What is Squarespace? 5 FAQs & Our Expert Review (Feb. 2024)

What Is Squarespace

What is Squarespace, you ask? You may have seen the logo at the bottom of some of your favorite websites or even seen one of the company’s ads on television. You’ve likely heard of the company, but what do they do and how can they help?

Simply put, Squarespace is a website builder that simplifies web design and site creation to just a handful of super-easy steps. The platform is known for stunning design templates geared toward business and creativity. Whether you’re experienced running a website or just getting started, site builders, such as Squarespace, can help you get online in a fraction of the time.

Read on to learn more about Squarespace, along with our comparisons with other website builder platforms you may want to consider.

1. We Rate Squarespace a 4.5/5 — How Do Others Compare?

Launched in 2004, Squarespace has grown into one of the most popular website creators for creatively sharing ideas. The platform powers millions of websites and is great for visually minded beginners, but a few limitations keep us from giving Squarespace the highest marks.

With a slogan of “Build it Beautiful,” Squarespace is known for well-designed templates. The company only offers about 60 options — dozens fewer than other website builder options — but Squarespace is the cream of the crop when it comes to carefully polished and crafted website themes. Additionally, Squarespace performance and page load times are surprisingly low for site builders, which usually bog down web browsers with ineffecient code.

The issue, however, is the $12-per-month price tag and being restricted to only 20 pages for your site. For as little as $2 per month, you can have a comparable builder platform, more templates, and an unlimited-everything shared hosting plan. Even better, Wix lets users design for free and run a website without cost as long as they’d like:

Wix.com

Wix Review

Monthly Starting Price $0.00

  • Start designing for FREE
  • FREE domain with most plans
  • Drag-and-drop templates, specific to industry
  • Exhaustive knowledgebase of articles
  • Huge app market available
  • Get started on Wix now.

CHEAP
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

Wix: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): Wix is known as a web-leading site builder service that's one of the most affordable — because getting started is absolutely free and about as easy as processes get. You can log in via Facebook or your Gmail account and be editing your new web property within minutes. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
14-day FREE trial 2 GB - Unlimited FREE (1 year) 4 minutes

Learn more about Wix »

Ecommerce: Selling is Simple, but Marketing Tools are Limited

Selling products from your site without adding plugins or new programs is nice, but Squarespace eommerce tools fall short next to the robust functionality of platforms like Shopify. For starters, Squarespace ecommerce options are only supported in the US, UK, Canada, and Ireland.

Squarespace will help you with inventory, orders, taxes, discounts, and accounting, but only accepts payments through Stripe. The functionality is technically there, but most store owners will be better served with a dedicated ecommerce platform added to their hosting account. Here’s our go-to option for ecommerce:

IONOS.com

1&1 IONOS review

Monthly Starting Price $1.00

  • Drag-and-drop online store builder for $1/mo
  • Quickly sell products, services, and digital goods
  • Cross-platform selling integrations with social media, Amazon, Google, and eBay
  • Built-in metrics, promos, and coupons
  • Track competitors' Google and social media activity
  • Get started on 1&1 IONOS now.

ECOMMERCE
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

1&1 IONOS: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): The online store builder from 1&1 IONOS gives entrepreneurs a full suite of selling and marketing tools at their disposal — and all for a ridiculously low price. The company’s lightning-fast architecture and tools for SEO and marketing metrics will make your customers’ buying experience quick and enjoyable. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days Unlimited SSD FREE (1 year) 4 minutes

See other top ecommerce hosts »

Blogging: You’ll Love Your Blog’s Look, but Better Blog Hosts Exist

Like ecommerce, blogging on Squarespace can be done — in a simple, perhaps too simple way. Squarespace excels in usability, offering a publishing platform with which even the earliest of beginners can excel.

Coupled with beautiful templates and adjustable content blocks, Squarespace blogs look great. However, we miss being able to toggle between visual and HTML modes or previewing what our post will look like, as you can on so many other platforms. Top blog hosting platforms, like the one listed below, give site owners more flexibility in terms of design, writing tools

Bluehost.com

Bluehost review

Monthly Starting Price $1.99

  • Recommended by WordPress since 2005
  • Automatic WordPress installation and updates
  • FREE themes and plugins in Bluehost Marketplace
  • Upgrade for managed WordPress or design help
  • FREE domain and content delivery network
  • Get started on Bluehost now.

