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Squarespace

Squarespace

Starting at $12 per month
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Overview

What is Squarespace?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Squarespace has become a go-to platform for small businesses, creative professionals, and marketers looking to build and manage visually …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 16 features
  • Admin section (87)
    8.3
    83%
  • Page templates (88)
    7.1
    71%
  • Library of website themes (85)
    7.1
    71%
  • Mobile optimization / responsive design (84)
    6.7
    67%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.squarespace.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $12 per month
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Features

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

8.5
Avg 8.0

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

8.3
Avg 7.7

Web Content Creation

Features that support the creation of website content.

7.8
Avg 7.6

Web Content Management

Features for managing website content

8.2
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a CMS platform that allows users to create a DIY blog, eCommerce store, and/or portfolio (visual art or music). Their templates are designed to be elegant and give users maximum control over the look & feel of the website. Some Squarespace templates are industry or use case-specific, such as menu builders for restaurant sites.

Squarespace allows eCommerce users to customize not only elements like themes and fonts, but also structural elements like online store layout. Templates are optimized for mobile shopping. SEO, product galleries, and order management features are built in. Squarespace integrates with Stripe for credit card payments, and ShipStation for shipping.

Squarespace Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Squarespace starts at $12.

Reviewers rate WYSIWYG editor and Publishing workflow highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Squarespace are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(298)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Squarespace has become a go-to platform for small businesses, creative professionals, and marketers looking to build and manage visually appealing websites. With its well-designed templates and extensive availability of designer fonts, Squarespace allows users to create a professional-looking website with ease. Users appreciate the platform's intuitive interface and drag-and-drop functionality, making it accessible for both beginners and design professionals. Squarespace also offers useful tools like Analytics to track website traffic and sales data, as well as an Abandoned Cart feature to follow up with potential customers. Furthermore, Squarespace's integration with payment systems like Stripe and PayPal simplifies the process of setting up e-commerce capabilities on a website. Whether it's showcasing products, maintaining portfolios, or running corporate websites, Squarespace provides a time-saving and cost-effective solution for individuals and businesses alike.

Intuitive Interface: Users have consistently praised Squarespace's intuitive interface, with many stating that it has made website creation and management effortless. Numerous reviewers have mentioned that they can easily navigate through different sections of their websites and perform tasks such as managing portfolios, blog posts, and responding to comments seamlessly. This user-friendly interface has greatly enhanced users' efficiency in managing their websites and engaging with their audience.

Wide Selection of Templates: The extensive collection of beautifully designed templates in Squarespace has received high praise from users. Many reviewers appreciate the wide variety of options available, as well as the frequent addition of new templates. These templates are seen as time-saving features for users with limited design background and coding knowledge. Thanks to the intuitive nature of these templates, users find them extremely easy to work with and customize according to their preferences.

Great Customer Support: Squarespace's customer support has been highly regarded by users for its helpfulness and responsiveness. Reviewers mention that the support team is not only friendly but also goes above and beyond to assist them whenever issues arise. Users appreciate having responsive email replies and live chat options available for support. The excellent customer service provided by Squarespace ensures that users feel supported throughout their website building journey

Cons:

  1. Limited customization options: Users have expressed frustration with the limited customization options in Squarespace, particularly in terms of design and layout. Several users have mentioned that the templates provided by Squarespace can look somewhat generic and lack flexibility for creating more complex websites.
  2. Difficulties in navigation and finding features: Some users find it difficult to navigate Squarespace's user interface and locate certain features. There is a learning curve associated with the software, making it challenging for users to find their way around and access specific functionalities.
  3. Lack of customer support options: Customer service being available only through email has been seen as a drawback by some users. They feel that having additional support channels, such as live chat or phone support, would be beneficial for resolving issues or seeking assistance more efficiently.

