IONOS Hosting vs. Squarespace

IONOS Hosting

Squarespace

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
IONOS Hosting	Score 5.6 out of 10	N/A	IONOS a provider of cloud infrastructure, cloud services, and hosting headquartered in Germany, boasting more than eight million customer contracts. They provide individual web services including SSL certificates (provided by GeoTrust True BusinessID) , domain registration services, website hosting, and managed hosting services supporting WordPress, VPS hosting, and ASP.NET hosting.	N/A
Squarespace	Score 8.4 out of 10	N/A	Squarespace is a CMS platform that allows users to create a DIY blog, eCommerce store, and/or portfolio (visual art or music). Some Squarespace website and shop templates are industry or use case-specific, such as menu builders for restaurant sites.	$25 per month

Pricing

IONOS Hosting

Squarespace

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Basic: $25
per month
Core: $36
per month
Plus: $56
per month
Advanced: $139
per month

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
IONOS Hosting	Squarespace
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

28% to 36% discount available for annual pricing.

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	IONOS Hosting	Squarespace
Considered Both Products	IONOS Hosting Ruby Javaid Chief Designer Chose IONOS Hosting iPage is terrible. They don't even really have a proper cPanel and GoDaddy is kind of hard to navigate once you log in. The DNS settings are not obvious and the interface is clunky and old looking. By comparison, 1&1 provides all the features you'd need to manage your domains … Incentivized Helpful? Elaine Truesdale Founder Chose IONOS Hosting Godaddy users seem to have more challenges with connecting their websites to their domain and customer service. Incentivized Helpful? Emily Preston Senior Internet Marketing Coordinator Chose IONOS Hosting Rackspace I find to be too pricey for the service they offer. Pagely is very much WordPress oriented. I've had downtime with both that I haven't experienced with 1&1. Incentivized Helpful?	Squarespace BM Brittany Mathiowetz Creative Consultant Chose Squarespace Each website platform has a place. Squarespace is great for simple informative websites, especially small or local businesses that are not ecommerce. Shopify is the leader for ecommerce website. Wordpress is my favorite for website that need more features and flexability. My … Incentivized Helpful? AC Ashley Clagett Director of IT Chose Squarespace We used Squarespace simply because it had the domains available that other providers said were already taken. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace is more user-friendly and sleek. I'd recommend it over Freenom for beginners and those who are more interested in running a website (instead of caring about their DNS). Incentivized Helpful? Caitlin Sloan Founder & CEO Chose Squarespace I like Squarespace better if you are starting from scratch. I was able to use Wordpress when it was an existing site and I just had to make updates, but would have a difficult time starting from the beginning and building a Wordpress site. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Blackbaud DonorCentral, Donorbox, Alaya by Benevity, Intuit Mailchimp, monday CRM and monday.com Incentivized Helpful? TN Tyler Newman Marketing Director Chose Squarespace In my opinion, Squarespace beats Wix all day. We have used both for microsite development. We use Wordpress for our main site as the featureset is open source and is considered the industry best practice. You can do a lot more specific features with WordPress that are sometimes … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace None. