In this Squarespace vs Wordpress comparison, we look at two of the world's leading web building platforms in depth.
We provide an overview of what both tools do, explore their key features and outline the reasons why you might choose one over the other for a website design project.
By the end of the article, you should have a much clearer idea of which platform is best suited to your business.
What is Squarespace?
Squarespace is a ‘software as a service’ (‘SaaS’) website builder - you pay a monthly fee to use it, but everything you need to build and maintain your site is provided as part of that: templates, a content management system, hosting, e-commerce, support and (depending on your requirements) a domain.
There are two versions of Squarespace: first, there's the 'standard' version, which is designed to be used by people without web development skills. The vast majority of Squarespace customers use this version.
There is also a developer’s version which allows access to and manipulation of the source code. This permits the addition of greater functionality to Squarespace sites and the creation of bespoke templates. As the name suggests, it's really suitable for experienced developers however.
What is Wordpress?
There are also two different versions of Wordpress available:
Let's take a look at each.
Hosted Wordpress
Hosted Wordpress - available at wordpress.com - is, like Squarespace, a software as a service (SaaS) tool. As with Squarespace you pay a monthly fee and you get access to a broad range of features which enable you to build and maintain a website.
It’s slightly less of an ‘all in one’ solution than Squarespace however, as users need to use third party tools like Ecwid or Shopify to add e-commerce features, and using the most attractive themes involves an additional fee.
On the flip side, this arguably makes it a more flexible tool than Squarespace, because you can integrate it with more apps, or buy more templates for it.
Self-hosted Wordpress
Self-hosted Wordpress is a piece of software (downloadable from wordpress.org) that you install on your own web server. It’s open-source, meaning that the code behind it is freely available and may be modified easily.
In practice this means that sites built with Wordpress can be customised to the nth degree - it’s an extremely flexible tool that, in the hands of the right developer, or through the installation of a suitable plugin, can be adapted to meet the requirements of nearly any website design project.
You can install Wordpress on your server for free, but there are hosting costs, domain registration charges and occasionally plugin or development costs to consider. We’ll discuss all this in more depth later on in the review.
So which versions of Squarespace and Wordpress is this review comparing?
This Squarespace vs Wordpress comparison is going to focus on the versions of the platforms that most people use: the standard version of Squarespace, and the self-hosted version of Wordpress.
Squarespace are a bit vague on user numbers, but their website states that there are 'millions' of paying Squarespace customers; and depending on who you believe on the internet, there are between 60m and 75m sites built using self-hosted Wordpress.
Who are Squarespace and Wordpress aimed at?
It’s probably fair to say that Squarespace’s core audience is comprised of users without web development skills. The key idea behind Squarespace is that anyone can use the platform to make their own website, without needing to code at all.
This leads to a ‘walled garden’ approach, where everything is very tightly locked down in order to:
- create a user-friendly interface
- avoid scenarios where Squarespace users manage to ‘break’ an aspect of their site
- preserve the quality of the templates.
Like Squarespace, Wordpress can also cater for users without web development skills - it is certainly possible to create and maintain a Wordpress site without resorting to coding. I’d argue however that in many cases, more configuration of Wordpress is needed before you can publish a website; and that setting up a Wordpress site involves a steeper learning curve.
Due to its open-source nature, Wordpress is also geared towards another audience: users who wish to use the platform to create an extensively-customised website with significantly more functionality that is available from Squarespace.
How much do Squarespace and Wordpress cost to use?
Squarespace costs
It’s fairly easy to understand the costs involved with Squarespace: there are four monthly plans available:
- Websites Personal - $16 per month
- Websites Business - $26 per month
- Commerce Basic - $30 per month
- Commerce Advanced - $46 per month
These plans work out a bit cheaper if you pay on an annual basis ($12, $18, $26 and $40 per month respectively).
The main differences between the Squarespace plans involve the number of pages you can create; transaction fees; integration with Xero; and e-commerce features.
The 'Personal' plan is quite restrictive and is not really suited to business applications at all - this is because it doesn't facilitate e-commerce and restricts the number of integrations with third-party apps you can use. It doesn't even allow you to add custom code to your site, meaning you can't even add a mailing list form to it. So, I generally advise my clients to avoid it.
