Jimmy ParkerSquarespace
Squarespace is an incredibly user-friendly website builder that allows anyone to quickly create a modern, stylish, and professional website. It has a simple drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to customize the look and feel of your site. Squarespace also offers a variety of features such as powerful blogging tools, e-commerce capabilities, and SEO optimization to help you get the most out of your website. With an ever-growing library of templates, you can create a stunning website in a matter of minutes. Squarespace provides the perfect platform for anyone looking to create a beautiful website without any coding knowledge.
3.5
Pros
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- Free SSL
- Great eCommerce features
- Great responsive designs
Cons
- No free tier
If you’re interested in other website builders, have a look at our comparisons of the best website builders in Canada and best website builders in Australia.
Table of Contents
Pros of Squarespace
- Unlimited storage space and monthly data transfer with all plans
- Free SSL certificate
- Excellent help and tools for analytics
- The Blogging tool lets you set up posts
- Allows you to use custom codes
- Deep e-commerce capabilities, including selling digital downloads
- Fluid Engine makes the design more intuitive in dedicated sections
- Gorgeous design, responsive and flexible to mobile screens
Cons of Squarespace
- There is no free Tier
- The templates can’t be changed in the latest version
- It is necessary to rebuild your website when you upgrade from Squarespace 7.0
Squarespace Overview
Squarespace is a site builder tool targeted toward small business owners as well as “solopreneurs..’
It was founded in 2004 as a means to help users with no experience in web development create and manage their own websites. Squarespace now powers millions of websites around the world (2.8 million, according to Internet statistics firm Builtwith.com).
While it began as a tool to build static brochure-style websites, Squarespace has evolved over the past few years into a platform that has built-in marketing and e-commerce features.
As you’ll discover later in this article this review, the platform is now able to be used to manage an online store, conduct emails for marketing, and can even assist you in creating video ads.
What Exactly Is Squarespace Function?
Squarespace is a hosted solution. This means it is hosted from its servers, and it doesn’t require you to pay for hosting services or install software elsewhere to make use of it.
The platform allows you to create websites in the web browser, without programming and also edit it with ease using a user-friendly and user-friendly system for managing content (CMS).
Also instead of launching Dreamweaver or another similar web design software and then churning out lines of code to create a website and then putting it all on the internet using Squarespace’s templates and style editor.
All you require to create and maintain your website requires is access to your Web site’s browser and access to the Internet.
Choose an image, click parts of the design that you wish to change, and alter the controllers within the editor style to accomplish this.
For instance, you could select a text, and then apply a new font and select a background to change its color of it; and it goes on.
However, in general, Squarespace isn’t really a web-based builder intended for people who want to modify their website design in a comprehensive manner it’s an application that allows users to select the template, make a couple of design tweaks, then add some content, then hit the “go” button.
Squarespace is a software as service (SaaS) tool – which means you don’t own the software however, you pay a monthly charge to access it.
Squarespace Pricing
The premium plans offered by Squarespace are affordable and range between $16.00 up to $40 per month if you pay per year. This is a reasonable cost and is like other choices available.
You can pick from four choices:
The rates shown are only applicable when you pay on an annual basis. If you want to pay per month and the cost will rise by a significant amount. The personal plan is $16/month. Business plan will be $26 for both plans, and eCommerce will cost $35 and $54 per month and $54 a month, respectively.
Additionally, Squarespace does not have an option for free. Its only options you are able to avail yourself are the premium ones. If you’re not willing to commit for a trial plan, you can avail the 14-day trial period for free. No credit card is required!
With four different Squarespace hosting plans with each one providing a bit more than the other It’s a fairly decent set of features. All Squarespace plans include hosting and domains, which makes it a perfect all-inclusive solution for websites.
You can try a lot of these tools with the option of a 14-day trial for every website you create.
But you will not be able to make use of that time to fully launch your site and gain customers, since it’s only accessible to anyone who visits it through a randomly generated link and password security will be added.
This can be helpful if you’re making design modifications and require someone else to provide you with more feedback.
After the expiration of your trial period, your website is saved to the dashboard, but it is no longer editable. It simply sits there, waiting for the user to sign up for a complete plan.
For everything else, we should upgrade and check out what Squarespace can offer.
What option should you choose?