Based on user reviews, users recommend using Squarespace for any level of web experience and most businesses. They find Squarespace easy to use and navigate, and highly recommend it for beginners. Users suggest exploring different templates and reaching out to support if needed. Squarespace is also recommended for small businesses, ecommerce, organizations, and artists. Users advise learning basic HTML and CSS coding for advanced features and understanding SEO for better website performance. They highly recommend Squarespace as the best website provider and recommend purchasing a domain through Squarespace for convenience. Users advise planning the site on paper before executing it in the system and recommend watching tutorials and experimenting with the program beforehand. Overall, users highly recommend using Squarespace for creating professional-looking websites with minimal effort.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 88)
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January 05, 2024

Easy to Manage and Learn

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Squarespace as our website. We have implemented many forms through it and other programs to easily track users and make the website more user friendly.
  • website design
  • customer service
  • user friendly
  • information collection
  • web design specifications
I think Squarespace is a great website creator for companies that do not want to have to do much on the website design and upkeep especially if you do not have a team or specific person making changes to the site. It is easy enough for someone who does not have experience in website design.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our nonprofit website is on Squarespace. The websites provides a simple way for multiple users within our organization to regularly update pages. The platform is simple enough for team members of varying tech abilities to create a good looking project. The website platform allowed us to overhaul our old design without outsourcing to a web designer.
  • ease of use
  • hyperlinking pages
  • built in youtube compatibility
  • layout freedom
  • easier to create drop down menus
  • allow for more buttons on the main menu
It’s a great platform if you want to have multiple users edit the site. You don’t need a web specific person because the platform is easy enough for people of limited tech abilities to use it. Squarespace is less useful if you need really precise item placement on pages. The way the platform uses blocks to hold items means that it’s hard to overlay those blocks or get a page to look how you want. Also mobile version of the site often looks bad and is hard to fix.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As our backend for our website and some website creation. Used the templates to build the look of our site
  • Easy to build templates
  • Easy to adjust settings on the templates
  • Easy to link documents for the public to view on your site
  • Easy to build test backend pages or make those pages live with drag and drop feature
  • Templates are meant not to be broken too much but that limits the variability. Some design feature restrictions could be lowered
  • Sometimes its unclear whether a background page is live or not.
  • Hard to run backend dns items
I believe Squarespace is perfect for startup companies. You can have a serviceable website up in a day. It works well with any domain service, we used Google Domain, which they purchased recently to make things less confusing. Once you get into custom websites with full service SEO and many other features, that web designer will need to completely start from scratch building your site. However, you do not really need this until you have a large company, if at all. Squarespace offers tons of functionality for online purchases, private customer access areas and much more.
Andy Ryan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Squarespace for our own websites for a number of years. We have recommended it to clients. We have helped clients create, edit, and manage Squarespace pages. I believe it is way easier than WordPress. Squarespace auto updates but WordPress does not. Squarespace is really easy to use, so we usually recommend it to our clients.
  • They have auto updates so you don't have to worry about security issues
  • The editor and templates are super easy to use
  • Setup is quick and easy
I think if you just need a basic website with info, Squarespace is the best choice. I've used WordPress before and you have to constantly update it and the plugins all the time because of security issues. Squarespace is really easy. It has nice templates to work off of and the design and building process is intuitive. They have done a really good job making a platform for non-web-developer people.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Squarespace to build the microsite for one of our signature events. It is paired with another tool for actual ticket purchases, but Squarespace drives most of the front-facing website. It was set up by an external vendor, and maintenance is jointly handled by the vendor and our internal team.
  • Minimal development experience needed to maintain.
  • Solid templates that look professional with minimal work.
  • Easy to manage multiple sites.
  • WYSIWYG can be difficult to work with - feels like designing in Microsoft Word sometimes.
  • Templates can be limiting and are generally less flexible than competitors like WordPress.
  • Plugins and advanced features are mostly not an option.
Squarespace is really great for a quick solution that can be maintained by non-technical staff while presenting a very professional image. It is not a great solution for developers or those needing to come up with a more advanced or customized solution than you are given out of the box.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Wix for our small to medium-sized businesses who need a website built without the hassle that comes with platforms like Wordpress.
  • Easy to use
  • No need to worry about hosting
  • Great integration with various tools
  • Mobile Responsiveness
  • Not as customizable as Wordpress
  • Squarespace version updates can get frustrating
Squarespace is perfect for a business that wants the benefits of a website but doesn't need anything complex. It's easy to use, there is no need to worry about plugin updates or hosting and it looks great. It's easy to update even if you don't have website experience.
Lisa Cooley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Squarespace for two websites. One for me personally and another for my company. It definitely makes great websites that look fantastic on both mobile and laptops. I also use it for marketing lists and emails, for selling products with a checkout, and for analytics. I'm considering using it for memberships but haven't gotten there yet.
  • Looks incredible
  • Great integration of marketing and SEO for websites
  • Great integration for marketing emails
  • Sites are mobile responsive without having to design a separate site
  • 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.
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.
Shawn Dehner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Squarespace hosts our business website. It is a safe and worry-free platform that looks and works great.
  • Security
  • Customer support
  • Maintenance
  • Squarespace would be improved by offering options for variants for downloadable products.
It's safe and reliable and offers easy-to-implement and good-looking website templates at a reasonable price.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Square space was an excellent platform that I used to display my online portfolio. It was a seamless experience from start to finish with setting up my platform. I was very pleased with the customer service that was offered and would highly recommend it to someone who was also looking for a similar system to be used.
  • Streamlined appearance.
  • Multiple options.
  • Space for creativity and ingenuity.
  • Trying to configure site options.
  • Adapting a template to a site.
  • Being able to move around the interface.
It is a well-suited option for a small business I found in my own personal experience. It allows for the exposure of creativity and also the personalization of choices found both on the site and with plug-ins that a user may find more suitable to their style or needs.
May 24, 2021

