Squarespace vs WordPress – 7 Important Differences

Squarespace

Related: Squarespace Review – 2023

• User-friendly dashboard – It is perfect for beginners to quickly pick up without prior knowledge, but is more rigid in its settings.
• Built-in domain hosting.
• The membership plan includes themes and plugins on top of your hosting.
• Plugins and themes are minimal but are of high quality.
• Squarespace offers its users all of the pieces that a typical small-sized company will need to build their sites.

WordPress

Related: Best WordPress Page Builders Compared

• It takes a little time to learn if you are a beginner, which makes for a steep learning curve. However, there are many options for customization.
• It requires you to have a separate hosting service.
• Free to use platform to build your site, and has add-ons for additional themes, plugins, as well as CSS options.
• There are many different themes and plugins, but the volume of options has inconsistent quality and usability.
• Features are ideal for site builders who are looking for something beyond the basics. More complex functions are readily available.

Squarespace vs. WordPress – What are the key differences?

While both are website builders, they cater to those with different levels of goals. With Squarespace, you pay a membership plan to use their service. In sharp contrast, free WordPress creates an ecosystem focusing on the opportunity to use their service any way you choose.

Is it possible to move a Squarespace website to WordPress?

Both of these websites have the ability to move blog posts from Squarespace to WordPress and vice versa. They have built-in migration tools to allow for blog content transfer. However, this is the only piece you can transfer. Designs, themes, plugins, domains, and website content cannot switch between the two. If you are interested in building an online store, then one of your best options is Shopify.

Related content – Shopify vs. Squarespace (2022) – Which is Best?

Which site builder is better for blog posts?

Squarespace and WordPress are both useful as blogging platforms and have comprehensive features for bloggers to create and maintain blog pages. Squarespace for blogging is easy to use. WordPress has many blogging tools to create a blog post.

Squarespace and WordPress are two popular website building platforms. Each has its pros and cons. For example, they both feature different tools and the most useful one will depend on your design needs, level of customer support, budget, and webmaster skills. You will need to know how you want your user experience when choosing between Squarespace and WordPress.

Squarespace is very kit-like which makes it easy to begin. It reminds me of a starter box for websites. You open it up and have everything you need to get your website going from the get-go. It has theme templates, analytics, and plugins, ready for you to put together for your website. It comes with SEO tools, web hosting, a style editor, and pretty much everything you need to get started with the user interfaces. It’s the ultimate plug-and-play.

On the other hand, WordPress is a fully customizable content management system that allows you to take their themes and plugins and add them to your code to make it exactly what your website needs.

Unlike Squarespace, a host is not a part of the system. You need to source your hosting provider. Many options are fully compatible with WordPress extensions. Since Squarespace includes it, you cannot use anything but its approved server.

Using Squarespace can be rather rigid, but you don’t need to be an expert to use it. WordPress offers more customization, but you may need a guide to get a feel for the interface. Our article will guide you through the six differences of Squarespace vs. WordPress in an attempt to answer which one we feel is the winner based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Editing

WordPress and Squarespace are two examples of the many different website platforms on the market. Others include Wix and Weebly. Squarespace is known as more of an eCommerce platform with many website templates to offer. There are a couple of differences when it comes to their software, but they have a similar overall performance.

Thanks to software updates, WordPress left its WYSIWYG  editor behind. WordPress 5.0 transitioned the editor to Gutenberg. This page editor allows you to move a block onto the website.

Blocks are a feature that you add to the screen to create layouts for your website. This tool can be for things like paragraphs, images, photo galleries, audio, lists, and much more. All blocks are accessible here without limitations. If you are looking to get something more advanced, plugins are purchasable. A text box can be set up within your blog page to display an article for your readers.

Gutenberg separates the editor from the live website. If you want to see the details of your changes in real-time, you have to toggle from Gutenberg to your website.

On the other hand, Squarespace uses a page editor that, unlike Gutenberg, allows you to drag and drop your content in real-time. During the creation process, you can see the look of the things you are putting onto your website without having to switch from your page editor to your preview. This can save you a lot of time and make things easier.

