Squarespace Review: Is Squarespace Worth It in 2022?

Squarespace has been a staple for bloggers, designers and small business owners since 2003. It is one of the most popular website building tools in the world with thousands upon thousands of customers. With an expansive range of features built into its platform, Squarespace is worth it as long as you know what to expect and have a realistic budget set aside for your new site’s expenses.

The “squarespace reviews complaints” is a website that has been created to help people decide whether or not they should use Squarespace. The site has good and bad reviews.

Squarespace is a popular website builder for small businesses, with a wide range of features for ecommerce, marketing, and SEO (SEO). Users adore Squarespace’s slick layouts and user-friendly interface, according to customer reviews. Although sophisticated ecommerce and extras may be costly, Squarespace is well worth the money for most small companies, particularly those hoping to create a professional-looking website fast and at a low cost.

Overview of Squarespace

Squarespace

What We Enjoy

• Templates that are simple and trendy.
• Mobile-optimized
• Plans with low prices and a 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
• Features for advanced SEO and the option to embed code
• Most website builders do not allow you to swap templates without starting anew.

What Isn’t There

• There is no free plan available.
• With Wix, there are 110 templates vs. 800+ with Wix.
• Design flexibility is limited compared to other site builders.
• Advanced ecommerce may be costly.
• Membership, scheduling, and email marketing plans are provided individually, so plans aren’t all-inclusive.
• A small number of third-party apps are available.
• There’s no autosave, no revision history, and no backups.

Squarespace is suggested for…

• Creating a website with a contemporary appearance
• SEO is a top priority for businesses.
• Restaurants that strive to create aesthetically appealing menus
• Bloggers that want to expand their readership
• Influencers and vloggers
• Personal and solopreneur websites, portfolios, resumes, and other personal and solopreneur sites
• Real estate firms with a small staff

Squarespace is noted for its sophisticated template design, user-friendly interface, and extensive feature set, including integrations and advanced capabilities. However, since Squarespace uses point-and-click editing rather than a genuine drag-and-drop editor like Wix, you won’t be able to create the most customized-looking website.

Nonetheless, our Squarespace study determined that Squarespace is well worth the investment. It delivers on the promise of having everything a small company website needs to develop and expand. It even comes in first place on our list of the best website builders for small companies.

While Squarespace allows you to create almost any style of website, it is not the best solution for everyone. Squarespace is wonderful for small company websites and blogging, but it falls short for major ecommerce merchants since these services aren’t priced reasonably. Check read our post on the top ecommerce systems if you need these capabilities.

Squarespace isn’t the ideal solution for businesses that require online appointment booking features, such as salons and spas, or sales-driven enterprises who want prospects to schedule demonstrations or presentations. Appointment booking tools are only available as an add-on, and depending on the capabilities you want, they might cost anywhere from $14 to $45 per month on top of your Squarespace website’s monthly fee. GoDaddy is a better choice for appointment scheduling software.

For Whom Is Squarespace Appropriate?

• Businesses looking for a cutting-edge website should: Despite the fact that there are just a few hundred layouts, each one is distinctive, clean, contemporary, and stylish. Despite having more than 800 templates to select from and greater customizability, it edges out Wix in terms of template modernity. Take a look at how it compares to Wix and the other platforms in our list of the top drag-and-drop website builders.
• Businesses that need to be discovered on the internet include: Squarespace’s SEO skills are confirmed in our Squarespace evaluation. Basic SEO is included in all plans, but you can also use advanced SEO capabilities and embed code to do much more. As a result, Squarespace is one of the most effective SEO website builders accessible.
• Squarespace connects with both ChowNow and OpenTable, making it a suitable restaurant website builder. To obtain these integrations, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Business plan, but it’s well worth it to acquire Squarespace’s restaurant designs with built-in menus. Squarespace has also teamed up with Tock to provide restaurant owners with an all-in-one solution for managing bookings, orders, tables, and events directly from their Squarespace websites.
• Bloggers: Squarespace has some of the greatest blogging options. You receive a fair quantity of SEO capabilities as well as income channels like Google AdSense, in addition to the gorgeous layouts. Squarespace is one of our favorite blogging platforms because of how simple it is to set up a professional site.
• Vloggers and influencers on social media: Subscribers may now make videos for their Squarespace websites using the new Squarespace Video Studio App. Beginner-friendly guided templates are included, as well as autofill, autovoiceover, customizing tools, resizing choices, and 24/7 support. Videos are stored on your Squarespace website and may be used on landing pages, shared on social media, and included in email newsletters, among other things. However, unless you subscribe to a Members Area plan, your video storage capacity is restricted to 30 minutes, and you cannot save or upload your films to another site like YouTube.
• Digital portfolios of photographers, creatives, artists, and job applicants: Squarespace’s design-first philosophy appeals to us, and it’s particularly appropriate for visual artists of all types. All plans come with unlimited storage and bandwidth, making it a solid option for anybody wishing to host a digital portfolio and earning it a spot on our list of the best site builders for digital portfolios.
• Real estate firms: Squarespace is one of the finest real estate website builders, according to our Squarespace review, because of its simplicity of use and prefabricated design features. Integration with the Internet data exchange (IDX) is accessible on all plans, including the two lowest. However, real estate professionals should consider upgrading to at least the Business plan to have access to sophisticated coding and analytics.