As you might expect, the more expensive Squarespace plans come with more features, particularly where e-commerce is concerned. I'll highlight key ones below but for a more in-depth overview of the differences between each Squarespace pricing plan, please see our full Squarespace review.
If you pay annually for your Squarespace plan, you’ll get a free custom domain too - but you should note that not all domain extensions are catered for.
Wordpress costs
“Hey, Wordpress is free” I hear you cry. Well no, not exactly, because to get it working properly you need to pay for other stuff.
There are five things that will generally affect your costs:
- hosting (server space on which to install Wordpress and store your site)
- themes (the design for your site)
- e-commerce integration (addition of tools that will let you sell products online)
- plugins (apps that can be added to your site to add more functionality)
- whether or not a developer is involved in your site build.
The one thing you'll always have to pay for hosting: without it you have nowhere to install Wordpress. There are a wide range of options available on this front, but the key choice you’ll have to make is whether you’d like to use a ‘shared hosting’ company (cheap but slower) or a provider such as WP Engine that specialises exclusively in Wordpress hosting (faster, more secure - but more expensive). For a small to medium-sized project you’re typically looking at costs of between $4 (shared hosting) and $30 (managed WP hosting) a month.
With regard to the other factors, you can technically get away with using a free template, e-commerce integration, and plugins - but realistically, to get higher quality results it’s usually worth investing in your site.
Below you’ll find some figures which demonstrate some costs you might expect if you were building your site yourself:
- Annual hosting, using managed Wordpress hosting from WP Engine as an example: $348 (recurring cost)
- Premium theme: $175
- Annual cost for e-commerce integration (using Ecwid as an example): $180 (recurring cost)
- 4 paid-for plugins: $100
If you were to use a developer to help you configure, build and maintain your site, you’d have significantly higher costs (but in all likelihood would be getting a better product).
In terms of how these sorts of costs compare to using Squarespace, depending on what sort of plan you’re on, you’re looking at an annual cost of between $144 and $480. This means that using Squarespace can actually work out cheaper than using Wordpress, despite it being a paid-for option and Wordpress being an open source one.
Pricing, however, should not be the only thing you consider in the Wordpress vs Squarespace debate. Let's take look at features...
While you're here...
We now offer both Squarespace web development and Wordpress web development services, providing custom coding that can significantly improve the look, feel and functionality and reliability of your website. In particular, you might be interested in our new Squarespace Setup packages - these make getting a Squarespace site off the ground really easy.
Interface / ease-of-use
The Squarespace drag and drop interface, whilst occasionally a little bit buggy, is extremely intuitive; and its style editor makes it pretty straightforward to change basic template design elements - font colours, heading sizes and so on. You just point at the design elements you want to change, and click some controls to change them. (Frustratingly, the extent to which you can tweak a template's design very much depends on the template you pick, however).
Once a Wordpress site is set up, it's by no means difficult to maintain either. Depending on what hosting provider you plump for, setup and configuration can be a bit fiddly, but once you’re up and running you’ll find that the Wordpress content management system (CMS) is easy-to-use and very responsive.
The main difference between the Squarespace and Wordpress approaches to content management is, in my view, to do with on-page editing.
With Squarespace, you can just go to the page you’d like to tweak and click on a bit of content to edit it: you’ll then see your edits in context on the page, as you make them.
In Wordpress however - out of the box at least - you have to edit the page in the back end and preview / publish it before you see your changes. But as with much else in Wordpress, if you're prepared to put a little bit of time and research into configuration, it's possible to tweak things to suit your workflow: there are quite a lot of front end ‘visual editor’ plugins / tools available that you can make use of to add a more 'Squarespacey' approach to content management.
On balance I’d say that most website editing newbies will feel more at home more quickly with Squarespace, but the Wordpress CMS is extremely usable too.
Templates
Quantity and quality
Squarespace templates are undeniably pretty, outclassing in my those available from competing hosted website builded platforms like Jimdo or Wix. There is also a reasonably large number of them to choose from - 92 in total.
