Squarespace Pricing: From Personal to Advanced Plans

Squarespace offers four pricing plans and, while not exactly confusing, it can be difficult on first glance to work out which plan is right for you. Plus, there are often hidden fees with website builders that can make running your website more expensive than you might have originally thought.

That's where we come in on Tech.co. We've spent hundreds of hours researching the website builder market to help you find the best deal. Squarespace costs will depend on whether you're creating a small personal site or a large online store – it's a flexible platform, with prices to match. If you want to take a look at all of the best website builders, take a look at our handy comparison page.

So, for all of its benefits, how much does Squarespace cost? Reassuringly, you don't need to spend much to get started with Squarespace. It has some fantastic value plans, beginning from just $12 per month if you pay annually. This cost rises to $40 per month for an Advanced Commerce plan – which is still tremendous value when it comes to creating an ecommerce website.

The most important thing is to understand how much you need to spend to get the type of website you're after with Squarespace. In this guide, we'll explain the different Squarespace plans and costs, and which plan is most appropriate for which type of site and budget.

In this Guide we'll look at all the pricing plans in detail:

• Squarespace Pricing Plans – Get an in-depth look at Squarespace's four pricing plans, starting from just $16 per month
  • Websites Personal ($12/month, paid annually) – the best choice if you're creating a blog, portfolio or very small business site
  • Websites Business ($18/month, paid annually) – a great value plan for small businesses
  • Basic Commerce ($26/month, paid annually) – a superb low price for creating an online store
  • Advanced Commerce ($40/month, paid annually) – everything you need for creating a larger-scale ecommerce site

We'll also cover some of the additional costs you might run into while using Squarespace and see how it fares against rival website builders.

• Using Squarespace for Free – You can, but only for 14 days
• Squarespace Domain Hosting Costs – You can use Squarespace's hosting, or connect a domain you already own to Squarespace
• Squarespace Additional Hidden Costs – We explain all the hidden costs you might run into when using Squarespace to create your website
• Squarespace Pricing vs Competitors – We examine how Squarespace compares with its biggest rivals, Wix and Shopify
• Squarespace Pricing FAQs – We answer the most pressing questions about Squarespace

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 plan is best-suited to which type of website:

• If you want to make a blog – Choose the Personal plan, as you’ll get unlimited storage for photos and website metrics
• If you want to sell products online – You’ll need the Basic Commerce plan at least. There are no transaction fees, and you can sell an unlimited amount of products
• If you want to create a site for your small business – We’d opt for the Business Websites 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 Personal 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 Personal plan. Unlimited storage is great for uploading videos, images or audio to advertise your work
• If you run a subscriptions business, like a magazine – You’ll need the Advanced Commerce plan. Squarespace is currently the only website builder to offer subscription sales

If you're planning on using Squarespace to build a website for your business, you're doing the right thing. According to Facebook, some 51% of businesses are experiencing more online interactions with customers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, making a website all but essential these days.

Squarespace Personal Plan

The Personal Plan is Squarespace’s cheapest pricing plan, costing $12 per month.

For this, you’ll get access to a fully-featured website with unlimited storage for uploading images and videos, 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. Also thrown in are website metrics and 24/7 help and support.

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 Personal plan is a great choice.

Squarespace Business Plan

The Business Plan is designed for companies that don't need to sell products online but still need an impressive, high quality website. It costs $18 per month when paid annually and offers some juicy extras when compared to the Personal Plan.

For a start, 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 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.

The Business Plan's other huge advantage over the Personal Plan is its advanced website metrics. This means you'll be able to analyse how users find and interact with your website in order to make improvements to its design, increasing sales and making more money. You’ll also be able to access a selection of tools to encourage customers to visit your store or place an order. You get $100 of Google Ad credit to help attract customers to your site, as well as access to promotional pop-ups and an announcement bar to make your offers even more enticing.

You get access to more tools and design elements to give your site more functionality. For example, you can connect apps which 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.

For small bricks-and-mortar shops or services businesses, the Business plan is ideal.

Squarespace Basic Commerce Plan

While you can sell products online with the Business plan, you will have to pay a 3% transaction fee on all sales you make. However, Squarespace waives the fee when you upgrade to the Basic Commerce Plan.