For Whom Squarespace Isn’t the Best

Squarespace offers a wonderful template design, but owing to its section-based editor, template customization is restricted. The features you’ll need to construct a membership site, as well as appointment scheduling, email marketing, and extensive packages for restaurants and hospitality enterprises, will cost extra. Other choices should be considered by those seeking complete creative freedom or a better value for some of these other characteristics.

Squarespace isn’t a good choice for:

• Sites that need a lot of design tweaking: Despite having attractive templates, our Squarespace review discovered that the section-based point-and-click editor does not enable you to alter your design as easily as drag-and-drop editing does. Wix is a great place to go if you want complete design control. It features the greatest customisation of any website builder, with a full drag-and-drop editor and over 800 themes to start with. More information may be found in our Wix review.
• Large ecommerce companies or dropshippers: Squarespace provides a good set of ecommerce features, but you’ll need to upgrade to the most costly plan to acquire all of them. Printful and Spocket are the only dropshipping integrations, and although you can connect other integrations like Oberlo, it’s not a simple procedure. Rather, choose a specialized ecommerce platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce. In this Shopify vs. BigCommerce comparison, you can see how these two systems compare.
• Squarespace Scheduling is a full scheduling solution with a ton of features including online payments, client alerts, and multilingual options for service-based enterprises. To include these capabilities into your site, you’ll need to purchase a Scheduling plan in addition to your regular Squarespace plan, which ranges from $14 to $45 per month invoiced yearly or $15 to $50 month-to-month. Consider GoDaddy for a less expensive site builder with equivalent booking options, which offers appointment booking as part of the free plan. More information may be found in our GoDaddy website builder review.
• Squarespace is marketed as a beginner-friendly website builder, but it’s not as simple to use as Mozello, Webnode, or GoDaddy, in my experience. Squarespace thrives when it comes to complex features like SEO and code, which need some prior expertise to use. If you’re a total novice who still wants to utilize Squarespace, follow our step-by-step Squarespace site-building instruction and double-check your site against our website essentials checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything.

Pricing for Squarespace

While it doesn’t offer a free plan like GoDaddy or Wix, Pricing for Squarespace is generally comparable to the paid plans of its top competitors. Moreover, three of its plans offer great value for money when you factor in design capabilities and features like advanced SEO.

Squarespace has an advantage over site builders like Wix and IONOS since all of its plans include unlimited storage and bandwidth. While its Business plan includes ecommerce tools, getting features like abandoned cart recovery and subscriptions involves upgrading to the highest-tier plan, lowering its value-for-money dramatically.

Select a plan name from the drop-down options below to learn more about what’s included when you upgrade to a higher-tier Squarespace plan:

Personal

Pricing for Squarespace for the Personal plan makes it one of the more value-packed base plans of any major website builder. For $14 a month (or $19 paid month-to-month), you get unlimited storage and bandwidth, SEO tools, basic site metrics, access to Squarespace’s third-party extensions, and the ability to embed code. Alongside access to Squarespace’s library of sleek templates, it’s one of the best website builders for personal portfolios, resumes, and blogging.

During our Squarespace study, we discovered that all plans now feature the company’s Video Studio App as well as 30 minutes of video storage. To gain full Studio access, you’ll need to subscribe to one of Squarespace’s higher-tier plans, and to acquire more video storage, you’ll need to add a Members Area plan, which ranges from $9 to $35 per month (billed annually).

