Accrisoft Freedom vs. Squarespace

The only thing I believe Accrisoft Freedom is not as well suited is for large e-commerce sites. Accrisoft Freedom actually has an E-commerce module and can do products and online sales, however if this is the majority of what your business does (or your clients' businesses), I would recommend an E-commerce focused CMS.
For almost all other circumstances I can think of though, I would recommend Accrisoft Freedom - ma and pa shops on up to a corporation.

Incentivized

Squarespace is one of the best solutions out there for building a website or web experience that looks good, has great functionality and is cost-effective, even for smaller businesses. Although most people in marketing will find most of the elements intuitive, if the creator is struggling with any of the functionality, there are many, many support options and other users who can offer assistance.

Incentivized

• Hosting and maintenance is taken care of. Due to it being proprietary software, everything is built to work together.
• Simple to use. Basic functionality for websites is built in without having to dig through thousands of potential options.
• Development is straightforward...no backend languages required. So if someone wants a unique layout for a portfolio, it's very simple to add a new content type and build the new layout using basic html and css.

Incentivized

• Stupid simple to use. I know very creative people who cannot code and this is probably the easiest ever platform for them!
• Pretty website templates and great functionality with showing off portfolios.
• They've already figured out what are the problems that non-coding people have when creating websites and they've figured out a simple solution for all of it.

Incentivized

• Their preview setup for reviewing page changes prior to pushing them live is not good. You basically have to push things live to see how they will look, then go back and tweak it, while the changes in progress are live on the site. They need a sandbox, or a better preview feature within the backend so you dont have to keep pushing changes live to test out functionality.
• Integration with outside tools is non existent. Instead of trying to force people to use their modules or features it would make much more sense to more easily integrate with leading tools in niche spaces.
• The UI is pretty old. It could use a big refresh. Things like drag and drop builders and functionality should be standard these days. This is also a plus for non tech savvy users as it keeps their page structures to what works without letting people tinker. But if you want to tinker and be a higher end user Freedom isn't the best bet.

Incentivized

• Customizing the sites can be highly UN intuitive
• Navigation for editing the sites can be difficult and frustrating
• Squarespace has different versions and it's hard to know which version you're on. You can't switch after you start making a site with one version.

Incentivized

We switched to WordPress; it was out of my control.

Unless our website requires significantly more functionality in the future, I can't see us terminating our contract

Incentivized

It's simple to use for someone who is really good with computers as well as those who are not. I've been using my personal squarespace for years and have also helped clients build a starting page which they are later able to manage theirselves.

Incentivized

This rating is based on personal experience only. I believe majority of people would say their support is top notch & 10/10. The only reason I am personally am giving it lower is because I consider my self a much more advanced user of Freedom than their typical Solution Provider developers. Because I am advanced, I troubleshoot my own issues pretty in-depth before I even contact Accrisoft support. Therefore sometimes I feel it takes longer to get the researched & specific answer I need vs. a simple support question would.

Incentivized

Help is available directly from the back end and uses full sentence searching to find answers to questions others may have asked before. With a ton of articles and support questions documents, it is very likely that your question has been answered. If not each page has the ability to open a direct email to support. Each case has a number and can be followed. Responses are often quick and have links and directions clearly stated

Incentivized

In all honesty, we have been moving away from Accrisoft Freedom due to its lack of customizability. We as an agency generally prefer open source solutions since our client base primarily consists of those looking for a more custom solution that can be built off of in the future. While yes, these tend to need more care and attention, they have benefited us more.

Incentivized

Squarespace was quicker to set up and more accessible to manipulate the theme, pictures, and content. The page layouts are more versatile and fluid. With WordPress, more time-consuming efforts go into making a template work the way you want it to (because of the lack of the drag-and-drop grids that Squarespace has).

Incentivized

• This was the first CMS we had at our company so hard to say positive or negative impact.
• Prior to this CMS there was a static site that html files had to be ftp to a company to have the site updated. So from that standpoint it made updating the site much less expensive.
• Compared to a tool like Wordpress this is much more secure and easier to manage, but since we outsource that portion of it to the company that built the site we dont realize those gains.

Incentivized

• The cost is reasonably decent. My client says they spent about $20 a month or $240 a year. I asked her if she could add Google AdSense to her blog one day, and they believe they can. They said a custom site would cost them $3000-10,000 depending on who does it. And I agreed, but I found the website they created was on the lower end of that range.

Incentivized