However, this number pales in comparison to the vast number of templates available for Wordpress - although it’s hard to put a precise figure on the number of Wordpress themes in existence, we can confidently talk about thousands, both free and paid-for. (You can buy templates from dedicated template stores like Template Monster or Theme Fuse).
It’s probably fair to say that Squarespace templates are a little bit easier to customise, due to the 'point, click and change' interface, but tweaking a (well-constructed) Wordpress template shouldn't involve that much of a learning curve either.
For me Wordpress is ultimately hands-down winner in a template shoot-out: the sheer quantity of themes available ensures most users will have plenty of high quality options to choose from. However, you should always aim to get your Wordpress template from a reputable source - some can contain malicious code which can compromise the security of your site. This is not something you really need to worry about at all with Squarespace templates.
Performance on mobile
All Squarespace templates are responsive, meaning that they will all adjust themselves automatically so that they are sized correctly for any device. In this day and age, it isn't at all hard to locate a responsive Wordpress template, but you will need to double check its suitability across devices before installing it.
One thing I really like about Squarespace's presentation of content on mobile devices is that it's dead easy to show your content in AMP ('Accelerated Mobile Pages') format.
AMP is a Google-backed project which drastically speeds up the loading of your pages on mobile devices by stripping out certain bits of code; using it means
- more people will access your content (web users routinely abandon slow loading pages on mobile)
- you may experience a slight bump in search results (Google sometimes puts AMP content in a carousel above other search results).
Turning on AMP in Squarespace is simply a matter of ticking a box in your site settings; currently you can only present blog posts in AMP format, but it's a good start.
It's perfectly possible to use AMP on Wordpress too - and, significantly, you can use it across all page types, not just blog posts (which is technically better than the Squarespace AMP offering). Again, it involves more configuration and installation of plugins - but the functionality you get is better.
Example of a Squarespace template, 'Bedford'
Content management and blogging
When it comes to content management, I’d argue that Wordpress beats Squarespace fairly comprehensively. There are four main reasons for this.
First, and most importantly in my view, Wordpress comes with content versioning - every single version of a page or post can be stored on the system and you can roll back to any of them at any point. Squarespace, presumably in a bid to save on hosting costs / resources, does not permit you to do this. It doesn't even facilitate an autosave feature, which is another serious omission.
Secondly, you can toggle between HTML and WYSIWYG when editing your content in Wordpress; although you can add ‘code blocks’ in Squarespace, you are not given direct access to the main HTML behind your pages and posts.
Thirdly, Wordpress gives you a proper media library that you can use to store, access and edit your images and documents. Squarespace’s offering in this regard is extremely basic - for example, if you want to insert an image that you've already uploaded to another page somewhere else on your site, you have to re-upload it!
The Wordpress media library (click to enlarge).
Finally, Wordpress allows you to use categories and tags more flexibly than Squarespace (you can also create your own custom content types in Wordpress). This allows you to present your site content in more relevant ways to users, who can also filter it more easily to meet their requirements.
An example of this in action might be this: say you run a car review website. With Wordpress, you could use parent categories, categories, tags and custom content types to offer readers the option to browse reviews by car make, model, trim and rating. With Squarespace you’d be limited to offering reviews by category and tag - meaning users could only browse by make and model.
That said, there are a couple of aspects of the Squarespace CMS which I find extremely strong.
First, the drag and drop approach to content management - it’s a doddle to move content and images around the page in Squarespace. Unless you've sorted out some sort of Wordpress visual editor, you'll find Squarespace's 'layout engine' a much more flexible way to move content around the page.
Secondly, you can do quite a lot with any content in Squarespace that you add using ‘summary blocks.’ For example, you can create a summary block containing thumbnail images and extracts from your blog, and drop them into any section of your site. Or add a slideshow of pictures which have been tagged in a certain way. This is fantastic for anyone wishing to create a magazine-style layout for their site.
The whole 'summary block' approach is possible in Wordpress too, of course, but as with much else, it requires some configuration first.
