Are you ready to go online with your business?

It is time to look for a featureful website builder that allows you to create a stunning online presence. If you search for website builders on Google, Squarespace and WordPress will be among the two most frequently appearing results. The question is, which one out of the two is better? The answer lies in the type of website you have in mind.

You must consider various factors while Choosing between Squarespace and WordPress. Squarespace is known for its unmatched collection of striking high-definition templates and ease of use. Whereas WordPress is an ideal tool for those who crave more control and customization for their project.

This article is for you if you are torn between two choices. So, scroll down to find out which one of the two website builders is ideal for you.

Squarespace vs WordPress: A Quick Comparison

Here are a few comparison points to help you decide how one weighs against the other in different categories. This comparison can help you choose the best platform for designing a website.

Who is the target audience of Squarespace and WordPress?

If you are looking for a content management system (CMS), then WordPress is perfect for you; on the other hand, Squarespace is a website builder and a perfect choice if you want to build one.

• Content Management Systems (CMS): If you aim for a big website with a lot of data, then WordPress provides you with options to customize and scale up your site. This is only possible if you know how to code. You just need to ensure you find a hosting provider for your website.
• Website builders: From picking out design templates to creating an entire website, website builders help with everything. No coding is necessary, and you can still manage the website all in one space.

Ease of Use

Is Squarespace beginner-friendly or WordPress?

Squarespace is beginner friendly, while with the help of coding, you can modify the WordPress website design. For Squarespace, you just need to use the drag and drop option and fill in the important information into the templates.

Squarespace: User-friendly but Less Flexible

As mentioned before, Squarespace is easier because of the following reasons:

• No coding skills are needed;
• Preview real-time changes without any hassle;
• The editor offers drag-and-drop templates;
• Easy to customize when needed, but with limited features.

Source: Squarespace

It never lets you get away with bad text or image positioning. You can choose between different themes and templates.

WordPress: Harder but More Customization Options

WordPress is harder to use because:

• You need to know how to code and use third-party plugins to make customizations;
• Any changes you make are at the backend, making it difficult to preview while editing;
• Going back and forth between edits can make it a bit of a hassle for a beginner.

Source: WordPress

From Design and Templates, which is better?

Even here, Squarespace is a better option in terms of the quality and consistency it provides in its templates over WordPress. Coding always makes it a challenge for one to go for WordPress, as it’s important to know how to code if you want to make changes in templates. Squarespace offers an amazing UX experience for its users and has been making changes to its interface.

Source: Squarespace

Choosing and Customizing Templates: Squarespace vs WordPress

With various options to choose from and no compromise on the design and quality of the templates, Squarespace offers clean and professional design templates. You can choose from 113 templates for any business you have, ranging from an online store to a blog.

You get a wider variety of templates on WordPress, but these designs are not clean and expert and hence require a lot of effort and edits to ensure they turn out into something amazing. Your hard work will pay off in the end.

Source: WordPress

The customization option makes it easier to play around and build your desired interface. Squarespace has easy to use drag-and-drop option. WordPress tried to compete by offering total control over your website in all aspects. Don’t mind starting from scratch? Start designing on WordPress.

Squarespace vs Wordpress Pricing 

Which is cheaper Squarespace or WordPress?

With its four pricing plans, starting from only $16 per month and going up to $49 per month, along with a free 14-day trial, Squarespace is on a more premium price plan side. You pay this price to get on the platform and make your site live. You get value for money in this pricing plan. You get a free custom domain, unlimited bandwidth, and a lot of SEO features.

• Personal Plan - lowest prices, yet provide you with all you need to create a website.
• Business Plan - perfect for beginner eCommerce platforms, as it has additional marketing features.
• Basic eCommerce Plan – is perfect for online products with a small variety of products.
• Advanced eCommerce Plan – powerful enough to support your online store.

On the other hand, WordPress offers more flexible and budget-friendly options, as the site itself is free to build on. You have to pay the hosting fee, different plugins you add on, and the resource you might hire to code and design. Hosting on the site is $7 per month, and you can use sites like DreamHost, SiteGround, or Bluehost for this. It will cost you roughly $84 per year. Other costs that can be incurred include paid themes ($30 to $80) and plugins for additional web features ($15 to $50). 