Keep in mind that you can’t download your movies, so if you terminate your Squarespace account, you’ll lose access to them. This also means you won’t be able to directly post them to other websites, such as YouTube or social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

In terms of Squarespace ecommerce, unlike Weebly’s plans, which all have limitless product ecommerce functionality (even Weebly’s free plan), this plan does not allow you to execute transactions. You also won’t be able to add appointment booking to your site without a Members Area plan. In example, GoDaddy’s $19.99 per month Premium package has sophisticated appointment scheduling options, while its free edition only allows for one-time appointments.

Business

You receive basic Squarespace ecommerce tools with your first upgrade—you may sell on your website and accept contributions. Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee on this plan, so if you intend on selling in bulk, accepting big sums or repeated gifts, or collecting membership fees, one of Squarespace’s Commerce plans may be more cost-effective.

Aside from added ecommerce abilities, Squarespace also gives you access to advanced coding so you can customize your website and add extra features like IDX integration. This plan targets very specific industries like Real estate firms with a small staff, very small sellers ( like those selling handcrafted goods), and small charities with limited merchandise.

If you’re selling or getting big amounts of contributions, Squarespace’s more pricey plans could be a better fit. Similarly, if you’re a blogger or an artist who doesn’t require ecommerce, we recommend keeping with the Personal plan.

You get a free professional email with this and higher options, as well as a one-year membership to Gmail and Google Workspace. It’s worth noting that the cost difference between Personal and Business is largely overcome by the Workspace account. Premium integrations are also included for generating leads and expanding your contact and client databases.

Advanced website analytics, including sales and conversion data, are among the marketing tools available at this level. You’ll also receive a $100 Google Advertisements credit and the option to deploy promotional pop-ups and banner ads on your website to boost sales, prolong specials, make announcements, and increase email subscriptions and sales. You also receive full access to all of the Squarespace Video Studio App’s templates.

Basics of Commerce

Despite the selling capabilities of the Business plan, the Basics of Commerce plan is really where Squarespace’s ecommerce begins, based on our Squarespace review. On this plan, there are no transaction fees outside of fees charged by payment gateways. You also get advanced analytics, a built-in point of sale, and Instagram Shopping integration.

You must upgrade to the highest-tier plan to get complex ecommerce features like abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping and discounts, and commerce application programming interfaces (APIs), therefore this plan is appropriate for small online retailers. Larger ecommerce businesses may need to upgrade to Advanced Commerce or use a third-party ecommerce platform such as Shopify.

Advanced Commerce

The most expensive Squarespace plan, Advanced Commerce comes with all the features of all lower-tier plans. It also has extras like abandoned cart recovery, subscriptions, advanced shipping, and advanced discounts. You can also create custom integrations through APIs, enabling any number of custom third-party integrations. However, regardless of plan, Squarespace only has two integrations for dropshipping.

It’s a little pricey for what you receive. Wix’s $27 per month Business Unlimited package, for example, includes subscription and abandoned cart recovery, as does Weebly’s $26 per month Performance plan. Similarly, Shopify subscriptions start at $29 per month. Unless the value of Squarespace’s design tools and templates surpasses these disadvantages, we recommend going with an alternative for a major online merchant or dropshipper.

Add-ons for Squarespace

Some elements found in other site builders (such as membership tools and email marketing) have been isolated as add-ons by Squarespace. When comparing the Squarespace website builder to other choices, consider if it’s more vital to save money by using a site builder that contains these features in different plan levels.

The pricing listed for Member Areas, Email Marketing, and Squarespace Scheduling are monthly costs when invoiced yearly. You may also pay at a greater rate if you pay monthly.

Member Areas: You’ll need one of Squarespace’s Members Area plans to create and sell member-only content. All options come with an unlimited number of members, no ads, and the ability to provide discounts and promotions.

• Starter: $5 for a single member area plus 7% transaction costs
• Core: $18 plus 4% transaction fees for three member locations.
• Pro: $35 for ten member regions plus 4% transaction costs

Email Marketing: A Squarespace Email Marketing plan is required to access native email marketing features. Unlimited subscribers, comprehensive analytics, email lists, and sender profiles are included in all subscriptions. Except for the entry-level plan, all plans incorporate automation.

• Starter: $5 for up to 500 sends and three campaigns.
• Basic: $10 for up to 5,000 sends and five campaigns.
• Pro: $24 for up to 50,000 sends and 20 campaigns.
• Maximum: $45 for up to 250,000 sends and unlimited campaigns.