A visual editor can be more intuitive for those who don’t have the abilities of programmers since you see your page’s aesthetics in depth.

Squarespace holds your hand through the process of building a website. The drag-and-drop placement helps with editing visually appealing elements like videos and galleries that need to flow within the same page as product descriptions or a sidebar with links.

Their design options do not take any coding skills, and business owners can use these editing tools to create a page that their website visitors will appreciate without starting from scratch.

Sourcing

In the case of WordPress vs. Squarespace, their philosophy on sourcing is very different. Squarespace is closed-source. They do not accept input from their users. Squarespace has handpicked a group of premium providers for you to choose from in an all-in-one package.

In contrast, WordPress is an open-source website builder. They have built a community of developers and designers to contribute to their themes and plugins. They have quite the collection of both:

• 7,000+ themes
• 55,000+ plugins

However, not all themes and plugins are perfect. Many themes or plugins have glitches or need some code adjustments before they work within your website. Having to think like a developer can be quite a headache for those who do not want to make configuration adjustments. Even if you choose a paid theme, you may still have these issues, which is a weakness for WordPress.

WooCommerce is a popular eCommerce plugin, allowing you to sell your things on your website and make money. On WordPress, this is a paid plugin. WooCommerce allows you to set up an online store and maximize your e-commerce functionality.

There are plenty of Squarespace apps. Squarespace has over 60 handpicked providers for your website. Narrow choices are less overwhelming for website builders and provide a sense of direction.

Squarespace offers options for blogging, such as AMP, Apple News, and Disqus. Integrations to make your day more efficient, like Zapier.

Squarespace also has ecommerce plugin options for your small business, which allows you to accept your customer’s credit card payment gateways, Stripe, Paypal, and Apple Pay, which will help with your ecommerce functionality. You are responsible for the transaction fee as well as the account creation on the backend.

Squarespace has installations for social media like Facebook and Twitter, which is important for small business marketing needs. The ecommerce builder has numerous marketing plugins like  Google Analytics to help you see your statistics and MailChimp to help maximize your email marketing as you communicate with your customers.

Simple vs. Complex

A drag-and-drop website builder with a simple layout using standard features makes it easy for Squarespace to have a simple environment. From the beginning, everything is at your fingertips. It takes little practice to use, and the template gives your website a clean appearance that is usable for your clients. Squarespace has built-in SEO features that can help you during your setup process.

Professionals, like photographers, who need a  simple website to showcase photography portfolios, blogs, or a small business website will find that Squarespace will complement the work they poured their heart and soul into. Squarespace gives entrepreneurs plenty of support and helps build their bottom line.

WordPress caters to features that are not considered a basic need of a site, a feature that goes beyond a product page or a portfolio.

For example, if you are searching for a WordPress SEO plugin, Yoast SEO is one solution from the thousands of WordPress plugins to help you fine-tune our SEO practices.

• Besan Block allows you to add responsive charts and data blocks to your posts and pages.
• BuddyPress allows you to build your social community within your website. Its features help you grow members and allow people to connect and make new friends.
• Akismet will auto-filter your comments, pull out any that resemble spam, and reveal misleading URLs. It does allow you to review all flagged comments before getting rid of them.
• WPForms is a drag-and-drop form builder that will help you create every type of form imaginable. It works on a mobile device or mobile app, enabling you to build forms for your page much easier with less of an issue. On top of being mobile-ready, it is SEO-friendly.

Using WordPress has an upside with the hundreds of plugins that are available. However, the question of their reliability can be a drawback for website builders and can be a hassle. Those who do not want control of their code like to use Squarespace as their designer for that reason.

For instance, when it comes to the more common features like photo galleries, there are hundreds of options for a WordPress plugin. All websites will need a photo gallery, but you can waste tons of time trying to find the correct one.

Squarespace has a photo gallery ready to use on your product pages or even in your blog. It can support all your small businesses’ needs and has customization options to give you the best photo gallery.

