Do I Need to Leave Squarespace for WordPress? The Essential Guide to Making the Right Decision for Your Business
Understandably, we all want to find the right solutions for our business. Especially when it comes to the complicated world of technology and web builders.
Maybe you’ve been with Squarespace for years and worked with it from a DIY perspective, but as your business scales, you’re worried about its ability to handle that growth. Or maybe you’ve recently started with Squarespace, but it’s all new territory for you and you’re trying to filter through various outsider opinions on the best digital residence for your business.
I get it - it can be overwhelming to say the least. Choosing the right website platform for your business website can significantly impact your online presence and operational efficiency. As a seasoned Squarespace designer, I’m here to share the vast capabilities and benefits of Squarespace that you may not be leveraging to their fullest extent. But, I’ll also give you a fair look at the pros and cons of each to help you make the decision that’s best for you.
While WordPress is often praised for its flexibility and customizability, Squarespace offers a far more streamlined and user-friendly experience. Here’s my comprehensive guide to help you determine whether you should leave Squarespace for WordPress.
Do I Need to Leave Squarespace to Have a Better Website?
Well, the answer to this question largely depends on your specific needs and long-term goals for your website. If your primary focus is on ease of use, attractive design, and integrated services, Squarespace may already meet your requirements. Squarespace excels in offering beautiful templates, straightforward editing tools, and an all-in-one approach that includes hosting, SSL, and customer support. This streamlines maintenance costs and limits additional expenses in comparison to WordPress.
However, if your website requires complex functionality, highly customized design, or you plan to scale significantly in terms of content and features, WordPress could be a better fit. WordPress is a compelling option for those who need complete control over every aspect of their site and have the resources to handle the complexities.
But Why Can't I Do Certain Things in Squarespace?
Squarespace’s limitations are by design. The platform prioritizes simplicity and ease of use, which inherently means it restricts certain customizable options to maintain ease of management. One of the greatest advantages of their platform is their Responsive Design feature, which automatically adjusts the size of images and content to fit different screen widths and devices. This allows site visitors to view a website in many ways without the need to build and edit separate layouts for each browser, display width, and device.
However, because of this feature, this inherently limits some of the advanced flexibility and customization you will find with a platform like WordPress. For well over 80% of businesses, I think this feature is an asset Squarespace offers to streamline the experience of both the builder and the site visitor. But, of course, there are exceptions to any rule.
Here are some common Squarespace limitations you may run into:
Limited Plugin Support: Squarespace offers a curated list of extensions, and while third-party plugins are available, you won’t find the vast plugin library offered to WordPress users.
Restricted Code Customization: While you can inject custom code into Squarespace, it's not as extensive as WordPress. Full access to the backend, themes, and plugins allows for deeper customization in WordPress with proper knowledge of code.
Responsive Design: Their responsive design feature limits the free-flow flexibility of other website platforms. However, it does reduce the need for editing various versions of your site for every browser or device size.
Despite these restrictions, many of the essential functionalities most businesses need are well-covered by Squarespace's native tools and integrations. In my experience working with clients over the last decade, the vast majority of websites can be built on Squarespace and doesn’t impede their growth, functionality, or ability to scale.
How Much Website Customization Do I Really Need?
The need for customization often gets exaggerated in platform debates. As a Squarespace expert, I have extensive knowledge of the platform and how to maximize its native features to craft a highly customized, one-of-a-kind design. But, in all honesty, more often than not, it’s the little things that go a long way. Most small businesses don’t require the high level customization capabilities that WordPress prides itself for.
Here’s a realist look at what most businesses require:
Basic Site Structure: Pages, navigation, and a blog – all easily handled by Squarespace.
Ecommerce: Functional with elegant layouts, Squarespace offers an impressive ecommerce option, with advanced features available on higher-tier plans.
SEO and Marketing Tools: Squarespace provides built-in SEO tools and integrations with third-party marketing services. SEOSpace is one of my personal favorite resources.
