Squarespace Review: Is It The Best Website Builder?

Squarespace stands out as a top choice for building websites.

This popular website builder does help you build websites that look great and it’s packed with great features. In short, the builder is perfect for small businesses, personal portfolios, blogs, and some online stores.

And now, Squarespace is even better for those with multiple sites.

But, you might be wondering, is Squarespace the right fit? Should you invest in this? Yes, there are tons of similar site builders out there.

In this Squarespace review, you’ll learn about everything.

I’ll walk you through Squarespace’s key features, give you an honest look at what’s great and what could be better, and point out other alternative site builders if Squarespace doesn’t match your needs.

In this article:

So, are you interested? Let’s get started…

Is Squarespace a Good Choice?

Squarespace is a great choice for both B2B and B2C organizations, and individuals too. It’s not just small businesses that love it; even big companies with the budget for custom websites often go for Squarespace.

Because it’s reliable and easy to use, even for beginners.

It’s an all-in-one platform, so you don’t need to juggle different web hosting providers or worry about plugin updates, like in WordPress. This lets you focus more on your business or project, and less on the techy stuff.

But, Squarespace isn’t perfect for everyone.

There are times when it might not meet all your needs.

The Ideal Squarespace Users

If you’re a photographer, artist, or anyone who loves beautiful designs, Squarespace is a dream come true.

It’s perfect for showcasing high-quality images, but if you’ve got a text-heavy site, you might not get the most out of its visual strengths. For small online stores or those selling digital products, Squarespace has some solid ecommerce tools. It’s not ideal for very large or complex stores, though.

Squarespace suits a wide range of users. Over 3 million users have stuck with it after a free 14-day trial, which says a lot about its quality.

Blogging: Squarespace is fantastic for blogs, especially if you use lots of images. It’s great for supporting multiple authors, sharing posts on social media, and even blogging on the go with their mobile app. Plus, their blogging-specific templates make starting a blog a breeze!
Business: Many small businesses use Squarespace. It gives you everything to hit the ground running: email campaigns, built-in analytics, ecommerce features, SEO tools, and integrations with tools like G Suite and PayPal.
Personal: For portfolios or photography websites, Squarespace is ideal. You can fully customize its professionally designed templates to reflect your style. Change images, fonts, colors, and integrate with tools like Adobe Creative Suite and Google Drive. This helps you build a unique personal brand.
eCommerce: When it comes to online stores, Squarespace is right up there with the big players, just behind Shopify. It’s perfect for smaller or growing stores with its eye-catching designs and powerful features like inventory management and abandoned cart recovery, and more.

You can even pair it with the Squarespace Commerce app and your Square account to sell offline and keep everything in sync.

Overview of Squarespace

Back in 2003, the founder of Squarespace, Anthony Casalena was just trying to make his own website and wasn’t happy with what was out there. So, in 2004, Squarespace was born, offering a simple way for anyone to create a website online without needing to know how to code.

Now, millions of websites use Squarespace.

It’s got cool features like e-commerce, email marketing, and analytics, making it great for lots of different people.

Top Benefits of Squarespace

Squarespace really shines with its user-friendly design and all-in-one package, including blogging and e-commerce.

Here’s what I think makes it stand out:

Comprehensive Features: Squarespace is more than a website builder now. It offers a whole set of tools for digital needs like domain registration, email marketing, scheduling, and more. This is great for small businesses who want everything in one platform. But remember, sometimes these all-in-one solutions might not be the best in every industry.
E-commerce: Building an online store is easier with Squarespace. You can easily Manage your inventory, handle various product types, and offer secure checkout. It even works with Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay, and integrates with major shipping carriers for shipping rates.
Blogging Tools: Squarespace is great for blogging too. You can have multiple people contribute, schedule posts, and organize everything neatly.
SEO Tools: With Squarespace, your site can be fully SEO-optimized. They have neccessary SEO tools, including automatic XML sitemaps and SSL certificates.
Ease of Use: You’ll find Squarespace simple to use, even if you’re new to website building. The drag-and-drop editor lets you customize your website easily without needing a developer.
Third-Party Integrations: Squarespace works well with 3rd party tools like Mailchimp and Google Workspace. Plus, they’ve got what they call Squarespace Extensions for even more app integrations.
Mobile Responsiveness: Every template adjusts your content for different devices, so your website looks good on phones and tablets too.
Mobile Editing: There’s a Squarespace mobile app for quick updates and checking analytics, but it’s not for the heavy-duty editing.