Flexibility
Flexibility is where Wordpress really kicks Squarespace’s ass.
Although Squarespace does come with a lot of useful features out of the box, it is a very ‘locked-down’, walled-garden system. By contrast, you can use Wordpress to pretty much create any sort of site you like.
There are two ways to go about this: either by installing some plugins to your site or commissioning a developer to code something for you.
With regard to plugins, there are thousands of plugins available which can be used to add functionality to your Wordpress site. Whether you’d like to add e-commerce, display a sophisticated photo gallery, capture data or show customer reviews, you’ll find that there is an enormous range of plugins available to help you. They are usually fairly easily installed and updated.
If you can’t find a plugin that meets your requirements, or wish to create a truly bespoke website, then you can always commission a Wordpress developer to help you (given the popularity of Wordpress as a platform, there are plenty of them about). A Wordpress developer can help you craft a truly unique site that involves your own template and functionality rather than those of a third party.
Plugins don’t exist in Squarespace per se, but there are certain built-in integrations you can use (for quite a few well-known services including Xero, Mailchimp, Dropbox and G Suite). You can use these so long as you are not on the cheapest Squarespace plan.
Alternatively, you can add code blocks to extend Squarespace functionality a bit - doing so allows you to add ‘widgets’ which can make your site do more stuff, but it’s a bit more of a faff. Of course, you could always commission a Squarespace developer to extend the functionality of your site.
To be fair to Squarespace, you could argue that the visual aspects of the sites you create with it are more immediately flexible than is the case in Wordpress. You can tweak site visuals in Squarespace easily in most templates, and edit the layout of pages easily. Where Squarespace struggles to compete with Wordpress in the flexibility stakes is in the areas of bespoke functionality and, as discussed below, site architecture.
Suitability for large or complex sites
If you're planning to build a very large or complex website, then Squarespace is usually best avoided. This is because it doesn't facilitate deep website hierarchies - the platform limits you to two levels of navigation.
In fact, you could argue that Squarespace only permits one level of navigation. This is because if you create a section on your site containing sub-pages (for, example a section called 'Our Services' containing two sub-pages, 'Gardening' and 'Tree Surgery'), Squarespace will not allow users to visit the parent page - i.e., your visitors will not be able to access the 'Our Services' page...just one of the sub pages below the heading. So basically with Squarespace you can only create extremely 'flat' websites.
Now in some ways, a flat structure for your site is a good idea, because in many ways it makes the site a lot easier to use and its content considerably more discoverable.
But for some businesses, particularly large organisations, or those offering a very wide variety of services and resources, a deep hierarchy does become a key requirement for a website build. Because this is a difficult thing to achieve in Squarespace, I'd recommend using Wordpress over it for any website requiring several layers of navigation. You will however need to ensure that you select a Wordpress template that facilitates multiple levels of navigation or a Wordpress developer who can create one for you.
E-commerce
Squarespace comes with a very nifty e-commerce system built in. It’s great for a lot of applications, but it does have its limitations: the number of payment gateways you can use is limited to Stripe (which is not usable by merchants in certain countries) and Paypal, and it doesn’t come with the sort of advanced online retailing or e-commerce reporting functionality that you’d get with dedicated e-commerce solutions like Shopify or Bigcommerce.
A key thing to be very aware of with Squarespace’s e-commerce functionality is that it doesn’t allow you to export your products. So if you build an online store in Squarespace and, a couple of years later, have a need to migrate hundreds of your products over to a different platform, you may have a bit of a problem and will need to resource to a potentially fiddly workaround (for example, this Squarespace product exporting Chrome extension or the use of a script).
Wordpress doesn’t have an e-commerce tool built in, but thanks to the wide range of plugins available for it, it’s really straightforward to add comprehensive online retailing functionality to a Wordpress site. Popular choices include Woocommerce, Ecwid and Shopp.
To be fair, you can also use code blocks in Squarespace to integrate some e-commerce services, but with Wordpress, you'll be able to integrate third-party e-commerce apps more tightly or seamlessly. With a bit of effort, of course - so Squarespace's out-of-the box approach will suit a lot of users wishing to get a simple online store off the ground quickly.