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace if much less work than WordPress, plus hosting and security are not an issue. GoDaddy and Wix are okay, but nowhere near the flexibility or advanced feature set that you can get with Squarespace. Compared to the other products that I have used, Squarespace … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace We picked Squarespace for a specific use case because it was easy to spin up the promotional content we needed. Incentivized Helpful? Maria Halse Duloquin Innovation Consultant Chose Squarespace Squarespace is easy to use, webflow can feel clunky (though I haven’t tried it recently), and Wix is very similar, but I preferred the Squarespace aesthetic. Also, Squarespace has clear, transparent pricing - you know what you get, and I like the design styles. I’m not in a … Incentivized Helpful? BG Bryan Grant Head of Product & Portfolio Management Chose Squarespace Squarespace was the quickest to get up and running for a basic website, and with the GoDaddy integration it simplified rapid setup. A plugin for basic language translation allowed us to be compliant from day one. Incentivized Helpful? JM Jeff Montgomery CTO Chose Squarespace 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 … Incentivized Helpful? PL Phoebe Little Promotions and Programs Associate Chose Squarespace Submittable and Squarespace serve different functions but Squarespace is by far the easier and more user friendly platform. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Wordpress is for more advanced users and allows more functionality to be built into the website. However, Squarespace is easy to use and you will be able to get a functioning website up and running on your own. That is their main point and purpose for their mission. However, … Incentivized Helpful? Andy Ryan Launch Engineer Chose Squarespace I would choose Squarespace over all the competition unless I wanted a website builder/host that had an online course portal. Squarespace has the easiest website builder. It's relatively cheap. It automatically updates. It is easy to integrate with third-party services such as … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Elementor and Shopify Incentivized Helpful? Lisa Cooley Art Advisor Chose Squarespace Both of my fields are visual, so design is as important as functionality. Unbounce looks great, but it's not set up for the same full functionality. I've also been quite familiar with Squarespace and felt comfortable with them. Incentivized Helpful? Shawn Dehner Owner Chose Squarespace Not even comparable. I was hacked within 2 years with WordPress in a brute force attack. Since going to Squarespace, I have had zero security issues. I feel the two platforms, though similar, are incomparable. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace I found it easier for me to use square space myself rather than have a middle person between me and my website. It was a lot easier for me to access and change something and when I wanted to change something on my site. It gave me flexibility and more options to utilize my … Incentivized Helpful? Nicole Nagy Product Designer Chose Squarespace I didn't evaluate any other platforms because I knew Squarespace was the best. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace's most attractive feature in comparison to WordPress and Wix is its library of themes available to use. WordPress has a neverending supply of options but that's WordPress, the industry-standard however the limited options for Squarespace is nice so you aren't … Incentivized Helpful? Darcy Knapp, MBA Owner/President Chose Squarespace Squarespace offers better SEO options and ease of use than Wix/Weebly site builders. Squarespace is easy to manage and easy to track inventory and sales. For companies with lower skill sets in-house, it is also very easy to train staff to manage the platform. Incentivized Helpful? MG Meadow Griffin Author/Illustrator Chose Squarespace I liked the usability of Squarespace better than Network Solutions for the type of website we were looking for. I found it was easier to create and customize and I liked the overall look of the website in Squarespace better than what the end result of the Network Solutions site … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Myself and my team have used more robust web development platforms for bigger organization presence on the web. However that has always required more time, effort and talent by using web developers to setup and add content to the sites. With squarespace, a site can be setup in … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace is the best option relative to other web hosting and design platforms we initially reviewed. It was a bit more expensive than some of the free models we looked at but those sites often came with hidden fees if we wanted to customize anything and Squarespace has … Incentivized Helpful?

