Squarespace Website Builder Review: Pros and Cons

Squarespace pricing and value for money

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	BEST VALUE
Personal	Business	Commerce Basic	Commerce Advanced
Price £12 per month (billed annually)	Price £17 per month (billed annually)	Price £23 per month (billed annually)	Price £35 per month (billed annually)
Free custom domain	Free custom domain	Free custom domain	Free custom domain
Ecommerce	Ecommerce	Ecommerce	Ecommerce
Transaction fees N/A	Transaction fees 3%	Transaction fees 0%	Transaction fees 0%

Use code "SU10" to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans Get deal

Squarespace offers beautiful, industry-leading templates, without the expensive price tag you might expect. In fact, it scored solidly in our ranking of web builders in terms of value for money – scoring a 3.6 out of 5. This has decreased marginally from 3.9 when we last did testing, largely because its plans are slightly pricier than competitors like GoDaddy or WordPress.

Although as the saying goes, you pay for what you get, and with Squarespace, this is certainly the case as its features, functionality, and customer support certainly justify the price.

Although there isn’t a free plan as such, Squarespace does offer a 14-day free trial. To get started, simply select a template that you love, then sign up.

Squarespace can be used both as a website builder and for ecommerce. While this article focuses on Squarespace’s suitability for building websites without ecommerce functionality, if you’re interested in its online store plans and functions, you can learn more with our dedicated Squarespace ecommerce platform review.

Website features

Squarespace offers strong in-built features that genuinely help small businesses grow, which is why we scored it highly in this category. It scores a strong 4 out of 5 in this category. This is down slightly from its previous score of 4.4 out of 5 as its user interface is still relatively basic. 

Features of particular note include its advanced website analytics and reporting functionality. You can track website visits, bounce rates, visitor geography, and traffic sources to name just a few. This is particularly useful if you want to monitor the performance of your website, and build a better picture of the users visiting. 

Many other platforms such as Jimdo and 1&1 Ionos do offer this feature, but in an incredibly basic format with limited reporting functionality in comparison with Squarespace.

Squarespace’s Business plan also includes additional conversion and sales metrics, so you can monitor where your customers are coming from, and understand what it is your target audience wants from you. This will ensure you market your best sellers and discontinue products that aren’t selling so well.

Website analytics is a vital feature to have when it comes to web builders, as the whole point of building a business website is to attract visitors and keep them on your site, and without data to anaylse to help you determine how this is going, how can you improve?

Other noteworthy features that will be indispensable for small businesses include: 

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Squarespace provides tips to help boost your site’s ranking in search engines (which you can find in the editor sidebar) so it’s easier for your site to get found online
• Squarespace for blogging – Squarespace’s blogging portal is simple to get the hang of – and you can preview how your blog posts look before they go live – in fact, Squarespace is renowned for its blog functionality

You can also pay for optional add-ons, such as the Acuity scheduling tool to let you monetise appointments via your site.

Despite its very strong website features score, particularly compared to competitors like Hostinger (2.5) and GoDaddy (3.4) some users have noted that Squarespace has fewer features than its competitors for a higher price, and when we say competitors we specifically mean Wix. 

Wix is the king of website features, and it shows with its score of 4.9 out of 5 in this category. You get access to over 300 apps on Wix’s mid-range plan, as well as one free year of site booster and visitor analytics, all for just £11 per month compared to Squarespace’s £17.

Design flexibility

Squarespace is best known for its beautiful and flexible templates, so it’s no surprise that it was number one in our research for design flexibility, scoring an impressive 4.7 out of 5. The web builder’s slick, artistic template designs really allow you to make the site your own, and the finished product is sure to be unique. This score has remained constant since our last round of research, meaning Squarespace is dedicated to upholding the quality of its design functionalities. 

If you’re a professional photographer, graphic designer, or creative, you’ll likely feel in good hands with Squarespace. It offers over 1,000 site pages for those that need page after page of portfolio images, artwork, or photographs without worrying about maxing out on website space. 

As well as this, even Squarespace’s cheapest plan offers unlimited bandwidth and storage space, so you can upload to your heart’s content without worrying about causing your site to crash or lag. 