Squarespace Website Templates

Squarespace has over 110 templates, and they’re sorted into 15 categories. Every theme has its special vibe, but they all fit in nicely.

The best part?

Templates all free, no matter which Squarespace plan you pick.

These templates cover a lot of niches, from Photography to Local Business, and Weddings to Entertainment. They’re all about modern, fresh looks and are fully responsive, meaning they adjust perfectly to any device.

This is why Squarespace is so popular with photographers – the templates make photos look stunning.

Squarespace’s templates are really in tune with what’s trendy.

They’re not flashy like old-school websites; they have a clean, contemporary style. The way they’re grouped makes it easy to find the perfect fit for your project. For example, in the Entertainment section, each of the six templates is just right for things like music or gaming.

And don’t worry about your website looking too similar to others on Squarespace. With so many sections and blocks to choose from, you can add your own personal touch to these beautiful templates.

If you’re not sure where to start, check out the Popular Designs section. It’s a showcase of the most popular templates all in one spot.

One thing to note: Squarespace’s templates are designed for big, high-quality images. If you don’t have your own great photos, the template might not look as impressive. But, if you need photos, Squarespace has a huge stock image gallery from Unsplash. So, you’re pretty much covered!

In short, Squarespace offers a fantastic range of up-to-date themes. Just remember, they look their best with high-quality images.

Anything Wrong with Squarespace?

Squarespace is great, but it’s not without its flaws. Knowing these can help you decide if it’s right for you. Here are some issues:

No Autosave: One big downside is there’s no autosave. If you’re editing and your laptop dies or you lose internet, you might lose your recent changes.
Site Search Issues: The search feature on Squarespace sites doesn’t always work well, especially for larger sites. For instance, searching for common terms might bring up no results, or sometimes it shows pages that shouldn’t be there. If this is a problem for you, you can add a third-party search tool.
No File Attachments in Forms: You can’t attach files to form submissions on Squarespace. This can be a problem, say, if you need customers to send photos with a warranty form. You can work around this by using third-party forms.
Learning Curve: Getting the hang of Squarespace’s editor, especially the Fluid Engine, can be tough for beginners.
Privacy Issues: Squarespace was slow to adapt to privacy laws like the EU’s GDPR. It took them until 2023 to add the feature to delete user profiles, which is important for privacy. Now, if you remove a profile from an email list, remember you also need to delete it from their “smart lists.”

Squarespace Pricing

Certainly! Here’s a table summarizing the Squarespace pricing plans based on the information provided:

Plan Name	Monthly Price	Ideal For	Good to Know Info
Personal	$16	Blogs, portfolios, small sites	A starting point for digital presence
Business	$23	Small businesses	Offers solid foundation for online business presence
Basic Commerce	$27	Setting up online stores	Great for entering the world of online sales
Advanced Commerce	$49	Larger e-commerce projects	Provides comprehensive tools for expansive online stores

Squarespace Pricing

There’s also the Squarespace Enterprise plan. It’s great for bigger needs, offering things like Single Sign-On (SSO) for private pages, better draft page features, and more control over who does what on your site.

Every plan comes with a free custom domain for a year (if you pay annually), SSL security, unlimited bandwidth, SEO tools, and 24/7 support.

Should You Invest in Squarespace?

Squarespace is a top choice for value in website builders. It’s not the cheapest, but you really get your money’s worth. For $16 a month, it offers amazing designs, decent set of features, and customer service.

One downside of Squarespace is it doesn’t have a free plan.

After your 14-day trial, or when you’re ready to publish, you’ll need to choose a paid plan. This is a bit different from many other site builders.

Still, Squarespace’s plans are pretty competitive.

When thinking about value, consider what you get for your money. For example, Squarespace’s $16 a month plan offers unlimited storage and bandwidth, whereas Wix only gives you 2GB of storage in the same price.

Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan, but it does offer a 14-day free trial for all its paid plans. You just need an email and password to start.

When you decide to go for a paid plan, you can save some cash by picking an annual plan or using a discount code.

Plus, there’s a 14-day money-back guarantee, so you can get a refund if you change your mind in the first two weeks.

Is Squarespace Easy to Use?

When you start with Squarespace, you get a helpful tutorial and a checklist. This is great for beginners and makes it easy for anyone to use.

Squarespace lets you drag and drop to build your website. This might take some time to learn, but it helps keep your site looking neat. But if you love total freedom in dragging and dropping, Squarespace has good news! Their new Fluid Engine lets you place elements exactly where you want them.

The Squarespace user interface is modern and simple, but at first, it might seem too simple. You have to click around a bit to find what you need.

