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Squarespace account dashboard
A Squarespace account dashboard includes access to your website, domains, settings, and the ability to create new websites.

With its beautiful templates and built-in e-commerce and marketing tools, Squarespace is ideal for SMBs wanting to create a professional website. You don’t need to learn to code or hire web designers — you can do it all yourself thanks to Squarespace’s easy design tools. And its excellent customer service team is available to help with any issues.

When choosing the website builder for your website, you have many options. We’ve reviewed most of them, and it is hard to beat Squarespace in terms of overall ease of use and features. As with any website builder, Squarespace has some drawbacks, like the lack of in-depth SEO features, but these don’t outweigh the benefits.

Read on to learn more about Squarespace’s pros and cons, features, and recommendations if you’re considering it for an e-commerce website or just a basic portfolio site.

Squarespace website builder standout features
Support
  • Live chat
  • Phone
  • Email
  • Social media
  • Community forum
  • Help center
Best forSmall businesses and individuals seeking an easy-to-use yet customizable platform
Strengths
  • Great customer service
  • Mobile-responsive themes
  • E-commerce tools
Weaknesses
  • Lack of multi-currency
  • No free plans
Promotion14-day free trial

What Are the Pros and Cons of Squarespace’s Website Builder?

While Squarespace is lauded for its features, it does have some drawbacks. Despite its search engine optimization (SEO) features, advanced bloggers will likely find the toolset lacking. The most glaring omissions are its lack of multi-currency support and no free plan available after the trial. Read on what works and what doesn’t:

Pros of Squarespace Website Builder

  1. A 14-day free trial: While Squarespace doesn’t offer a free plan, they offer a 14-day free trial to test the platform. No credit card is required, and the signup process took me under two minutes to start.
  2. Tools for e-commerce: With Squarespace’s flexible settings, handy integrations, and good marketing tools, I found it especially useful for managing e-commerce businesses.
  3. Great customer support: I like that Squarespace offers a live chat and email feature for all of its plans, ensuring that newbies and pros alike can get their questions answered quickly. Squarespace has an extensive help center with FAQs, tutorials, guides, and videos.
  4. Templates: Squarespace has a great selection of over 110 templates for all kinds of websites, such as online stores, local businesses, and home decor. You can edit the templates in real time with a drag-and-drop editor, and you can switch between mobile and desktop views to ensure your site looks great on any device.

Cons of Squarespace Website Builder

  1. Lack of SEO features: Although Squarespace offers SEO features such as page titles, descriptions, sitemaps, and alt text, it lacks many additional features WordPress offers, including good SEO plug-ins. Despite this, I found it offers enough features to create a blog and rank it. However, WordPress probably offers the most benefits.
  2. Lack of multi-currency: Another downside is that Squarespace doesn’t have a multi-currency option for merchants who want to sell globally. This is not a deal breaker if you want to sell globally, but it would be nice to have the option. Other providers, like Shopify, offer this, making it easier for sellers to sell in different countries.
  3. No free plan: It’s a drawback that there is no free plan with Squarespace. There’s a market for free, very basic websites, but Squarespace has elected to ignore that low-hanging fruit. leaving it to competitors such as Mozello, Weebly, and Webnode.

Squarespace Website Builder may be the best website builder for: Professionals, bloggers, small businesses, and individuals who want a great website builder that’s easy to use and has great features.

