Squarespace Pricing | 5 Key Ways to Save Money

Using Squarespace on a Budget

In this guide, we’ll discuss what it’s like using Squarespace web hosting, how much it costs, and how to choose a cost-efficient Squarespace plan.

Squarespace is a longstanding brand founded in 2004 and focuses on web hosting and website building. Like many competing companies, Squarespace specializes in business-friendly templates and drag-and-drop elements that appeal to small business owners. You won’t need programming skills if you sign up for a membership, but understanding pricing is essential.

Related: The Best Website Builder in 2023

We decided to test Squarespace’s website building experience and share our research results with readers.

As we begin, there’s no sense in avoiding the obvious – Squarespace’s creative edge is impressive. The site offers many graphically pleasing designs and easy-to-navigate formats that are compatible with most browsers. Your website will look clean and professional.

Naturally, the best-looking websites also cost more than standard web hosting fees. Squarespace pricing, however, is not necessarily high-end or unaffordable. It depends on what features are most important to you. We will answer some of the most commonly asked questions about Squarespace’s four hosting levels.

Related: SEO for Ecommerce – The Complete Guide 2023

How Expensive is Squarespace Pricing?

• Personal | $12.00 per month
• Business | $18 per month
• Basic Commerce | $26.00 per month
• Advanced Commerce | $40.00 per month

Squarespace’s pricing plan caters to your needs, offering a package subscription that simplifies technical issues. You get one easy-to-manage template-based website and a customer support team.

Choose from the following programs, two of which are online stores and two website builders. The more you pay by the month, the more features you “unlock.” You also get 24-7 customer service for all plans.

Squarespace Price Comparison: Annual Prepaid Savings

All Squarespace’s options come with a 14-day trial, so you can test these features before committing to a month or year’s worth of service.

Related: Best E-commerce Website Builders Compared – 2023

Squarespace Packages Review

Squarespace’s pricing plan caters to your needs, offering a package subscription that simplifies technical issues. You get one easy-to-manage template-based website and a customer support team.

Choose from the following programs, two of which are online stores and two of which are website builders. The more you pay by the month, the more features you “unlock.” You also get 24-7 customer service for all plans.

If you pay by the year instead of month-to-month, you can save up to 30 percent by agreeing to 12 months of continuous service. An annual plan for all four packages includes:

Personal

The affordable plan is for individual use but contains many features beyond most low-cost web hosting options.

This cheap plan is designed for personal and hobby sites, meaning no online shopping. Still, users can link to other stores and use most other Squarespace hosting features, including a drag-and-drop editor, selection of templates, domain, and SSL security.

Business

The intermediate business package lets you sell products and services online. If you are looking for e-commerce integration and functionality, this is an ideal choice. There is a three percent transaction charge for a professional layout and easy-to-navigate experience, not to mention advanced safety features.

Basic Commerce

If you want to take your sales to the next level, the basic commerce level gives you access to complete online stores.

This plan offers advanced features beyond basic shopping, including mobile-friendly checkouts, integrated accounting tools, and customer account databases. You can even sell on select social media sites.

Related: Squarespace Review 2023 – All the Pros and Cons

Advanced Commerce

This plan includes extra features designed to boost your sales. Many sites stall in sales because they lack promotions. With extras like gift cards, discounts, abandoned cart recovery, and extra shipping features, you can start professional-level sales and quickly see the difference.

Squarespace Comparison: Annual Prepaid Savings

All Squarespace pricing options come with a 14-day trial, so you can test these features before committing to a month or year’s worth of service.

If you pay by the year instead of month-to-month, you can save up to 31 percent by agreeing to 12 months of continuous service. An annual plan for all four packages includes:

Squarespace Plans

Squarespace Review: Personal Package

If you’re looking for affordable, check out the Personal package.

The budget website building option is ideal for informing your web audience about your company instead of paying for more advanced features. You can still count on style (thanks to templates) and simple design and navigation for your users.