Calendar Booking: Acuity Scheduling was acquired by Squarespace, which offers a streamlined digital booking system to keep everything under the umbrella of your website.
Design: Professionally designed templates that you can tweak to reflect your brand. Again, Squarespace templates are highly customizable without the use of any code whatsoever. On certain plans, you can add code to your website to elevate your design even further.
Customization: Squarespace vs WordPress
Many agencies and WordPress developers criticize Squarespace for its design and code limitations compared to the near-infinite customization possible with WordPress. In my opinion, this is unfair and reflects a lack of understanding of Squarespace’s platform capabilities.
For most small businesses, Squarespace's built-in design options and integrations are more than sufficient to create a professional, modern site that effectively represents their brand and converts visitors into customers.
Unless you have highly specialized functionality needs that can only be met by particularly custom WordPress plugins or themes, the extra customization potential of WordPress is likely overkill. Squarespace's curated set of features, while more limited, covers the key requirements of most business sites and still provides ample room for design customization.
Surprising Squarespace Capabilities You May Not Know About
Squarespace has been steadily expanding what's possible within their platform. Since the release of 7.1 a few years back and their new Fluid Engine platform, they are constantly releasing new design features to place more power in your hands over design customization and user experience.
If you haven’t been fully leveraging their features, such as blocks, you are missing out. Blocks are versatile design elements that can transform your website's content into an engaging and dynamic experience. From image and text blocks to galleries, colored backgrounds, and social media integrations, Squarespace blocks offer endless possibilities for customization without getting fancy with code.
Lesser-known capabilities to enhance your site without leaving Squarespace:
Fluid Engine Layering on Squarespace 7.1 offers advanced design flexibility with drag-and-drop features and precise control over element placement. The new Fluid Engine editor enhances user experience by providing intuitive tools for creating responsive, dynamic layouts effortlessly.
The new text box backgrounds feature on Squarespace 7.1 allows users to enhance their content with customizable background colors, images, and gradients, providing more design flexibility and enabling the creation of visually appealing and unique website sections.
Shape Blocks
Squarespace 7.1 introduces versatile shape block options, allowing users to creatively enhance their web design. These new shape blocks include customizable forms like circles, squares, and polygons, offering diverse styling possibilities to fit any visual theme or layout.
Site-Wide and Text Animations
Squarespace 7.1 offers site-wide and text animations to enhance the visual appeal and user engagement. These customizable animations include fade-ins, slide-ins, and zoom effects, adding dynamic movement to page elements and creating an interactive browsing experience.
Accordions
The Accordion Block is a versatile tool perfect for organizing content. This block allows users to create expandable sections, ideal for FAQs and detailed information, streamlining content display and enhancing website navigation and user experience.
Custom Fonts
Some of the simplest code you can add to your Squarespace website is for customizing fonts. Just a few lines of code and targeting your headings and paragraph fonts will allow you to add any font you like to your new website.
Take some time to fully explore what's possible within Squarespace before assuming you need to switch. Plus, if you’ve run into certain roadblocks because you have yet to make the move from 7.0 to 7.1, simply upgrading to Squarespace version 7.1 can unlock a world of new features and greater customization as well.
It’s Essential to Upgrade to Squarespace 7.1
If you’re on Squarespace 7.0 and thinking about switching to another platform due to perceived limitations, I would suggest that the move to Squarespace 7.1 would be a much better solution.
The 7.1 version includes enhancements like:
Flexible Design Options: More intuitive design adjustments and layout options.
Increased Mobile Responsiveness: In today’s mobile-first world, mobile responsiveness is crucial.
Improved Speed and Performance: Better site optimization for faster loading times.
New Features and Tweaks: Continuous updates and new tools that expand the platform’s capabilities.
Better SEO Tools: In addition to some of the basic, overall site features for SEO, 7.1 also has even more tools available to improve the SEO of your website.