Design

Both WordPress and Squarespace offer great options for plugins and themes. WordPress has the advantage over Squarespace of having hundreds of themes available for you. Your Squarespace site has 70 Squarespace themes, whereas there are over 11,500+ WordPress Themes.

WordPress has an impressive number available due to being open source. In comparison, Squarespace’s themes focus on having the best themes of all the website builders. They are easier to use and do not require the learning curve of WordPress themes.

WordPress Themes demonstrate that quantity is not always quality. If a free WordPress theme is not compatible, you may need to use custom CSS to make sure that the source code will work properly. This may be difficult if you do not have any coding experience and are not a  programmer.

When you use Squarespace, their themes just work without having to keep an eye out for problems or pieces to update, which is one of the brand’s strengths. Squarespace’s design tools have the simplicity of being a package. You can go into each Squarespace template to focus on the style that keeps consistency within your branding.

Each element is editable from your fonts to your page colors. The types of font choices are numerous. With a variety of font choices in each section, you are sure to get the look you desire without the hundreds of options in WP.

WordPress has a style editor, Customizer, which is not the most intuitive of editors. Customizer allows you to edit and set up the website. In comparison, Squarespace has a better editor.

Cost

WordPress, not wordpress.com, is a free platform with some themes included. Anyone can create an account and begin building their website. WordPress themes and WordPress plugins are available for purchase if you need to add something like SEO plugins to assist search engines in finding and ranking your content. A WordPress theme can vary in cost, and there are quite a bit of paid themes available.

As a general guide, WordPress plugin’s pricing ranges from $15 to $200+, with the average WordPress plugins price somewhere around $138. Developers charge transaction fees one of three ways, a free “light” version, a one-time payment, or pay per year.

Unlike Squarespace, WordPress does not have its own hosting services, so you will need to consider the cost for WordPress hosting companies in your choice. Hosting providers can range from $46- $135 a year when you include your domain name. With this in mind, your total platform cost can vary based on your personal preference.

Squarespace’s Squarespace’s pricing varies based on if you are looking for a personal or business plan. Pricing plans are billed either per month or per year, and Squarespace pricing ranges from $12 a month to $40 a month. With an annual subscription, you do receive a discount, which is one of the possibilities to help keep your costs low.

All of these plans include a free custom domain, SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth and storage, SEO, templates, multiple contributors, mobile optimization, basic metrics, and Squarespace extensions. You can also get a free trial by signing up with your email address. That way you can evaluate what Squarespace offers and upgrade your order to your ideal subscription plans at a later time.

Customer Service

Since Squarespace is a paid website, it has 24/7 customer support, and even with its ease of use, you may need help with certain things. Most of the time, you will get your question answered by a representative within an hour of submitting and can access them via email support or by live chat. Unfortunately, they are not reachable by phone.

One downside to WordPress being free is that they don’t have dedicated customer support. In part, WordPress’s CMS popularity is due to their communities’ supportive nature. WordPress has support forums available to ask questions and get information from their volunteers. You can also sign up to attend WordCamp or Meetups. They also have a database with blogs and tutorials about WordPress.

Summary

When you are evaluating the difference between Squarespace vs. WordPress, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of data involved with building a WordPress site. There is a steep learning curve for those who are new to WordPress. However, it is a flexible platform that is compatible with multiple devices and gets the job done. Complex themes and plugins are an essential aspect for many WordPress users.

In categories where you are unsure, you can use its knowledge base. You can also rely on the star rating to see the benefit or disadvantages of different themes and sniff out potential problems.

Squarespace is an excellent eCommerce builder ideal for people who want a website builder that is easier to use and includes everything they will need right out of the gate. Those who are not experts and don’t require sophisticated features and flexibility will do well on Squarespace. Users who do not want to limit their options may do better with a WordPress site.

Keep in mind when choosing between Squarespace or WordPress, how simple vs. how complex your website is. Once you determine that factor, it will become clear which one will be the best option for your website.