Squarespace vs. WordPress

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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.
$12
per month
WordPress
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Wordpress is an open-source publishing platform popular with bloggers, and a content management system, known for its simplicity and modifiability. Websites may host their own blogging communities, controlling and moderating content from a single dashboard.N/A
Pricing
SquarespaceWordPress
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SquarespaceWordPress
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
SquarespaceWordPress
Considered Both Products
Squarespace
Chose Squarespace
I prefer Squarespace since they have already included many of the features that I had to use plugins for when designing with WordPress. Squarespace's many tools integrate seamlessly with the rest of the site's features, compared with a frustrating battle with my WordPress
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace and Wix were the two webpage development utilities we trialed when switching from our hosted WordPress template. Both options were upgrades from what we were managing before, with quick, automated pages developed from each. Squarespace ended up being the most …
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace doesn't offer as much flexibility as WordPress or Contentful (paired with something like GatsbyJS), but that's perfectly fine for 95% of small businesses. They don't need all the bells and whistles of WordPress and they certainly don't need a fully custom website …
Chose Squarespace
Wix was the number one contender against Squarespace when deciding on our website platform, but Wix felt too clunky when it came to formatting pages due to its highly customizable nature. Blogger and WordPress are definitely better as blog sites, which did not address our …
Chose Squarespace
Much easier to use than WordPress, Umbraco, go daddy designs. Looks expensively built and beautifully designed.
Chose Squarespace
As they say, form follows function. After that, it’s about finding the template that’s the best fit for your brand. If that’s all you need, Weebly will satisfy. You can custom visualize your brand with logo, fonts, colors and more.

Chose Squarespace
Before switching to Squarespace in 2017, I had tried to build out websites on Weebly, Blogger, Wix, and WordPress. I am in no way well-versed in any any sort of code, but I love having total control of bringing my vision to life. Squarespace is the only website builder that has …
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace, like Wix and Weebly, is a closed-source platform - meaning that you don't have to deal with the security issues surrounding WordPress. You don't have plugins to update yourself, Squarespace takes care of all that for you. When compared to Wix and Weebly, …
Chose Squarespace
WordPress is great - it has a lot of intuitive features, and has grown over the years. However, it isn't really in the same league as Squarespace when it comes to simplicity. Squarespace allows you to craft beautiful websites quickly with little or not training and/or web …
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace has the simplest and most elegant WYSIWYG editor among these competitors. It's simple to understand the components and to move the elements around in a way that will look visually appealing - it's hard to make a Squarespace website look truly bad. WordPress is …
Chose Squarespace
WordPress is great for customization and extensibility but is much more of a hassle to maintain and secure. We opted for Squarespace to simplify all of those management aspects while upgrading our design. We never had much interest in going the ad network route with our blog, …
Chose Squarespace
Each website or webstore backend that I've used has different purposes, so do not let me mislead you. Squarespace provides the best balance of website, blog and storefront for my purposes, and outright beats Weebly for a better appearance in your final product. Tumblr and WordPr…
Chose Squarespace
We use Squarespace to create small to medium informational websites for clients that want an easy-to-maintain site. Most sites we design use WordPress due to its extreme flexibility and countless templates and plug-ins. While we have used Wix and Shopify to create sites, we …
Chose Squarespace
I really like Squarespace's all-in-one concept vs. WordPress, where you add each piece individually. However, if you are building a much larger site, WordPress may be better. For our needs in terms of sales, Squarespace was great.
Chose Squarespace
I actually ended up going with WordPress's OShine theme. Squarespace just missed some of the SEO and API tracking that I wanted and Elementor was too slow and WP Rocket isn't compatible with it. OShine ended up fitting the bill so everything I wanted could work together, but …
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 …
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.
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 …
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, …
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace is by far the easiest option to use by non-technical staff, so we rely on it when we need to get something to market quickly, with minimal design and development time, in a way that is maintainable by Events and Marketing staff without support from web development …
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 …
Chose Squarespace
Ultimately Squarespace was the easiest for us to use for our needs and allowed us to tie in our other ecommerce third party provider. It is competitive in costs and has good customer service.
