Joomla! vs. Squarespace

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Joomla
Score 7.4 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 8.3 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.
$12
per month
Pricing
Joomla!Squarespace
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
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!
7.0
44 Ratings
14% below category average
Squarespace
8.5
59 Ratings
6% above category average
Role-based user permissions7.044 Ratings8.559 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
6.5
41 Ratings
17% below category average
Squarespace
8.3
51 Ratings
8% above category average
API7.039 Ratings8.044 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language6.140 Ratings8.733 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
7.2
47 Ratings
5% below category average
Squarespace
7.8
88 Ratings
3% above category average
WYSIWYG editor6.046 Ratings9.076 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.044 Ratings8.069 Ratings
Admin section8.443 Ratings8.387 Ratings
Page templates7.045 Ratings7.088 Ratings
Library of website themes9.043 Ratings7.085 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.043 Ratings6.784 Ratings
Publishing workflow6.143 Ratings9.076 Ratings
Form generator6.039 Ratings7.569 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
6.6
45 Ratings
10% below category average
Squarespace
8.2
78 Ratings
11% above category average
Content taxonomy8.044 Ratings9.066 Ratings
SEO support7.044 Ratings7.171 Ratings
Bulk management4.142 Ratings8.044 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.045 Ratings8.058 Ratings
Community / comment management6.143 Ratings8.958 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
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Joomla!Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend
6.1
(68 ratings)
8.3
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(28 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
9.9
(7 ratings)
10.0
(4 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
I have a gorgeous website that I made myself, thanks to Squarespace. I'm able to integrate marketing emails, SEO, analytics, online carts, pretty much instantly. If you want to get started fast, it's really great. I think if you want to customize square space and you're having trouble, it would be most helpful to hire a square space designer. That's what I would have done in retrospect.
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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
  • As a wine company it would really love it if Squarespace had an easy plugin for wine club subscriptions.
  • Squarespace would be awesome if it could automatically take your photos that you upload on the site and optimize them for the web and for the website.
  • I do wish we could have more than two contributors for the basic website costs.
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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
Overall, as a designer, it makes perfect sense for small to large businesses to use a site such as SquareSpace. Costs are relatively reasonable with the ability to go in and do custom code.
The issue is certain aspects of it, depending on the plan, you can't do. So, if you want to do API to the site, you need to use the top-tier program to do so. Even at custom code, you won't have access to the API section.
As well, like all templates and themes, everybody is using the same style too.
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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 key positive impact on my overall business objectives is how simple Squarespace sites are to implement new information. Whenever our services change, we can quickly update pages or even change how the website flows, in a very short window of time. This allows me to get back to more urgent work sooner.
  • Our Squarespace site for Club Swim Show helped present our web series to potential partners; Club Swim Show went on to partner with a popular swimming magazine and reach a larger audience through that magazine's hosting thanks to the professional design of our original website.
  • Squarespace does not bring in customers to my storefront, which is fine for me, since I sell things infrequently and it is not my main business, but might work against someone who is expecting a Shopify or Etsy level connection with buyer markets.
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ScreenShots