Data capture and forms
On the surface, Squarespace is great at allowing you to capture data - it allows you to add very attractive forms to your site very easily.
However, it restricts where you can send that data - you can email it to yourself, add it to a Google Sheet or send it to Mailchimp.
Forms are easy to create in Squarespace, but they only send data to Mailchimp, Google Sheets, or an email address. Wordpress allows you to integrate any e-marketing tool.
Admittedly the Google Sheet and Mailchimp integrations are very useful, given the popularity of these two tools - but I’d much prefer it if you could send the data to a wider range of e-marketing tools. Thousands of potential Squarespace users make use of the likes of Getresponse, Aweber, Campaign Monitor and so on - and although you can use Squarespace’s code blocks to integrate those services, it's just not as straightforward as the Mailchimp / Google Sheets integration. It also takes a bit of messing about with CSS to make the resulting forms look as pretty.
Wordpress, by contrast, allows you to integrate all of these services easily - you’ll need a plugin like the fabulous Gravity Forms to help you but once you’ve set it up, you’ll benefit from a rock solid integration with all the major e-marketing solutions and additional functionality (confirmation emails, file uploads, entry limits, hidden fields) that you won’t be able to avail of using the built-in Squarespace form builder.
The other thing I don't love about forms in Squarespace is that you can't just create one form and insert it on any page you like - generally speaking, you have to create a new form each time (I say 'generally speaking' because some Squarespace templates facilitate basic sidebars, which you can configure to include a particular form).
As with much else in Squarespace and Wordpress, it's easier to get going with data capture in Squarespace, but the data capture options available to you are more extensive in Wordpress.
SEO in Wordpress vs Squarespace
Wordpress is the hands-down winner in the search engine optimisation department - it blows Squarespace out of the SEO water in quite a few ways.
First, in Wordpress, alt tags and meta data are referred to by their proper names - this is not the case with Squarespace, where you’re dealing with ‘captions’, ‘descriptions’ and ‘extracts’ which, depending on the template, may actually end up visible on the page (a very strange scenario which probably encourages people to make use of alt tags and meta data with visual impact rather than SEO in mind).
Second, Wordpress allows you to make use of a wide range of sophisticated SEO plugins - for example, Yoast - which assess the quality of your on-page SEO efforts and automatically suggest improvements. There’s no equivalent functionality in Squarespace.
Third, you can't add rich snippets easily in Squarespace. Rich snippets are bits of data which enhance your search results by (1) displaying contextual information such as ratings, pricing and reviewer to search results (see example below) and (2) by letting search engines get a more detailed idea of what your page or post is about. There is a workaround you can use to add these to Squarespace sites - using Google's Data Highlighter tool - but it's a bit messy.
Example of rich snippets in action - besides a text description, users can also see a star rating, number of reviews and price range information about this London restaurant
By contrast adding rich snippets in Wordpress is a very straightforward affair - there are many plugins available which allow you to simply add the relevant data to your web pages with a minimum of fuss.
Finally, there's page speed to consider: Google looks at how quickly your page loads when deciding where to put it in search. Using Wordpress gives you greater control over this, because you can choose your hosting (the faster the better!) and tweak your code so that it meets the recommendations laid out by Google via their 'PageSpeed' tools. If you're on Squarespace, you're stuck with their shared hosting and there is less you can do from a code tweaking point of view.
All that said, it's not an entirely awful picture with regard to Squarespace and SEO.
Squarespace sites do quite a few things that Google definitely likes: they generate a sitemap.xml file; use clean HTML markup; and are mobile friendly. You can definitely optimise a Squarespace site for search, it’s just harder to do than with Wordpress, it's an odd process and you’ll have less tools available to help you.
TIP: For more information on how to optimise a Squarespace site correctly for search, you might like to check out our Squarespace SEO article. Both Wordpress and Squarespace users will also find our 'Super Simple SEO' e-book useful.
Using the Yoast plugin for Wordpress is an excellent way to optimise your site for search: you won't find anything like this in Squarespace (click to enlarge).