The Personal option is best for business owners just starting who want to get the hang of a professional website and who are mainly going to link out to other sources instead of offering onsite sales.

With a Personal subscription, you get these features:

Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage

One important feature is the unlimited storage and bandwidth option since some low-cost web services will limit your storage space or your traffic.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred in a month. “Unlimited” services mean your site’s storage and bandwidth have no monthly limits.

Free Domain

You get one free domain to direct your customers if you pay by the year.

SSL Security

The secure sockets layer (SSL) is a security technology used with most professional websites, enhancing online security. SSL provides an encrypted link between a server and a client.

While SSL is not necessary for a simple informational site, it’s a must-have feature for stores and websites with membership and login information.

Furthermore, Google penalizes sites that don’t have SSL in search engine results, so SSL is a great feature.

Two Contributors

You can assign two contributors to your site with a Personal plan, such as an offsite owner and manager.

Website Metrics

Metrics allow you to see demographic information about your business website, such as popular pages, search terms that get traffic, and personal data about your visitors, like country of origin and web browser.

Mobile-Optimized Sites

Even if you design your site with a desktop, you can rest assured it will display similarly and cleanly on a mobile phone or tablet. Uniformity is essential if you want to rank in search engines.

Squarespace Review: Business

The Business plan is a slight upgrade from the Personal and includes all of the Personal plan’s features but with about nine extra features.

The Business package works right about when you realize the limitations of the Personal plan and have that one excellent marketing idea. Great ideas require more resources. The Business plan includes:

Unlimited Contributors

Whereas the Personal plan only had two users, you can have as many as you need in the Business plan, such as an entire staff or even multiple offices.

Advanced Website Metrics

With advanced analytic metrics, you can examine the details of your web traffic and plan accordingly for reevaluation. Examine unique visitors, pageview trends, top traffic sources, points of sale, and referral links, and track revenue and conversion rates according to your pages.

Professional Email from Google

Free email accounts don’t look good for business. With a Business package, you can use a Gmail account but customize your email address to look professional.

$100 Google Ads Credit

If you are just getting started, $100 of free advertising credits can go a long way.

Promotional Pop-Ups

Pop-up ads usually only work if you offer a special incentive. That’s why limited-time promotional pop-up ads get sales! With the Business package, you get sales-oriented features not available with the Personal package.

Complete Customization

The best features of the many stylish templates Squarespace offers are only available with a Business membership.

The Business plan offers unlimited template features and more font and color customization. You also get complete customization through CSS if you want to hire a programmer to customize a feature further.

Premium Blocks and Integrations

Some “blocks” that work with templates require particular sophistication when customizing the visual and video experience. Create a schedule, gallery, and service blocks with ease. You can even add JavaScript or iFrames functions in premium blocks.

Fully Integrated Ecommerce

Set your website to sell unlimited products and accept donations. While the Business plan lacks all the store features of the Commerce options, you can still make money with this upgraded plan. Site owners get charged 3 percent on all transaction fees.

Announcement Bar

Keep your best customers up to date with company announcements and marketing ideas while integrating social media updates onto your site.

Squarespace Pricing Review: Basic Commerce

There’s not much “basic” about this very in-depth plan that gives you access to many eCommerce tools to turn your ordinary informational website into an actual store that encourages online shopping. Basic Commerce features go beyond the Professional package and include:

No Transaction Fees

Hosting an online store gives you a break on transaction fees.

Commerce Metrics

Add trackable shopping tools like tags, blog posts, categories, product descriptions, images, videos, and related product ads. Track your sales patterns and change details accordingly.

Allow your customers to check out on your domain with no offsite sales or commissions to pay. You can also get a mobile-optimized checkout page that automatically loads when a customer uses a cell phone.

Business Features

Add your inventory, orders, tax data, label printing, and coupons onto your website for one easy-to-use interface. Integrate all of your accounting into your online store and simplify the process.

