Squarespace vs WordPress – A Comparison of Pros and Cons

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Squarespace vs WordPress: A Detailed Comparison

Squarespace and WordPress are two popular website builders that offer a code-free approach to website creation.

Please note that this comparison is between self-hosted WordPress and Squarespace, not WordPress.com. To understand the difference, please see our comparison of self-hosted WordPress vs WordPress.com.

To provide a comprehensive comparison, we have divided this article into several sections, including ease of use, cost, design and templates, extensions and integrations, e-commerce, data portability, language support, and a summary of our findings. Additionally, we answer frequently asked questions about Squarespace vs WordPress.

Ease of Use and The Learning Curve

For most beginner-level users and business owners who are not familiar with coding, having a website builder that is easy to use and does not require hiring a developer is important. This section compares how WordPress and Squarespace perform in this aspect.

WordPress is the most popular website builder on the market, with over 43% of all websites using it. While it is intuitive and easy to use, there is a slight learning curve, which involves familiarizing oneself with WordPress terminology and concepts such as the difference between posts vs pages, categories vs tags, and understanding themes and plugins. However, most users adapt to WordPress quickly, and there are drag-and-drop page builder plugins available for even more flexibility.

On the other hand, Squarespace is simpler and more user-friendly than WordPress for absolute beginners, with a block editor similar to WordPress for adding content. However, the lack of choice may limit customization options for some business owners.

In conclusion, Squarespace is better for ease of use for absolute beginners, but its limited features may not be ideal for all business owners. WordPress, on the other hand, offers more options from the beginning, which may be confusing at first, but provides more flexibility in the long run.

Comparing Costs: Squarespace vs WordPress

When choosing between Squarespace and WordPress, it’s important to consider the costs of each platform.

WordPress is free and open-source, but you’ll need to pay for web hosting and a domain name to build your site. Depending on your needs, you can choose a shared hosting plan, VPS hosting, or managed WordPress hosting. WordPress is popular for its low overall cost and the ability to change hosting plans as your site grows.

In contrast, Squarespace offers plans starting at $16/month for personal use and $23/month for business use, but these plans have limited features. Squarespace’s eCommerce support is available with a business plan starting at $23/month but includes a 3% fee on each transaction. Separate plans for online stores start at $27/month with no additional transaction fee.

Overall, WordPress is a more cost-effective option with flexible pricing plans available from various web hosting providers. Squarespace pricing is higher and less flexible, and its plans come with limited features.

Design and Templates

WordPress and Squarespace provide users with pre-built templates and design tools to make it easier to create a personalized website. In terms of the number of options and tools available for creating well-designed websites, let’s examine which platform offers more.

WordPress

WordPress offers access to thousands of free and premium themes, which are highly customizable. Users can modify website logos, colors, images, and layouts, as well as make use of features such as sliders and photo galleries.

There are many professionally designed templates available for any type of web design project. However, the abundance of choices can be overwhelming for beginners.

Squarespace

Squarespace offers pre-made website templates arranged by category. These templates have professional designs that look great on all devices.

Users can easily select a template and modify it using the built-in customizer. However, the number of templates and design options available are limited compared to WordPress, and these templates are not as customizable.

Conclusion

In terms of design choices, customization options, and flexibility, WordPress offers more than Squarespace. While Squarespace has great-looking templates, they are limited in number and not very flexible.

Extensions and Integrations Website builders typically come with built-in features, but as your site grows, you may want to add more features and connect to third-party tools and services. In this respect, let’s compare WordPress and Squarespace.

WordPress

The real strength of WordPress lies in its vast ecosystem of plugins, which are like apps for your site that can add new features or modify the default behavior of your site. There are currently over 60,000 free WordPress plugins listed in the WordPress.org plugin directory alone, and thousands of premium WordPress plugins available from third-party websites. WordPress plugins are so robust that many of them are full-fledged platforms with their own add-on plugins and a thriving community. Because WordPress is the most popular website builder, most third-party services and tools have their own WordPress plugins which integrate their services to a WordPress website.

Squarespace

Squarespace pales in comparison to WordPress when it comes to extensibility and integrations. Although they do offer a limited set of extensions and integrations, Squarespace doesn’t have powerful APIs that developers can build upon. The available integrations are often limited in functionality, and for eCommerce, you can use their built-in platform, but you cannot extend it in any way. Squarespace lacks the flexibility to allow custom websites you might need for your online business idea.