Site maintenance
One thing Squarespace users don’t really have to worry about is site maintenance. All the technical aspects of running a website (software updates, hosting, server configuration etc.) are taken care of by the company.
With Wordpress, it’s a different kettle of fish: you are in charge of ensuring that you’re using the most up-to-date version of Wordpress, that your server’s been configured correctly, that your plugins and themes are all up to date etc. Although some of this can be handled automatically, it’s still something you need to keep an eye on - if you end up with an out of date version of Wordpress or a plugin, your site is much more vulnerable to being hacked.
Which brings us neatly on to…
Security
Because Squarespace is a hosted solution, the bulk of the responsibility for security lies with the company who make it: it’s chiefly their responsibility to ensure that their system doesn’t get compromised, your site doesn't get hacked and that backups of your content are made.
However, because Squarespace now hosts over one million websites on its servers, it has in recent years become a high-profile target for distributed denial of service (DoS) attacks - bringing down Squarespace brings down a very large number of sites.
As a result, there have been outages and downtime for Squarespace users for precisely this reason in the past. You might find your Wordpress site less vulnerable to this sort of thing, depending on who you host it with (some of the the larger hosting companies are also targets for DoS attacks).
With Wordpress, if you’re not commissioning a developer or agency to maintain your site, then the ultimate responsibility for security belongs to the end user: you! It’s your responsibility to ensure that your version of Wordpress is up to date, along with any plugins or themes you might be using. Failure to keep on top of this aspect of site maintenance can make a Wordpress site very vulnerable to being hacked.
You’ve also got to be aware that some Wordpress themes and plugins can contain malicious code which can compromise the security of the site, so you need to be very careful about which ones you install. And finally, you've got to ensure that you're regularly backing up your site (various plugins are available to help automate this process for you).
In short, I think it’s fair to say that Squarespace sites are ultimately less vulnerable than Wordpress ones, simply because there’s much less scope for users to neglect security on their site or add dodgy code to it. And if something does go wrong, then Squarespace's team have a responsibility to help resolve the problem.
Finally, a quick note about SSL: a free SSL certificate is provided with all Squarespace sites - meaning that your visitors are browsing your site on a secure connection. You can of course install SSL certificates on Wordpress sites too - but again, it's your responsibility to sort that out.
Control of your content
Something which is often overlooked in Wordpress vs Squarespace comparisons is control of content.
If you use Wordpress, what you put on your site is, generally speaking, entirely up to you. If you use Squarespace, you’ll need to be aware that Squarespace can remove it if it conflicts with their acceptable use policies.
Admittedly, a company that you've paid to host your Wordpress site could similarly take your site down if it didn’t like what you were publishing - but in that scenario, you would have more options: you could move to a more liberal hosting provider, for example.
Crucially, it’s much easier to get content out of Wordpress than it is using Squarespace. There are a lot of tools available to Wordpress users to help them export and back up every single piece of content. In Squarespace, you are limited to exporting your site to an XML file, and only certain types of content can be exported.
Wordpress ultimately gives users far more control over their content than Squarespace, and depending on the nature and size of your site, this factor should not be overlooked.
Multilingual sites
Many businesses require multiple versions of their website - in different languages, or for different territories (or both).
Wordpress is a much better solution than Squarespace for this sort of thing - you can use either the Wordpress Multilingual plugin or the Wordpress Multisite option to create multiple versions of a website in multiple languages.
There are a couple of workarounds you can use to get Squarespace sites to display in multiple languages, but they are clunky and don’t come remotely close to providing the multilingual / multisite functionality you can achieve with Wordpress.
Mobile apps
Squarespace
If you're a fan of using smartphone apps to manage your website on the go, then you'll appreciate the fact that Squarespace offers quite a few options in this regard.
There are five apps available to manage aspects of your Squarespace site:
- Blog
- Analytics
- Portfolio
- Commerce
- Note
All of the above five apps are available for both iOS and Android.
Squarespace's 'Blog' app as seen on mobile and tablet.
In terms of what they do:
- 'Blog', as you'd expect, allows you to publish content to your blog from your smartphone (and manage existing posts).