The monthly price is increased to $26 per month, but you get a wide range of benefits beyond just the removal of the transaction fee. For example, you get a fully mobile optimized checkout on your own site and improved commercial metrics to identify any pain-points your users are finding with your site.

Find out more – Squarespace for Ecommerce Review

You also get access to integrated accounting and label printing services, provided by specialists that have partnered with Squarespace. This makes it super easy to keep your stall in order.

Squarespace Advanced Commerce Plan

At $40 per month, this is Squarespace’s most expensive plan. And, 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.

You get all the features from the Basic Commerce plan, plus:

• Abandoned cart auto-recovery
• Advanced shipping rate calculations for USPS, FedEx and UPS
• Flexible discounts to specific order values, or limited use or time promotions
• The ability to sell digital gift cards
• Access to the Orders API, which allows you to build custom integration with third-party services for order fulfilment and production logistics
• Subscription sales for recurring product orders

This extra level of functionality means that you’ll be able to offer a complete ecommerce experience with remarkable ease.

If your business is selling products, this is the best way to go about it.

Squarespace Additional Hidden Costs

Squarespace has a pretty straightforward pricing structure. However, there are some hidden costs that it is definitely worth bearing in mind before you deciding on your website builder.

Free Custom Domain

We said above that you get a free custom domain on Squarespace's cheapest pricing plan. However, you'll only get this free domain if you pay for a year up front.

What's more, the custom domain only lasts for a single year and auto-renews at Squarespace's standard rate — typically around $20-40 per year.

You might be better off choosing a custom host (we like InMotion or BlueHost), with potentially lower costs and less hassle if you choose to move it after a year.

Email

Again, while you do get Gmail free on the Business Plan, you only get one account. Plus Google's email solution isn't the best for sending mass marketing emails.

If you want to add another Gmail account, if for example 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.

Payment Processing Fees

Yes, Squarespace doesn't charge transaction fees on its Commerce plans and, yes, not all website builders can say the same.

However, if you decided 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 (confusing, we know) which might make it easier or cheaper.

Squarespace Pricing vs Competitors

When compared to many of its website builder competitors, Squarespace can look expensive. For example, it has no free plan and its cheapest plan costs more than the cheapest plans for Wix, Weebly, and WordPress.

However, Squarespace prides itself on high-quality template design and powerful, easy to use integrations. All these cost money to produce and support and Squarespace wants to make your experience as painless as possible.

Compared to many of its ecommerce rivals, Squarespace looks relatively affordable. Shopify, for example, costs $29 per month on its cheapest plan, before rising to $79 per month. Squarespace's plans, meanwhile, are capped at $40 per month.

These cheaper prices reflect that Squarespace might not be the last word in ecommerce. It's very good for small- to medium-sized businesses, but it might struggle for seriously large operations. This is where a service such as Shopify or BigCommerce might be a better fit with their improved in-house analytics and inventory support.

Squarespace Pricing FAQs

Here's a quick and simple whistle-stop tour through all of your most pressing questions about Squarespace.

Does Squarespace charge transaction fees?

It does, but only on the Business Plan. If you choose either of the Commerce plans, the transaction fee is waved.

However, you will have to pay the fees required by your payment processing company of choice.

Which Squarespace plan is best?

For a small portfolio or blog, we'd recommend the entry level Personal Plan. If you're looking to run a website for your small comapy, we'd recommend the Business Plan which will give you loads of extra features useful for attracting and retaining customers.

If you're looking to run an online store, we'd recommend the Basic Commerce plan which waives the transactions fees on the Business Plan and will give you more ecommerce-friendly features.

If your online store is taking off, we'd recommend moving up a level to the Advanced Commerce plan for even more features.

Is Squarespace better than WordPress?

If you're looking to run a small-time blog, go with WordPress. It's cheaper and many of its features are designed specifically for blogging. At the other end of the scale, if you're looking to create a hugely complex, large scale website, WordPress is ideal, given how adaptable it is for web development teams. That may be biting off a little too much to chew, though, for anyone creating a site single-handed.

Which is why, if you're looking to run any other type of website, get Squarespace. Most people find it easier to create a website with and it has a range of extensions and additions which can add some seriously sophisticated extra features.

Squarespace isn't the only website builder platform, of course. It's one of the best we've tested, but to help you decide, check our full results table, below:

*Use code TECHCO10 for a 10% discount off all Squarespace plans