And unlimited bandwidth is incredibly important for creatives with large amounts of portfolio work. This is something you’ll get with all of Squarespace’s plans, yet when it comes to the likes of Wix, you will have limited bandwidth until you pay for its unlimited plan.

It’s also important to mention one of Squarespace’s powerful design features. Squarespace Fluid Engine offers intuitive web design through an array of functionalities. These include an advanced drag-and-drop smart grid that levels up the design process.

Users can literally drag elements anywhere on the website, which is typically at least a little restricted with previous Squarespace software and competitors such as Wix.

Squarespace can really help you make one of the most stylish websites around. It offers a large selection of beautiful templates, which you can filter by industry or website type. Below are a few examples. 

Help and support

Squarespace support options include:

• Live chat Monday to Friday
• 24/7 social media support via Twitter
• 24/7 Squarespace Support Assistant chatbot
• 24/7 email support
• Community forum

Scoring 4.8 out of 5 is no small feat, but you don’t get better than Squarespace when it comes to help and support.

The website builder’s extensive on-site knowledge base and onsite help function should be all you need in most cases, providing enough guides, articles, and even video tutorials to answer the most burning customer questions and queries.

Other platforms fall short in this area, with the likes of Shopify offering a very confusing, and difficult to navigate, knowledge centre.

Other contact options available include 24/7 email support, as well as week-day live chat to help support its customers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer phone support which is why its score went down from a perfect 5 out of 5 since our last round of research.

Value for money

The lowest score for Squarespace is its value for money, but this has massively improved since our last round of research – jumping up from 3.4 to 3.6 out of 5. This is due to the large improvements in its feature offering making it far better value for money than it was previously.

Also, the quality of website you get for the money you spend on a Squarespace subscription is certainly worthwhile. And although the range of customisable features offered is smaller compared to other competitors (particularly Wix) you are still getting great value for money.

As an example, Wix offers many of the same features Squarespace’s Business plan offers, but for less – with it’s unlimited plan setting users back £11 per month.

See our dedicated guide to Squarespace pricing for more information about the pros and cons of each Squarespace plan.

Customer score

Small business owners are overall very satisfied with Squarespace, and with such brilliant customer support and a huge improvement in UX, it is understandable as to why. It scored an impressive 4.3 out of 5 in our research.

The majority of user feedback we received was largely impressed with Squarespace’s best feature – its brilliant design flexibility and sleek, creative templates.

One user said:

“I felt like the page still looked good, no matter what I added to it, which was vastly different to Wix.” 

As well as being very pleased with Squarespace’s design functionality, users were also impressed with the ability to sell online with its Business plan, costing them just £17 per month. This is a feature only offered by Squarespace as a web builder, as for the likes of GoDaddy, Weebly, and Wix, you must upgrade to an ecommerce specific plan before you can sell online.

Further evidence of Squarespace’s satisfied customers is the jump in its scoring since our last round of research in 2020. Back then it received a 4 out of 5 customer score, yet recently it received 4.5.

Ease of use

Even though Squarespace’s ease of use is one of its weaker features, it has massively improved since our last review, with an impressive jump in its score from 4 out of 5 to 4.4 out of 5. This is thanks to improvements in its user interface and its drag and drop functionality.

Squarespace has a drag-and-drop, grid-based editor, like most website builders. You can start creating your new site in just a few minutes – simply sign up, pick your template, name your site, and you’re off!

The next steps are where things get a little trickier. Squarespace’s actual editing platform is a tad less intuitive than other web builders – for example, it might not be immediately clear where the editing tools even are. This is in contrast to Wix, which signposts actions clearly to its users, and so scores a rating of 4.4, similar to Squarespace.

To put it one way, Squarespace might be best suited to business owners striving for style and perfection, as opposed to those looking to knock together a site in a hurry.

The drag-and-drop functionality certainly makes Squarespace suitable for beginners, although it doesn’t quite match the intuitiveness and comfort of some other web builders on the market.

Your Squarespace site could be a ‘labour of love’. The web builder is designed for making professional-standard sites, which could be why some users have found it quite tricky or time-consuming to get to the final result – or, at least, it took a bit of getting used to!

You may want to consider its affordable premium price plans for a more comprehensive set of design features and better ecommerce functions.