Squarespace Review

Nicole Nagy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Squarespace for personal usage. As a product designer and photographer, I require a place to house my work that's accessible to others. Squarespace fulfills that need for me. I can house all my projects, and make sure it's password protected in case the work is confidential. It also provides a clear solution for photographers when it comes to uploading and placing images on a page that's visually appealing.
  • Image Stacking
  • Website Building
  • Customization
  • Drag and Drop
  • Domain accessibility
Personally, I think Squarespace is suited for anyone who wants to either start their own mini business or showcase their work. There are so many integrations Squarespace can handle, and it's a beautiful layout that's easy to use! However, larger businesses... I don't think the website could sustain that much data... so if you're trying to start a software company I'd recommend using something else.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Squarespace is used for clients who need a website and want to be able to change things on the backend without the help of anyone else. It's an affordable and aesthetically pleasant option. It's an easy to use CMS and has enough capabilities within it.
  • Pleasant themes
  • Usability
  • Customization lacking (CSS)
I would recommend the use of Squarespace for people who want a minimal and attractive website as Squarespace does this sort of theme well. It's easy enough to use and affordable. Good for newbie web designers and/or people who are new to making a website or on a limited budget. Also for those who don't need too much customization and that want to be able to make edits on their own without the use of a developer.
Darcy Knapp, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have many clients that use Squarespace for their website and ecommerce solution. Squarespace offers a great starting point for SMBs to get into ecommerce and have online check out for services.
  • Easy to navigate
  • Simple to update products
  • Ease of use for check out pages
  • Simple platform for site management
  • Low SEO value
  • Hard to expand for larger scale online catalogs
  • Limited check out integrations
Depending on the size of the catalog, volume of sales and needs of the client, Squarespace is a good starter solution. For a more robust solution and higher volume clients they will need to change platforms down the road. Many clients last years in Squarespace until they have the sales volume and needs that a more robust platform offers (Shopify or BigCommerce).
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Squarespace to create website for Legends of Erin. I found it worked well for what I was looking for. I felt like the amount of templates and flexibility were perfect for the sort of website I was designing. I also found the templates highly customizable in the Design menue to fit the feel I was looking for.
  • Templates and Designs worked well for the sort of website I was creating
  • Blogging Feature was great to keep customers up to date on current events
  • Great price for what your getting in the website deign
  • Excellent support whenever you run into a snag. Live chat I have found was a great tool and you get responded to right away.
  • I find the usability of the editor to be a little frustrating at times. I would have preferred to have an autosave feature instead of having to save every change.
  • Page speed is low, which makes for a poor smartphone experience.
If your looking for a tool that's a great price and helps you create a smaller website then this is the tool for you. For larger websites this would not be the right tool, but for artistic sells, book sells, and showing off artwork I found Squrespace to be an excellent tool.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SquareSpace is being used by the marketing department of our Independent Research Group. They setup a marketing site to showcase our research team and the multiple projects that they are working on. We are keeping this site separate from our organization site as we want to create a unique identify for this smaller research group to gain traction for the multiple projects.
  • Easy to set up initially
  • Learning curve isn't steep to access the dashboard features
  • Decent Analytics to keep track of basic traffic data that helps in making decisions.
  • Needs more integrations from other web friendly platform tools.
  • Not innovating fast enough - I feel their updates aren't creative enough
  • Better Video & multimedia integration.
SquareSpace is suited for straight forward, more simplistic web pages. We set up the informational site for our small research group with 8 pages to showcase a few new projects with pictures, information and some multimedia files. However for a more complicated workflow and forms, we wouldn't choose SquareSpace as it doesn't have more integrations with our backend Azure systems. I wouldn't recommend it for large corporations with complicated workflows. Its more suited for smaller businesses.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Squarespace for web hosting and website design for the past six years. We utilize it across all departments of our organization, providing an overview and background about our work and services as well as linking to social media, curriculum portals, and embedding student scholarship and fellowship applications.
