Overview

Squarespace is a well-rounded, versatile website builder best known for its impressive website designs. The all-in-one website creation platform makes it effortless to set up an online shop, manage your site, and build your online presence.

The platform was launched in 2004 and had since advanced. And today, Squarespace has become a popular website builder that millions of people used to create beautiful websites.

Who Should Use Squarespace?

Squarespace is best for ecommerce stores, artists, and designers that want to establish their online image with minimal fuss but with incredible visuals. Thus, making it the perfect option for small business owners that want a boost visually but don't have the know-how or budget for it all.

And because this elegant platform is a hosted solution, you don't need to worry about any extra steps to install software or find a server. Hence, you can easily create a beautifully designed website all in one place, right on your browser.

Essentially, Squarespace is perfect for creative people that want to work with a style editor, and Squarespace's templates that allow personalization.

Squarespace Features At A Glance

Squarespace has become an all-rounder in the website builder space. It's the go-to platform for building online stores, portfolio websites, and blogs. Squarespace prides itself on offering the features or tools that its customers need to build beautiful Squarespace websites. Here's a quick look at some of Squarespace's features:

Style Editor

Squarespace's style editor is a semi-drag-and-drop interface. That means you can drag elements around on the page, but you can't move them out of their pre-determined positions.

When you edit a page, you start by adding content blocks, which are sections of site functionality or page layout. And they are pre-configured for painless use. These include contact forms, food menus, text blocks, calendars, charts, social media icons, ecommerce products, and more.

Once you have selected the content block you want to use, the drag-and-drop stuff starts. You can drag elements around so that they fit the layout you like within the correct parameters. Squarespace isn't like Wix or Webflow. You can't casually put anything anywhere you want.

This limitation is designed to keep your website properly spaced and looking consistent. But layout-wise, there are still plenty of things you can do.

For one, pre-set content blocks can give you the layout you desire and make some minor changes. Another thing, you can add a blank content block and create a layout yourself by adding text, images, videos, and buttons.

Ecommerce Solution

Ecommerce is a big deal in Squarespace. It's the most significant selling point of the platform and differentiates it from the Squarespace alternatives. The Squarespace ecommerce offerings empower you to sell just about anything, be it booking appointments or selling products and services.

Adding an online store to your website is as simple as answering a few questions, clicking a couple of buttons, and letting Squarespace take care of the rest, design-wise. You can add products manually or import products through a CSV file.

Other things you're allowed to do includes:

• Squarespace scheduling in-store pickup
• creating shipping zones
• getting an automatic shipping fee calculation
• creating mailing lists
• offering discounts and sales
• getting automatic tax calculation
• accepting payment gateways
• selling gift cards, both physical and digital products, subscriptions
• sell via social media

The online store will generally take on the same feel and style as the rest of your website. But you can change its layout and how individual product pages look. Additionally, the user interface (UI) for managing your products is simple to learn, but it can be detailed.

Squarespace provides you with a robust backend and plenty of store templates, setting it apart from other website builders for selling online. Plus, the platform allows you to create a membership website if you want to sell content or have a subscription-based service.

Blogging

Squarespace has plenty of built-in tools for blogging. You can create visually-stunning blogs using the wide range of blog templates. Blogs in Squarespace are structured or ordered in two parts: individual blog posts and blog pages.

Blog posts are a blog page's subpages. Each post has its dedicated URL and own page. You can add as many posts to a page as you would like. On the other hand, blog pages are the landing pages of your blog.

Depending on your website, it displays multiple blog posts in a grid or list. Clicking a featured image or a post title opens the individual posts on their page.

Bring your ideas to life with Squarespace's custom color palettes, flexible layouts, access to quality, free images, and cohesive fonts. You can also track the performance of your blog with Squarespace analytics and connect your social media accounts to share your content.

Squarespace's blogging tool is one of the best in the business, and it integrates seamlessly with the platform.

