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Squarespace pricing starts at $16 per month for its Core plan. The popular website builder offering other plans that cost $23 per month, $39 per month, and $99 per month, respectively.
Compared to other top website builders, Squarespace is a bit more expensive than the average, but for good reason. The platform is consistently near the top of our in-depth research, providing comprehensive design features within an intuitive interface, even for beginners. On top of that, you can build an online store with all paid plans, which is certainly a plus.
In this guide, you’ll learn about all the pricing plans available from Squarespace, as well as what kind of features are available in each one. We’ll also highlight some of the best Squarespace alternatives, so you can weigh your options for your website building needs.
| Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Price paid monthly The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed monthly | Staff accounts | In-person credit card rates | Transaction fees | Advanced analytics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | | | | ||||
| $25/month | $36/month | $56/month | $139/month | ||||
| 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | ||||
| 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.7% + 30¢ | 2.5% + 30¢ | ||||
| 2% | 0% | 0% | 0% | ||||
| | | | |
How Much Does Squarespace Cost?
Squarespace pricing offers four different plans that range in cost from $16 per month to $99 per month. There is no free plan, but there is a 14-day free trial. Here’s a breakdown of each pricing plan available from Squarespace:
- Basic: $16 per month – Best for small businesses on a budget
- Core: $23 per month – Best for advanced analytics
- Plus: $39 per month – Best for large sales operations
- Advanced: $99 per month – Best for unlimited storage
Which Squarespace pricing plan is right for you?
To help you understand those prices and features even further, it helps to think in terms of what type of website you’re aiming to build. Here’s a breakdown of which Squarespace pricing plan is best suited to which type of website:
- If you want to make a blog – Choose the Basic plan, as you’ll get unlimited storage for photos and website metrics
- If you want to sell products online – All Squarespace pricing plans offer online store functionality, but the Core plan allows for no transaction fees for online purchase, so we would start there.
- If you want to create a site for your small business – We’d opt for the Core plan. You get professional email, and the ability to create promotional pop-ups and announcement bars to help you make sales.
- If you want to run a website for a club or group – The Basic plan should suit you just fine – and with unlimited bandwidth thrown in, you’ll never worry about your site going down
- If you want to create a portfolio – Again, we’d go for the Basic plan, giving you access to Squarespace’s templates to showcase your art. You only get 30 minutes of video storage, though, so if you need a lot more, the Plus plan (50 hours) might be what you need.
- If you run a subscription business, like a magazine – While all plans allow for subscription functionality, the Advanced plan unlocks no transaction fees, which can save you a lot of money in the long run.
If you’re planning on using Squarespace to build a website for your business, you’re doing the right thing. The provider is known for its mobile editor functionality, and with nearly three out of every four dollars spent on online purchases today is done so through a mobile device, it’s safe to say that kind of functionality is important.
Squarespace Basic Plan – $16 per month
- Best for individuals and small businesses on a budget
The Basic Plan is Squarespace’s cheapest pricing plan, costing $16 per month if you choose annual billing. Pay for it monthly, however, and that price jumps to $23 per month.
For this, you’ll get access to a fully featured website with 30 minutes of video storage, and unlimited bandwidth to make sure everyone can visit your site.
Your website will be fully mobile-optimized, thanks to Squarespace’s industry-leading templates, and you’ll get SSL security included, so your users will see the reassuring padlock in their browser. What’s more, you’ll get a free custom domain name and you’ll be able to have two contributors working on your site.
If you’re looking to build a website for a small club, hobby, blog, or portfolio, the Basic plan is a great choice.
As far as how it compares, the Basic plan from Squarespace is $1 cheaper than the Light plan from Wix, another accessible starter plan. They’re both a bit more expensive than other options like Hostinger, but the features they provide make these starter plans an excellent value.
Squarespace’s Fluid Editor let me customize my website to the pixel, using its drag-and-drop capability. Source: Tech.co user testing
Squarespace Core Plan – $23 per month
- Best for businesses that need advanced website analytics
The Core plan from Squarespace costs $23 per month when paid annually or $36 per month when billed monthly and offers some juicy extras when compared to the Basic Plan.
For starters, the biggest improvement from the Basic plan to the Core plan is the availability of advanced website analytics for your site. This makes it perfect for businesses that might want to actually track and measure how the website is doing in the long term.
On top of that, you’ll be able to register unlimited contributors to your site — almost essential for businesses with more than a handful of employees. Plus, you’ll be able to get a professional email from Google, featuring your site’s custom domain name rather than @gmail.com. You’ll also get access to shared calendars (useful for planning meetings), access to Google Drive, and improved support.
You get access to more tools and design elements to give your site more functionality. For example, you can connect apps that allow customers to place orders and make reservations and use these forms to add records to your customer database. You’ll also be able to show off any products you sell on Instagram with links directly to your store. Finally, you’ll get access to the CSS and JavaScript code that your site is based on in case you need to do any really fancy editing and be able to use Squarespace’s new Fluid Engine editor — giving users granular levels of control over their site.
