How Much Does Squarespace Cost?

Squarespace offers four main pricing plans, as well as a 14-day free trial.

It might not seem as cheap as other website builders on the market when you’re first starting out, but Squarespace has a fantastic range of features available – even on its cheapest plan. Chances are, if you’re after a high-quality website, Squarespace will be worth it.

* Use code TECH10 for 10% off on Squarespace plans

Can You Use Squarespace for Free?

Yes, you can use Squarespace for free – but only for 14 days.

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 adverts, 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.

Squarespace Pricing Plans In Detail

Squarespace splits its four pricing plans into two sections: Websites and Online Stores.

The Website plans are the cheapest, starting at $12 and $18 per month. These plans are meant to provide websites that will suit all kinds of users, from hobbyists, clubs and portfolios to small and medium-sized businesses.

The clue is in the name with the Online Store plans. They’re designed to allow users like yourself to create fully-functioning online stores for your business, no matter its size. As a result, they require some specialized ecommerce features – such as shipping and tax calculators – that bump the price up. The Online Store plans cost $26 and $40 per month.

The plans might sound expensive, but Squarespace’s pricing structure isn’t designed to upsell you. It wants to make the whole business of creating and running a website – whatever you need it to do – as simple as possible.

• 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 Online Store plan. 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 Online Stores plan. Squarespace is currently the only website builder to offer subscription sales

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.

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

Intended for businesses that don’t need to sell products online, the Business plan costs $18 per month and builds on the Personal plan’s strong foundations.

You’ll be able to register unlimited contributors to your site – ideal for businesses with more than one employee – and be able to get professional email from Google featuring your site’s custom domain, rather than “@gmail.com.”

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.

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

Squarespace Basic Online Stores Plan

While you can sell products online with the Business plan, Squarespace will take a 3% commission on every sale you make. With the Basic Online Stores plan, however, Squarespace waives the fee.

The monthly price is increased to $26 per month, but you get a wide range of benefits beyond just 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.

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 Online Stores 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 Online Stores 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 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 Personal 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.

Next Steps – Getting Started With Squarespace

It really does take mere moments to get up and running with Squarespace. That's the joy of using a website builder – after answering a few simple questions about what type of site you're trying to create, the builder will start generating a series of templates for you.

From there on, you're free to customize and adapt things as you choose. The process is so simple, even complete beginners to website publishing can be up and running with a professional looking site in a matter of hours.

Hopefully by now, you'll understand the kind of costs you'll be dealing with if you choose to publish a site via Squarespace. The next best step you can take is to head to Squarespace and compare plans and deals.

If you choose to create your website with Squarespace, you'll be able to take 10% off with the code ‘TECH10'.