BLOG
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

Bluehost: Our Expert's Review

Ryan Frankel (HostingAdvice.com): Bluehost's WordPress hosting packages are aimed at first-time site owners and personal bloggers. These services come at a premium compared to the standard Bluehost web hosting (basic shared hosting) plans, but the WordPress optimization and platform-specific resources are arguably worth the cost. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 10 GB SSD - 100 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 7 minutes

See other top blog hosts »

2. Is Squarespace Free? (Trial or Forever)

Squarespace does not have a free option, but they do have a 14-day free trial — enough time to see if the features match your expectations and needs, but Squarespace will inevitably slap on a relatively hefty price tag. An annual plan costs upward of $12/month, which is pretty steep for shared hosting. With many hosts including top-notch website builders for free, we’re not sure Squarespace is worth sacrificing the options available with more complete hosting plans.

Fortunately, you can pick and choose from a number of other options. Here are some affordable Squarespace alternatives we recommend:

Wix.com

Wix Review

Monthly Starting Price $0.00

  • No coding skills needed with drag-and-drop builder
  • 100s of templates with niche-specific designs
  • Add features via the App Market and Wix Events
  • Easily create ecommerce functionality easily
  • Great way to build small sites on a budget
  • Get started on Wix now.

WEBSITE BUILDER
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

Wix: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): Website building is where Wix shines. The thousands of templates, the intuitive editor, the industry-leading designs that cater to a variety of specific fields and use cases — all these facets represent a platform that excels at facilitating easy web design for the non-tech-savvy user. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
14-day FREE trial 2 GB - Unlimited FREE (1 year) 4 minutes

IONOS.com

1&1 IONOS Review

Monthly Starting Price $1.00

  • No coding skills necessary with MyWebsite Creator
  • Free domain name or transfer your existing site
  • FREE social media and marketing widgets
  • Pro templates with pre-filled text and images
  • Multilingual support and tools for SEO
  • Get started on 1&1 IONOS now.

WEBSITE BUILDER
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

1&1 IONOS: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): If you're in need of a one-stop shop for designing and launching a website, you should be pleased to hear that 1&1 IONOS offers its own custom website building tools for both desktop and mobile devices. In addition to a free domain and email address, along with unlimited storage space, the 1&1 IONOS MyWebsite platform includes all the essentials for starting a site from scratch. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 10 GB - Unlimited FREE (1 year) 5 minutes

Hostinger.com

Hostinger Review

Monthly Starting Price $2.49

  • Drag-and-drop design from custom tools
  • FREE access to hundreds of specialized templates
  • Built-in ecommerce and payment processing
  • Easily switch among widescreen, desktop, tablet, and mobile previews
  • Support for 31 languages and 99.9% uptime
  • Get started on Hostinger now.

WEBSITE BUILDER
RATING
4.6 ★★★★★ Our Review

Hostinger: Our Expert's Review

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): Whether you're taking your first foray into website hosting or are a developer looking to save some time, a strong website builder can dramatically streamline the creation process and enable users to launch a website in five minutes or less. Fortunately for customers, Hostinger has invested heavily in crafting an impressive visual editor sure to appeal to users of all levels of experience. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 50 GB SSD - 200 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 3 minutes

3. Should I Use Squarespace or Wix or Weebly or WordPress?

The Squarespace site builder comes packaged with a blogging platform, content management system, and hosting — unlike other builders, you can’t add Squarespace to your existing hosting account. We compared Squarespace to other popular website builders to see how the features and flexibility impact customers.

Our Favorite: Wix

We love Wix templates, which strike the balance between the strong designs of Squarespace with the hundreds of options you can find through other builders. However, you’ll run into the same limitations as Squarespace since you can only use the Wix builder on their hosting subscription terms. At least the price tag is much more reasonable — plans range from roughly $4 per month for the most basic sites and top out at $25 monthly for VIP treatment and features.

Wix.com

Wix Review

Monthly Starting Price $0.00

  • Start designing for FREE
  • FREE domain with most plans
  • Drag-and-drop templates, specific to industry
  • Exhaustive knowledgebase of articles
  • Huge app market available
  • Get started on Wix now.

CHEAP
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

Wix: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): Wix is known as a web-leading site builder service that's one of the most affordable — because getting started is absolutely free and about as easy as processes get. You can log in via Facebook or your Gmail account and be editing your new web property within minutes. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
14-day FREE trial 2 GB - Unlimited FREE (1 year) 4 minutes

Runner Up: WordPress

Sure, WordPress isn’t technically a site builder — but we love the world’s most popular content management system too much to let semantics get in the way. The free platform is available through 1-click installations on practically every hosting plan and opens the door to millions of themes and plugins. WordPress has a bit of a learning curve for those just getting started, but you can rely on a passionate, worldwide community of support.

