Squarespace review. It’s even better for blogs that include multiple images, and that’s ideal because 32% of marketers agree that images are the most crucial content form for businesses.
Squarespace supports multiple contributors, allows you to sync up with social media accounts and share your blog to them, and provides you with a Blog App to allow you to blog straight from your mobile device on the go. Furthermore, there are templates specifically for blogging, which makes starting a blog on Squarespace extremely convenient.
If you check out Squarespace’s “Our Customer” page, you’ll find that loads of small businesses use Squarespace. That’s not surprising once you consider all of the tools mentioned in this Squarespace review that Squarespace offers for businesses. Here are some of the things Squarespace offers to enhance your business website:
The arrival of eCommerce has changed the world. Almost every business has an online shop and online services have allowed shoppers to get nearly any item they want from the comfort of their homes. This was an essential area to cover as part of our Squarespace review.
Squarespace offers a lot of unique features for ecommerce sites, from its robust inventory system to its gorgeous designs that are specifically for ecommerce. When you use their ecommerce tools and templates, your products will be displayed in elegant fashion that’s appealing to customers.
Of course, our Squarespace review isn’t saying that Squarespace is the best ecommerce platform, but if you’ve got a small store and you want a storefront that matches your brand then Squarespace is the best option for you. There are two different ecommerce plans that Squarespace offers that will automatically provide you with a plethora of useful tools.
You even have the option to pair your Squarespace Commerce app with your Square account, which will make sales possible even when you’re not online. You’ll be able to take card payments when you’re on the go, which will be added to your online inventory.
Because of the emphasis we’ve placed on the visual nature of Squarespace’s design elements in this Squarespace review, it’s easy to understand that Squarespace is a great option for artists and photographers. You can customize the templates to meet your needs to make them match your artwork.
It’s easy to change fonts, replace or add images, change fonts, integrate with third party services such as Google Drive and Adobe Creative Suite, share your website on social media, and build your brand while establishing your business’s online presence with Squarespace.
This wouldn’t be a comprehensive Squarespace review if we only told you about Squarespace’s best features. In this Squarespace review we’ll tell you all the good and bad aspects of their services so that you can decide if it’s the right service for you. Here are some of the drawbacks to Squarespace’s services:
If you’re upgrading your website from the older Squarespace version 7, you’ll need to rebuild your entire site. This isn’t really a problem for new users, but for existing customers who want to utilize new features, it can definitely be devastating.
One does not simply switch templates with Squarespace’s editor. Switching templates means you lose all of the work you completed on the previous template because it isn’t loaded into the new template you chose, which is annoying to many users.
Squarespace also doesn’t support any custom JavaScript or CSS you have added to your site when it comes to troubleshooting. Even though they allow these custom elements to be added to your site, their customer support team won’t be able to help you resolve any of these issues until after the customizations have been removed.
There’s also no option for multilingual support, which can seriously hinder aspiring eCommerce businesses. You do have the option to add additional language support through custom code, but that can be a lengthy and complex process.
Squarespace also does not allow custom code to be added to the payment page, so any customized language support will still be reset to the default once your customers need to submit payment.
There’s not a free version of Squarespace, which hurts the overall rating of this Squarespace review. If you’re working on a budget or short on funds, this may hinder your decision.
There’s also a lack of communication regarding site-wide code updates, and that can create chaos on your pages. These updates are also frequent, so these changes often happen suddenly and with little or no warning. You may find yourself revisiting Squarespace’s training videos and help center far more often than with one of their competitors.
Squarespace doesn’t offer phone support, which can be annoying for a number of reasons. The first reason is that many users prefer phone support over chat or email support. Of course anyone who’s ever dealt with email support knows that it’s not as fast as phone support.
Although the Personal plan is quite affordable, you miss out on most of the features if you choose the Personal plan. Once you discover how many features aren’t included with the Personal plan, it really makes you question why it’s even an option.
We felt that it was important to include a section about the cost of Squarespace in this Squarespace review, as well as the features. Many people will place just as much importance on the cost of the service as the features and quality of the service. So, here’s a look at the pricing and plans that Squarespace offers:
The four Squarespace plans are:
You also get discounts of between 25%-30% if you pay for the plans upfront for an entire year, as well.
It wouldn’t be a very good Squarespace review if we included the pricing for each plan, but not what came included with the plans. Here’s a look at the features of each of Squarespace’s plans:
At the time of writing this Squarespace review, you don’t get any e-commerce features with the Personal plan. However, you’re allowed to sell an unlimited number of items from your online store with any other plan.
If you choose the Advanced Commerce plan, you gain access to a useful feature called “Abandoned cart autorecovery”. This allows you to identify and then automatically email customers when they add items to their shopping carts without completing the purchase.