We were able to easily create an email marketing campaign with Squarespace. Source: Tech.co testing
Squarespace Plus Plan – $39 per month
- Best for businesses with large sales operations
The Plus plan costs $39 per month when paid annually or $56 per month when billed monthly — you will also pay no transaction fees on any sales in your online store and you get a lower credit card payment processing rate than the Basic and Core plans.
Find out more: Squarespace for Ecommerce Review
The other big bump up from the Core plan is that the Plus plan allows for a lot more storage for your website. In fact, it’s a 10x jump from the Core plan to the Plus plan, with the former allowing only five hours of video hosting and storage, while the latter offers an impressive 50 hours.
For larger scale sales operations, the Plus plan is going to be your ideal choice, mostly because it provides API integrations for advanced sales functionality. This allows you to really customize every aspect of your online store to encourage the most sales for your team.
Squarespace gave me a choice between one-time purchase subscriptions and just subscriptions, and also let me choose their frequency. Source: Tech.co user testing
Squarespace Advanced Plan – $99 per month
- Best for businesses that need unlimited storage
The Advanced plan is Squarespace’s most expensive plan. It costs $99 per month when billed annually or $139 per month when billed monthly. While you might wince at that price, don’t forget that Squarespace’s excellent site design and features will be helping you make way more money than that.
Despite the massive price bump, the Advanced plan doesn’t add a whole lot of functionality for businesses building a website. You’ll get unlimited video hosting and storage, which is obviously important if you’re a larger operation. Additionally, this plan allows you to get rid of transaction fees on all digital content and memberships, which could save you a lot of money in the long run.
Squarespace is great for a lot of reasons, but as an enterprise-level online store provider, it could do better. Shopify, for example, has a $29 per month plan that offers more robust options, including inventory management, which might be a better fit. Still, if design is your priority, stick with Squarespace and just accept that inventory management isn’t in the cards for you.
Check out our Shopify pricing guide for more information
Squarespace Pricing: Can I Use Squarespace for Free?
Yes, you can use Squarespace for free – but only for 14 days. After that, you’ll have to go with one of the regular Squarespace pricing plans to continue using it.
That might seem like a shame, but as we’ve spoken about elsewhere, free website builders are far from ideal. You’ll have a very limited feature set, your site will be littered with ads, and there’s a high chance you won’t actually be able to publish your website at all.
Squarespace’s 14-day free trial, though, gives you the chance to try-before-you-buy. You’ll be able to set up your site exactly to your liking, and when the 14 days are up, you’ll be able to publish it straight away.
However, we found in our research that the ecommerce features were extremely limited in the free trial, which means you aren’t going to get a good feel for its online store functionality before you buy. Overall, we found that ecommerce functionality to be good and easy to use for smaller businesses with traditional businesses, because the lack of customizability hampers any significant changes.
Squarespace gave me a choice between one-time purchase subscriptions and just subscriptions, and also let me choose their frequency. Source: Tech.co user testing
Squarespace Domain Hosting Costs
Every website has a domain name. Ours, for example, is Tech.co.
Without a domain name, you won’t have a website – and while it is something you have to pay for, it’s not something that costs a lot of money. With Squarespace, when you pay for your website plan annually, you get a free domain for a year.
When your year’s free domain ends, you’ll need to pay for it on a monthly or yearly basis, and it can be renewed from within your Squarespace account. Domains typically cost somewhere between $20-50 per month, depending on what top-level domain you go for (.com, .org, .me, etc.)
So, this means that a Basic Plan website with a year’s hosting could cost about $165, or $13.75 per month. And, considering that you get unlimited storage and bandwidth on all Squarespace plans, that’s far from a bad deal.
Pros
- Easiest website builder to use across our research
- Plenty of content-focused features for blogging
- Integrates with Acuity for booking and appointments
Cons
- Limited language support for international businesses
- AI site builder creates fairly generic output
- Performed poorly on-site speed tests in our research
- Basic: $16/month
- Core: $23/month
- Plus: $39/month
- Advanced: $99/month
- 10% off with code 'TC10'
- 14-day free trial
Does Squarespace Charge Hidden Fees?
As with most website builders, there’s a bit more to Squarespace’s pricing plans than meets the eye. There are often hidden fees with website builders that can make running your website more expensive than you might have originally thought, such as contract length, hosting, and transaction fees for online stores.
Custom domain
As mentioned above, you get a free custom domain for one year, even on Squarespace’s cheapest pricing plan, if you pay for a year upfront with an annual plan.
The custom domain will auto-renew at Squarespace’s standard rate after this period — typically around $20-40 per year.
You might be able to find a cheaper solution by choosing a custom host (we like InMotion or BlueHost), after your years ends, if you don’t mind the hassle of moving.
While you do get a Professional email from Google Workspace with the Core plan, you only get one account, and you have to be new to Google Workspace to qualify. Plus Google’s email solution isn’t the best for sending mass marketing emails.
If you want to add another Gmail account, for example if you have more than one employee, you’ll need to sign up for a professional email service separately.
If you want to do some email marketing, however, you’ll need a dedicated solution. And preferably one that integrates fully with your website for easy analysis.