Other costs include domain costs somewhere from $10 to $12 per year, and the cost to hire a developer can go up to thousands. There is no definite number you can say when it comes to WordPress.

SEO Squarespace vs WordPress

When it comes to SEO features and plugins, you come at a draw with Squarespace and WordPress, as both have amazing tools and features to help you navigate the sites.

Squarespace has the following SEO tools:

• You can customize the descriptions and meta titles;
• You can easily clean up URLs for your site to be more reachable to the search engine;
• Alt text helps the search engine understand the image's representation and purpose;
• Changed a page’s URL? Redirect it to the new page with Squarespace automatically;
• Sitemaps can be generated on Squarespace, helping search engines find links between different site pages;
• You can easily hide a page from Google hassle-free;
• Control the images being displayed against your site content.

Source: Squarespace

You need to download SEO plugins to get the best plugin features on WordPress. Here are different plugins to choose from depending on what kind of page you are trying to create.

Built-in Features: Squarespace vs WordPress

Squarespace has useful features like web analytics, importing content from social media accounts and embedding social media accounts onto the site, hosting a podcast, and even blogging. No additional plugins are needed in Squarespace.

On the other hand, you get an array of options, but you need to download them yourself. Which feature to choose from the long list? Here are a few options we have:

• Publishing and scheduling tools;
• Image editing tools;
• Content Management tools;
• Customizing designs;
• Passwords to protect the pages;
• Having multiple contributors;
• More than 70+ language options.

Design Options: Squarespace vs WordPress

Squarespace is a winner here, with its custom designs and user-friendly templates, providing you with an amazing experience. While WordPress has a lot of options to choose from, the designs don’t stand out much, and you only get full benefits if you fully utilize your coding skills.

Site Migration

You can easily import everything from one platform to another between WordPress and Squarespace. Both site builders allow you to migrate from your site if you want to easily.

Plugins and Apps

While there are already tons of different plugins and apps integrated into Squarespace, there aren’t a lot of additional options to choose from the high-quality ones.

Source: WordPress

The additional plugin quality might be faulty, but there are many options to choose from in WordPress, apart from the extra available functions.

eCommerce with Squarespace and WordPress

Which helps sell better online?

The built-in sale features are easier just to plug in and start right away. But selling with Squarespace and its all-in-one features, your platform gets a rather professional and clean look. There is a 3% transaction fee on the Business plan, while if you are seriously looking to sell, you need to upgrade to the plans accordingly. These plans include:

• Label printing;
• 0% transaction fee;
• Subscription selling;
• Inventory, orders, tax, and coupons;
• Video storage;
• Abandoned cart recovery;
• Product listing on Instagram;
• Advanced web analytics.

Source: Squarespace

With the WooCommerce eCommerce plugin, you are creating an amazing online store. It is compatible with WordPress and is free and easy to install. Some of its features include:

• Multiple themes;
• Digital and physical products;
• Inventory management;
• Payment and shipping options.

Source: WordPress

Looking to Blog? WordPress or Squarespace?

WordPress has always been more useful, with its different plug-ins that help create and design amazing content. Both offer quality blogs but offer different tools to build a blog site. On the other hand, Squarespace is the same, but WordPress is still the go-to option. With the right app and the right device, you are ready to connect and get writing.

Security: Squarespace vs WordPress

Squarespace is there to manage all your security concerns for you. It has a team of experts who will make sure to fix all security issues and run security checks for you. They check and protect against DDoS attacks. With the help of GDPR, SSL Certificates, and Cookies, you can protect your data through Squarespace.

WordPress does not allow you that ease. You have to manage the security of your website and run all checks for it. All the certifications, running backup checks and updating the WordPress site, everything needs to be done by you. Your host provider will determine how strong or average your web security is.

Content Ownership

While both, Squarespace and WordPress, don’t offer you rights over your website content, you can opt-out of letting Squarespace use your website content to promote itself and its features. As for WordPress, you need a separate hosting provider with similar licensing terms as Squarespace.

Help and Support

WordPress doesn’t provide the support needed in-house or via live chat or email. On the other hand, Squarespace support offers 24/7 email and Twitter service, live chat options (Monday to Friday), free online webinar sessions, and even a community forum.

