Squarespace: Beautiful Sites, Yet Limited
Squarespace’s user-friendliness comes at a price. Because it’s not only a site builder, but also a web hosting, it is a closed space in which its developers maintain tight control over tools and resources, and limit users’ choices and control over the content they post.
Customizing Sites
Your choices are limited to the templates offered by Squarespace itself. Aside from small tweaks, such as changing colors and fonts, or adding your own images, you can’t do much when it comes to customization
Who’s In Control?
Though Squarespace’s monthly fees cover everything involved with running your site, this also limits the amount of content and resources you can use. Personal accounts on Squarespace are under $10 monthly but sites are limited to just 20 pages. To get unlimited pages and bandwidth, you would have to purchase one of the Business premium plans at up to three times the cost.
The self-hosted version of WordPress, on the other hand, can be downloaded free from WordPress.org and hosted on any platform a user chooses. The host has no claim on website content, and users can add as many pages or posts as they want. You can register your own domain name independently, or through your host, and you can export any or all of your content to another provider whenever you choose.
eCommerce Friendly – or Not?
Whatever plan you choose, Squarespace takes a percentage of each transaction made from your site, and payments can only be collected in certain currencies through Stripe. Compare that to WordPress, whose WooCommerce plugin is one of the most popular eCommerce platform options in the world. With Woocommerce hosting and other similar tools, you can set up your online store any way you like on a WordPress site, collect payments through a variety of popular portals, and keep all the profits from your sales.
Options
Squarespace doesn’t have near the vast number of themes or plugins that WordPress has. This can greatly limit your website and what you want to do. And if Squarespace raises its prices, or changes its pricing plans, you have no alternatives.
Creative Arcade Can Help
Squarespace looks easy, but it is less flexible and limited. I have hands-on experience working with a number Squarespace sites for those looking to have a simple straightforward site. If you are looking to move your site over to WordPress or Shopify I can help you with that too.
