Great for out-of-the-box speedy launch, easy to maintain
May 10, 2021

Great for out-of-the-box speedy launch, easy to maintain

Josh Summerhays | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Squarespace

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 enabled us to control the brand experience with our most loyal customers more effectively than driving them to listings on 3rd party marketplaces. We're able to offer customers discounts and offers that we didn't have before.
  • We're generating 30% more sales now from organic search than when we were a marketplace-only seller.
  • Outreach from brands in our industry has increased now that we have our own professional web presence. We have several sponsorships and other relationships that came to us as a result of our website and blog.
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, preferring to create pleasant, unobtrusive blog content that would drive people to our products. Squarespace has been great for that.

Do you think Squarespace delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Squarespace's feature set?

No

Did Squarespace live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Squarespace go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Squarespace again?

Yes

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.

Squarespace Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG editor
8
Code quality / cleanliness
6
Admin section
7
Page templates
8
Library of website themes
7
Mobile optimization / responsive design
8
Publishing workflow
8
Form generator
8
Content taxonomy
9
SEO support
8
Availability / breadth of extensions
2
Community / comment management
7
API
Not Rated
Internationalization / multi-language
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
5