- 'Analytics' provides you with access to the Squarespace reporting interface (which whilst not as comprehensive as Google Analytics is well-laid out and easy to use).
- 'Portfolio' allows you to download the content of your Squarespace galleries to your phone so that you can show your work to people when you're without wifi.
- 'Commerce' allows you to manage certain aspects of your online store from your smartphone.
- 'Note' is a note-taking app which allows you to publish content to a variety of well-known cloud services including Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive. (It's got a slightly odd interface but it's actually quite a useful app in its own right, and you don't actually need a Squarespace account to use it.)
Wordpress
With Wordpress, it's more a case of using one mobile app rather than 5 - you can install the suitably titled 'Wordpress' app on your phone (both iOS and Android versions are available) and perform key site management tasks on it. These include:
- creating and editing pages / posts
- uploading media
- moderating comments
- view stats
Which approach is best - i.e., several dedicated apps versus one will probably boil down to personal preference.
The Wordpress mobile app.
Support
Support is an area where Squarespace arguably beats Wordpress, particularly if you are building your site yourself.
When you buy a Squarespace account, you get support included with it (live chat or email). This means if something serious goes wrong with your site, there is somebody to turn to.
(This is a particularly important thing to bear in mind if you're building a site for somebody else - when you hand a Squarespace site over to a client, so long as you've set things up correctly, you shouldn't have to worry about providing ongoing support to your client - that's Squarespace's job).
It’s a different scenario with Wordpress: if you’re building your website yourself with the platform and run into difficulties, it's not obvious where to turn to. You may find yourself sourcing help from a variety of locations: for example, the Wordpress forums, a hosting company, a plugin provider, a mate who knows a thing or two about Wordpress…
To get around this problem properly, you ideally need to work with a developer or agency specialising in Wordpress development and take out a support contract with them.
On the plus side, this this can give you a personal level of support that you are unlikely to ever receive from Squarespace (face-to-face meetings, phone calls etc). The flip side is that it can be costly.
On balance I would say that if you are building a site for yourself or a client, then there is usually an advantage in using Squarespace (at least from a costs perspective).
Squarespace vs Wordpress: the conclusions
Most developers and webmasters would be comfortable in saying that Wordpress is a vastly more powerful and flexible tool than Squarespace, and I’d agree with them.
However, that’s not to say that Wordpress is the right choice for all users.
I would argue that in many ways Squarespace meets the needs of individuals and small businesses better than Wordpress, because
(1) it’s easier to set up a Squarespace site than a Wordpress one and
(2) once your site is set up you don’t have to worry about maintenance or security issues - other than remembering to update your site with interesting content periodically, using Squarespace is a sort of ‘set and forget’ scenario.
Squarespace is a great solution for the likes of photographers, bands and small business owners, who just want a simple website quickly and with a minimum of fuss (and down the line, if your needs do become more sophisticated, you could consider hiring a Squarespace developer to enhance your site through custom coding).
However, if you have advanced e-commerce or blogging requirements, or envisage a scenario where you are operating a business in multiple locations, I’d be inclined to go with Wordpress - for the simple reason that you can pretty much build anything with it and make use of a vast number of plugins and themes.
Wordpress is also a much more scalable solution, thanks to the multilingual and multisite options that are available. A Squarespace site is fine for a business that knows it's only ever going to operate in one location and in one language - but if your plan is to grow that business and open premises in a variety of locations, then Wordpress is an option that is much better suited for the long-term.
If you are going down the Wordpress route, I would suggest that rather than try to use it on the cheap - by doing everything yourself - it makes more sense to work with an experienced developer or agency, and to keep them involved in maintaining your site on an ongoing basis. Not only will you get a more polished, bespoke website, you’ll also get more peace of mind, as you won’t have to worry about security or maintenance. You will need to budget properly for this, but if you work with the right individual or team you’ll get a good product.
One way of deciding on Squarespace vs Wordpress for a website build is by asking yourself 3 questions:
(1) "Do I have a large budget?"
(2) "Do I have time?"