  • Out-of-the-box templates make it easy for non-technical people to get started
  • Easy to manage, add users, and customize administrative features
  • Ability to integrate a number of other services and applications
  • For those who are a bit more savvy than a typical non-customized website but not proficient coders, the tools can seem a bit limiting in ability to really adapt and tweak visuals and special content
  • Doesn't always play friendly with mobile versions and different browsers and can be difficult to know, at times, how the content will look across the internet and smart phones
  • Limited customization of payment/donation features requires us to use a separate platform for online payments
Overall, Squarespace is the best in its field...providing the best bang for the buck when it comes to web hosting and web design features without requiring a full-time web manager to oversee the site on a regular basis. We have used the service for six years and do not have any intention of switching or looking at other options anytime soon.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I went through a trial to see if Squarespace would fit my business well for a website earlier this year. I wanted to tinker with the features and ease of creating the website and also see how well it would solve other SEO and tracking issues I've had over the years. While I did find it very easy to use, unfortunately, I found WordPress to work better for me overall and I went with WordPress.
  • 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.
  • SEO doesn't seem to crawl as well on different search engines.
  • I wanted to hook up my API code to my squarespace site to see how it tracks visitors and I didn't have a way to do that.
  • Website loading time felt kind of average (3-5 seconds). I like to be around 1 second or less.
If you've started up a business and the idea of learning how to build a website and/or hiring a designer is just out of the question for you...this is your solution. You can easily have a beautiful website up and running in just a day or two using Squarespace and it isn't horrifically frustrating like other website templates or software can be. The only downside is that your SEO doesn't seemed to get picked up by crawlers as easily as other solutions and you cannot create your own code to add to Squarespace for other things you'd like to track. Other than that, this is a very easy platform to use and you can easily have a very professional and beautiful site up in just a day or two and your membership pays for all those other things that you don't want to look up that you need to purchase when buying a domain etc... It's a great solution for the non-tech business owner who just wants something up and running quickly.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Squarespace to sell our products at the height of the COVID pandemic when our retail stores were closed. The product was easy to set up and got us selling in a flash!
  • Fast setup
  • Easy-to-understand backend
  • Great customer service
  • Back end does require some technical knowledge
  • There is no scraping opportunity from our our website, which would have improved content speed
  • Customer service was email only
Squarespace is great for selling products online. It's not as appropriate when selling in person. We did not use the product as a point-of-sale service, but they do have that option. Overall, highly recommend. Especially as the fees the service charges are so low.
Jared Jacobson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Squarespace has been used to develop a web portal for a speciality food company. It is addressing the problem of trying to get more customers to be interested in ordering speciality food online. This site was used across the entire organization and we were constantly making improvements to the site.
  • Provides great looking templates
  • Provides good online sessions to develop skills
  • Provides website analytics
  • The forum needs to have more users
  • Help center can have more videos
  • Need more templates for more industries
Squarespace is well suited for small companies that need an effective website to help promote their product or service to a specific group of customers. It is great if you need to market your business, publish a blog, promote an event, or just sell products. I would not try to use it to market myself for a position at a major corporation.
Michael Chow | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
A client of mine purchased Squarespace as their website for their business. Even though a custom design website would have cost more, she elected to pursue Squarespace for the ease of drag and drop and the ideas of a future blog.