The True Costs of WordPress
The assumption that WordPress is cheaper than Squarespace often overlooks hidden and variable costs. Before you make the switch because of cost-related concerns, I would encourage you to take the following things into consideration.
Hosting: Quality hosting for WordPress can be expensive, especially for high-traffic sites.
SSL Certificates: Included with Squarespace, but will need purchasing separately for WordPress.
Premium Themes and Plugins: Many WordPress themes and plugins carry one-time or recurring fees.
Maintenance: Regular updates, security measures, and troubleshooting require time or paid services.
In contrast, Squarespace's all-inclusive pricing simplifies budgeting and ensures no surprise expenses related to the platform's core functionality. It also offers a far easier user-experience for those who wish to DIY their website maintenance, reducing the need to hire help to upload blog content, add products to your store, change a font, or make other simple updates.
While WordPress itself is free, open-source software, running a WordPress site involves many additional costs that can really add up.
Hidden WordPress Costs
| undefined | ||
|---|---|---|
| Wordpress Hosting (WP Engine, Kinsta, etc) | $30-$250/month | $360-$3000/year |
| SSL Certificate | $50-$200/year | |
| Premium Theme | $50-$200 (one-time fee) | |
| Page Builder Plugin (Divi, Elementor, Duda, etc) | $50-$250/year | |
| Ecommerce Plugin (WooCommerce) | Free, but extensions cost $50-$200/each | |
| SEO Plugin (Yoast, AIO SEO) | $50-$200/year | |
| Security, Backup, Caching and Other Utility Plugins | $50-$500/year | |
| Developer or Agency Time for Custom Development | $50-$200/hour |
In contrast, Squarespace's single monthly fee of $12-$45 includes hosting, SSL, templates, ecommerce, basic SEO, and more. Even their more expensive plans can be far more cost-effective than piecing together a WordPress stack, especially when you factor in ongoing maintenance.
What’s the Right Website Platform Decision for my Business: Squarespace or Wordpress?
In my experience, for most small-to-medium businesses, Squarespace delivers the optimal balance of affordability, ease-of-use, built-in features, and expandability. Its limitations become strengths by guiding you to best practices and eliminating distracting, unnecessary options.
WordPress makes sense if you need high level functionality not possible on Squarespace, you are willing to invest substantially more time and money into your site, and have access to WordPress development expertise. Those last two points being non-negotiable when it comes to a successful WordPress experience.
When weighing the pros and cons of Squarespace vs WordPress, consider these five points:
Your website's key goals and required functionality
Your budget for setup and ongoing costs
Your in-house technical skills and capacity
Simplicity and ease-of-use needs
Ability to make site changes quickly
Key Takeaways
Choosing between Squarespace and WordPress really comes down to your specific needs, technical capabilities, and long-term website goals. Again, for the majority of small businesses, Squarespace's ease of use, integrated features, and transparent pricing make it the perfect choice.
If you run up against perceived limitations, bringing in the support of a design expert to troubleshoot issues or make small but powerful tweaks can totally change the game. My Live Squarespace Support Hour service or Design Day services are great options if you need an expert-take on the issues you’ve encountered.
If your needs grow more complex, or if you have the resources to fully utilize and manage WordPress, the investment may be worthwhile. Evaluate your priorities, consider potential growth, and weigh the true costs—both financial and operational. Platforms should serve your business’s strategic objectives, so choose the one that aligns best with your vision and capabilities.
Don't switch just for the sake of switching or due to a false perception that WordPress is always better. With some creativity and perhaps an upgraded plan, Squarespace can support your business website needs for years to come. Carefully map out your true requirements and budget before making what could be a costly and stressful decision.
Your Designer
Hi friends! I'm Justin Mabee, a veteran Squarespace website designer with over 12 years of experience building websites. As a top-rated Squarespace web designer, I build rich, interactive sites that don’t look like anyone else’s out there – and they’re intuitive enough for you to pick up and run with after we publish. Not sure if you need to move on from Squarespace? I’ll help you make the best decision for your business. Get in touch!