But once you get the hang of it, editing is quick and smooth, and you’ll like how uncluttered it is. Squarespace is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, meaning your site in the editor looks just like it will when it’s live. You see changes as you make them. This is something most users like.

The best part? No coding needed.

You can add code if you want, but Squarespace is all about letting anyone make a professional website without worrying about coding skills.

Overall Performance & Security

Squarespace is known for being strong for performance and security, and that’s why lots of people switch to it from WordPress.

When we talk about performance, Squarespace is pretty reliable.

They even keep you updated on any big issues.

For security, every Squarespace site gets a free SSL certificate.

SSL keeps data sent between a visitor’s browser and your website safe. This is really important, especially when handling sensitive stuff like credit card details. It’s also smart to add extra security steps, like changing your password regularly and only letting a few trusted people edit your website.

Customer Support

Good customer support is key for any website builder like Squarespace. In its early days, Squarespace’s support was top-notch. Although things have changed a bit as they’ve grown, they still offer strong help for users.

Help center: Need a guide or tutorial to learn the platform better? Squarespace Help Center is full of them, including FAQs to help you out.
Live chat: Squarespace has live chat available on weekdays.
Video tutorials: For beginners, Squarespace has webinars and video tutorials.
Email support: Squarespace is there 24/7 with email support.
Community forum: There’s also a Squarespace community forum.

Who Should Avoid Squarespace?

While Squarespace is great for most of the websites, but it’s not always the best pick for every project. In certain cases, you need to avoid it:

Really big sites: For huge websites with lots of content, like big news sites or complex databases, Squarespace might not cut it.
Very unique websites: Need something super specific that Squarespace’s templates can’t handle? WordPress offers more flexibility. Or, you could check out Squarespace’s Developer Platform.
Big online stores: If you’re running a large e-commerce site needing advanced features like complicated shipping rules or selling in different currencies, Shopify or Magento might be better for you than Squarespace.
Forums or social networks: Squarespace doesn’t have built-in tools for making a forum or social network. You can add these with other apps, but if building a community is your main goal, another platform could work better.

Alternatives to Squarespace

Squarespace is a fantastic website building tool, but it’s important to think about what you need and look at other options before deciding.

Let’s compare what you want with what Squarespace offers.

Here are some other choices:

WordPress: Perfect for those who need complete control on their website, especially bloggers who want total control. It’s more complex than Squarespace but allows for lots more customization.
Shopify: If your main goal is to build an online store, Shopify could be the way to go. It’s made just for e-commerce and has strong features like selling in different currencies and lots of integration options.
Wix: Like Squarespace, Wix has templates and an easy editor. But, Wix designs might not always match the seamless style Squarespace has, and not all of their templates adjust well to different screen sizes.
Webflow: For web designers and developers who want really specific design control or unique content setups and don’t mind a bit of a learning challenge, Webflow is an excellent choice.

Can You Grow with Squarespace?

If you’re thinking about whether Squarespace will still work for you as your business grows, it’s all about how big and complex your needs get. No one platform fits everyone perfectly.

As a business gets bigger, it might need more complicated features, like working with other business systems or more functions.

Sometimes, a more specialized platform fits these growing needs better. This doesn’t mean Squarespace is lacking; it’s just how business needs change over time. And when a business outgrows Squarespace, it’s usually ready to move to more advanced technology.

But, many businesses will always be just fine with a simple website builder, no matter how successful they become.

If you’re a consultant, coach, restaurant owner, engineer, accountant, or run a local business and you need a great-looking website to quickly share information, Squarespace is the perfect choice for you.

Related reading:

Squarespace Review: Final Verdict

In wrapping up this Squarespace review, I would like to say it’s clear that Squarespace is a solid choice for many of you. Whether you’re starting a blog, opening an online store, or just want a cool website, it’s got a lot to offer. But, remember, it’s not the only option out there.

If you’re looking for something that gives you a bit more in-depth tools for SEO and online marketing, you might want to check out WordPress.

I’ve found WordPress super useful in building websites.

It’s not preferred only by me, but over 40% of all websites online are powered by WordPress. That’s amazing numbers, right?

So, as you decide, think about what you really need.

Squarespace is great for its simplicity and style, but if you’re diving deep into the world of online marketing and SEO, WordPress could be your best bet. You’ll just need a domain and web hosting to get started.

Talking about Squarespace, it’s definitely a top-notch choice for building professional-looking websites easily. It blends beauty, functionality, and ease of use in a way that suits many different people.

Squarespace Review: Is It The Best Website Builder in 2024?