Customer Accounts

If you’re counting on regular customers, create a database of their information so they can quickly return, log in, and reorder items regularly.

List Products on Instagram

List and sell products on the hottest social media site in the world instantly from your store.

Squarespace Review: Advanced Commerce

You might think Basic Commerce would be the only package you need, but don’t underestimate the best sales features from the advanced program made to grow online sales. Features include:

Abandoned Cart Auto-Recovery

Get access to all the sales tricks of the trade – like an autoloading card for when customers abandon the sales window but then come back later. You can also send emails to remind customers that their product selections are still in stock and ready to buy.

Advanced Shipping

Personalize the order to your customer’s preference, letting them fill in the location and preferred shipping method.

Orders API

With orders API, you can manage all facets of Squarespace pricing and inventory, including shipping, taxes, payment (including Paypal), and streamline the process for simplicity. If you want your site to look and operate more like eBay, Etsy, and other well-known commercial stores, the Advanced program won’t disappoint.

Subscriptions

Manage your customers who subscribe to updates or sign up for an email newsletter. With email marketing options, you can encourage return customers, promote impulse buying, and hone in on the incentives that sell products.

Flexible Discounts and Gift Cards

Get even more leverage when you offer returning customers special privileges like gift cards, discounts, and unique sales promotions to take advantage of marketing trends.

Additional Costs of Service for Squarespace Services

While you get one domain name with an annual membership purchase, you can also buy special features related to domain names and other eCommerce tools.

These might include multiple domain names or other top-level domains. Buying additional domain names may help to increase traffic or perform a related service, such as hiding contact information from the general public.

Month-by-month hosting does not include a custom domain name. Top-level and easy-to-remember domain names can help make your site look professional and increase your search traffic.

Squarespace does not offer free stock photos but can refer you to its partner websites like Getty and Unsplash for royalty-free images.

You will not have to worry about hidden hosting fees. Squarespace handles all hosting fees and only charges users for the website builder, templates, and commercial features.

Squarespace Email Marketing

Opt-in email marketing is one of the most effective ways to encourage first-time and repeat purchases and increase traffic.

Remind users of a new sale, new product, or blog post. While plans include professional-level G Suite and Gmail services, you can also buy a marketing software platform called Squarespace Email Campaigns. This tool lets you create custom emails without the need for additional software. Simply integrate the email program with your website.

Squarespace Fees and Commissions

If you pay for the Business package, then you also accept a three percent transaction fee. You can get the transaction fee waived if you use either of the Basic or Advanced Commerce packages.

The Business option is for small stores with limited products. The Commerce package might serve you better if you have a larger store since you get accounting and marketing specialties not available on the other plans.

Being a Squarespace pricing member also allows you to work with the company’s business partner, Square, a payment processing company.

Square lets merchants receive credit card payments online or offline using a Commerce app and card reader (sold separately for $49). Square charges fees apart from Squarespace, namely:

• 2.6% transaction fee and a $0.10 processing fee for swiped transactions
• 3.5% transaction fee and a $0.15 processing fee for keyed transactions

Squarespace Pricing vs. the Competition

Squarespace provides similar hosting and website building packages to well-known companies such as Wix and Weebly. Squarespace pricing is premium compared to Wix and Weebly’s free and low-cost plans. What, though, is the difference in features?

Squarespace pricing is more expensive in some packages but less costly in others, particularly in premium hosting. Weebly has the most expensive advanced eCommerce option, while Weebly surpasses Squarespace’s Advanced commerce selection by almost 50 percent.

Regarding free hosting, the competition offers what Squarespace cannot: a free membership account. However, Wix and Weebly’s free hosting options have limitations that may frustrate small business owners ready to sell.

Wix offers 500 megabytes of storage space and 500 megabytes of bandwidth, which is not enough to host large spikes in traffic. Wix also displays advertisements on your website and will not let you connect to your existing domain.