Squarespace Scheduling is a stand-alone service that may be bought separately or connected with your Squarespace website. It has a powerful appointment scheduling system that can handle several team members, personnel, or locations. Calendar synchronization, personalized payment settings, card vaulting, and automatic appointment reminder emails are included in all plans.

• $14 for a single calendar from Emerging
• Growing: $23 for 2-6 calendars, SMS text reminders, and bundles, as well as gift cards, memberships, or subscriptions.
• Powerhouse: $45 for 7-36 calendars, numerous time zones for employees/locations, bespoke APIs and CSS (cascading style sheets), and HIPAA* compliance (applies only to businesses in the USA)

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is an acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Tock, an all-in-one reservations, events, takeaway, and delivery service, has just joined with Squarespace. This is available as an add-on for restaurants, event venues, and other hospitality organizations, with monthly prices ranging from $199 to $699 and enterprise-level solutions available.

Features of Squarespace

Squarespace provides sophisticated capabilities that may help a small company thrive and allows for outstanding visual website creation. For SEO, basic ecommerce, content-heavy or visual-design-reliant sites, one-page websites, and simplicity of use, it’s a top site builder.

Templates & Design

Squarespace offers a tiny number of designs compared to some of its rivals, but each one is beautifully designed and mobile-friendly. While there are only roughly 110 templates, there is a wide range of options for each industry, and the majority of them may be readily changed and adapted for almost any industry or company type.

You may also change your layouts if you realize that they aren’t appropriate for your company website or if you want to freshen its appearance. This is a unique feature since switching templates with a different site builder normally necessitates starting from scratch.

Take a peek at Squarespace’s template choices.

Its customizability is where it falls short in terms of design. Because Squarespace lacks a genuine drag-and-drop editor, you can only change so much with each template.

Furthermore, all Squarespace designs are image-heavy for aesthetic impact, so if you prefer a less image-heavy website, require sections with less whitespace, or just need more page and section modification possibilities, Wix or the Bluehost Builder may be a better alternative.

What it looks like to modify a web page using Squarespace’s section-based editor.

Unique Features & Capabilities

Squarespace’s website builder strikes a mix between simplicity of use and a design-forward mindset. For example, section-based animations such as fading, scaling, sliding, and more, with choices for fast, medium, and slow rates, may provide visual appeal.

Set parts to fade in as users browse down your website’s pages, adding visual intrigue. (Image courtesy of Wavecrest Financial’s Squarespace website.)

Squarespace does not claim to be the greatest at anything in particular. It doesn’t try to serve a specialized position like Shopify or Strikingly does. The fact that you can start with a fantastic design, simply personalize it for your brand, and access a wide variety of native SEO and marketing tools, as well as a reasonable number of connectors, makes Squarespace worthwhile for most small business websites. These skills, when combined, will make it simple to expand your firm.

Squarespace is also distinguished by the breadth of its capabilities for a website builder. It provides a number of complex options, such as keyword search, ecommerce SEO, site metrics and analytics, and even local SEO, for example.

Analyze your site’s traffic sources and data.

SEO and marketing

A major aim of beginning and expanding a small company is to be discovered online. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of ensuring that your website is found and indexed in order for it to appear in online search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines.

Squarespace SEO comes with a rather detailed checklist to help you with your SEO efforts, as well as tools to help you choose the ideal keywords for your content. You can even hire a professional to improve your website directly from your Marketing SEO dashboard if you need assistance.

Checklist for Squarespace SEO and keyword research

You may also manage the locations shown under your Google Business Profile from the Marketing tools in your dashboard. To boost lead generation and conversions, such as adding more subscribers, driving traffic to landing pages with online forms, or generating purchases, create promotional popups and add an announcement bar to capture the attention of site visitors.

You can publish Instagram posts and tag your store’s items on them for selling on Instagram, depending on your plan. Add Pinterest “Save” rich pin buttons to your photographs, link your Facebook pixel and ad data, and create Instagram stories.

Ecommerce

Squarespace’s ecommerce capabilities provide a number of important tools for online retailing. Visitors to your site can effortlessly shop and checkout, you can generate gift cards and special deals, and you can use its merchandising capabilities to highlight new, highlighted, on-sale, or coming soon goods. In five simple steps, learn how to create a Squarespace ecommerce site.