Bluehost.com

Bluehost Review

Monthly Starting Price $1.99

  • Recommended by WordPress.org since 2005
  • Automatic WordPress updates and initial install
  • FREE WordPress themes in the Bluehost Marketplace
  • 24/7 support via live chat, phone, and email
  • Get exclusive discounts on WordPress plans
  • Get started on Bluehost now.

WORDPRESS
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

Bluehost: Our Expert's Review

Ryan Frankel (HostingAdvice.com): Bluehost's WordPress hosting packages are aimed at first-time site owners and personal bloggers. These services come at a premium compared to the standard Bluehost web hosting (basic shared hosting) plans, but the WordPress optimization and platform-specific resources are arguably worth the cost. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 10 GB SSD - 100 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 7 minutes

Runner Up: Weebly

Although all website builders are inherently easy to use (or at least should be), Weebly’s interface is hands-down the most accessible. Balancing a bevy of customizable options with drag-and-drop simplicity, Weebly users won’t get overwhelmed by the rich collection of available features.

And, because Weebly is now part of the Square product suite, it’s easier than ever to build online stores should you have the need. Square streamlines payments so you can focus on your business instead of eCommerce technicalities.

Weebly.com

Weebly Review

Monthly Starting Price $0.00

  • All-in-one hosting and drag-and-drop builder
  • Start designing for FREE, upgrade whenever
  • Easily build a blog, personal site, or online store
  • 100s of FREE templates for websites
  • $100 credit toward Google advertising
  • Get started on Weebly now.

CHEAP
RATING
4.6 ★★★★★ Our Review

Weebly: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): Weebly is a well-known name in the cheap shared hosting space — not necessarily due to competitive pricing but because several of the web's leading low-cost hosting providers have opted to include Weebly software for free, adding value to their existing offerings. It's worth noting Weebly does offer a free plan, but websites are found on a Weebly subdomain and display Weebly advertising. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 500 MB - Unlimited FREE (w/ paid plans) 3 minutes

For Basic Sites: Squarespace

If you’re really intimidated by entering the hosting world, Squarespace gives you a 1-stop solution with minimal interactions with the technical side of things. Your site doesn’t have to suffer because you want simplicity — Squarespace designs and functionality will give your portfolio, business, or blog an impressive, professional appearance with minimal hosting know-how. Words, images, and other content are contained in blocks that can be easily arranged in any configuration.

4. How Does Squarespace Customer Support Compare to Competitors?

Unlike so many browser-based website builders, Squarespace actually does a pretty good job at onboarding and supporting their users. Like many hosting companies, Squarespace has a support team who is available 24/7 by live chat or email, and they will respond to your email within the hour. Their online help center includes dozens of guides, video tutorials, and links to online webinars and in-person workshops.

Nothing, however, compares to the dedicated support teams behind self-hosted options. Instead of concentrating their efforts on a single product, such as a website builder, hosting providers have more resources to spend on upgrading infrastructure and cultivating a team of experts to assist customers. SiteGround is our Best 24/7 Support award winner and carries a stellar reputation.

SiteGround.com

SiteGround Review

Monthly Starting Price $2.99

  • FREE site transfer or new site setup
  • FREE daily backups, CDN, email, and SSL
  • 24/7 expert support with no wait on phone or chat
  • Recommended by WordPress as a top host
  • Ideal for business email hosting
  • Get started on SiteGround now.

BEST OVERALL
RATING
5.0 ★★★★★ Our Review

SiteGround: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): With an impressive breadth of overall hosting services offered, SiteGround is a leading innovator in the hosting space — from custom software solutions to premier customer support. The company offers the full range of web hosting features, including a free Cloudflare CDN, cPanel with SSH access, and unlimited MySQL databases and bandwidth — not to mention prize-worthy customer support. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD New or Transfer 6 minutes

5. Are You Ready for Real Hosting? Cancel Squarespace Anytime

Once you get comfortable with Squarespace, you’ll probably find how the feature limitations will restrict your site or creativity. Canceling your Squarespace subscription can be a challenge, but you can access your cancellation options by going to the Settings menu and clicking:

  1. Billing & Account
  2. Billing
  3. Subscriptions
  4. Website

From there, you can either uncheck the auto-renew option or click the Cancel Website Subscription button. If you have separate subscriptions for your domain name or emails, you will have to cancel them manually.

A shared hosting plan is the natural next step for your website, and even low-budget plans will include more computing power and intuitive tools for eCommerce, site building, analytics, email, and security than one-size-fits-all site builders. When you’re ready to sign up for big-girl web hosting, consider checking out our recommendations for hosts with the best website builders.

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