Personal planBusiness planBasic commerce planAdvanced commerce plan
Price$23 per month$33 per month$36 per month$65 per month
Best forPersonal usersSmall businesses
Professionals
Small businesses
E-commerce brand owners
Global sellers
Basic features
  • Mobile optimized websites
  • Templates for all types of websites
  • Free custom domain
  • Mobile optimized websites
  • Templates for all types of websites
  • Free custom domain
  • Mobile optimized websites
  • Templates for all types of websites
  • Free custom domain
  • Mobile optimized websites
  • Templates for all types of websites
  • Free custom domain
Customer service
  • 24/7 support
  • A limitless number of contacts
  • 24/7 support
  • A limitless number of contacts
  • 24/7 support
  • A limitless number of contacts
  • 24/7 support
  • A limitless number of contacts
Scalability
  • Staff accounts (up to 2)
  • Squarespace extensions
  • Basic SEO features
  • Staff accounts (Unlimited)
  • Squarespace extensions
  • Basic SEO features
  • Staff accounts (Unlimited)
  • Squarespace extensions
  • Basic SEO features
  • Staff accounts (Unlimited)
  • Squarespace extensions
  • Basic SEO features
Sales supportNone
  • Online store
  • Sell unlimited products
  • Accept donations
  • Gift cards
  • Add product reviews
  • Customer accounts
  • Merchandising tools
  • Limited inventory labels
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Sell subscriptions
  • Commerce APIs
  • Advanced discounts
  • Commerce APIs
Order managementNone
  • Integrated e-commerce
  • Unlimited products
  • Integrated e-commerce
  • Unlimited products
  • Customer accounts
  • Advanced merchandising and marketing features
  • Integrated e-commerce
  • Unlimited products
  • Customer accounts
  • Advanced merchandising and marketing features
  • Abandoned cart options
  • Advanceed shipping
ReportingBasic website metricsAdvanced website analyticsAdvanced website analyticsAdvanced website analytics
Marketing
  • Multiple sales channels (availability varies by country)
  • Marketing automation (emails)
  • Squarespace video studio app (limited access)
  • Promotional pop-ups and banners
  • Squarespace video studio app (full access)
  • Audience management
  • Promotional pop-ups and banners
  • Squarespace video studio app (full access)
  • Audience management
  • Promotional pop-ups and banners
  • Squarespace video studio app (full access)
Security
  • Free secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate
  • Automatic backups
  • Free secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate
  • Automatic backups
  • Free secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate
  • Automatic backups
  • Free secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate
  • Automatic backups
Transaction feen/a3% per transaction0% per transaction0% per transaction
Tax calculations

Learn more

Automatically calculate sales for your customers at checkout with TaxJar toolAutomatically calculate sales for your customers at checkout with TaxJar toolAutomatically calculate sales for your customers at checkout with TaxJar toolAutomatically calculate sales for your customers at checkout with TaxJar tool

Store design and templates

As a starting point for your website, Squarespace offers over 110 professionally designed templates. Squarespace has fewer templates than competitors like Wix, but in my opinion, they are the most beautiful.

Squarespace multiple categorized templates
During signup, you can select from multiple categorized templates.

All plans include templates that are suitable for online stores, portfolios, memberships, scheduling, blogs, and one-page websites. Your website can be easily customized after you select your template.

Squarespace comes with a drag-and-drop editor, which I found easy to use and ideal for building all kinds of websites.

Squarespace drag-and-drop editor

Squarespace is easy to learn even with no experience, and all the tools you need are right at your fingertips. I’m not a coder myself, but if users who are can use HTML and CSS to customize to your Squarespace website to your liking.

E-commerce features

Squarespace E-commerce features

Squarespace has great e-commerce features, including e-commerce templates, order management, and integrations with tools like Printful.

As for e-commerce, it doesn’t outperform Shopify, but it is really close. Shopify offers more advanced multi-currency options, better app integrations, and better inventory management. As for editing, Squarespace has an advantage over Shopify because of its drag-and-drop editing interface.

Squarespace what to sell

When deciding what to sell on your online store, you can choose between physical or digital products, different services, gift cards, and memberships.

These are some of the e-commerce features Squarespace offers:

Adding new products

This is easy and straightforward and includes everything that an online store owner would want.

The process includes naming the product, adding images, setting a price, stock amount, description, variants, and additional marketing features like SEO and social share. Depending on what kind of products you sell, you could have additional features like custom forms on checkout.

Abandoned cart recovery

With Squarespace, you can collect email addresses and send abandoned cart emails to your customers, which is critical for boosting your conversion rates.

Payment processor options

Squarespace makes connecting payment processors such as Stripe to your online store easy.

You can connect Stripe to your online store and accept the following payment methods with it:

  • Visa (credit and debit)
  • Mastercard
  • Apple Pay
  • Afterpay and Clearpay
  • American Express
  • JCB
  • Discover (for U.S. merchants)

PayPal and Venmo payments can also be accepted through PayPal. Squarespace also has cash and card payment options if you sell in person, which is available through the Squarespace mobile app.

Cart and checkout settings

Squarespace cart and checkout settings

Squarespace offers many options to customize your checkout page, such as the ability to add a logo or custom messages throughout the checkout process. The checkout process can also be simplified by enabling “Express Checkout” so that the cart page does not appear during checkout.

Product reviews

You can also showcase customer reviews on Squarespace and request them through email automatically. You don’t have to install any third-party apps to add reviews, unlike on Shopify.

Squarespace product reviews

SEO and blogging tools

Squarespace SEO and blogging tools

In addition to having great e-commerce features, Squarespace offers competitive blogging functions, which are only surpassed by WordPress in my opinion.

While it lacks the wide selection of SEO plug-ins that WordPress offers, Squarespace’s award-winning templates make it easy to create visually appealing blogs.