Except they found it more confusing. The learning curve wasn't confusing. They didn't have a comprehensive flair for good design, usage of typography and colors for the website. That's where I come in, and I designed a site using the Squarespace interface with ease. It's likely one of the most accessible third-party platforms I have used!
  • Blogging feature - easy to set up
  • A variety of templates and designs for the clients to from
  • Mobile apps
  • Couldn't see anything wrong. Almost makes me want to stop creating custom sites because of Squarespace!
Although there are templates and themes, if you are skilled in web development or web design, one could further customize the site. You can use your custom code to CSS whatever you need to do. One is not stuck to the template or theme.
Don Stone | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I use Squarespace for small website design projects. If my client needs a simple ad fast website design that they can update themselves, I will suggest WordPress or Squarespace for their site. The choice of platform will depend on the client's needs and their understanding of website design. Some clients prefer an easier-to-maintain website like Squarespace.
  • The sites created in Squarespace are easy for my clients to maintain.
  • Updating a Squarespace site can be completed by the client
  • It is easy for me to quickly design and implement a wide range of websites for my clients.
  • Maintaining a Squarespace website costs more than a traditional or WordPress site.
  • Building larger or more complex sites is difficult.
  • Lack of 3rd party plug-ins reduces customization options.
Squarespace can be used to create fast and amazing-looking websites. It is perfect for clients that have little to no website design experience. I will suggest Squarespace as an option for small business sites especially local business websites. If I am creating a larger site or site that requires customization, I would normally use WordPress to create the site.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Squarespace for all our websites. We have multiple domains and multiple websites, some simply splash pages and others full websites with e-commerce. Squarespace allows us to quickly create clean, professional websites with very little lift. As a small business most of our organization is using Squarespace. This allows us to save time and money not just once but ongoing as it is so easy to update.
  • 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.
  • 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.
[Squarespace is] really great for small businesses where the owner or few employees have to do many jobs. Less appropriate for full blown ecommerce driven websites. Great for being able to quickly get something online with a clean and up to date look. For those wanting a product subscription plugin I have yet to find one that fits with Squarespace that fits my wine club needs.
Courtney Birnbaum | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I began using Squarespace to maintain a production blog for web series Club Swim Show, which worked very well. Squarespace provides a very versatile, customizable website building platform that was easy to update with blog posts and to keep a specific look to the overall production website for the social media and promotion department. I continue to use Squarespace for my husband's and my portfolio sites, where I can showcase portfolio work and offer an easy-to-use storefront for any merchandise we have available to sell related to our graphic design and art.
  • Squarespace makes it simple to set up your website, whether you know a lot or very little about web design. HTML coding can be used but is not necessary, thanks to the hub's large selection of templates for both overall website look and individual pages.
  • The backend "Dashboard" for Squarespace sites is very clean and clear — navigation is simple to get started, and if you select a wrong section, you can easily go back to the main menus.
  • Commerce is very nice. I've used Shopify and a few custom store backends, and Squarespace stands out as one of the best. Because I'm a longterm user, I have certain benefits that now have a different price point, but I'd recommend their store as a very good option for most groups.
  • Analytics are pretty standard, which is nice for groups who want to keep track of basic traffic and sales without needing a secondary tracker, but may not satisfy someone looking for extra robust information.