This means you might want need to pay for a premium Squarespace extension with a company such as MailChimp. Squarespace does offer its own Email Campaigns tool, but this only has a limited set of free features included.
Payment processing fees
There is a 2% transaction fee if you opt for the Basic plan. However, Squarespace does not charge transaction fees for online store purchases on any of its other plans, a perk that is definitely not available with many other website builders.
However, if you decide to use Squarespace for ecommerce, you will find that the companies that process your payments will charge a fee. Squarespace has no control over this, but it does have some preferred partner companies, such as Square (which is different from Squarespace — confusing, we know) which might make it easier or cheaper.
Squarespace also lets you process payments directly through the sites through its new payment service: Squarespace Payments. The function relies on the payment processor Stripe, so will charge comparable rates to the third-party service.
Squarespace Blueprint let me set a site quickly, and its AI text feature generated copy to get the ball rolling. Source: Tech.co user testing
Squarespace Pricing vs Other Website Builders
When it comes to price, Squarespace boasts some serious value, particularly compared to its website-building competitors.
At $16 per month, Squarespace’s entry-level paid plan is one dollar cheaper than Wix’s Light plan, and we found that Squarespace offered better value overall. This is because the average price of Squarespace’s plans is lower than Wix’s, and Squarespace’s entry-level plan offers slightly more competitive features.
Check out our Wix pricing guide for more information
If you’re able to sacrifice top-tier user experience, Hostinger is even more affordable than Squarespace with the builder’s plan starting from a rock bottom $2.49 per month. There are a variety of free website builders available as well for users looking to slash costs completely, they’re no match for Squarespace when it comes to design and web building functionality.
Check out our Hostinger review to learn more
Squarespace offers great value for users building online stores too. It allows users to build an online store across all of its pricing plans, although the more affordable plans do come with some hefty transaction fees, which can cut into your revenue.
Simply put, Squarespace is one of our top-rated website builders for small businesses and ecommerce, so even though it’s not the cheapest builder on the market, you can rest easy knowing you’ve made the right choice.
| Overall Score All Tech.co research categories, condensed into one score | Paid plan Monthly | Number of templates | Pros | Cons | Try Now | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BEST ON TEST  | |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Squarespace | Shopify | WordPress | 1&1 IONOS | ||||
| 4.7 | 4.5 | 4.2 | 4.2 | 4.0 | 3.4 | 3.4 | 3.1 |
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| Over 900 | 177 | 1,000 | 22 | Over 150 | Over 8,000 | Over 200 | 19 |
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| Claim 10% off | Try Squarespace | Try Shopify | Try GoDaddy | Try Hostinger | Try Wordpress | Try IONOS | Try Jimdo |
Squarespace Features at a Glance
Squarespace is one of the best website builders we’ve tested due to its excellent design functionality, comparable only to fellow market-leader Wix in terms of the powerful features on offer. The main difference between Wix and Squarespace is that Square is slightly easier to use, whereas Wix prioritizes sophisticated web-building and design features.
Squarespace let me customize the font and color scheme of my template in a couple of clicks. Source: Tech.co user testing
In our research, some of the most impressive aspects of Squarespace beyond its design functionality were its simple, comprehensive reporting tools, that allow you to view website data all in a custom dashboard, and multi-channel selling functionality, providing simple setup for discounts, email campaigns, social integration, and payment options.
Squarespace is always updating its platform, which makes creating a website even easier. In May 2023, for example, the company added a new feature called Squarespace Blueprint, a “guided website design system providing professionally curated layout and styling options.”
Learn more about the builder’s potential in our Squarespace review.
Squarespace Blueprint let me set a site quickly, and its AI text feature generated copy to get the ball rolling. Source: Tech.co user testing
We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we're giving you the clearest, most useful product recommendations.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we put them through their paces with hands-on testing to see their real strengths and weaknesses. In this case, we put 16 website builder products to the test across 398 areas of investigation.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we've established a website builder testing methodology that scores each product in six core categories of investigation and 33 subcategories; this covers everything from customer feedback to design, ease of use, and more.
Our main testing categories for website builders are:
- Website Features: the capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.
- Design Functionality: the aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customizable themes.
- Customer Satisfaction: external customer opinion. This is the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder – the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
- User Experience: how user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Value for Money: the balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
- Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder.
When it comes to calculating a product's final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are simply "nice to have." After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
At Tech.co, we have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run this testing process regularly, to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Verdict: Is Squarespace a Good Value?
Squarespace is a top-class website builder that provides great value to its users. It has significantly added to its feature catalog, greatly improved ease of use across all its plans, and provides even more marketing functionality for growing businesses.
Whether you’re creating a simple portfolio website to showcase your art with stunning Squarespace templates or building an online store to sell products to customers, all of the pricing plans from Squarespace will allow you to get started and scale as your business grows. Plus, those stunningly beautiful templates certainly add to the experience, particularly when it comes to website builders for artists.
Plus, with our code “TC10” you’ll be able to save an extra 10% when you choose Squarespace.
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