October 30, 2024
Want to get your website up and running but stuck choosing between Squarespace vs WordPress?
Building a website today has never been easier, thanks to platforms like Squarespace and WordPress. These two popular website builders have helped millions of businesses and regular people establish their online presence, but they offer very different approaches to website creation.
In this article, we’ll compare the features of Squarespace vs WordPress to help you pick the better option. By the end of this article, you will know which platform is the best option for creating your website.
But before we start with a detailed comparison, let’s look at a quick overview of both platforms.
| Feature | Squarespace | WordPress |
| Pricing | Monthly subscription plan, starts at $16/month. | Free; hosting & premium options |
| Learning Curve | User-friendly, easy to learn | Moderate, requires some technical skill |
| Customization Options | Limited templates, easy to use | Virtually unlimited, varies based on theme or page builder |
| Performance | Optimized | Depends on the hosting & plugins |
| Themes & Templates | Professionally designed, limited | 12,000 free themes available, premium options also available |
| Scalability | Good for small to medium sites | Excellent for all sizes, highly scalable |
Squarespace is an all-in-one website building platform that focuses on visual design and user experience. Known for its sleek, modern templates, Squarespace allows its users to create visually appealing websites with minimal effort.
Its core features include mobile friendly design, included e-commerce capabilities, built-in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, and website analytics for seeing your traffic statistics. Squarespace powers 3.1% of all websites that use a known content management system, which represents 2.2% of all websites overall.
The platform’s drag-and-drop interface allows users to easily customize their sites, making it ideal for those who are just getting into website design.
WordPress started in 2003 as a simple blogging platform, quickly gaining popularity for its user-friendly interface and flexibility. Over the years, it has evolved into a powerful Content Management System (CMS), enabling users to create a wide range of websites — from personal blogs to complicated sites and even online stores. Its open-source nature allows developers to add new features to the platform, leading to a huge number of plugins (add-ons) and themes (templates) that give you virtually unlimited design and feature options.
The large WordPress community contributes to its ongoing development, offering support and resources to users worldwide.
This collaborative effort has resulted in WordPress powering 62.5% of all websites that use a content management system, which accounts for an impressive 43.4% of all websites on the internet. This widespread adoption underscores WordPress’s versatility and reliability as a platform for building and managing web content.
We will conduct an in-depth comparison of Squarespace and WordPress, examining various aspects of both platforms to help you make an informed decision.
From usability and design flexibility to pricing and the ability to build larger websites, we’ll explore how each platform stacks up against the other, allowing you to figure out which is best suited for your needs.
Let’s start!
When choosing a website-building platform, ease of use is often a big consideration, especially for beginners. In this section, we’ll compare the ease of use of Squarespace and WordPress, focusing on their interfaces and how user-friendly they are for website creation and management.
Squarespace features a sleek, user-friendly interface designed for ease of navigation and faster website creation. Central to this experience is the visual editor, a powerful tool that allows users to build pages by dragging and dropping content blocks into place.
The Squarespace editor consists of different types of design and content blocks, including text, images, videos, galleries, forms, and more. Each content block serves a specific purpose and can be easily inserted into a page.
To add a new block, you can click the “+” icon in the editor, which opens a menu displaying all available block options. Once selected, the block appears on the page, ready for customization.
The options for each block are straightforward. Users can click on a block to reveal a set of editing tools, which allow them to adjust the content, styling, and layout.
For example, a text block can be modified to change the font size, color, alignment, and spacing. Similarly, image blocks can be resized, cropped, or linked to other pages.
One of the standout features of Squarespace is its emphasis on a clean design. The platform offers a range of layout control choices, but these are heavily curated to prevent overwhelming users with too many options.
While some platforms provide endless customization options that can lead to confusion, Squarespace’s limited choices mean that beginners can quickly learn how to navigate the interface and create beautiful websites without feeling lost.