(3) "Do I have complex requirements for my site?"
If your budget is tight, you could consider building a Squarespace site yourself, or - do forgive a plug here - availing of one of our Squarespace Setup packages. By contrast, if you are not particularly limited by budget, I'd be inclined to go with Wordpress, but hiring a developer to build and support your site.
If you are short on time and technical skills, and building your website yourself, I'd be inclined to plump for Squarespace over Wordpress.
And finally if you have complex requirements for your site you will probably need to use Wordpress, as it's a significantly more flexible platform from a functionality point of view.
Below you'll find a summary of some of the key reasons why you might use either Squarespace or Wordpress over the other.
Reasons to use Squarespace over Wordpress
- Squarespace is easier to set up and use than Wordpress - you shouldn’t face much of a learning curve.
- A lot of features which you have to source separately in Wordpress are available ‘out of the box’ if you’re using Squarespace - e-commerce, data capture forms, themes etc.
- Hosting and domain names are included with the product (note that domain names are available on annual plans only); with Wordpress, you have to sort these out separately.
- With Squarespace you don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of maintaining your site; if you use Wordpress, you need to keep on top of this or your site will become vulnerable to being hacked.
- Squarespace is largely responsible for the security of your website - if you use Wordpress, security depends on how diligent you are in updating your software and theme.
- 24/7 support is available for Squarespace (email and live chat). By contrast, whether or not you can avail of support for a Wordpress site depends largely on whether you have commissioned a developer.
- Squarespace is arguably a better option than Wordpress for users who require an elegant but simple website delivered quickly.
You can sign up for a free Squarespace trial here, or for more information about the product check out our detailed Squarespace review. If you need help with a Squarespace project, you can check out our Squarespace Setup packages here.
Reasons to use Wordpress over Squarespace
- You can build any type of site with Wordpress; it’s a much more flexible platform than Squarespace.
- A significantly wider range of templates is available in Wordpress than in Squarespace.
- Wordpress comes with a more sophisticated content management system which, unlike Squarespace, facilitates content versioning.
- You can use Wordpress to create sites with deep levels of navigation - this is not really the case with Squarespace (without custom coding anyway),
- A vast range of plugins - paid-for and free - is available to help you add functionality to your Wordpress website. Although you can add functionality to Squarespace sites via widgets and code blocks, you can’t use plugins.
- You have a greater range of options when it comes to e-commerce in Squarespace than in Wordpress.
- Data capture options are more extensive in Wordpress than in Squarespace (so long as the correct forms plugin is used).
- Wordpress sites can be optimised for search engines much more easily and comprehensively than Squarespace ones.
- You can add rich snippets much more easily to Wordpress sites.
- On a Wordpress site, you have more control over your content - with Squarespace, you’ll have to adhere to an ‘acceptable use’ policy and you may have trouble exporting some of your site content (especially where e-commerce-related content is concerned).
- Wordpress is a much better option than Squarespace for creating multilingual or ‘multisite’ projects.
You can download Wordpress for free here, or if your interested in getting some help with a Wordpress project, you can check out our Wordpress development section here.
Alternatives to Squarespace and Wordpress
Of course, Squarespace and Wordpress are not the only options when it comes to building a website: there are a large number of alternative solutions available.
On the self-hosted front, the best-known alternatives are probably Joomla and Drupal: very flexible platforms that host millions of websitse.
With regard to hosted web builders, you might want to check out Wix, Jimdo or Weebly (or indeed hosted Wordpress).
These are probably more geared towards ‘general use' websites rather than e-commerce sites; so if you’re interested in building an online store then it’s worth investigating Bigcommerce or Shopify - two very-well known hosted solutions that don’t have a terribly steep learning curve.
(Check out our Bigcommerce review, our Shopify review and our discussion on Shopify fees for more information on these two products).
Got any thoughts on Squarespace vs Wordpress?
Have you any thoughts on Squarespace vs Wordpress? Do let us know in the comments section below (note: if you're reading this on a mobile device, you may be viewing a faster-loading 'AMP' version which doesn't include the comments section - if so, you can view the full version of this post here).
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