Joomla! vs. Squarespace

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Joomla
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Joomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.N/A
Squarespace
Score 8.6 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.
$16
per month billed annually
Pricing
Joomla!Squarespace
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$16
per month billed annually
Core
$23
per month billed annually
Basic
$25
per month
Core
$36
per month
Plus
$39
per month billed annually
Plus
$56
per month
Advanced
$99
per month billed annually
Advanced
$139
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
JoomlaSquarespace
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPersonal: $12/month (paid annually) $16/month (paid monthly) Business: $18/month (paid annually) $26/month (paid monthly) Basic Commerce: $26/month (paid annually) $35/month (paid monthly) Advanced Commerce: $40/month (paid annually) $54/month (paid monthly)
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Joomla!Squarespace
Considered Both Products
Joomla
Chose Joomla!
Joomla and Concrete5 have about the same capability and similar issues. Purchasing a SAAS like Squarespace, Weebly or Wix would be worth the price to remove the hassle of Joomla. A more robust free CMS like WordPress or Drupal would be a better solution if you wanted to remain …
Chose Joomla!
Simpler and easy to visually understand elements and tools. We don't need to do any fancy coding or use too many plugins. çompared with WordPress and Webflow, we believe Joomla! has a more accurate and easy interface that allows the user to finish tasks in less time than the …
Chose Joomla!
Joomla! is the #2 Open Source CMS behind WordPress, which we also use, and ahead of Drupal, which we have evaluated but decided not to pursue. Joomla! generally performs better than WP for clients that need more complexity to their websites, including flexibility in templating, …
Chose Joomla!

Before I settled in on using Joomla for the City of Pomona, I experimented with WordPress and Drupal, as being the right fit for the new website. Each time I went through the analysis, research and development, both WordPress and Drupal, came up short for quickly delivering a …

Chose Joomla!
We do currently use ExpressionEngine (EE) as well as it gives us some more flexibility when trying to display documents/ reports in an automated manner and better file management and integration with FTP. We weren't very happy with Squarespace as it has a challenging user …
Squarespace
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace can't even begin to compare against any of the other options, Squarespace is a very basic, simplistic, minimal webpage builder with no special features to create a truly outstanding website. An outstanding website that brings a company customers/orders requires a …
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace is the top of the pack when it comes to "set it and forget it" website builders. Wordpess is slightly more flexible but still requires a watchful eye from and administrative standpoint. Others, like Drupal, are more extensible but are better for larger websites that …
Chose Squarespace
WordPress is much more flexible and offers a much broader and deeper range of capabilities that Squarespace. However, setting up a WordPress site can be quite time consuming in comparison, and you must commit to spending time regularly - at least once a month - to updating …
Chose Squarespace
SquareSpace is infinitely easier to use than any CMS I've used before. It's more reliable and saves a lot of time. I wouldn't recommend SquareSpace for large e-commerce sites or big government sites, but for small business, it's ideal.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Joomla!Squarespace
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
8.7
45 Ratings
8% above category average
Squarespace
6.8
61 Ratings
17% below category average
Role-based user permissions8.745 Ratings6.861 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
7.3
42 Ratings
5% below category average
Squarespace
6.9
53 Ratings
11% below category average
API6.440 Ratings7.546 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.341 Ratings6.434 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
8.4
48 Ratings
9% above category average
Squarespace
7.7
94 Ratings
0% above category average
WYSIWYG editor8.347 Ratings9.281 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.145 Ratings7.875 Ratings
Admin section10.044 Ratings7.593 Ratings
Page templates6.446 Ratings7.194 Ratings
Library of website themes8.444 Ratings7.491 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.744 Ratings8.190 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.344 Ratings7.781 Ratings
Form generator8.340 Ratings7.175 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
8.0
46 Ratings
9% above category average
Squarespace
6.6
84 Ratings
11% below category average
Content taxonomy8.045 Ratings7.472 Ratings
SEO support8.745 Ratings7.776 Ratings
Bulk management7.443 Ratings6.148 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.446 Ratings5.463 Ratings
Community / comment management8.344 Ratings6.663 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Joomla!Squarespace
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Joomla!Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(69 ratings)
8.5
(94 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(28 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(8 ratings)
8.8
(8 ratings)
Availability
9.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.8
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Joomla!Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend
The Joomla Project
It seems with the release of Joomla! 4 that the weak areas have all been covered. Its always been good for the mid-level small to large business, the blogging was WP, and the large-scale enterprise was probably bespoke. But the new interface is so simple it seems pointless using WP when Joomla! is as easy and can then grow as big as you like. The Workflows feature which allows you to set up work pipelines easily is going to be a boom to any larger enterprise sites. Couples with the new API which I got to see at one of their user groups, is amazing. They were creating articles on one site then another site was taking the feed directly for just certain categories. Really blows your mind what you could do with that and the new workflows.
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Squarespace
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.
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Pros
The Joomla Project
  • We use Joomla to build our websites and web applications because of its incredible intuitiveness and tools to make everything more manageable.
  • Its working environment is quite comfortable for my development team, and its web design resources significantly speed up our work when carrying out web development projects.
  • It allows you to use blocks to create and visually manage websites and divide them into different categories without programming knowledge.
Read full review
Squarespace
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
The Joomla Project
  • Because Joomla's user community is smaller than WP, it lacks as many choices from 3rd party developers, meaning it can be a little more difficult to find the right extension for what you need to accomplish
  • Along the same vein, most of the best 3rd-party software for Joomla! is paid
  • Simple features such as Add to Menu and Cache cleaners should be adopted as part of the Joomla! core, though they are available as extensions
  • Joomla! could use a simpler and easier URL rewriting process
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Squarespace
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
The Joomla Project
I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever.
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Squarespace
Unless our website requires significantly more functionality in the future, I can't see us terminating our contract
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Usability
The Joomla Project
Joomla! 3.x is easily installed either manually or via a script provided by your host. It contains most of the tools needed to begin creating websites right from the start. Those features that it doesn't have are easily installed via links and buttons from the thousands of extensions available in the community
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Squarespace
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.
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Performance
The Joomla Project
Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever.
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Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The Joomla Project
Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best.
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Squarespace
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
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Online Training
The Joomla Project
It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing
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Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
The Joomla Project
Joomla has gone through tremendous growing pains. It is now better than ever. But before, when it was going from 1.5-2.5, the templates and plugins would break over and over again. If you don't understand what Joomla was trying to do back then, you might have a bad attitude toward it. Today, those pains are over and things don't break like they used to during that time period.
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Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
The Joomla Project
We tested other platforms like WordPress, Magento and some local CMS. 
But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content.
Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time.
It allows you to maintain visual standardization and offers many options for working with images.
With its ability to control access to different articles, categories or even different components, it is a great tool, even if they are managed by different people.
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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 drag-and-drop grids that Squarespace has).
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Return on Investment
The Joomla Project
  • Joomla has reduced our costs of rolling out a new website because it uses less developer time and can be rolled out by individual users as needed.
  • Joomla has a lot of extensions and add-ons that make it easy to create and implement advanced solutions quickly.
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Squarespace
  • 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.
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ScreenShots