Squarespace is known for its gorgeous templates that make it easy(ish) to make your brand shine. If you’ve seen a Squarespace ad, they make it look like you just drag and drop, and your beautiful website is built. That could be true if your content happens to fit nicely in the boxes that the Squarespace design team has set out for you. In our experience, though, that only rarely happens. It’s also quite easy to make a Squarespace website look absolutely terrible, though that’s not a topic we’re tackling today. What you may not know is that you CAN achieve a Squarespace aesthetic with WordPress, with a lot more freedom for customization. So how do you decide which platform to choose?
Functionality Comparison
It’s important to keep in mind that Squarespace and WordPress are two completely different animals. WordPress is an application that you (or more probably, your web designer) installs on a server, also known as a hosting package. A domain name ending in .com, .org, .net, etc., is pointed to that WordPress installation. WordPress is an open-source application, and it’s free. You will still need to pay for your hosting package and for your domain name (or multiple domain names, if you wish). You will also need to purchase a WordPress theme for your website, which is the specialty code that gives your WordPress website a particular look and particular functionality; that’s generally a one-time cost, while hosting and domain names must be renewed annually. There are lots of free themes out there, but generally we pay about $60—maybe slightly less, often slightly more—for a theme. When we design a website, that cost is absorbed by us.
Squarespace, on the other hand, is a proprietary product. Squarespace websites are all hosted by Squarespace, and you cannot decide to move them somewhere else if you should ever become disgruntled with them. (This is not the case for WordPress websites, which you can move to just about any hosting provider.) Squarespace assumes all the responsibility for keeping your website secure, and they offer tech support. If, however, you run into a functionality requirement that you want, Squarespace might just not offer it, or it might not be as easy as you’d expect. For example:
- Want a box around your text? There’s no easy way to do that; you’ll need to use custom CSS (i.e., custom code).
- Want your text in a different color? Again, custom CSS.
- Do you want your navigation bar to have an About page on it, and then dropdowns underneath with links to each of your team members? Sorry, that’s not something you can do with Squarespace. You can have a parent folder and pages underneath… but you cannot have a page with subpages.
Pricing Comparison
Squarespace offers a free domain for the first year, but after that it renews at $20 per year, so we recommend registering your domain elsewhere. Most domains at GoDaddy can be purchased for under $5 with a coupon code and will renew for under $15 per year. (You can also choose to take the free domain and then transfer it, but that depends on you to remember to do it.) We’ve put together a chart comparing Squarespace pricing and WordPress hosting at GoDaddy, and you can see that, over time, it’s probably less expensive to run a WordPress website.
| Squarespace Website (20 pages or under) |
Squarespace Website (unlimited pages) |
WordPress Website (unlimited pages) | |
| First Year | $8 per month billed annually + domain registration = approximately $111 | $18 per month billed annually + domain registration = approximately $231 | Approximately $60 for a WordPress theme + $3.99 per month billed annually + $11.99 for a .com domain = approximately $120 |
| Subsequent Years | $8 per month billed annually + domain registration = approximately $111 | $18 per month billed annually + domain registration = approximately $231 | $6.99 per month billed annually + domain registration = approximately $99 |
That said, the cost of developing a WordPress website is generally considerably more than developing a Squarespace one. And it’s also more expensive, generally speaking, to maintain. We mentioned above that Squarespace assumes all the responsibility for the security of your website. The opposite is true of WordPress websites—all the responsibility for the security of a WordPress website is in your hands, or in the hands of your website designer/developer. Since it’s open-source and very widespread, lots of hackers target it, and updates are constantly rolled out. Custom functionality for WordPress is achieved through plugins, and those plugins need updating frequently too. Generally it’s pretty easy to update a plugin—you just click a link—but if something breaks as a result of an update, it can be tricky to fix. Generally speaking, it’s not a task for an amateur.
It sounds like you just can’t win, right? If you have a Squarespace website, you have to do all sorts of custom coding to get your website to look the way you want, or you may be stymied by lack of functionality offerings. If you have WordPress, you can get anything you want built, but you have to spend money on updates. We don’t mean to sound so doom-and-gloomy. By all means, if you can envision your website in a Squarespace template, go for it! A great number of websites out there—sites for restaurants or musicians or artists or wedding service providers—don’t need custom functionality. If you have great photography to show off, Squarespace could very well be the right option for you. Want to discuss website needs? Contact us any time!