Competitors for Squarespace don’t always have features like this, so it felt right to mention this particular feature in our Squarespace review
Other options that are limited to the Advanced Commerce plan include subscriptions, advanced discounts, the Squarespace API and real-time carrier shipping.
Too many services on the internet charge transaction fees, and Squarespace is no exception. We felt that our Squarespace review should cover how they handle fees in the interest of transparency.
To avoid transaction fees, you need to choose the Basic Commerce or Advanced Commerce packages. Squarespace will take 3% of all of your online store transactions if you choose the Business plan. Because of this, it may be more cost-efficient to choose the Business Commerce or Advanced Commerce packages, because that 3% fee really adds up.
Customization features are important to any web developer, and were a big consideration as part of our Squarespace review
CSS is a form of code that is used to style the templates, which means that if you want complete control over the customization of the site, you need the ability to access it.
JavaScript is typically needed to integrate apps and services with your website for further functionality.
For more experienced users, these additional tools are essential to gaining more artistic control over your page, so we want our Squarespace review to cover which plans have these features.
Considering there’s only one plan If you choose the Personal plan, you won’t be granted access to CSS or Scripts.
At the time of writing this Squarespace review, you’re limited to two website contributors with the Personal plan. However, there’s no such restrictions on contributors with the other plans.
Having the option to access third-party tools to improve your site is a key feature, and we wanted to this in our Squarespace review.
You don’t get to use any of Squarespace’s integration options if you choose the Personal plan. This means you’ll miss out on third-party apps that integrate services such as Amazon, Mailchimp and Opentable.
The Squarespace Video Studio app is relatively new as of writing this Squarespace review, and it allows you to create videos for your website that match not only your website’s design but also your branding.
If you choose the Personal plan, you’re only permitted to use four of the video templates in the Squarespace Video studio.
Promotional Pop-ups allow you to call attention to offers or a CTA (Call to Action), such as signing up to a mailing list. Mobile information bars give mobile users quick access to contact information for your business.
We wanted to make our Squarespace review comprehensive and honest, so we have to mention that you don’t have access to the pop-ups or mobile information bars if you choose the personal plan.
One of the major things that people look for when they sign up to any sort of subscription plan is a free trial option. These freebies are great for people on a budget or people who aren’t sure about the services yet. Because of this we felt we should include any of their free options in our Squarespace review.
Squarespace doesn’t offer any free plans much to the chagrin of many people because their competitors very much do offer free plans. However, Squarespace does offer a 14 day free trial. This is a great option if you’d like to try their services before buying, and it means they’re confident enough about their services that they believe you’ll pay for them after the free trial period.
We’re not writing this Squarespace review with the idea that you’ll hate this service so much that you’ll need a refund. However, it’s nice to know about the refund policy of any company you aren’t familiar with, so we chose to include it in this Squarespace review.
Squarespace does have a refund policy. If you’ve purchased one of their plans, you can request a refund within 14 days.
We can’t call our Squarespace review thorugh if we didn’t cover Squarespace’s customer service.
Squarespace offers 24/7 email support, so anytime you have an issue you can contact someone for a reply. If you’d prefer a faster method of assistance, then Squarespace also offers live chat support from 4:00 am-8:00 pm EST, Monday through Friday.
Both methods typically get quick and concise response that are straightforward. Unfortunately, Squarespace does not offer over-the-phone assistance, so the only way to speak to a representative is via the live chat option (which is text-based). This can be irritating though, as sometimes it’s easier to actually talk to a person instead of read text messages.
What’s really great about Squarespace is they also offer an extensive knowledge base with a multitude of articles and guides to help you get started. It’s referred to as the Help Guides and is filled with articles covering how Squarespace works, how to learn certain elements of the platform, and tons of other helpful subjects. So it has t be mentioned as part of our Squarespace review.
Overall, Squarespace has a good customer support experience when compared to their competitors but the lack of phone support isn’t ideal.
One of the other things we knew we’d have to cover in this Squarespace review is how well their tech holds up. What kind of tools and services do they offer and how do their servers and hosting services work?
One of the big things to mention in our Sqarespace review is that Squarespace provides you with detailed analytics and statistics breaking down your site traffic. You’ll be able to track your views, page visits, audience size, and more.
You’ll also be able to see data for referrers, popular content, search engine queries, and click-through rates after connecting your account to Google Search Console.
They’ll also generate an Activity Log that shows each individual visitor’s IP address, but this doesn’t include any information about how they’re accessing the site (I.e. mobile device or PC, or what browser they use).