If your traffic is coming from social media, SEO is less critical, which makes Squarespace is one of the best choices available.

Squarespace’s blog management system is easy to use. The left sidebar displays all of your blog posts sorted by date, and you can edit them individually.

Squarespace sidebar blog posts

Mobile support

As almost 60% of internet traffic comes from mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to have a mobile-responsive website and website builder.

Squarespace is known for its responsive design, which means it automatically resizes your content and images to fit different devices. That means your customers should have a good experience no matter how they view your site.

You can also easily switch between mobile and desktop views in your Squarespace editor, so you can see your website from different perspectives.

Squarespace mobile support

Integrations and extensions

Squarespace offers different apps and extensions designed to expand the functionality of your store. During my testing, I noticed that Squarespace offers fewer than its competitors, but they do cover most of the important features, including email marketing, print-on-demand, fulfillment, and accounting.

Squarespace integrations can be divided into different sections:

Social media and marketing connections

You can use these extensions to connect your social media profiles with Squarespace and pull content from them. Your website visitors can also share this content within their own social media accounts.

Social media and marketing banner

Music and video connections

This enables you to easily embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo, and music from Spotify or SoundCloud on your website so that fans can hear your latest sounds, shorts, and images.

Business connections

These include payment, shipping, and tracking integrations with companies such as UPS, Stripe, U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, Apple Pay, and PayPal. These allow you to offer more payment and shipping options, which could make the customer experience more positive.

Business connections banner

Squarespace extensions

From accounting to email marketing, Squarespace extensions are designed to get more out of your online store. Squarespace, as I mentioned earlier, doesn’t offer a ton of extensions, but the ones it does offer are excellent.

You can find apps in the following categories:

  • Accounting
  • Product reviews
  • Customer support
  • Inventory management
  • Email marketing
  • SMS marketing
  • Dropshipping
  • Print on demand
  • Wholesale
  • Multilingual website

All of these apps come with their own costs on top of Squarespace’s monthly plans, so you have to be prepared to pay if you want to use them.

Email marketing

Squarespace Email marketing

Squarespace integrates with different email providers, but it also has a built-in email marketing tool. In my opinion, it is definitely a standout feature because e-commerce providers like Shopify and Weebly don’t offer the same built-in email tools.

However, it does come with an additional cost, which is between $7 and $59 a month, depending on the email marketing plan you choose.

Squarespace website security banner

Sensitive card data is never handled by Squarespace. It doesn’t have access to this information as it goes directly to the payment processor’s servers.

Squarespace Support

  • Live chat: The live-chat feature of Squarespace is the best way to contact its support team. It is available Monday to Friday. While it lacks the 24/7 availability that Shopify offers, I was able to get questions answered within a couple of minutes.
  • Email: It ook less than a day to get an answer from Squarespace email support, and I found it to be the second-best option for contacting their team.
  • Help center: Squarespace has one of the best help centers out there. It is full of tutorials divided into different categories, guides by topic, and the ability to contact a real person if you can’t find an answer to your question.
  • Hire an expert: It is also possible to hire a Squarespace expert that can help you with design, marketing, and anything in between.

Squarespace Support 2

Squarespace also has a dedicated support page for developers who are using the Squarespace developer platform to create websites. The developers support page goes through basic as well as more advanced functions such as local development, custom post types, and template annotations.

Design custom merch

The largest new Squarespace update is the ability to design and sell custom merchandise with your logo or create custom designs. This was not available on Squarespace before.

The custom merch feature works hand in hand with a platform called Printful, which can be connected from your “Commerce” page inside the Squarespace editor.

Squarespace custom merch feature

One of the best parts is that Printful handles all orders, so you don’t have to worry about keeping inventory yourself. This is called print-on-demand.

Duplicate blocks

Squarespace recently launched a block duplication feature that allows you to copy blocks and place them across different sections on your page. This is not a huge update, but it is something that can save you a lot of time.

Use the Unfold video editor

Another new feature is Unfold templates, which allow you to create trendy videos for TikTok and Instagram Reels. Unfold is a video editing app designed by the Squarespace team that is available in the Apple and Android Play stores. New templates are available within the app.

Features coming soon to Squarespace

  • Reusable sections: Lets you repurpose sections from one page on others.
  • LiveChat extension: The new live chat extension allows you to add a live chat directly to your home page, so customers can contact you.
  • Asset library: Makes it easy to organize, manage, and add photos and videos.