  • It takes practice to get used to the editing flow for setting up pages in Squarespace: you need to both use an on-page "Page Content" tab to edit most aspects but also use a gear icon on the left-hand sidebar to finish setting up the pages with SEO, social image and metadata style descriptions.
  • Because so much of your website is created through drag and drop, it can be frustrating at times when items do not move as precisely as you need. I end up having to resize columns after laying out the whole page from time to time.
  • I pay for a domain through Squarespace because it keeps it simple, but the pricing is not ideal, especially if you need more than one domain. If you are bringing your own domain names, there is extra work, but it does work.
The beauty of Squarespace is its cohesive, "all-in-one" platform for building visually striking websites that communicate your goals to your audience, and then adding in a long list of other marketing tools to connect. Squarespace has done everything that I've used well, but there are so many options that it may be difficult to find yourself needing all of them—or affording them since there are different subscription levels that can add up for an individual but would be well within the budget of an established firm. If you already have reliable clients and a set workflow for website domains, marketing tools, email blasts, professional email hosting, analytics, web storefront, and logo design, for example, you may prefer to keep all those settings outside of your Squarespace account and let Squarespace excel at what it does best: let you build and host your website on a reliable platform. You may find it more streamlined to run all of those out of Squarespace! That's why there are options. Overall, Squarespace remains my preferred source for building and hosting websites, with the options I need like hosting blog, portfolio, and store pages on the same site, without needing to HTML code.
Josh Summerhays | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Squarespace as our primary web presence for both our online store and blog. We sell digital products via Squarespace's eCommerce platform. I am the primary Squarespace user and am responsible for all content updates and edits in the store and on the blog. Squarespace enables us to create a good-looking website for our small business without additional help from a designer. It also integrates easily with our Stripe and Paypal accounts.
  • Squarespace makes it very easy to get products listing in an eCommerce store. The interface is intuitive (they've improved in this regard quite a bit in their recent update, in my opinion) and quick to navigate.
  • Squarespace is designed for fast deployment. While it sacrifices some customization, it is very simple to get your website framed up, the pages filled out with images and content, 3rd party integrations set up, and everything launched.
  • The tools for building your content are easy to understand use. They've improved greatly with the functionality for inserting a content block. It used to be pretty buggy or fiddly but you can now just place your cursor in the editor where you want to insert something, see an indicator for where the new content will be inserted, click, and you're on your way.
  • Solid uptime performance. I've never had problems with my website going down after two years as a customer.
  • Automatic updates keep the site secured and free of malware or other problems that tend to afflict the average WordPress user.
  • Design options tend to be limited unless you venture into the world of add-ons where things can get quite technical. If you're looking for a plug-and-play, you'll get it here, but you will likely have to concede some personal design preferences to fit the boundaries of their templates.
  • It can be a little bit tricky at first to figure out the Pages tool and how to use it to get your navigation the way you want. I have some pages that I don't want in the primary navigation and
  • This platform really needs more turnkey functionality for a membership site, recurring payments, gated content, etc. I hope that's coming at some point. Right now, you're better off using Squarespace for a more conventional eCommerce business.
  • If you're a blogger and want to load up your site with ad placements, Squarespace is not for you. The platform is really unfriendly for any kind of ad network integrations, including AdSense.
Squarespace is well suited for small business eCommerce. Their tools are great for people with a bias toward creating highly aesthetic web experiences with little to no custom development required. Squarespace is excellent for photographers and other types of makers to showcase their art and creations effectively online.