- Select the personal plan when wanting a straightforward platform to blog or showcase your work. It’s a fairly small plan, lacking online shopping capabilities, or sophisticated analytics or marketing tools. However, If you’re not planning to make your site an enterprise, this is the ideal place to start.
- Small-sized companies business, the Business plan could appear like a decent choice. In the end, it’s there in the title! This plan allows you to market unlimited products on the internet and accept donations.
For every transaction that comes through your website, Squarespace will take a 3.3% fee for transactions. While that may seem like nothing, spending only $500 per month can instantly change your $18 monthly plan into a $35 monthly plan. That, my dears isn’t the most efficient approach to running an enterprise.
Instead, I’d suggest one of these Commerce plans:
- Basic Commerce costs $26 per month. This removes the transaction cost and provides new possibilities for your site, including accounts for customers and advanced eCommerce analytics.
- Advanced Commerce is the most expensive plan with a cost of $40 per month. It also includes the option of selling subscriptions and includes advanced shipping options and also abandon cart recoveries and discounts that are advanced.
Which is the better of the two?
It’s possible to consider the increase of just $14 each month to get one or two additional features doesn’t seem like a lot. True! However, for many established companies who are in the business for a long time, an extra $13 per month to attract more customers, and offer them discount shipping options and better prices can be an excellent bargain. This is among the instances where, despite not being the most cost-effective alternative, a web-based website builder is a great value in terms of price.
The personal plan is a good choice for a normal non-business site, and the two Commerce plans offer different levels of features, suitable for eCommerce businesses of various sizes. However, I would not recommend anyone to go with the Business plan because the huge transaction cost makes it a very costly proposition.
What Is the Best Website to Make Use of Squarespace to Create?
Different tools work best for various types of tasks. This is also true for websites, too. While a platform could be suitable for a certain type of website, it could not be suitable for the other. Let’s take an examination of the way Squarespace addresses many of the major issues.
Squarespace to Host Online Stores
Squarespace provides plans with eCommerce capabilities. This is also the reason why Squarespace actually has some third-party integrations, like tools for managing shipping and printing labels for products as well as print-on-demand printing. The overall experience is truly easy to use – a step-by-step setting process makes creating an online store as simple as it can get.
Don’t be enticed by the lowest plan that supports eCommerce. The $18 Business plan comes with an additional transaction fee of 3 that will increase your profits. It is better to invest in an expensive plan.
Businesses Can Use Squarespace to Host Their Businesses
If you’re a small-scale business, Squarespace does everything to draw you in. In fact, tools for marketing on social media, customized design of posts as well as SEO, email marketing, and many more, provide Squarespace with an all-in-one platform for everything related to business.
There’s a catch, however, that certain of these options will cost more or even have an extremely limited free plan that is offering to upgrade. It’s not as if there aren’t numerous ways to avoid this. Squarespace has the “walled garden” approach, so using third-party tools isn’t easy. It’s best to look around at the features Squarespace offers, and then decide if you’re interested in it.
Squarespace for Portfolios
Squarespace is an excellent alternative for portfolios and even the most effective one on the market. It’s because Squarespace Portfolio themes can be fantastic. They’re gorgeous and diverse which put your work on top of a stunning stage.
Some people may be irritated by the builder’s focus on images. If your photos are attractive then your website will look great. So, get your top camera before jumping onto Squarespace.
Squarespace for Blogs
Squarespace offers a great blogging platform, that is ideal for newbies. It only takes just a few minutes and a blog example with pre-written posts for you to modify will be made available. It’s an easy way to begin and I laud it for doing that.
But, there are certain limitations, most of them in relation to the blog editor itself. It’s not as robust as other editors and has fewer editing options. It’s more reminiscent of an editor for websites instead of an editor for text. This could make it feel restricted to bloggers who are accustomed to various more advanced platforms, such as WordPress.
Are You Able to Use Squarespace Simple to Use?
- Controlling Your Website – Virtually everything you’ll require will be on the same page which is the exact place where to edit the content on your website. It’s among the top dashboards you can find.
- Making Your Website The freedom you have to create your website could be limited by a restricted grid system. But, there are many options to tailor the look and feel of your website.
- Setup menu, where you select the template, name of your site, and category. After that, you’re ready to go.
- Setup Process Setup Process – This part is quite easy. It is easy to understand.
