Squarespace vs WordPress: What Are the Benefits and Drawbacks?

squarespace_vs_wordpress

When the internet was in its infancy, creating and managing a website required specialized knowledge. But nowadays, you can get a website up and running without coding experience or know-how with a content management system. That’s why it’s baffling that a whopping 45% of small businesses don’t have a website.

Are you part of this statistic? Creating a business website broadens your marketing efforts, expands your clientele, and improves your legitimacy. Through the use of either Squarespace or WordPress, you can get your website online as soon as today.

The question is, which service is right for you? Let’s take a close look at the benefits of Squarespace vs WordPress.

Squarespace vs WordPress: Which Is Easiest?

WordPress is a user-friendly content management system. It allows you to create and customize your website with limited coding knowledge. While WordPress doesn’t require HTML or CSS experience, it will limit your access to certain features.

However, WordPress does need website owners to go through the traditional process of establishing a website. You’ll first need to buy a domain name and choose a web hosting provider. It’s a simple task, but it’s enough to scare off business owners with limited technical skills.

Squarespace hosts its own websites. You don’t have to fiddle around with domain names or hosting providers. Squarespace takes care of that for you.

Squarespace is a website builder rather than a content management system. You can choose from templates, drag-and-drop, and watch your website unfold in front of you. WordPress now offers a similar editor feature, but you’ll still need to use the backend for some features.

The verdict: Squarespace is easier to use for new website owners.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Which Is Cheaper?

Since Squarespace has a simpler pricing plan, we’ll take a look at this website builder first. Their business plans start at $18 per month and swell up to $40. Assuming your business does not need e-commerce support, you’ll likely start with the $18 plan.

In short, a basic Squarespace website is $216 every year.

So how does this stack up to WordPress? WordPress itself is completely free. But you’ll need to pay for the domain and hosting provider to get your website online.

The typical domain name will run you about $10 every year. A basic shared hosting plan — which is a fine start for any small business — is about $10 a month, depending on your provider. This is to say that your WordPress website will cost you at least $130 a year.

From here, you’ll see that WordPress is almost half the price of Squarespace. WordPress expenses can inflate should you spend extra on plugins and expensive WordPress themes. Still, you have complete control over how much you spend on these services.

The verdict: WordPress is cheaper than Squarespace so long as you avoid expensive additions.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Which Has Better Features?

If you are paying $40 a month for the best Squarespace plan, you’ll enjoy a boatload of features. These include many templates, fonts, email campaigns, and more. Sounds great, right?

Here’s the thing: WordPress can do this and so much more, and many of these features are completely free. That’s because WordPress has access to third-party plugins.

If it can be done, there is a WordPress plugin that does it. Squarespace limits you to its selection of features — and most of them are only available on their expensive plans. Even if you don’t want to bother with plugins, WordPress enjoys many of the same built-in features that come with Squarespace.

Squarespace attracts many small businesses that need access to an e-commerce store. But its e-commerce experience has limited functionality in comparison to WordPress’ catalog of plugins. Plus, Squarespace takes about 2% to 3% off the top of every transaction unless you are on the most expensive e-commerce plan.

The verdict: WordPress offers better features than Squarespace in every category thanks to its catalog of over 55,000 plugins.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Which Looks Best?

The appearance and design of a website play a pivotal role in establishing brand image and professionalism. It’s the best way to make a great first impression. Since Squarespace is a website builder with no third-party plugins, you must rely on their designer templates.

There’s no doubting that the Squarespace templates are beautiful and customizable. Admittedly, they also come with plenty of restrictions, as you can only change so much about each template. Making sense of these restrictions can sometimes be an exercise in patience, especially if you are a website beginner.

But WordPress gives you access to hundreds and thousands of templates and themes. These come from third-party content creators. No matter what look you want for your website, it’s out there.

You can also work with talented website designers to make your dream website a reality. This option is not available for Squarespace users who must stick with their rigid and limited templates. Best of all, you can use plugins or customize the code yourself to make a WordPress template do just about anything.

So what’s the verdict? While designing a WordPress website is more laborious, it also comes with vast customization that Squarespace lacks.

Squarespace vs. WordPress: Who Is the Winner?

It’s true that Squarespace is far easier to use than WordPress. Yet even a website beginner can create a great WordPress website. And thanks to third-party plugins and themes, WordPress outperforms Squarespace in every sense of the word.

But let’s look beyond Squarespace vs. WordPress. If you want the best WordPress website available, you’ll need the help of website design professionals. At Higgens Media, we’ll take your WordPress website to the next level with SEO optimization and a responsive, professional design.

Contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation.

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