A Squarespace ecommerce store example: check the Maca demo site for further information

Squarespace provides a range of ecommerce services, from the most basic to the most complex; however, the features offered for the price may not be worth it. Wix’s $23 Business Basic ecommerce package includes capabilities that cost $27 per month. You receive capabilities equal to Wix’s $27 per month Business Unlimited ecommerce package for a pricey $49 per month.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better site builder than Squarespace if you want an extraordinarily stunning web business that can expand both online and locally. If you’re on a small budget, alternative solutions such as Weebly, which may even be utilized for free, are accessible. If you’re a dropshipper or a huge ecommerce merchant, Shopify is the way to go.

Third-party Integrations & Squarespace Extensions

Without mentioning Squarespace extensions, no Squarespace review would be complete. Integrations offered via other site builders’ app marketplaces or WordPress plugins are analogous to extensions. They increase the functionality of your company’s website by integrating third-party applications, as the name implies.

Here’s a taste of some of Squarespace’s 30+ extensions:

• Platform for bookkeeping 1800Accountant
• To handle online sales and sync information to your Quickbooks Online database, use Quickbooks Commerce and Connector.
• TaxJar is a sales tax calculator that is fully automated.
• Post-sale marketing and engagement products from Aftership and Delighted
• For developing and selling personalized or branded items, use Art of Where and SPOD.
• Mailchimp for Commerce is a targeted marketing platform that helps businesses increase traffic and revenue.
• ShipBob, Sprocket, Syncee, Shippo, and Easyship are examples of shipping tools (and more)

View the whole list of Squarespace extensions to discover whether your favorite app is available for simple integration with Squarespace. Check out our roundup of the top Squarespace extensions, plugins, and integrations instead. Squarespace’s top plan tier subscribers may also use developer APIs to construct bespoke third-party integrations.

User-Friendliness

Squarespace’s section-based site editing interface is point-and-click.

A content management system (CMS) like WordPress is significantly more difficult to operate than Squarespace. However, it’s not the most user-friendly site builder we’ve seen, and this is one of Squarespace’s few flaws.

That isn’t to say it isn’t suitable for novices. The UI is more straightforward and tidy than Wix’s. However, it won’t enable you to create a professional website as quickly as GoDaddy’s or IONOS’ website builders or Mozello’s super-easy-to-use site builder.

Squarespace also enables you to integrate custom code to further personalize your website. All of these capabilities may help you take your website to the next level if you know how to use them, but they make Squarespace less beginner-friendly than other platforms. For additional information, see our step-by-step instructions on how to create a Squarespace website.

Customer Service

Squarespace, like most major site builders, has excellent Customer Service. It has 24/5 live chat Monday through Friday, providing helpful answers, social media support, and 24/7 email support. It doesn’t offer phone support, so you won’t get instantaneous answers outside of live chat, but from experience, the support it provides is more than enough.

Squarespace has a number of articles, videos, webinars, and a community forum to assist you with both simple and difficult issues.

Squarespace members have access to a comprehensive collection of articles, videos, and webinars in addition to speaking with an agent. Searching the support resources can most likely answer any simple queries and fix issues, and the guides may even aid with more complicated subjects. Finally, if you need a quick response, there’s a community forum where you can ask other Squarespace users questions.

What Squarespace Reviewers Have to Say

Squarespace is one of the finest site builders available, according to our expert analysis. However, we looked for Squarespace reviews from customers who have used the platform to create a small company website to see whether it was worth it. The Squarespace website builder is often regarded as a fantastic choice.

Squarespace has received the following average ratings on prominent review sites based on genuine user reviews:

While Squarespace reviews suggest that customers like the site builder and, in particular, the templates, many feel that it lacks in terms of intuitiveness and customizability. Its user interface isn’t the most intuitive, and even if you figure it out, you won’t be able to create a completely personalized website design.

Alternatives to Squarespace

Based on the shortcomings covered in our Squarespace review, you may be looking for an alternative platform. For example, you may want more design freedom, need a cheaper ecommerce site builder, or be looking for a more beginner-friendly and intuitive editor. We recommend the following as the best Alternatives to Squarespace:

Are you still on the lookout?

Conclusion

Squarespace is one of the most powerful website-building platforms available. It has extensive functionality in addition to its template choices, so intermediate website makers will not be disappointed. Squarespace combines all of its features to allow anybody to create a stunning and professional website for practically any sector in which a small company operates.

Consider Squarespace.

The “squarespace vs wordpress” is a question that has been asked many times. Squarespace was originally created in 2004, and since then it has grown to be one of the most popular website builders on the market.

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