Conclusion

WordPress is the clear winner with an incredible ecosystem of thousands of plugins and integrations, while Squarespace has very few integrations, many of which are very limited.

Comparing E-commerce Functionality of Squarespace vs. WordPress

When building an online store, it’s important to consider the e-commerce capabilities of Squarespace versus WordPress.

WordPress

WordPress offers flexible payment processing through any payment processor or platform. Its plugins allow easy online payment acceptance via Stripe, PayPal, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, Payoneer, Skrill, and even Bitcoin.

With a variety of e-commerce plugins available, WordPress can turn your website into an online store within minutes. WooCommerce, the most popular e-commerce platform, is a WordPress plugin that comes with its own ecosystem of add-ons and thousands of ready themes.

Unlimited product listing, display and sales can be run, and you can manage your own affiliate program without restrictions.

Squarespace

Squarespace’s e-commerce features are limited. Only Stripe and PayPal are available for payment processing, which are only offered in select countries. No other payment system is available, restricting the ability to accept payments from a wider audience.

Apart from selling products in Business or Commerce plans, very few external services can be integrated with a Squarespace site. This can limit promotional activities and opportunities for business growth.

Conclusion

WordPress has far superior e-commerce capabilities to Squarespace, which can hinder the growth of an online business. Additionally, WordPress can also be used in conjunction with Shopify. Refer to our comparison of Shopify vs. WooCommerce.

Data Portability

Data portability, the ability to move all your work to another platform, is an important aspect of online business. WordPress and Squarespace are compared in terms of data portability and the freedom to switch.

WordPress provides built-in tools to export all data, including themes, plugins, and the entire database. This content can be moved to any other Content Management System, stored anywhere else, and the web host can be changed anytime.

Squarespace’s export feature is limited. Only certain parts of the content, such as pages, galleries, and one blog page with all its posts, can be exported. The product pages, album pages, text, audio, and video blocks will not be exported.

In conclusion, the content created on a website belongs to the user, and they should have the freedom and tools to move it elsewhere. WordPress provides easy-to-manage tools to export the entire site, making it the winner in terms of data portability.

Languages and Internationalization

In the globalized world we live in, many businesses target a multilingual audience in various geographic locations. This section examines how Squarespace and WordPress handle languages, multilingual content, and locations.

WordPress

WordPress is fully translated into dozens of languages, allowing users on a WordPress site to choose their language from their profile settings. Most WordPress themes and plugins are also translated into many languages. You can build a WordPress website in any language and even translate WordPress yourself if your language is not yet available.

Although WordPress does not come with multilingual functionality out of the box, excellent plugins can create multilingual websites that are SEO-friendly and feature-rich.

Squarespace

Squarespace is fully translated into six languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese) and partially supports a few more languages. You can change your site language, timezone, and country. For store products, only currencies supported by Stripe or PayPal are available.

You can create multilingual pages by duplicating your pages, manually creating site structures or different sites for each language (billed separately). Alternatively, you can use Weglot, a third-party service to manage translations for a starting price of $9.99 per month for one language.

Conclusion

WordPress is significantly superior to Squarespace in terms of language and localization options. Squarespace is highly restricted and unsuitable for creating multilingual websites.

Winner: WordPress

Squarespace vs WordPress Comparison Summary

WordPress is a more superior website building platform than Squarespace. According to our CMS market share report, WordPress powers over 43% of all websites while Squarespace is only used by 2.1% of websites.

FAQs about Squarespace vs WordPress

1. Is WordPress better than Squarespace?

Yes, WordPress is better than Squarespace because it offers more freedom and flexibility to build any kind of website.

2. Is WordPress better for SEO than Squarespace?

Yes, WordPress is better for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) than Squarespace because it allows the use of SEO plugins like All in One SEO for WordPress, which enables the addition of powerful sitemaps, schema markup, meta title and descriptions, and more.

3. How can I move my site from Squarespace to WordPress?

Squarespace offers limited export options, but it is still possible to switch from Squarespace to WordPress. Check out our tutorial for step-by-step instructions.

4. Squarespace vs WordPress: which is better for bloggers?

WordPress is the better platform for bloggers. It started out as a blogging platform and still has the best blogging tools among any other site builder on the market.