Squarespace vs. Local by WP Engine

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

It's great for quickly cloning an environment down from WP Engine and/or Flywheel servers but can also just be used as a way to setup local environments on your own with manual syncing. If you need to spin up local environments that are not WordPress based then this tool isn't ideal. It can be used for it but it's not design for that.

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

• Easily clone installs from WP Engine to local envrionments
• 1 click setup of Local WordPress sites for new or existing builds
• Can optionally push back to WP Engine with ease
• Easily change PHP versions
• Integrates with IDE for error reporting

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

• Interface for syncing files could be improved
• Would be nice if there was an easy way to use media from WP Engine host to save on space for larger sites
• 1 click login doesn't always work as expected if SSL in place.

Incentivized

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

Super easy to use the only thing that might need some improvement is the interface for syncing files. It's intuitive for push/pulling down from WP Engine and Flywheel environments but can sometimes disconnect and require re authentication. Also currently sometimes it can be difficult to tell proper account name you are pulling from bug that's a known bug that's being worked on

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

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

While Docker is powerful, setup is more complicated and is less consistent. Local minimizes friction and does what it needs to do with out extra complication that can sometimes come with using Docker or other platforms.

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

• Save hours of onboarding time for development
• Consistent environments across the time minimize unexpected issues
• Integrated error reporting makes it easy to track down issues

Incentivized