Built-in Scheduling, SEO, and Marketing Tools

Your goal as a website owner is to make your Squarespace site visible and successful. The good news is that there are plenty of built-in tools designed to help you promote and market your website with minimal effort.

Squarespace has a lot of marketing tools that you can take advantage of, such as promotional pop-ups, Facebook ads, Instagram stories, Pinterest buttons, and social share buttons. There's also the Mailchimp integration for email marketing.

Additionally, you can hire a Squarespace SEO Expert to help you with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They will work with you to identify opportunities and make recommendations on how you can improve your website's ranking.

Lastly, Squarespace has built-in scheduling tools that let you take appointments, send reminders to customers, manage available time, create intake forms, and more.

Website Analytics

Squarespace offers built-in analytics for your site that can help you track your website's traffic and performance. The platform provides you with ten Google analytics categories, including:

• Activity Log
• Search Engine Queries
• RSS Subscribers
• Site Search Queries
• Abandoned Cart
• Purchase Funnel
• Popular Content
• Traffic Sources
• Traffic Overview
• Sales Overview

You can view them from your Squarespace account or export them into a CSV file.

Pricing Options

Squarespace offers four plans, with monthly licensing fees ranging from $12-$54, depending on whether you want to pay every month or every year and what tier of service you use. It's important to note that Squarespace doesn't offer a free plan. However, it offers a 14-day free trial.

Personal

For $19 per month (or $14 when paid annually), the Personal plan comes with 24/7 customer support, full access to the template collection, SEO features, and unlimited storage and bandwidth. Also, the Squarespace Personal plan includes at least two contributors and basic website metrics.

Business

For $33 per month (or $23 when paid annually), the Business plan includes all the Squarespace Personal plan features plus complete customization with JavaScript and CSS, promotional banners and pop-ups, advanced site analytics, and a professional email from Google. What's more, the Business plan comes with fully integrated ecommerce with a 3 percent transaction fee.

Basic Commerce

For $36 per month (or $27 when paid annually), the Basic Commerce plan comes with all the Business plan features plus merchandising, customer accounts, and point-of-sale functionality. This Squarespace Commerce plan also allows you to sync your offerings with Instagram to market there, too. Note that transaction fees are removed from this plan.

Advanced Commerce

For $65 per month (or $49 when paid annually), the Advanced Commerce plan comes with all the Basic Commerce plan features plus the ability to sell subscriptions, abandoned cart recovery, advanced promotion features, and advanced shipping options.

Pros

• 14-day free trial, money-back guarantee
• extensive online support
• improved site editor
• excellent SEO functions and blogging capabilities
• ability to export blogs and pages to WordPress
• CSS customization
• beautiful imagery designer templates
• has an undo button
• offers top-notch ecommerce functionality
• responsive Squarespace templates
• webinars and help guides
• built-in email marketing

Cons

• limited control over the domain name or no free custom domain
• no multi-currency selling functionality
• limited automatic tax calculations
• limited payment gateway options
• no version history functionality
• no autosave
• live chat support is available in the English language only
• slow loading Squarespace sites

Is Squarespace Worth The Switch?

Squarespace is an excellent website-building platform for creating responsive, beautiful, and modern websites for mobile and desktop. The templates it offers can be customized and are all mobile-friendly.

While the Squarespace pricing is not the most affordable, its features, capabilities, and ease of use make it a great value. And the 14-day free trial is a nice perk.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Do I need to use another web host?

A. No, you don't need another web host. All Squarespace plans include cloud hosting, ensuring your site remains available and performant no matter the traffic.

Q. Is Squarespace downloadable?

A. No, you can't download Squarespace. The platform doesn't have plans to make a downloadable version.

Q. How do I cancel service?

A. It's easy to cancel Squarespace. You can do it right from your website manager.

Q. Is it possible to switch plans?

A. Yes, you can switch plans at any time. When downgrading or upgrading your plan, you'll receive a refund or a pro-rated charge.