Once you become more comfortable with the platform, you can explore advanced features such as custom CSS, integrated analytics, and e-commerce tools. However, even the most basic users can build a professional website with the intuitive visual editor and its straightforward customization options.
The WordPress dashboard is designed with user-friendliness in mind, making it relatively easy for users to navigate and manage their websites. From the central dashboard (also called WordPress admin, or WordPress admin panel), you can access your posts, pages, media, settings, and more.
However, the dashboard can vary significantly depending on the theme or plugins you choose for your website. Generally, you’ll come across three main types of interfaces based on your selections:
Classic themes provide pre-designed layouts that allow users to customize certain elements through the WordPress Customizer, a special interface for changing theme settings. Users can tweak options like colors, fonts, and layouts but are limited in terms of more extreme design changes.
Full Site Editing themes use the Site Editor interface, which enables users to make more significant changes to their website’s design. This interface allows for greater flexibility in modifying templates and layouts, giving users the ability to adjust headers, footers, and other site-wide elements.
Page Builders, like Breakdance, are another popular option for users what want more complete control over the look and feel of their site. These plugins usually replace the built-in WordPress editing interfaces and provide more powerful tools.
Breakdance is a great example of a page builder that’s easy to learn, but with plenty of power under the hood. It offers a more Squarespace-like experience, with drag-and-drop design and visual controls for various options. It also makes it easy to design mobile friendly pages.
While WordPress offers a range of options to suit different user preferences and levels of expertise, it remains approachable for those willing to learn.
With various themes and plugins available, users can find the right combination that balances ease of use with the flexibility to create a unique website.
| Platform | Ease of Use Summary |
| Squarespace | Intuitive drag-and-drop interface with professionally curated design options, making website creation simple and straightforward for beginners. |
| WordPress | Flexible platform with multiple editing interfaces, offering more customization but requiring a moderate learning curve and some technical understanding. |
| 🏆 Winner | Squarespace (Slightly Edges Out) |
We will compare the design and customization options available in Squarespace and WordPress. Understanding the flexibility of each platform will help you decide which one will help you build your perfect website.
Squarespace offers a selection of professionally designed templates that cater to a variety of styles and industries. These templates are visually appealing and mobile-responsive, ensuring that your website looks great across different devices.
Once a template is selected, users can customize pages using the visual editor, which allows for the easy addition and arrangement of content blocks.
However, while Squarespace provides a streamlined approach to customization, it does have its limitations. Users can modify colors, fonts, and layouts within the constraints of the chosen template, but options for deep customization are usually restricted.
For those with more advanced skills, Squarespace does offer the ability to add custom CSS.
WordPress’s design and customization options largely depend on the theme or page builder plugin you choose. The WordPress.org directory boasts over 12,000 free themes, giving users a wide variety of options to fit any style or function.
Classic themes typically provide limited customization options through the WordPress Customizer, allowing users to make minor tweaks like color changes and font selections.
New Full Site Editing (FSE) themes, however, present a more modern experience. With FSE themes, users can use the visual Block Editor to create custom designs, offering many more layout options than classic themes usually do.
Modern page builders like Breakdance offer advanced design capabilities. These tools enable users to create website pages exactly as they envision them, thanks to their drag-and-drop interfaces. A page builder is the best option if you want precise control over the design of your site.
Additionally, most page builders come with a library of pre-designed templates that can be easily customized to align with your brand style, making possible to get a unique look without extensive coding knowledge.
Overall, while Squarespace provides a more guided and visually cohesive design process, WordPress excels in offering a broader range of customization options, catering to both novice and advanced users alike.
| Platform | Customization Summary |
| Squarespace | Offers professionally designed templates with a streamlined approach to customization, providing easy-to-use design options within predefined template constraints. Limited but visually cohesive design process. |
| WordPress | Provides virtually unlimited customization with over 12,000 free themes, advanced page builders, and the ability to create pixel-perfect designs using tools like Breakdance, catering to both beginners and advanced users. |
| 🏆 Winner | WordPress (Comprehensive Customization) |
This time around, we will compare the plugins and integrations available in Squarespace and WordPress. Understanding what each platform can do is important to avoid getting stuck with unwanted limitations down the road.
