Squarespace Pricing: How Much Does the Website Builder Cost?

Squarespace pricing starts at $16 per month for its Basic plan. The popular website builder offers other plans that cost $23 per month, $39 per month, and $99 per month, respectively.

Compared with other top website builders, Squarespace is a bit more expensive than the average, but for good reason. Our hands-on testing found it to be one of the best platforms on the market, with exceptional design features and a great user experience, even for beginners.

On top of that, you can build an online store and accept payments on all of Squarespace’s paid plans, which isn’t as common as you might expect across the website builder industry.

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.

• How Much Does Squarespace Cost?
• Does Squarespace Offer Discounts?
• Can I Use Squarespace for Free?
• Which Squarespace Plan is Best for Me?
• How Much Does Squarespace Charge for Domain Hosting?
• What Are Squarespace’s Payment Processing Fees?
• Does Squarespace Charge Hidden Fees?
• Is It Easy to Switch to Squarespace?
• How Does Squarespace’s Pricing Compare With Competitors?
• What Features Does Squarespace Offer?
• About Our Research
• Verdict: Is Squarespace Good Value?

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

How Much Is Squarespace’s Basic Plan?

• 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 $25 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 excellent value.

Squarespace’s Fluid Engine editor let me customize my website to the pixel, using its drag-and-drop capability. Source: Tech.co user testing

How Much Is Squarespace’s Core Plan?

• 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 with 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 will 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 create an email marketing campaign easily with Squarespace. Source: Tech.co testing

How Much Is Squarespace’s Plus Plan?

• 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 10-fold 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

How Much Is Squarespace’s Advanced Plan?

• Best for businesses that need unlimited storage

The Advanced plan is Squarespace’s most expensive plan, costing $99 per month when billed annually or $139 per month when billed monthly. While you might wince at that price, don’t forget Squarespace’s excellent site design and features.

However, 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 one of its stronger features.

Check out our Shopify pricing guide for more information

Does Squarespace Offer Discounts for Students or Non-Profits?

Yes, Squarespace does offer discounts for eligible students and non-profits. Specifically, the platform will give students 50% off their first year of an annual subscription, after which point it will revert to full price. To redeem the offer, eligible students will need to verify their student status via Student Beans.

Squarespace also offers a discount for non-profits. To redeem the offer, simply input “NONPROFIT” at the checkout and you’ll receive 10% off your first payment.

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, if you opt to move to a paid subscription.

However, we found in our research that the ecommerce features were extremely limited in the free trial, so you won’t get a good feel for its online store functionality. For example, you won’t be able to accept payments, which will make the free trial an unsuitable option if you’re trying to validate your ability to conduct business online.

Overall, we found that ecommerce functionality was good and easy to use for smaller businesses; for traditional businesses, the lack of customizability hampers any significant changes.

Which Squarespace Pricing Plan is Right for Me?

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 a 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 physical subscription business, like a magazine or gift box – While all plans allow for subscription functionality, the Advanced plan unlocks no product transaction fees, which can save you a lot of money in the long run.
• If you run a digital subscription or membership business, like an online course – It depends on your size. Squarespace has a special digital transaction fee that starts at 7% for Basic and drops to 1% for Plus, so as you grow, you’ll benefit from higher-priced plans.

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 three out of four online consumers carrying out purchases through a mobile device, it’s safe to say that functionality is important.

How Much Does Squarespace Charge for Domain Hosting?

Squarespace provides a free custom domain for one year with all of its annual plans. This is an absolutely critical feature as, without a domain name, you won’t have a website.

When your free domain year 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 year, 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.

What Are Squarespace’s Payment Processing Fees?

Apart from a 2% transaction fee on its Basic plan, Squarespace does not charge transaction fees for online store purchases on any of its other plans. The same perk can’t be said 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 might make it easier or cheaper.

Squarespace also lets you process payments directly through the site through its new payment service: Squarespace Payments. The function utilizes Stripe for processing and charges standard Stripe rates, which vary by plan for in-person transactions (from 2.9% + 30¢ down to 2.5% + 30¢), and differ for online transactions (2.9% + 30¢).

Squarespace has partnered with Square to bring you in-person selling via Squarespace Point of Sale. To get started, you’ll need to connect your existing Square account (if applicable) and pair a reader with an iOS device.