Squarespace 7.1 Compares to Squarespace 7.0
If you’ve been a Squarespace user since 2014 or later and haven’t noticed the change in the site builder’s design may be a bit different. In March of 2020, the company launched Squarespace 7.1 which offered an easier way to create websites. The new features were so significant that Squarespace put together a manual that provides a quick overview of the latest features. A major distinction is that the majority of Squarespace 7.1 websites use the same template, whereas 7.0 includes templates, each with distinctive style, design, and features.
For those who are new to Squarespace, you’ll find that the 7.1 version is available right after the jump. Users who are using version 7.0 have to upgrade their websites to 7.1 for them to take advantage of all the features that are new. That’s annoying. Fortunately, Squarespace offers a guide for this problem, too. It’s not a problem for Squarespace. 7.1 is the most popular website-building tool currently; you will be able to access it in the Squarespace 7.0 builder by doing some research and research, but the company suggests that users upgrade to the latest version. We’ll go over some of the differences in the versions in a moment.
Interface and Web-Design Options
Like nearly every other site-building tool, Squarespace kicks things off by asking you to choose an appropriate template. Squarespace will ask you about the general theme of your website from the pre-defined categories like Food, Music Marketing, Gaming, and so on. You then select the goals you want to achieve for your website like announcements of events, displaying art and blogging, or even selling products. The next step will ask you where you are on your website creation process, which can range in the direction of “Collecting Inspiration” to replacing your existing website with the Squarespace variation. You’ll then be directed to a collection of templates.
Squarespace provides a variety of appealing choices, including some that feature photos with full-length backgrounds. Some also have scrolling interfaces. Each template is labeled with categories like Blog, Art & Design, and Media & Podcast, which allow you to filter your search choices. You can also view every template before beginning the process of creating and editing.
As with the pages Squarespace creates, its editing interface is among the most beautiful things on the market although it’s not the easiest to use. Your website comes with a preset homepage that is based upon the design you’ve selected.
There’s a bar on the right that has a number of website settings that include Pages, which allows you to add new types of pages to your website and modify the navigation of your main page; Design, which lets you alter the overall design and create custom CSS as well as Commerce that lets you create a storefront when you have the option. A helper appears on the left of the screen for new users, helping you navigate the process of creating your site.
Built-In Marketing, SEO, and Scheduling Tools
Naturally, the objective isn’t just to build your website on Squarespace. It’s about making your business or website immensely successful. To achieve that there are a variety of tools built-in to aid you in marketing and promoting yourself at a minimum effort.
There is a myriad of marketing tools, such as the social sharing button, Pinterest buttons, Instagram stories, and Facebook ads with pop-ups for promotions. I’ve already mentioned Mailchimp integration, however, Squarespace also offers its own marketing and email platform which even though it’s not as sophisticated as Mailchimp and is not available for free if you have already paid for your website.
Squarespace also offers an easy-to-use set of SEO tools to assist in making your site (and the content you publish) more easily found via Google as well as other engines. If you’re willing to pay for and you’re willing to engage a “Squarespace SEO Expert.” They do, in fact, have them.
Squarespace also recently launched Squarespace Analytics which allows you can check the keywords that bring the majority of traffic to your website and assist you in making your content meet the needs of your visitors.
A new tool that is in development can be described as the Scheduling tool. It can schedule appointments (go you). If your business relies on appointments that are in person it is possible to use this feature to schedule appointments, plan your time available and send automated reminders to your customers (so they’re more likely to attend) and create intake forms, and more.
Add-ons and Third-Party Integrations Galore
Squarespace isn’t a stand-alone site but is in fact linked to many other websites and services. These integrations are basically a way for Squarespace to enhance its capabilities. They permit your site to be connected to different platforms. For instance, you can cross-promote your blog’s posts on social media. You can also embed things such as map images, YouTube videos, restaurant menus, and much more.
One feature I like is the scheduling tool from Squarespace. It’s simple to set up (you can incorporate it on every Squarespace website) It lets customers check your availability and also schedule appointments on your website. It’s possible to automate appointment reminders and confirmations as well as follow-ups. Additionally, it works with many payment processing companies so that you can take payments as well. It’s not an affordable tool however it’s definitely worth it for appointments that are your main source of income.