Squarespace offers a selection of extensions that help users enhance their websites by adding various features. These extensions allow you to connect your site with services like social media, email marketing, and e-commerce, providing access to more features and useful options.
While these extensions are useful, it’s important to note that Squarespace’s offerings are not as extensive as the vast WordPress plugin ecosystem. This limitation means that users may find fewer options for specific features and integrations compared to what WordPress provides.
WordPress has an extensive library of plugins that can upgrade your site with lots of new features. With thousands of plugins available, users can customize their websites to meet virtually any need. This flexibility allows for the addition of features like contact forms, analytics tracking, search engine optimization, and more.
Some popular plugins include Yoast SEO for optimizing your website for search engines, and WSForms for adding custom forms to your website.
AnalyticsWP is another great plugin that helps you track website traffic and user behavior. WP All Import and WP All Export simplify the process of importing and exporting data between WordPress and other platforms.
With so many plugins available, there’s basically no limit on what your WordPress site can do. This makes WordPress an ideal choice for the huge number of possibilities, meaning your site can evolve as you grow or change over time.
| Platform | Integrations Summary |
| Squarespace | Offers a limited but curated selection of extensions with basic integrations for social media, email marketing, and e-commerce tools. Provides straightforward but constrained additional functionality. |
| WordPress | Boasts an extensive ecosystem with thousands of plugins covering virtually every conceivable website need, offering unparalleled flexibility and the ability to add complex features with minimal technical expertise. |
| 🏆 Winner | WordPress (Overwhelming Plugin Variety) |
Both platforms offer options for different business needs, making it essential to understand how they stack up against one another in the eCommerce arena.
Squarespace comes equipped with a built-in eCommerce website builder that simplifies the process of setting up an online store. With a selection of eCommerce-specific templates, users can create their stores quickly and efficiently.
Squarespace offers flexible shipping options, support for various payment gateways, and tax management features.
In addition to physical products, Squarespace allows users to sell digital products, including downloads and subscriptions. The platform’s eCommerce features also extend to service-based businesses, supporting appointment bookings, selling services, and offering online courses.
WordPress, on the other hand, utilizes the WooCommerce plugin to transform a standard site into a fully functional eCommerce store. WooCommerce supports various product types, including physical and digital goods, subscriptions, and even affiliate products.
One of the standout aspects of WooCommerce is its massive library of extensions that allow users to customize their online stores.
These extensions cover everything from additional payment gateways and shipping options to advanced inventory management and marketing tools.
Furthermore, page builder plugins like Breakdance come with dedicated WooCommerce elements, allowing users to design custom WooCommerce pages using a drag-and-drop interface.
Overall, while both Squarespace and WordPress offer robust eCommerce capabilities, Squarespace excels in providing an all-in-one solution for quick store setups. WordPress and WooCommerce, on the other hand, offer more customization options for users looking to build complex and feature-rich online stores.
| Platform | eCommerce Summary |
| Squarespace | Provides an all-in-one, user-friendly e-commerce solution with built-in features, simplified store setup, flexible shipping, and support for digital and physical products with a streamlined approach. |
| WordPress | Uses WooCommerce to offer highly customizable, scalable e-commerce features with extensive plugin extensions, supporting complex product types and providing advanced inventory and marketing tools. |
| 🏆 Winner | WordPress (Flexibility and Scalability) |
Understanding the SEO capabilities of each platform is important for enhancing your website’s visibility in search engine results, ultimately driving more traffic to your site.
Squarespace offers several built-in SEO features designed to help users optimize their websites effectively.