Conclusion: Squarespace vs WordPress

Which one to pick? We suggest you go with Squarespace over WordPress as it is easier to use, does not require coding skills, offers a range of templates to choose from, and has many built-in tools.

If you require customizations and using a site to grow your blog, then WordPress is your best option as it provides you with creative freedom of all sorts. It is a powerful tool to blog and learn from and requires being handy with technical tasks, such as security, hosting, or constant updates.

Squarespace and WordPress - Overview

What Is Squarespace?

Building a stunning website doesn’t require advanced tech knowledge. Thanks to Squarespace, you can build a visually pleasing website without prior web development experience. It comes with splendid design options, powerful built-in tools, and various features people with minimal tech knowledge can benefit from. Whether you want to create an ecommerce store or blog to display your creativity, Squarespace has you covered.

Squarespace Overview

Following is all that Squarespace offers in a nutshell:

• Squarespace offers a stunning collection of personalizable templates;
• It offers a variety of pricing planning starting from $12/per month;
• It is an ideal builder for websites that focus on visual aspects;
• It offers various Search Engine Optimisation and blogging tools to maintain the site’s SERP position;
• Squarespace is an all-inclusive platform ideal for creating online stores, business websites, creative portfolios, and more;
• Easy third-party integration ensures a smooth, functioning website;
• Squarespace is ideal for beginners as it comes with numerous visually enticing templates. However, it may not be suitable for people with advanced coding experience. The reason is limited customizability.

Who Should Use Squarespace?

If it’s your first time building a website and you are looking for a simple and intuitive website building tool, then Squarespace is for you. This platform allows you to build a website fairly quickly. Using Squarespace, you can set your website up and running within a few minutes without hassle.

You don’t have to be tech-savvy to make the most of this website-building platform. With Squarespace, you don’t need to write a single line of code to set up your website. Squarespace's transparent pricing plans make it easier to calculate the development cost beforehand. There are no hidden charges to catch you off-guard.

People have long debated which is better; Squarespace vs Wordpress for photographers?

We feel that Squarespace is ideal for creative people who want to share their art with the world. That’s why it is the go-to portfolio builder for designers, artists, and photographers. Websites created with Squarespace don’t just stand out visually but also functionally. Built in with various powerful eCommerce tools, Squarespace is your key to creating well-designed and highly usable websites.

User Experience is directly related to the User Interface. Most times, a little design tweak can do wonders for your eCommerce store growth. Squarespace is the ideal eCommerce website builder that allows you to present your merchandise in an easily navigable manner. The templates are designed to make the online selling and buying experience seamless for you and your customers. A simple checkout experience adds to the usability of the website.

Responsive design is the key to conversion. Squarespace templates are designed to be exceptionally responsive to offer a memorable user experience. Add high-quality images to make the most of the responsive features offered by the platform.

If you plan to create a text-heavy website, Squarespace might not be your best option.

Squarespace: Pros And Cons

Is Squarespace easier to use than WordPress?

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of using Squarespace.

Squarespace Pros

Following listed are the significant reasons for using Squarespace:

• Squarespace offers beautiful yet professional templates. The responsive design is compatible with all screen sizes. Squarespace has a suitable template for you regardless of your top goal, niche, and business size.
• Websites built on Squarespace are easy to optimize for search engines. The platform provides an SEO checklist and built-in SEO tools to grow traffic during the initial stages of business development.
• Squarespace allows you to build premium-looking websites with no or minimal tech knowledge. It is the one-stop solution for creating professional portfolios, online stores, and general websites.
• Squarespace blogging is ideal for sharing updates, press releases, and information regarding new products and services with the clientele.
• Easy third-party integration is an added benefit. You can connect your website with your most-used apps such as Instagram, Twitter, Dropbox, Google Maps, Unsplash and more to better manage your tasks.
• Engage your audience by sharing stunning video content using Squarespace video studio. Use the right combination of visuals and words to boost your site’s engagement rate.
• Squarespace website analytics help you understand and boost your website’s traffic.
• Squarespace also offers exceptional customer support to keep your website running smoothly.