Chose Squarespace
Squarespace had a very professional profile. They advertise on our local NPR station so I felt their values were similar in a way Their templates at-a-glance seemed user-friendly. Their marketing states that customer service is 24/7 with under an hour response time. All of this …
Chose Squarespace
The ease of use was a massive plus in Squarespace's side. I have limited knowledge of HTML and web development. Squarespace won simply because of its user-friendliness and the low barrier to entry when it comes to creating a good looking website. Every alternative that I looked …
WordPress
Chose WordPress
The two other open source tools, Joomla! and Drupal, were at one time comparable to WordPress but have since been left behind as WP has more developers working on it. Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace are all great platforms for small companies who don't want to spend any attention …
Chose WordPress
Wix and Squarespace offer low cost of entry with ongoing hosting and operating costs. They make it seem easy to create attractive websites but eventually most cases we have seen end up running into limitations with respect to extensibility and SEO opportunities.

FusionCMS is …
Chose WordPress
Squarespace and Wix make it easy for anybody to design a quick website, but lack the customization and power to make a good website. I moved our companies site from Squarespace to WordPress simply because I could not build the site I was envisioning in Squarespace, nor could I …
Chose WordPress
I already knew how to use WordPress. One time, a client asked me to set up his site on Wix and I hated the layout of the platform and the learning curve I had to go through. I gave up. Squarespace sites look good, but I couldn't get into it because I was already so familiar …
Chose WordPress
I like Squarespace better because it is a lot easier to use and I've never had any security issues with Squarespace. We don't have a developer, so WordPress is challenging to stay in control of. We have to hire a third party to ensure the site continues to function well on …
Chose WordPress
While still being relatively user-friendly (or at least pretty easy to learn the basics), WordPress blows the other hosted, 'out of the box' platforms like Wix and Squarespace out of the water. They simply can't compete when it comes to customizability, especially back-end and …
Chose WordPress
WordPress is more flexible and/or easier to use than the platforms above. While Wix and Squarespace are good for non-developers, and Drupal is good only for developers, WordPress can work well for both the end user, the viewer, and the developer.
Chose WordPress
I have never been a huge fan of platforms like Squarespace because a lot of the code is hidden behind locked doors, so from a speed and performance perspective, there's only so much you can do in order to optimize. On page speed insights, I haven't seen a Squarespace site do …
Chose WordPress
We have considered and operated within Shopify and Squarespace. Both serve their purpose for niche clients, but we do recommend WordPress as being the superior option. We find that WordPress is easier to use and offers maximum scalability while the others are more challenging …
Chose WordPress
I'm not a fan of being locked into the limitations of a single-use platform like Wix or Squarespace, and greatly prefer the portability of having a WordPress website.
Chose WordPress
Squarespace has far more options in regard to themes and design and can perform better as a traditional website. However, I feel Wordpress's tools and customization options are more robust
Chose WordPress
I found WordPress to be a bit easier to navigate through and better suited to an all around website creation. Squarespace is geared specifically towards eCommerce while Wix felt the most artsy of the three. WordPress feels like a middle ground with great customization options …
Chose WordPress
WordPress is the grandest of Wix and Squarespace just alone in how many theme and plug-in options you can have access to. Also SEO is another big role in comparison – better SEO with WordPress
Chose WordPress
For most small businesses, Squarespace is a better option. It provides all of the basic and intermediate functionality a business owner could want (e-commerce, forms, media, blog, etc) without the plugin and hacking nightmares of WordPress. It's also easier for clients to …
Chose WordPress
I used Wix and Squarespace for a few projects then I found WordPress, as a developer with programming background I needed the flexibility of adding a touch of code on my website be Wix did not allow me or give me that flexibility. WordPress gave me the room for customization …
Chose WordPress
Not as user friendly, and much more bloated than these other lighter-weight CRMs, but the available integrations and total customization available from WordPress is unmatched in the industry.
Chose WordPress
WordPress is by far the best website CMS available on the market. It is an open-source free solution with endless possibilities of websites that you can build. You don't need to be a developer to build a site, but there are options to use code to take your website to the next …
Chose WordPress
It is the best and free platform if you compare others and if you will use WordPress you don't have to know how to code. Basic information will be more than enough to start. Creating pages and editing posts you created is so easy to manage. If you use other platforms, it will …
Chose WordPress
I think WordPress is a superior platform compared to others because of the vast number of plugins and themes. Developers are always creating more plugins and functionality for WordPress as well, so it is constantly being improved upon. There are limitless possibilities for what …
Chose WordPress
Unless you have a very small e-commerce store, WordPress is a much better option. A WordPress site integrated with WooCommerce is a powerful shop tool, and if you aren't selling online, then WordPress is assuredly the way to go. Their WYSIWYG editor makes things as easy as can …
Chose WordPress
WordPress was an excellent balance between allowing options for customization and giving us reasonable efficiency in development and content administration. We still use other tools for certain cases, such as when we need to launch a smaller site quickly or when we need very …
Chose WordPress
WordPress has the largest community of users, selection of plugins and themes, and the best third party support on the market.