Another aspect that can help Squarespace distinguish itself from competitors includes one of the features that helps Squarespace differentiate itself from other websites: the Weglot Translate Extension. This tool is powerful and allows you to include multilingual capabilities on your website by automating the translation of your content into one of more than 100 languages. Visitors to your site can choose the language they prefer via an options menu. It’s even more impressive that Weglot includes multiple languages SEO functions built in to allow you to get higher rankings in search results for various languages.
If you’re looking to make money from your knowledge, Squarespace Member Areas could be the perfect addition to your site. It allows you to put premium content and services – be they podcast episodes or yoga videos, cooking recipes, or coaching sessions in a 1:1 format that is behind a safe paywall. Then, you can offer various membership plans for one-time payments or recurring subscriptions.
Other integrations are:
- There are a lot of social media sites
- Mailchimp
- Flickr
- Google Ads
- Google Analytics
- Dropbox image sync
- Amazon affiliate tracking
- Adobe Fonts and Google Fonts
- G Suite, for those who prefer Google Drive for everything
- Freshbooks helps you manage your accounts and create invoices
- Order Desk to help you automatize the process of fulfilling orders
- FedEx as well as UPS shipping rates calculation
- Thank you for the feedback from customers after the purchase surveys
- Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe, and Square integration to process payments
- Easyship for shipping and sales management
- Apple News integration for cross-publishing your blog on Apple News. Apple News app
- Disqus Commenting
- A block for the video that can be used to support YouTube, Vimeo, Animoto, and Wistia.
- An OpenTable block for booking reservations at restaurants
- Google AMP
- The Google Maps block
- A SoundCloud block
Excellent Uptime
Uptime on websites is one of the most important factors of the hosting service. If your website is down your customers or clients won’t be able to find you or use your services or products. We utilized a tool for monitoring websites to monitor our test site’s availability over a period of 14 days. At every 15 minutes, the program will ping our site and send an email in the event that it’s not able to connect with the website for at least one minute. The test results show that Squarespace is extremely stable. in actual fact, it didn’t crash during the testing period. You can therefore trust Squarespace to serve as an extremely solid foundation for your site.
Measuring Site Traffic
All Squarespace accounts come with an Analytics section that displays daily, hourly, weekly, and monthly traffic stats for page views, visits, and audience size. It also displays the mobile website’s activity, its the number of referrers, the most popular content, geographical locations, and queries from search engines. It also includes a Google Search Keywords panel. Google Search Keywords panel, which lets you examine click-through rate, keywords, and search rankings after connecting your account with Google’s Google Search Console. An Activity Log will show your user’s IP addresses.
Through pie charts and bars Additionally, you get only a glimpse of the technologies–web browser and platform visitors, for instance. Accounts with a Commerce level get an additional Metric option called Sales Overview. It provides revenue and sales per hour or day, week, and month. Squarespace has you an SEO-friendly checklist to use on your website and lets you even engage a Squarespace SEO specialist.
Building a Mobile Website
Squarespace automatically creates mobile sites using the website you created to work with desktops. The Squarespace websites look amazing on mobile devices, which is the reason why it has templates that limit the position and sizes of objects.
There’s a mobile-only option: Mobile Information Bar. It’s the menu that is displayed at the bottom of the mobile view, showing the contact information details, location, and even business hours when you’ve turned on those. Squarespace displays buttons on the top of the editor that allows you to see your website as it appears on smartphones and mobile devices.
Working With Images
Squarespace has integrated online editing of the uploaded photos, letting you adjust the brightness or contrast of your photos, as well as filter them, and then crop them as well. You can also browse, preview and purchase licenses to make use of Getty Images professional stock photography on your website.
The cost of licensing the images we tested was $10. This is affordable. Squarespace has the option of storing the images you upload for use on other pages of your site(s) along with images from Getty Images as well as some free images.
Galleries can be added to any web page or created galleries to pages, which draw inspiration from the template. There aren’t any modifications to the gallery’s look when you choose the page option. Gallery pages can be displayed as carousels, grids stacks, or slideshows and offer a variety of behavior-specific options such as providing your title as well as description whenever the mouse moves over an image or displaying transitions and a lightbox option for the grid gallery style. It is also possible to alter the space, however, you won’t enjoy the level of control on the appearance of your galleries as other website builders provide. This is a way to ensure good design however, it does limit the ability to be creative.
