Oversimplification leads to restricted design, but if you're on a tight budget...
November 23, 2018
Oversimplification leads to restricted design, but if you're on a tight budget...
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Squarespace
I use Squarespace not for my own website, but for clients. I have had four clients over the past year that have chosen to use Squarespace for their website and they have hired me to help with various tasks, such as styling, third-party integrations, design review and more. Squarespace was being used by independent artists and small business owners.
Squarespace makes creating a simple website easy for people with no real web development experience. It offers a fairly clean interface featuring a visual builder WYSIWYG editor and the ability to drag and drop elements quickly.
Squarespace makes creating a simple website easy for people with no real web development experience. It offers a fairly clean interface featuring a visual builder WYSIWYG editor and the ability to drag and drop elements quickly.
- Fairly simple to use visual builder for front-end website development
- The cost is very low
- The setup, from purchasing a domain and certifying with SSL through building pages is relatively simple for non-coders.
- Restrictive when it comes to design. I tend not to recommend Squarespace to any organizations of more than one or two people because it is more or a temporary "fix" for not having a website, in my POV.
- You never own your website, as it is stuck to Squarespace's proprietary platform.
- Your website design will most likely look like everyone else's who uses the same Squarespace theme, as people who go this route tend to do very little customization.
- There is still a learning curve, regardless of how easy people say it is for beginners.
- The Acquity appointment scheduling platform allows people to book directly on a Squarespace site, which helps keep more of each purchase as opposed to going to a third-party ticket sales platform.
- As a web developer, I tend not to recommend Squarespace due to the lack of customization and uniqueness when establishing a web presence.
I select Squarespace only when my client is on an extremely short budget, otherwise I'm going with WordPress. Wix is basically the same animal as Squarespace and I do not really see the benefit of one over the other. Shopify is one of the most useful DIY builders when it comes to creating an online store; I often recommend it over WordPress for simplicity (when recommending for a noob).