Squarespace allows users to connect their site with Google Search Console, enabling easy monitoring of search performance and indexing status.
Users can easily customize meta titles and descriptions for individual pages, which are essential for search engine rankings and click-through rates.
Squarespace automatically generates a sitemap for your site, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.
Additional built-in features include customizable URL slugs, automatic SSL certificates for secure browsing, and mobile optimization, which helps ensure a better user experience across devices.
However, Squarespace does have limitations regarding more advanced SEO features. For instance, it lacks a built-in Schema generator, which can help improve how search engines understand your content.
Users cannot edit their sitemap directly, and customization of canonical URLs is limited. Furthermore, advanced on-page analysis tools, which help optimize content, are not available natively, potentially hindering more experienced users looking for in-depth SEO insights.
The core WordPress platform comes with basic SEO features, such as a sitemap, customizable permalink structures, and the ability to add alt text to images. However, to unlock the full potential of SEO optimization, users often rely on various plugins.
Popular SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math SEO offer comprehensive tools for optimizing on-page elements, including titles, descriptions, and headings.
Schema Markup with these tools enables users to add structured data to their pages, improving how search engines understand and display their content.
These plugins are great for optimizing images too. Including alt text and file names is really convenient with them.
They also offer OpenGraph support. It enhances how shared content appears on social media platforms, improving engagement and click-through rates.
Additionally, these plugins often include built-in analysis tools that provide actionable recommendations for improving content SEO. Users can receive real-time feedback on keyword usage, readability, and overall SEO performance.
Overall, while Squarespace provides a solid foundation for SEO with its built-in features, WordPress offers a more extensive suite of tools through its plugins, enabling users to implement advanced SEO strategies and enhance their site’s visibility in search engine results.
| Platform | SEO Summary |
| Squarespace | Offers built-in SEO features with automatic sitemap generation, easy meta title and description customization, and mobile optimization, but lacks advanced SEO tools and customization options. |
| WordPress | Provides comprehensive SEO capabilities through powerful plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math, offering advanced features including schema markup, detailed content analysis, and extensive optimization tools. |
| 🏆 Winner | WordPress (Advanced SEO Capabilities) |
When creating a website, understanding data ownership is crucial. Your content, design, and user data are valuable assets, and the platform you choose can significantly impact your control over these resources.
Squarespace’s approach to data ownership is straightforward but comes with some important considerations. While you technically own the content you create and upload to the platform, you’re operating within a closed ecosystem.
Key aspects of data ownership on Squarespace include:
When you create a website on Squarespace, you’re essentially renting both the space and the tools to build your online presence. This means while you own your content, you’re dependent on Squarespace’s infrastructure and rules.
WordPress takes a fundamentally different approach to data ownership, rooted in its open-source philosophy. When you use WordPress, you have complete control over your website, data, and content.
Key advantages of WordPress data ownership include:
With a self-hosted WordPress site, you’re not just the content creator – you’re also the platform owner. This means that you can export your entire website at any time with no platform-imposed limitations on content usage. You also get complete flexibility in data management with total control over your website’s backend.
| Platform | Data Ownership Summary |
| Squarespace | Provides content ownership within a closed ecosystem, with limited data portability and platform-dependent infrastructure, restricting full control and easy migration of website content. |
| WordPress | Offers complete data ownership and control, with full access to website files, easy migration capabilities, and no restrictions on content usage or platform changes. |
| 🏆 Winner | WordPress (Complete Data Control) |
Another important aspect of comparing these two platforms is pricing. Since WordPress is an open source platform that is self-hosted, comparing its price to platforms like Squarespace isn’t always straightforward. Let’s take a closer look at the similarities and differences between the two platforms’ pricing and plans.
Squarespace’s pricing is fairly straightforward since it’s an all-in-one platform. Plans start at around $16 a month (billed annually) and scale up from there. If you need basic e-commerce features, you’ll need to look at the $23 per month Business plan. The more expensive plans expand on e-commerce features for the most part, including lowering platform transaction fees.