Customer Service Support
Squarespace provides 24/7 email and live chat support from Monday to Friday, 4 a.m. until 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. There’s no telephone support. A customer service representative answered the question we typed in the chat window a few seconds after hitting Enter. Enter key.
After that, the person on the opposite end of the display directed us to the information we needed about third-party extension support. The experience of support is excellent but it lacks the ease of speaking to a real person in person. In contrast, Wix offers telephone support even for accounts that are free. On the other side of the range, WordPress.com offers just a knowledge base for free users Live chat is available only for accounts that are paid.
Alternatives to Squarespace
Here’s the way Squarespace stands out from its primary rivals:
GoDaddy
Squarespace is, in general, a superior website developer than GoDaddy. GoDaddy is frequently too easy
Wix
Wix as well as Squarespace are two of the most well-known website builders. The most notable difference is in the editor. Wix is a blank editor that allows you to move elements anywhere on your site.
WordPress
Squarespace is a comprehensive web-based builder. It works flawlessly. WordPress is a CMS, not a web-based website builder. It’s not an all-in-one solution that makes it more flexible, however, it requires more technical knowledge and configuration.
Shopify
Shopify is a top eCommerce web design tool. It’s not as straightforward to utilize as Squarespace however it’s more efficient.
Conclusion
Squarespace has all the tools needed to create a site regardless of whether it’s a site that is for blog posts or an online store. Although Squarespace provides a variety of site-building options, however, it’s ideal for those who are creative, small online stores, and bloggers.
Squarespace will help you develop visually pleasing websites which include portfolios. This design style is appealing to photographers, artists writers, writers, and others who require a solid portfolio section on their websites. Other site builders don’t have high-quality portfolio options. Sites built by Squarespace are visually attractive, and that’s why they make themselves distinct.
Squarespace is affordable and flexible. The basic plan comes with numerous features and functionality which allow you to build an attractive website in a matter of minutes. Because of the aesthetic appeal of its websites and the ability to build portfolios, this website builder is particularly attractive to creatives. Its higher-level plans can support e-commerce websites that use a range of tools. Squarespace is perfect for budding artists as well as for larger company that requires a reliable online store.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do You Know if Squarespace Offers Social Tools?
Squarespace bought Unfold in the year 2019– it’s a separate application for creating stunning Instagram stories.
Is Squarespace Part of the Ownership of Square?
No! They are two completely separate businesses.
Is Squarespace Bad for SEO?
No. Squarespace has the tools needed for technical SEO. These include alt tags Meta descriptions and titles, SSL, AMP support, and much more. One issue with Squarespace (and the majority of websites built by developers) is that their page speed performance (as determined using Google Lighthouse) can be at a low level.
What Is the Most Effective Squarespace Plan?
The most suitable Squarespace plan is based on your requirements. The Personal plan is designed to suffice for an easy website that includes an individual domain, SEO features security, and much more. This plan, called Business is the second-lowest choice, with high-end integrations, a professional Google email account, advanced site analytics, and a fully-featured online store.
Upgrades to higher plans allow users to allow them to sign up as accounts with your website or sell items on Instagram and recover carts that have been abandoned as well as access the most advanced shipping options and make use of APIs for e-commerce. Whatever plan you select you will be able to use our amazing coupons to lower the total price.
Does Squarespace Handle a High Volume of Traffic?
Although no web development platform can ensure 100 100% availability, Squarespace websites support significantly huge traffic levels. The Squarespace website is built using the same infrastructure as they provide for their customers (imagine the massive traffic surges after the Super Bowl ads).
If your website is packed with information or has large image files, it could take a long time to load, especially when viewed on smartphones. Check out Squarespace’s support pages for suggestions to speed up loading speeds by using fewer fonts, getting rid of custom code, decreasing the size of your pages, and many more.
Are Squarespace Websites Mobile Responsive?
Every one of the Squarespace templates is mobile-friendly which means that your website will appear great across all devices. In the case of Squarespace version 7.0 or higher, your template might include additional mobile-friendly styles when you view it on mobile devices.
These styles allow you to alter the size of logos, font sizes and mobile navigation bars, and many more. However, you won’t find these options in Version 7.1 of Squarespace because all the mobile optimization is standard.