Squarespace website builder review: pros and cons

Squarespace is the easiest website builder for small businesses, offering a seamless design editor with over 150 templates, strong AI-powered capabilities, and 24/7 customer support.

When we tested Squarespace, we found that it’s ideal for beginners or those who may not have much experience in web design. That said, if you’re a creative professional looking to showcase your portfolio, artwork, or photography, the platform’s visual and design elements will work perfectly for you.

In our 2025 round of analysis and first-hand testing, we were able to evaluate Squarespace’s features, functionalities, and user experience to see how it holds up compared to competitors. This allows us to give you an honest and transparent review of Squarespace, including its advantages and drawbacks.

Read on to learn how Squarespace ranks in terms of the factors that really matter to small business owners:

4.6 out of 5

• Website Functionality
  3.2
• Design Features
  4.3
• Pricing
  3.7
• Help and Support
  4.1
• Reputation
  4.7
• User Experience
  4.8

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Squarespace web builder overview

Squarespace

4.6

Ideal for professional and creative businesses that appreciate affordable plans and an easy-to-use platform.

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• Free trial 14-day
• Price from £12 per month Use code "SU10" to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans

• Over 150 stunning free templates
• Great value for money
• Use code 'SU10' to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans

Summary Squarespace scores extremely highly in our testing, catering to creative professionals with its mobile-responsive templates and visual designs. In comparison to Wix and GoDaddy, Squarespace is the easiest website builder on the market thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop editor, though it lacks the creative freedom of Wix. Plus, Squarespace’s affordable plans make it an accessible option for small businesses.

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Squarespace stands out thanks to its stylish, design-oriented templates — in fact, it comes with the best design features of all the web builders we’ve tested.

That being said, Squarespace is the second best website builder for small businesses overall, behind Wix (read our full comparison of Wix vs Squarespace to learn more about how these two builders match up). But if your small operation has big ambitions, Squarespace could be your perfect pick – it’s ideal for growth-focused businesses that are looking to scale.

Since our last round of testing back in 2024, Squarespace has certainly improved. This is mostly driven by vastly improved help and support services and user experience. As a result, you should be able to get a website up and running more quickly and easily than ever before with the Squarespace web builder.

Our Squarespace video review

Prefer watching to reading? We explain everything you need to know about Squarespace and show you how it works in this short video:

Squarespace’s pricing

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	BEST VALUE
Basic	Core	Plus	Advanced
Price £12 per month (billed annually)	Price £17 per month (billed annually)	Price £29 per month (billed annually)	Price £79 per month (billed annually)
Free custom domain	Free custom domain	Free custom domain	Free custom domain
Ecommerce	Ecommerce	Ecommerce	Ecommerce
Transaction fees 2%	Transaction fees 0%	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, starting at just £12 per month for its Basic plan.

However, compared to other platforms, Squarespace’s pricing isn’t the cheapest. For example, Wix’s paid plans are cheaper, starting from £9 per month, and it also offers a basic free plan to try the builder out on.

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

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

 

As well as websites, Squarespace can be used to build online stores. While this article focuses on Squarespace’s suitability for building websites without ecommerce functionality, you can learn more about its online store plans and functions in our Squarespace ecommerce platform review.

Squarespace’s pros and cons

Website functionality

Unfortunately, we found that Squarespace fell a little short in terms of website functionality. This is primarily because, compared to Wix and Shopify, it was missing some crucial capacities. We found that it doesn’t provide AI-guided support when navigating search engine optimisation (SEO), and we weren’t able to check spelling and grammar with its editor. This means you’d have to download a third-party extension, such as Grammarly, to avoid any typos or grammatical errors.

That being said, it still had its strong points. For example, its advanced website analytics and reporting functionality allows you to 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 IONOS, do offer this feature, but in an incredibly basic format with limited reporting functionality in comparison with Squarespace.

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

• SEO tools for site visibility, providing 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
• A generous number of third-party integrations, including dropshipping, sales tax compliance, and social media marketing.

You can also pay for optional add-ons, such as the Acuity scheduling tool, which lets you monetise appointments via your site — ideal for service-based businesses looking to connect with their customers easily and efficiently.

Reputation

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.

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

As well as being very pleased with Squarespace’s design functionality, users were also impressed with the ability to sell online right from its Basic plan, costing just £12 per month. This is a feature only offered by Squarespace as a web builder, as for the likes of GoDaddy and Wix, you must upgrade to an ecommerce-specific plan before you can sell online.

Our methodology: How did we evaluate Squarespace web builder for small businesses?

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BEST ALL ROUND	BEST FOR ONLINE STORES
Wix	Shopify	Squarespace	GoDaddy	Site123	WordPress.com	Hostinger
BEST FOR Best all-in-one website builder	BEST FOR Ideal for growing your online store	BEST FOR Design flexibility & businesses looking to scale	BEST FOR Ease of use and simplicity	BEST FOR Help and support	BEST FOR Blogging tools	BEST FOR Cheap builder
Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.9	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.2	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.2	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.7	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.6	Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.3
Price £9-£119 per month £8.10-£107.10 with code “TAKE10”	Price £19-£259 per month, billed annually Currently £1 per month for the first three months	Price £12-£79 per month, billed annually Use code “SU10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans	Price £7.99-£13.99 per month, billed annually (first term discounts available)	Price $0 – 12.80 per month (about £10.22)	Price £3-£20 per month, billed annually	Price £2.99-£3.49 per month (48-month subscription) Up to 81% discounted with code “STARTUPS”
Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial	Free trial
Try Wix	Try Shopify	Try Squarespace	Try GoDaddy	Get Site123	Get Wordpress	Try Hostinger

Squarespace is the clear winner when it comes to design features and helping businesses looking to scale. But how did we come to this conclusion?

When conducting our review of Squarespace (and eleven other website builders) in 2025, we first carried out in-depth research, which included testing the platform out for ourselves. We also spent hundreds of hours collecting data across six primary categories, which were weighted according to their importance to small businesses:

• Website functionality: 25% – Does Squarespace offer essential website features, such as SEO and marketing?
• User experience: 25% – Is Squarespace easy to use and navigate?
• Design features: 15% – What customisation options are available with Squarespace?
• Help and support: 15% – How can you contact Squarespace’s customer support?
• Pricing: 15% – How much does it cost to use Squarespace, and how does it score for affordability?
• Reputation: 5% – How does Squarespace compare to its competitors?

Verdict: is Squarespace right for you?

If you’re looking for a website builder that has ample design flexibility, that has your back with robust customer support, and is easy and intuitive to use, then our answer would be a resounding yes.

Squarespace has hundreds of visually stunning prewritten templates, which can fast forward you into creating a stylish and highly functional website.

However, if you’re not convinced because of its price or because you think its website features aren’t generous enough, we’d recommend checking Wix or GoDaddy out. Wix, in particular, has good levels of functionality, design features, and user experience, and is priced cheaper than Squarespace.

Overall though, Squarespace is rightfully the second-best website builder for small businesses based on our expert analysis and in-depth research.

Still not sure? Check out the best website builders for small businesses for our favourite high-performing and affordable solutions.