Squarespace vs WordPress

After rigorously testing both WordPress and Squarespace, we found that Squarespace is the best website builder overall, beating WordPress in a number of different categories. 

Squarespace’s superior design features, marketing capabilities, and customer support – as well as the fact it's better value for money and easier to use – means it comes out on top. 

In this guide, we’ll take you through the ins and outs of both platforms. Before that though, check out the table just below for a direct comparison of the provider’s most important aspects. Alternatively, try out our comparison tool to see how Squarespace and WordPress match up next to other competitors in the website building world.

In This Guide:

• WordPress.org & WordPress.com
• Squarespace vs WordPress: Head-to-Head
• Squarespace vs WordPress: Value for Money
• WordPress Pricing 
• Squarespace Pricing 
• Free Plans
• Features Comparison
• Alternatives
• Verdict
• FAQs

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

Before we get into judging WordPress against Squarespace it’s important to note here that this article is comparing Squarespace with WordPress.com rather than WordPress.org (although we still mention it in a couple of relevant places). To avoid confusion, here's the difference between the two:

• WordPress.org is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage their own websites. It's self-hosted, meaning you just get a copy of the CMS. You'll have to find your own domain provider and sign up to a hosting service. The end-user manages everything, from site maintenance to security. 

• WordPress.com feels like a traditional website builder, but it's probably best described as a blogging platform. It has a lot of features that have been brought over from WordPress.org, but remains a streamlined version that doesn't have any coding or hosting responsibilities for the end-user. 

The reason this article compares Squarespace and WordPress.com – rather than WordPress.org – is that Squarespace is the same ‘type' of program as Word.com. Both WordPress.com and Squarespace operate like traditional website builders – whereas WordPress.org is better described as a CMS.

If you're looking to build a website, then, WordPress.com and Squarespace will be useful to compare – WordPress.org, not as much. Overall, WordPress.com is a lot easier to use, more streamlined and you don’t have to do all the more complex elements of website building required by WordPress.org. You need a significant amount of resources and technical ability – as well as traffic potential – to justify building a website in WordPress.org. 

Squarespace vs WordPress: Head-to-Head

In terms of ease of use, Squarespace is drastically more user-friendly than WordPress.com. “First impressions are that this does come with a steep learning curve,” one user admitted during our testing, illustrating that WordPress can be intimidating even for users who’ve built websites using other platforms.

However, WordPress does have a free version whilst Squarespace doesn’t, and WordPress’s plans are priced lower than those offered by Squarespace. WordPress is cheaper than Squarespace overall – but not necessarily better value for money. 

Squarespace had a wider range of useful ecommerce features than WordPress. 

WordPress.org is also free, but you have to pay for all the plugins and thirty-party apps you’ll need to build a successful website – it requires some technical expertise and coding knowledge too, which can put some people off. WordPress.com doesn’t require that level of coding knowledge, yet still relies heavily on plugins for marketing features; Squarespace has most of these features built-in. 

Squarespace offers a custom domain for free for a year, but you’ll have to purchase WordPress’s Personal plan or above to obtain a custom domain and set it as your default web address. 

Another point in favor of Squarespace is unlimited storage; even WordPress’s priciest plans have a 200GB maximum. 

Squarespace also provides a better suite of customer support options – its wide range of email, phone and live chat support can be accessed 24/7 on all plans, whereas WordPress only lets you access live chat on the Premium plan or above (email support is available to all). Our testing found that Squarespace had a much more useful knowledge base, which was easier to find useful articles within than WordPress’s equivalent. 

Who are Squarespace and WordPress Best for?

Although Squarespace is better than WordPress overall, both platforms have huge customer bases and contain a wealth of website-building features that would suit a wide variety of businesses and individuals. That being said, in terms of features, we found that:

• Squarespace is better for site design. 
• WordPress is better for publishing blogs and other written content. 
• Squarespace is better for ecommerce/selling products.
• Squarespace is better for customer support.

This means that certain businesses and individuals will benefit from one over the other. We concluded that:

• Squarespace is the best choice for beginners.
• WordPress.org is the best choice for experienced coders & website builders. 
• Squarespace is the best choice for growing businesses.
• WordPress.com is the best choice for businesses on a budget.
• Squarespace is the best choice for online stores and retailers.
• WordPress.com is better for digital publications.

Thanks to superior design features, Squarespace will be a much better option for anyone who’s trying to grow their business by selling products through an online store, and would find it a lot easier if all the code-based customization options are found in a platform like WordPress were just taken care of. 

Squarespace

Whilst WordPress’s templates are mostly geared towards blogging, Squarespace has a much wider variety that can cater to a multitude of different sites. In terms of quality, they’re also top of the range; Squarespace ensures your site will look professional, sleek, and inviting, whichever template you opt for. 

Squarespace is famed for its marketing tools and integrations and should be your go-to if you want your site to gain traction on social media. I should definitely be your go-to if you’re planning to sell products – and if you have a physical store too, there are options that allow you to manage all of your sales together. 

It’s also got one of the best customer support systems in the game (our testing found it superior to Wix and GoDaddy as well as WordPress) – so if you feel like you’ll need support whilst setting your site up, Squarespace is one of the best options out there – and it's one of the better website building options for beginners. 

Unlike WordPress, Squarespace has no free version – but it does have a free trial available. There are four paid plans, however, the Personal ($12/month), Business ($18/month), Commerce Basic ($26/month), and Commerce Advanced Plans ($40/month). Prices listed here are for users paying annually – you can pay month-by-month too, but it costs more. 