Squarespace is not a great choice for ad-revenue-reliant bloggers or similar content creators. Its eCommerce tools are great for launching quickly but lack a lot of customization options without custom development. If you have the resources to go that route, however, there are some great Squarespace development shops that can do some pretty cool stuff.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Squarespace to build out one of our sister websites. It was a simple website, so this tool worked for us perfectly. It helps us solve the issue of creating quick websites for ourselves and for our clients if needed.
  • Squarespace is great because the interface is simple. Anyone can build a website in this platform.
  • I love that analytics are tracked within the software itself.
  • User management and editing is easy.
  • Writing blog posts are easy.
  • Squarespace is simple, which is a positive, but it also lacks a lot of other tools for creating further complexities.
  • The templates could definitely be improved.
  • Some templates are not responsive.
Squarespace is suitable for websites that are simple but you want to look elegant. While the templates are not complex, they look very clean. It is appropriate for any company that needs a simple website that can be designed quick.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our non-profit uses Squarespace as our website builder for our organization's website. We use Squarespace as a solution for our web presence and for e-commerce capabilities that has allowed us to sell merch and physical CDs. We've also used Squarespace's e-commerce to "sell" free PDF downloads with resources for teachers, which has also allowed us to collect their email addresses for further engagement. We previously used Squarespace's Donation capabilities as well, which was fantastic when we were just getting started. (We now have a Bloomerang form embedded into our Squarespace site.)
  • Design - Squarespace is like an Apple product, it just looks really nice and does what you want it to do out of the box. If you're like most young non-profits, you probably just want to put up a basic website that looks visually appealing, presents information about your work, and collects donations. Squarespace is fantastic for that purpose.
  • Accessible editing - If you have folks on staff who are not tech people, they will still likely be able to make quick updates to text or replace a photo with Squarespace. The editor is very newbie-friendly, and you can easily add restricted contributor users who can make certain changes, but can't bork the whole thing. Compared to a WordPress dashboard, Squarespace is super simple.
  • Landing pages - Squarespace has a feature called "Cover Pages". These are really handy for when you'd like to make a quick landing page for a specific project or take your site offline temporarily. If you set up your site and only select a cover page as your site structure, the price for monthly service also drops dramatically.
  • Domain included - When you create a Squarespace site, you can register a domain name for free for the first year. Many organizations have trouble keeping track of a separate web host and domain registrar and will lose their domain name unintentionally over an unpaid bill. Having the domain and the site hosting/builder all in one package comes in handy to avoid this situation.
  • Pricing - I haven't done a lot of shopping around, but the price points for getting to e-commerce functionality seem fairly steep. It's worth doing the math on your expected sales to see if you should choose the commerce plan with transaction fees (less expensive monthly) or without. It's also challenging to compare with other solutions, because Squarespace is all inclusive while another product like WooCommerce will cost money as you go along in the build and can be hard to predict.
  • Store Products are rigid - Squarespace uses Product objects for e-commerce, and they are created by the page. In other words, if you start building a store page and add 10 products, those products will not be accessible on other store pages across your site. If you're working with a large inventory, this can be a nightmare.
  • E-commerce add ons - We were looking to create a popup that encouraged customers to donate to our organization, and this isn't natively available inside Squarespace. It was frustrating that we had to do a lot of searching for a third party company and pay $50 to get this done. It would be nice if Squarespace could offer a marketplace of approved vendors if they aren't interested in building out these types of standard e-commerce behaviors. I had to trust the $50 code would do what we wanted it to do without any backing from Squarespace. Luckily, it worked beautifully!
Squarespace is fantastic for the first stages of an organization's existence on the internet. It's simple to set up, it looks good out of the box, your domain name is free with the Squarespace package, and it will provide all the basic functionality a small organization will need as it grows. You can quickly accept donations online, too.

You can also purchase a Google Workspace account via Squarespace and keep billing for website, domain, and professional (@your domain) email in a central place. It's a great way to put everything together for your online portion of the organization.

If you're running a larger e-commerce operation beyond maybe a dozen products, Squarespace might not be the right choice for you simple because the inventory management piece will end up costing time in labor and agita.
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