Related: Wix Pricing 2023: What Plan to Pick and What to Avoid?

Weebly website builder has similar restrictions, disallowing domain transfers and running unrelated ads on your website. Weebly also has bandwidth and storage restrictions on its “Personal plan” for $5 a month.

 

Related: Weebly Pricing 9 Important Things To Know

Wix has scored high points for its website builders but received mixed reviews for its limited bandwidth. Weebly scored high for its themes and cheap plans but also had more limitations than Wix and Squarespace. Squarespace doesn’t have a “cheap” plan but compromises between flexible design options and mobile-friendly templates.

Related content: 16 Squarespace Alternatives For Every Kind of Website

Squarespace Summary

Squarespace offers high value for its low-cost plans and has a more efficient and impressive package than its competitors, at least with the Advanced package. While Wix and Weebly do have free plans, remember that most small businesses will eventually upgrade to a paid subscription anyway because of limitations, such as invasive advertisements and a lack of a business-friendly domain.

To counter its competitors’ “free” offering, Squarespace gives a free 14-day trial on all its plans, allowing users to completely customize their site and then decide if they want to pay for it. To the relief of many customers, they will not have to pay for the membership until the trial is over, and they’ve decided the service is worth their investment.

Now that you understand what features come with each paid plan of Squarespace pricing and additional costs to budget, you can begin designing a website and beginning your SEO strategy.

The Personal plan is best for a simple informational website that links to other stores or has basic previewing features. The Business plan is ideal for small businesses with a limited product selection, justifying the extra transaction fees.

For eCommerce sites, the Basic plan works well for small online stores, while the Advanced plan is for when you reach a higher level of success and can afford special tools that will lead to even more sales.

Squarespace pricing is high compared to free hosting. Still, in return, you get the latest cutting-edge features, navigational functionality with practically every new browser, and professional services not available to the average free WordPress site. Squarespace is worth the investment particularly if:

• You’ve never built a professional site before
• You haven’t updated your WordPress business theme in a few years
• You have been getting notices from Google stating there are problems with your site’s navigation
• Customers or other acquaintances have complained about the site’s confusing display
• Sales are non-existent

Squarespace FAQ

The Squarespace website is complicated, given its many commercial features. Consider a few frequently asked questions that have come up over the last few months, courtesy of the Squarespace website and forum.

What if I sign up for the free trial but decide I don’t like the service?

You can cancel your subscription at the end of the free trial for a full refund. Remember to turn off the “auto-renew” feature to avoid accidental billing.

What if I want to upgrade to a premium plan later on?

While competing sites might not let you do this, Squarespace does. You can upgrade or downgrade your subscription plan by changing the Billing Settings tab.

Does Squarespace offer seasonal discounts for new sign-ups?

Periodically, the company might offer exclusive coupons, so follow the company’s social sites and blogs to keep up to date. Squarespace also provides discounts for students all year round, with savings of up to fifty percent. Students must have a valid school email address to apply.

Does Squarespace offer SEO assistance?

Squarespace doesn’t guarantee SEO results or offer personalized SEO marketing plans with a subscription.

However, you do get an upgrade in SEO optimization thanks to the company’s sitemaps, clean HTML markup, auto-tagging, and error-free site publishing. You can also find professional-level site design or SEO strategy assistance at the Squarespace Marketplace.

Can I import my previous site to a Squarespace website for SEO optimization and other advantages?

Yes, Squarespace imports exported and backup files but only in WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr format. As Squarespace’s FAQ page explains, you can also import products from existing online stores like Etsy, Big Cartel, and Shopify.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading our Squarespace pricing guide. You now understand the pros and cons of starting a Squarespace website compared to other competitive site builders.

We think you will find that Squarespace offers a competitive set of packages for the small business owner who has specific plans and is ready to start selling.

Related: The Best Free Ecommerce Website Builders for 2023