It's tempting to go with something that is less customizable and therefore requires less maintenance, but if you desire flexibility, WordPress is a good …
Chose WordPress
I prefer Wordpress because it is open source and has a huge community of users and developers. So it is incredibly flexible already because of the plugins available, and it can be further customized to any extent by readily available developer talent.
Chose WordPress
I am the biggest fan of WordPress compared to others I've tried because you can further customize and edit your site to your liking. The others feel less intuitive and more cumbersome to update. You need to know more CSS/HTML coding in order to make a change to the other sites. …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SquarespaceWordPress
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Squarespace
8.5
59 Ratings
6% above category average
WordPress
8.2
127 Ratings
2% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.559 Ratings8.2127 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Squarespace
8.3
51 Ratings
8% above category average
WordPress
6.4
104 Ratings
18% below category average
API8.044 Ratings6.394 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.733 Ratings6.679 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Squarespace
7.8
88 Ratings
3% above category average
WordPress
8.1
133 Ratings
6% above category average
WYSIWYG editor9.076 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.069 Ratings7.3121 Ratings
Admin section8.387 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Page templates7.188 Ratings8.3128 Ratings
Library of website themes7.185 Ratings8.5130 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design6.784 Ratings8.6129 Ratings
Publishing workflow9.076 Ratings8.5125 Ratings
Form generator7.569 Ratings6.3104 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Squarespace
8.2
78 Ratings
11% above category average
WordPress
7.9
131 Ratings
7% above category average
Content taxonomy8.966 Ratings7.0113 Ratings
SEO support7.171 Ratings8.2118 Ratings
Bulk management8.044 Ratings7.5100 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.058 Ratings8.5121 Ratings
Community / comment management8.958 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Best Alternatives
SquarespaceWordPress
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
SquarespaceWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(88 ratings)
8.9
(169 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(4 ratings)
9.4
(36 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(4 ratings)
9.6
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
SquarespaceWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Read full review
Automattic
If your business relies heavily on content creation, and particularly on blog posts, then WordPress is really the best option you have. But if you don't have a blog, you only need static pages, or you want to build an eCommerce site, then you might want to explore other alternatives.
Read full review
Pros
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
Automattic
  • WordPress is incredibly easy to set up and get running with little to no technical knowledge. Most web hosts will do it for you, since it's so easy.
  • With thousands of themes available for free and for low cost, WordPress can accommodate any design you can imagine.
  • The community behind WordPress is generous, and there are loads of educational opportunities both online and in person to learn and connect with other users.
Read full review
Cons
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.
Read full review
Automattic
  • WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
  • Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
  • WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Squarespace
Unless our website requires significantly more functionality in the future, I can't see us terminating our contract
Read full review
Automattic
My rating is based on the knowledge I have of the community that WordPress has had built around it for years now. It's as solid as it comes when you talk about community involvement and expansion. There's no other CMS out there that can match-up with it, hands down.
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
Automattic
It's a sophisticated but easy to use piece of software. Many of the content addition pieces are familiar from other pieces of software so there isn't a huge learning curve. And for new areas, there is a lot of info on WordPress.org as well as other WordPress help sites.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.
Read full review
Performance
Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.
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Support Rating
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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Automattic
WordPress itself only has community service so your experience will depend on where you turn. Online, through forums and community boards, support is rudimentary but effective. You can easily turn to your local community and find exceptional individuals who know and use WordPress regularly for more advanced, inexpensive, support. I'm rating this less than 10 because of the lack of any formal support provided by a company.
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In-Person Training
Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.
Read full review
Online Training
Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Automattic
It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution
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Alternatives Considered
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.
Read full review
Automattic
We have considered and operated within Shopify and Squarespace. Both serve their purpose for niche clients, but we do recommend WordPress as being the superior option. We find that WordPress is easier to use and offers maximum scalability while the others are more challenging to design, code, configure and launch.
Read full review
Scalability
Squarespace
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.
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Return on Investment
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.
Read full review
Automattic
  • WordPress helps us reduce website management costs because we can oversee updates in-house.
  • WordPress is easy to use, reducing the amount of time we spend on website management.
  • The ease of use enables us to offer website management for clients, helping us grow our capabilities/business.
Read full review
ScreenShots