Point of Sale is only available with Commerce Basic ($28 per month) and Commerce Advanced ($99 per month), and you’ll be charged the standard in-person Square transaction fee, amounting to 2.6% + 15¢ per transaction.

Finally, there’s one last big fee to know about: the Digital Content and Memberships transaction fee. This is separate from the online store fee, and it refers to any digital product transaction, such as courses, video pages, and member sites.

For those, you’ll be charged a 7% transaction fee with Basic, a 5% transaction fee with Core, a 1% transaction fee with Plus, and a 0% fee with Advanced.

Does Squarespace Charge Hidden Fees?

Beyond the main cost of a plan, Squarespace does charge some added fees, including domain renewals (after the first year), email marketing costs, payment processing fees, and fees for digital products or memberships. You’ll find a breakdown below.

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 end, if you don’t mind the hassle of moving.

Email

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.

Email marketing

Squarespace offers email marketing as a paid add-on with every plan. The cost will depend on how many emails you’d like to send each month. For example, if you’re looking to send up to 500 emails per month, it’ll cost an additional $8 per month. If you’re looking to send up to 250,000 per month, that fee increases to $68 per month.

Alternatively, you can opt for a dedicated third-party solution. And preferably one that integrates fully with your website for easy analysis. This will involve paying for a premium Squarespace extension with a company such as Mailchimp.

Is it Easy to Switch to Squarespace?

You might already have an established web presence with a vendor such as WordPress, but don’t let that deter you — it’s still possible to migrate your site over to Squarespace. However, it’s not the easiest task in the world, and there are some limitations.

To begin with, you’ll need to build a new site through Squarespace, either by tapping into the 14-day free trial or opting for one of the paid plans. Once you’ve done that, it’s a case of importing content from your old site.

While it’s not possible to import your existing site’s layout, design, or fonts, you can import the following features from the following vendors.

• Pages and blog posts – WordPress, Blogger, or Tumbler
• Products – Big Cartel, Etsy, Shopify, or other platforms through a .csv
• Podcasts – Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, SoundCloud

From here, you’ll want to build some new sections to fill in the gaps, before migrating your domain across.

How Does Squarespace’s Pricing Compare With Competitors?

Squarespace offers some pretty strong value, with a starter plan that competes with Wix ($16 per month versus $17 per month). What’s more, the average price of Squarespace’s plans is lower than Wix’s, and Squarespace’s entry-level plan offers slightly more competitive and customizable features for beginners and artists.

We do think Wix is the best for small businesses, since it offers more SEO and ecommerce tools, but Squarespace is a close second, so you’ll be well served with either.

If you’re able to sacrifice top-tier user experience, Hostinger is even more affordable than Squarespace, with the website builder’s plan starting from a rock-bottom $2.99 per month. You can read our full Hostinger versus Wix guide for a complete breakdown of these two providers, head-to-head.

There are a variety of free website builders available as well, for users looking to slash costs completely, but they’re no match for Squarespace when it comes to design and web-building functionality.

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.

What Key Features Does Squarespace Offer?

In our research, some of the most impressive aspects of Squarespace, beyond its design functionality, were its simple, comprehensive reporting tools, which allow you to view website data in a custom dashboard, and multi-channel selling functionality, providing simple setup for discounts, email campaigns, social integration, and payment options.

Particular highlights include its flagship suite of AI tools, known as Blueprint AI. With Blueprint AI, users can create high-quality websites and content in a matter of minutes, incorporating things like brand personality, look and feel, and more.

For more information on the best AI website builders, check out our full guide.

Squarespace lets me customize the font and color scheme of my template in a couple of clicks. Source: Tech.co user testing

What’s more, the platform scored highly for ease of use in our most recent round of testing. If you’re looking for a website builder with a shallow learning curve, you could do a lot worse than Squarespace. Alternatively, check out our full guide to the easiest website builders for beginners.

Squarespace is always updating its platform, which makes creating a website even easier. In May 2025, for example, the company added new functions, including the ability to trigger automated email campaigns with form submissions, as well as the ability to transfer standalone domain ownerships without contacting the customer support team.

Learn more about the website builder’s potential in our Squarespace review.

Squarespace’s Blueprint AI lets me set up a site quickly and its text feature generates copy to get the ball rolling. Source: Tech.co user testing

About Our Research