Commerce level accounts get access to analytics for their sales. Squarespace calls this your Sale Overview, and it gives you a breakdown of your revenue and allows you to track how many units or products you’ve sold by hour, day, week, or even month. These detailed analytics are fantastic for identifying peak sale trends and other vital statistics for your business.
Another feature Squarespace provides is a Sales Funnel feature, which gives a breakdown of each customer’s site activity and shows you exactly how they purchased a product.
Another important function we need to cover in this Squarespace review is Uptime.
Uptime is a measurement of how long it takes to get your site online after you’ve finished the design phase. It also measures how long your website is able to be accessed and ow long it has been online, or offline. If your customers can’t get a strong and stable connection to your site, that can grind sales and site activity to a halt.
Luckily Squarespace provides an excellent quality and stable connection when it comes to uptime. Squarespace’s servers have been thoroughly tested and designed to provide the strongest and stablest connection to your site, ensuring that it can be accessed any time of day without any kind of service issue.
Server response time is also fairly good, so you can expect site viewers to have little to no trouble connecting to your site.
Another topic that needs covered in the tech section of our Squarespace review is social media.
As previously stated in this Squarespace review, many business across the world rely on a social media presence to draw in customers. In the modern era, social media has dominated much of the world and has created hundreds of new way for people to interact and helped new businesses advertise to larger amounts of customers.
Squarespace offers many of the same integrations as their competitors, allowing you to share blog posts and new products. You also have the option to add in your own share buttons to allow users to share it on their own Facebook, Twitter, or Linked-In account.
They also feature unique integration options like their Cover Page feature. This allows you to showcase your social media content on the website and allows your website and social media to act as extension of each other.
Squarespace offers classic functions too, such as customized sharing when you make a new post on your site. You can also get access to Facebook Pixel, which allows Facebook to help determine the quality and success of your ads.
Yet another tool in Squarespace’s box is their integrated Unfold utility, which allows you to create and share Instagram stories about your latest products and greatest deals.
Squarespace excels at making an intuitive and accessible designer allowing users to build their websites without learning complex computer code, but their actual creative options can seem limited at times. The constraints and limitations of their site builder can limit the creative vision of some of it’s users.
If you prefer more creative control and artistic liberty with your design choices, then Squarespace isn’t for you. Even though they are highly customizable, you won’t be able to build outside of the standardized templates formats Squarespace offers. If that general style isn’t what you need from a website designer, then you may want to try one of the competitors covered in this Squarespace review instead.
Squarespace is also significantly more expensive than many of its competitors, so if you’re looking for a budget-conscious solution then Squarespace isn’t it. When compared to services like Wix or Weebly, Squarespace’s plans seem incredibly overpriced for the amount of features and services you get. Some of Squarespace’s competitors even have free plans that include more design elements than what is available through Squarespace.
So you’ve come to the conclusion that Squarespace is not for you. So, what do you do now? As part of this in-depth Squarespace review, we’ll give you with various alternatives to consider and tell you a little bit about each of these choices.
Wix is Squarespace’s main competitor when it comes to general purpose website builders, so it wouldn’t be fair to leave them out of this Squarespace review.
Wix provides an incredible selection of templates and design features, all of which are easily customized using a drag-and-drop style editor. The level of creative flexibility that this system provides its users is unparalleled on the market, and when you consider the large number of free templates that are accessible, it’s simple to understand why.
There are several SEO tools available to assist you in increasing the visibility of your website in search engines. The ability to update your website’s meta description and description with Wix is sufficient to increase the number of visitors to your site. Another wonderful feature is the possibility to utilize a customized URL for your website in order to improve your SEO ranking.
The amount of flexibility that Wix provides you with their editor may be impressive, but it can also be overwhelming—and not just for you personally. It may lead you to build a web design that doesn’t follow normal structure that we are all familiar with, which may cause visitors to your site to get confused or frustrated. It can also knock your desktop and mobile website versions out of sync with each other.
If you own an eCommerce business, you’ve definitely already been referred to Shopify, and a comprehensive Squarespace review would be incomplete without mentioning one of their primary competitors.
Shopify provides an intuitive and simple-to-use interface that is ideal for small and large online shops and sellers alike.
Despite the fact that Squarespace provides eCommerce options, Shopify is a company that focuses in that particular service. Moreover, all of Shopify’s templates are well-designed and visually appealing, so you will be able to achieve a professional appearance while still saving time and money.
Oddly, Shopify’s URL structure does not allow for much flexibility, which might have a negative impact on SEO and make your website more difficult to locate. Squarespace provides far greater flexibility and SEO integration, which may make a significant impact.
A further limitation of Shopify is its inability to develop multi-lingual websites, which might either eliminate a large number of prospective customers or make their shopping experience more difficult for them.