Squarespace Cons

Squarespace might not be for everyone. Here are the reasons why

• As mentioned earlier, Squarespace is known for its stunning and responsive template collection. However, it might not be for experienced developers who want to customize everything according to their liking. This website builder may not be ideal for those who want specific features in their website, as Squarespace only allows limited customization.
• Squarespace lacks automation. You have to save changes after you make an edit manually. Limited automation consumes time that could have been used to focus on other significant tasks.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is your best option if you want to build dynamic blogs and websites. It is an open-source Content Management System or CMS. Powerful back-end CMS and other components allow seamless management and customization. These features and functionalities make WordPress internet’s most popular blogging system.

WordPress was founded by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little and launched on 27th May 2003. In 2009, the CMS was announced as open source.

What is a Content Management System (CMS) used for?

A Content Management System can be defined as software that stores a website’s data. This data includes texts, documents, images, music, and more. A Content Management System allows for customizing, editing, and publishing site data.

WordPress Overview

Is WordPress cheaper than Squarespace?

Following is all that WordPress offers in a nutshell:

• User Management is easy with WordPress. This CMS makes it easier to manage user information, and passwords, create or remove a user, and more. It also allows changing the user’s role, including author, subscriber, contributor, editor, or administrator.
• WordPress makes it easier to manage media such as files and folders. It is very easy to upload media using WordPress. Using this CMS, you can easily manage, organize and upload media files to your websites.
• Sites built on WordPress are highly customizable. You can easily modify the site view and functionality. The theme system provides you with various templates, custom pages, images, and stylesheets.
• WordPress allows you to add custom features and functions to your website. You can extend your website’s functionality using several plugins the platform offers to suit your users’ needs.
• WordPress makes on-site simple. It is built-in with various SEO to boost your site’s SERP position.
• Use WordPress if you want to convert your non-native audience. WordPress allows you to translate your website’s content into your preferred language.
• You can import data to your website through posts using WordPress. WordPress imports everything from custom files to comments, tags, posts, and pages.

WordPress Pros

Following listed are the reasons why WordPress is a popular website Builder.

• WordPress is a free and open-source platform for building a highly customizable website.
• You can create websites that align with your audience’s specific needs by modifying CSS files.
• You can use various templates and plugins and customize them to improve your website’s functions.
• WordPress uses a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, making it exceptionally easy to edit content. You can use this User Interface to manipulate the website’s layout without a layout command.
• The CMS offers a quick and easy way to upload media files.
• WordPress has a set of professional SEO tools that simplify on-site SEO.
• It offers unlimited customization that meets users’ needs.
• User management is easy with WordPress as it allows you to create different user roles, including author, contributor, admin, and editor.

WordPress Cons

Following are the cons of using WordPress as your website builder:

• Your website might take longer to load and run if you use several WordPress plugins.
• You need PHP knowledge to modify or edit your WordPress website.
• You may need to update the software from time to time to keep your site compatible with current mobile devices and browsers. You need to keep a backup copy of your website if you lose data updating the WordPress version.
• It might be difficult to format or modify graphic images and tables with WordPress.

Who Should use WordPress?

Content-heavy websites should be developed on WordPress, requiring extra support for large files. This CMS allows unlimited customization. WordPress is your best option if you want to build your website from scratch and code it to create a unique experience for your audience.

It provides you with complete control of your website. Several powerful blogging tools and third-party plugins allow you to create the image you have in your mind for your website. WordPress is the answer if you have years of tech knowledge and experience in hosting, updates, and security.

Is Squarespace Better Than WordPress?

Are you looking to create a hassle-free website that is easy to set up and run quickly? Squarespace is your best option, especially if you are not tech-savvy and don’t know or want to write codes. It has a rather transparent billing system and price plans that clearly show how much you’ll have to spend to get the final website. It offers amazing design templates and is the best option if you want your website to stand out from your competitors.

Key Takeaway

The debate of Squarespace vs WordPress is ongoing. While the first one has a variety of high-quality templates and is quite easy to use and build a website on, the latter has an ideal content management system. WordPress allows you options to customize and play around more than Squarespace. While one may have a clear preference regarding Squarespace vs WordPress, here are some differences and similarities to help decide which one is more suitable for you.