Features

IONOS Hosting

Squarespace

Security

Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
	IONOS Hosting - Ratings	Squarespace 8.3 Ratings 1% above category average
Role-based user permissions	00 Ratings	8.30 Ratings

Platform & Infrastructure

Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
	IONOS Hosting - Ratings	Squarespace 6.6 Ratings 16% below category average
API	00 Ratings	7.10 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language	00 Ratings	6.10 Ratings

Web Content Creation

Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
	IONOS Hosting - Ratings	Squarespace 7.6 Ratings 3% below category average
WYSIWYG editor	00 Ratings	9.20 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness	00 Ratings	6.90 Ratings
Admin section	00 Ratings	7.40 Ratings
Page templates	00 Ratings	7.20 Ratings
Library of website themes	00 Ratings	7.30 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design	00 Ratings	8.10 Ratings
Publishing workflow	00 Ratings	8.30 Ratings
Form generator	00 Ratings	6.60 Ratings

Web Content Management

Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
	IONOS Hosting - Ratings	Squarespace 6.1 Ratings 21% below category average
Content taxonomy	00 Ratings	7.30 Ratings
SEO support	00 Ratings	6.40 Ratings
Bulk management	00 Ratings	5.80 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions	00 Ratings	5.50 Ratings
Community / comment management	00 Ratings	5.70 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	IONOS Hosting	Squarespace
Small Businesses	Shopify Score 8.7 out of 10	ManageWP Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Shopify Score 8.7 out of 10	RWS Tridion Sites Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises	No answers on this topic	RWS Tridion Sites Score 9.0 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	IONOS Hosting	Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend	7.0 (0 ratings)	8.6 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Usability	- (0 ratings)	8.5 (0 ratings)
Availability	10.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Performance	10.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	9.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	IONOS Hosting	Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend	Reasonable pricing (SSL certificate for only $30! vs the usual $99), ease of use on the backend and/or dashboard, and reliable customer service, all make this a win in my book. And, of course, you can't beat the free private registration that comes with each domain purchase. I've been recommending 1&1 to all my clients for domain purchases for years. Incentivized Ruby Javaid Chief Designer Read full review	We've found Squarespace perfect for quick, well-designed websites that you can literally design and launch in a day. However, if you want to get more complex with your website, including custom backend integrations or code, Squarespace presents a bit more of a challenge when it comes to what they will allow you to modify on their platform (especially using third-party integration apps). Incentivized JM Jeff Montgomery CTO Read full review
Pros	Their uptime is outstanding. They have great customer support with real people. They have all the technologies available I need to run my website. Their dashboard is easy to use. Incentivized Emily P Senior Internet Marketing Coordinator Read full review	Squarespace is very easy to use, this is a super helpful thing as small business owners we have to wear many hats and being a full blown website developer doesn't need to be one of them. Squarespace has quick and simple plugins. Squarespace allows you to easily expand as you need to. Incentivized MM Megan Murray Owner Read full review
Cons	From my experience, customer services does not know how to address issues in an understandable language I feel that they arbitrarily overcharge w/o any explanation In my opinion it is really pricey Verified User Anonymous Read full review	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 Lisa Cooley Art Advisor Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	No answers on this topic	It's a great CMS tool. Easy to use and maintain. It looks great and the support is excellent. Incentivized Sharon Reaves Owner/Founder/Design Guru Read full review
Usability	No answers on this topic	It's dead simple to use. There are no over complicated controls or tons of menus to screw things up. People with bad taste couldn't make an ugly website. While it may be frustrating for the pro designer to get exactly what they want, it prevents the uninitiated from making something ugly Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Reliability and Availability	In over 8 years of operations, we have not had a single outage that affected us. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	No answers on this topic
Performance	The email system has not impeded out mail flow in any way, and we do not notice the delays we sometimes see with other systems that include spam/junk mail filtering. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	No answers on this topic
Support Rating	No answers on this topic	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 Angela Skees Director of Graphics and Marketing Read full review
Alternatives Considered	Rackspace I find to be too pricey for the service they offer. Pagely is very much WordPress oriented. I've had downtime with both that I haven't experienced with 1&1. Incentivized Emily P Senior Internet Marketing Coordinator Read full review	Squarespace if much less work than WordPress, plus hosting and security are not an issue. GoDaddy and Wix are okay, but nowhere near the flexibility or advanced feature set that you can get with Squarespace. Compared to the other products that I have used, Squarespace definitely offers more options, customization, advanced features and design options than others, for a great price. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Scalability	The scalability of the email solution far exceeds our needs and would be suitable for organizations not looking for an enterprise sized multipurpose solution (O365, Google Workspace, etc). Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	No answers on this topic
Return on Investment	1&1 host our email and domains adequately. We can easily add and remove emails as needed. 1&1 also works with our website platform, Memberclicks. Incentivized Elaine Truesdale Founder Read full review	I can see how squarespace can improve efficiency since it's so quick to build a site on there. For those who don't want to hook up a bunch of different stuff to their website and make it work...they most likely have whatever plug in you need and you can add it. Worst case scenario, they have developers you can hire who can make what you need. As your business grows you can add an online storefront to your site and make more money that way! Easy peasy! They have an easy system for adding special SEO words/phrases so you don't have to learn SEO at all! Incentivized IS Isabel Sam Owner Read full review
ScreenShots