Comparing Shopify to Squarespace, the latter is more advantageous for larger businesses and sellers that want a specialized eCommerce platform to market their products. Unless your business is tiny or closely associated with a blog, Squarespace is likely to be a better choice.
WordPress.com is another major rival of Squarespace, and it would be unfair to leave them out of our Squarespace review.
WordPress.com is a website-building service that makes use of the very popular WordPress software. You can get a copy of the WordPress software from WordPress.org, the home of their open-source community. The WordPress software is only one component of creating your own website. For the rest, you’ll need WordPress.com.
WordPress.com is all-inclusive and will cover all of your website creation, registration, and hosting needs. The platform includes all of the tools you’ll need to do so, as well as extension, support, and essential metrics to help you track the success of your page. This is great since you no longer have to worry about a certain integration damaging your page.
WordPress is more expensive than some of its competitors for premium services, yet also provides a free plan equal to Squarespace. The issue is that WordPress has a higher learning curve than Squarespace, and the design tools aren’t as user-friendly as Squarespace’s drag-and-drop toolbox.
WordPress also restricts most of its design freedom behind a barrier. You simply do not have access to many of WordPress’s more complex functions and features if you are not a subscriber to their premium business plan.
Another alternative worth noting in our Squarespace review is Weebly. If you’re looking for a comparable drag-and-drop-style editor with many of the same capabilities as Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace, this is the best option for you.
Weebly offers a free option with no expiration date. Weebly also does not need you to upgrade to their premium plan to eliminate ads from your website. Even if you choose Weebly over other site designers, you can expect to pay around the same amount of money for their higher service packages.
Still, the content management mechanism of Weebly might need some improvement. Compared to their rivals, their method is less efficient and can be difficult to use. You also can’t be as creative with Weebly’s content management system as you can with Squarespace since it lacks any option to add custom content.
If you do decide to move your website away from Weebly, there is no straightforward or fast way to transfer your content. The majority of the site’s content may be exported in a zip file, however any blog content must be manually copied and pasted and the URLs might be a pain to move.
The Weebly site builder allows for custom coding and HTML editing, but unless you have full authority over your site, it’s tough to get the most out of it. When compared to other services, it might be more of a barrier.
Generally speaking, Weebly is a good option for a short-term or beginner website, but consider Squarespace if you have longer-term goals in mind
In terms of competition, Unbounce is less of a rival and more of a niche tool, but depending on your needs, it may be a superior option, so it’s worth discussing in this Squarespace review.
Unbounce is a website designer that was created exclusively for the creation of landing pages, and it includes features that are tailored to that goal. Although Squarespace also allows you to create landing pages, Unbounce is a superior option because it is more focused on this particular goal.
Unbounce also allows you to create several landing pages and features a drag-and-drop editor that is comparable to Squarespace, making it a straightforward and easy system to work with.
The cost and limits of Unbounce are where it falls short. You can create a simple page, but anything more complex than that will necessitate knowing how to program. Unbounce is also a costly service that only allows you to create landing pages. If you want a full website or more functionality in general, it may be preferable to go elsewhere.
So what’s the final verdict of our Squarespace review? How well do they compare to their competitors? And are their features really worth the price?
All the research we conducted as part of this Squarespace review has shown us that, while Squarespace is an excellent tool for building a business, there is still room for improvement.
As previously mention in this Squarespace review, the personal plan lacks so many important features that we question why it’s even offered. When you consider that many of Squarespace’s competitors offer free plans that provide more, this is a seriously negative takeaway.
However, the features included in Squarespace’s higher tier subscriptions are definitely worth the extra money. Their eCommerce plans include options that improve customer outreach and access to analytics that give you detailed breakdowns of how users navigate your site and make purchases.
Squarespace’s customer support is also fairly accurate. Their live chat feature can help you resolve many common issues fairly quickly, and with 24/7 email support you can submit a ticket for assistance anytime and typically expect a response within 24 hours. The lack of phone service is a drawback, but the quality of service is good enough that we don’t consider this an absolute deal-breaker.
Overall, Squarespace offers a toolbox filled with fantastic design elements and decent support, with some other fantastic features and analytics tools included in their higher tiers of service. Even though they’re more expensive than most of their competitors, Squarespace is worth it if you don’t mind spending the extra money.
Squarespace is also a great choice for beginners. They offer a variety of templates and design elements without being overwhelming like other services. What’s even better is that Squarespace allows for custom CSS and JavaScript, allowing you to add more layers of creativity to your design.
The only catch here is that these custom elements have to be removed if you need troubleshooting, but as long as they aren’t the source of the issue you’ll be able to reintegrate them with no trouble.
So if you want a web designer that offers a good value for premium features and won’t overwhelm with options, then Squarespace is a solid choice.
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