Compare Squarespace Website Builder Alternatives

Squarespace is one of the best — if not the best — overall website builders, but competitors including Shopify, Wix, Weebly, BigCommerce, and WordPress could be a better fit for you. Each company was carefully evaluated, its services examined, and hours were spent researching them.

See how Squarespace compares with other top-tier website builders that the team here at Digital.com recommends:

Website builderPricingTemplatesAppsBasic plan featuresCompare
Squarespace

Overall rating
(4.5)

$23 per monthOver 110 templates32 apps
  • Unlimited products
  • 24/7 support (email, chat)
  • Marketing tools
  • Shipping tools
  • Advanced analytics
Shopify

Overall rating
(4.1)

Read our full Shopify review.

Consider Shopify if: You want to build a comprehensive and scalable e-commerce store.

$29 per month107 templatesOver 2,200
  • Unlimited products
  • 24/7 support (phone, email, chat)
  • Reporting tools
  • Marketing tools
  • 0% transaction fee
Squarespace offers more beautiful templates and drag-and-drop editor, while Shopify has better e-commerce features, and third-party plug-ins.
Wix

Overall rating
(4.0)

Read our full Wix review.

Consider Wix if: You want an unstructured editor that allows you to move elements anywhere.

$4.50 per monthOver 800 templatesOver 300 apps
  • Unlimited products
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • 24/7 customer support (phone, email chat)
  • 20 GB of storage space
As Wix has an unstructured editor, it lets you move elements just about anywhere on a page, unlike Squarespace, which has a structured editor. There are also more templates on Wix, but Squarespace has more beautiful ones.
Weebly

Overall rating
(2.8)

Read our Weebly review.

Consider Weebly if: You are new to website building and want a low-cost website builder.

FreeOver 50 templatesAround 360 apps
  • Unlimited products
Squarespace offers a better overall solution, that has more beautiful templates, and the features are more powerful, but Weebly is a great choice for first-time website builders who want low-cost solutions to build a website.
BigCommerce

Overall rating
(4.3)

Read our full BigCommerce review.

Consider BigCommerce if: You are scaling or large business looking for e-commerce solutions.

$29.95 per monthAround 170 templatesOver 1,500 apps
  • Unlimited products
  • Unlimited staff accounts
  • Single-page checkout
  • Multi-currency online store
  • 24/7 support (phone, chat, ticket)
Squarespace comes with great e-commerce features for small businesses, but BigCommerce is a more scalable option with its large-scale inventory management capabilities.
WordPress

Overall rating
(3.6)

Read our WordPress review.

Consider WordPress if: You want powerful blogging features, and you have more budget.

FreeNo4,228
  • Collect payments
  • Google Analytics integration
  • Premium themes
  • Email support
While Squarespace’s pricing plans are transparent and suitable for most people, WordPress’ may be more complicated due to the wide selection of paid plug-ins . WordPress comes with much better blogging tools.

Frequently Asked Questions About Squarespace Website Builder

Can I use Squarespace for free?

Squarespace comes with a 14-day free trial where you have all of the features available for use. You don’t need a credit card. Paid plans start at $16 per month.

How long does it take to create a website on Squarespace?

The process of creating a website with Squarespace is quite fast. The signup process is simple, and you don’t even need to add your credit card details. You can publish your website straight away with the built-in domain that Squarespace provides, buy a custom domain name from Squarespace or connect an existing one.

Is Squarespace good for beginners?

Squarespace is an excellent choice for beginners. The editing interface is easy, while you still have a lot of freedom to make any design changes you want. You can get started with one of their beautiful, customizable templates.

Is Shopify easier than Squarespace?

Both platforms are beginner-friendly, but I think Squarespace is easier for most. However, if you want powerful e-commerce features, Shopify is the best choice for you, and it is not hard to learn either.

Do you own your site on Squarespace?

Not fully. Squarespace handles website hosting. If you want to own your website fully, select a competitor like WordPress.

How I Rated Squarespace Website Builder

I rated Squarespace using a thorough and detailed study of the platform. I looked at the various facets and features offered by Squarespace in comparison with other major players in the industry. I used direct testing and third-party services to ensure an accurate rating. I even created a dummy store and added relevant apps to get a thorough understanding from a user’s perspective.

While I did a comprehensive overview, I gave more weight to certain parameters that I felt were most important. These include available templates and their mobile responsiveness, price, available third-party apps, customization, scalability, and customer support.

In all these areas, Squarespace excelled, proving to be a high-quality website builder, particularly for small businesses. It also offers features for scaling and enterprise businesses. The monthly plans start at $23, and when billed annually, it’s even cheaper. With its many benefits and some disadvantages, Squarespace provides users with a flexible and feature-rich website builder.