The main downside of an all-in-one platform like Squarespace is lock-in. Once you’ve set up your site on Squarespace, and assuming it’s successful, you may eventually reach a scale that their plans won’t accommodate. At that point, you’re often faced with exorbitant enterprise-level pricing or moving your site to a more affordable platform, like WordPress.
As I said earlier, comparing Squarespace to WordPress on pricing is a bit tricky. They have very different pricing models. Namely, WordPress is completely free.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay anything for your website. Primarily, the cost of a WordPress site comes in the form of hosting. Hosting plans come in many different shapes and sizes. The best route if you’re not technically skilled with administering a server, however, is a managed WordPress host. Managed hosts do all the heavy lifting for you, including installing WordPress for you, so that you can get started quickly.
A managed WordPress hosting plan from a typical provider can cost as little as $11 per month for a very basic server. More realistically, you’ll be paying somewhere around $16 to $20 per month.
While it might look initially like WordPress costs about the same as Squarespace, the cost savings comes into play with additional features like SEO and WooCommerce.
WordPress boasts an extensive collection of plugins that are completely free. Many of these have enough features that you’ll never need to pay for the premium versions, though you can if you want. WooCommerce, for instance, doesn’t cost anything for basic (and even some not-so-basic) e-commerce features.
You can get a long way on a basic hosting plan and free plugins. Most premium plugins are sold on a yearly subscription and cost anywhere from $100 to $300 per year. How much you pay for your WordPress site is entirely up to how many premium plugins and themes you purchase, and how robust your hosting plan is.
| Platform | Pricing Summary |
| Squarespace | Offers straightforward, predictable pricing with all-in-one plans starting at $16/month. It includes hosting and features, but can become expensive as your site grows and requires more advanced capabilities. |
| WordPress | Offers straightforward, predictable pricing with all-in-one plans starting at $16/month. It includes hosting and features but can become expensive as your site grows and requires more advanced capabilities. |
| 🏆 Winner | WordPress (More Cost-Effective Long-Term) |
Choosing the right platform for your website ultimately depends on your specific needs, technical skills, budget, and project requirements. Below are guidelines to help you decide between Squarespace and WordPress.
Choose Squarespace if you are looking to create basic websites for your business with minimal hassle. It is ideal for users who appreciate a streamlined setup process and want a visually appealing site without delving into complex design or coding.
Small businesses or personal websites that require a professional appearance without extensive customization, can work great with Squarespace.
Opt for WordPress when you want a scalable platform that provides extensive freedom in choosing and designing your website using various plugins and themes.
Users who need full control over the content they publish and want to customize their website extensively should definitely go for WordPress. WordPress is also great for complex websites or large eCommerce stores that require specialized functionality and a wide range of product types.
Overall, WordPress is the go-to choice for users who prioritize customization, scalability, and control over their website, while Squarespace is perfect for those seeking simplicity and quick deployment without the need for extensive technical knowledge.
It depends on your skill level and desire to learn web development. Squarespace is much easier and quicker to get started with if you’re a complete beginner, but has some upper limits you’ll run into if you plan to build larger or more complex sites. WordPress has a steeper learning curve but virtually no limits to what can be built.
The primary downsides are the limitations imposed by the platform. Because it’s a simpler experience, some options simply won’t be available.
If you anticipate needing to scale your site or need highly custom features, switching from Squarespace to WordPress can free you up to achieve those goals. You might also save money, depending on which plugins and themes you choose to use.
According to Squarespace, you own the content you upload to their platform. But you do grant them permission to use it in ways necessary to provide, improve, promote and protect their services.
You should avoid Squarespace when you need highly custom features, a bespoke design, or anticipate that you may need either of those things in the future.
Yes, professionals use Squarespace. It is a good option for simple websites that do not need highly unique designs or custom features.
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