WordPress

WordPress is a powerful website-building tool – over 455 million websites have been created using the platform. WordPress is a highly customizable builder but a lot of this customization comes from plug-ins that you’ll have to find elsewhere, rather than built-in features. 

WordPress has a free version and four pricing plans – Personal ($4/month), Premium ($8/month), Business ($25/month), and eCommerce ($45/month), which are all billed annually. The business plan is the one you want to go for if you’re a small business, whereas the eCommerce plan is the best option if you’d like to start an online store. 

WordPress is definitely geared towards bloggers and digital publishers in general – it’s one of the best options on the market if you’re going to be publishing a lot of written content. The vast majority of the website templates on offer are geared towards this use case, which means that you may find it quite restrictive if you have other goals or aims for your site. 

Best Value: Squarespace

Squarespace is better value for money than WordPress – even though WordPress is cheaper. You'll pay more for Squarespace, but you get a much broader and more useful range of features.

WordPress’s Premium Plan is only $8/month, which is cheaper than any of Squarespace’s plans, which start from $12/month. If your only consideration is your budget, and you’re looking for the cheapest way to get your business off the ground, then WordPress is your best shot. WordPress’s Personal plan – which is just $4/month – is the cheapest paid plan provided by any of the website builders we tested, including Wix, GoDaddy, Weebly, and SiteBuilder. 

However, Squarespace has better quality website templates for a wider variety of sites – WordPress’s are much more restrictive and you’ll find that the majority are really only suitable for blogs. Squarespace provides a broader range of marketing and SEO tools on the less expensive plans too, so although you’ll pay more for Squarespace than WordPress, you get more bang for your buck.  Squarespace is a better all-around product if you’re looking to sell items on your site, with a broader and more powerful range of ecommerce tools. 

Plus, you actually have to get WordPress’s Commerce plan to unlock a lot of these features, which is $45/month, to take payments in different countries, integrate with top shipping carriers, and gain access to dedicated design options for online stores. Squarespace’s Advanced Commerce plan is only $40/month, yet is a lot more fully featured. 

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace departs from WordPress initially as it doesn’t have a free plan, although it does have a free trial so you can road test the software without spending a cent. 

Cheaper Squarespace Plans

There are four paid plans. Like WordPress, there’s a Personal plan – but at $12/month, it’s a lot more expensive than WordPress’s similarly-named offering. You don’t get any commerce features on this plan, but Squarespace will give you a free custom domain, SSL certification, 30 minutes of video storage, 24/7 customer support, a collection of SEO tools, and access to Squarespace’s library of extensions. 

Overall it’s a bit more impressive than WordPress’s equivalent but doesn’t let you earn ad revenue, which WordPress does. 

The Business plan is available for $18/month and allows for complete customization with CSS and Javascript. The Business plan allows for full access to Squarespace’s video studio application, in which you can create promotional pop-ups and banners (and you’ll also get $100 of Google ads credit). 

You’ll also be granted access to a number of commerce features including the capacity to sell unlimited products and sell digital gift cards, and you’ll be able to use Squarespace’s shipping and inventory management tools too. 

Squarespace Plans for Commerce

Commerce Basic plan ($26/month) and Commerce Advanced plan ($40/month) are what you should really be looking at if you’re planning on selling products and items in an online store. 

The Commerce Basic plan has powerful merchandising tools, ecommerce analytics, and access to a commerce app that integrates with Square’s (different company – confusing, we know) Point of Sale software – so you can take orders online and in-person and never lose track. Transaction fees are also reduced from 3% on the Business plan to 0% on the Commerce Basic plan

On top of this, Squarespace's Commerce Advanced plan provides even more useful functions like abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping (including calculating the real-time rates for companies like FedEx), and subscription capabilities. 

WordPress Pricing

WordPress has a free version and four pricing plans. The free plan is pretty limited, although you’ll still have access to a number of themes/templates and a pre-installed SSL certificate. You’ll also get all the Jetpack essentials features, including ways to view your site activity and SEO tools, as well as 3GB storage space. 

Cheaper WordPress Plans

The Personal plan ($4/month) offers users a free domain for one year, unlimited email support and 6GB of storage. WordPress ads will also be removed, and you’ll get a custom domain as your web address. You’ll also be able to accept payments, create subscriber paywalls and paid newsletters. 

WordPress’s Premium plan ($8/month) unlocks additional support features – including Live Chat and 24/7 Priority support – as well as more than double the storage space in the Premium Plan (13GB). The Premium plan also unlocks premium themes and advanced design customization. Marketing features like Google Analytics integration and PayPal payments are also available. This is the cheapest plan you can earn money with through ad revenue with too. 

Pricier WordPress Plans

The Business ($25/month) and eCommerce ($45/month) plans equip users with the full suite of marketing and monetization tools that WordPress offers, as well as the maximum amount of themes, and 200GB storage. The eCommerce plan has additional, advanced commerce features – such as the capacity to accept payment in 60 countries and integrations with top shipping carriers. 

The Business plan is the one you want to go for if you’re a small business, whereas the eCommerce plan is the best option if you’d like to start an online store. Unless you’re a freelancer or a very small team, you’re going to find the Personal plan quite limited – the Premium plan is a nice in-between though. 

WordPress.org, by contrast, is just free. It will require you to find your own hosting, which costs around $7/month depending on what provider you choose. You’ll then be tasked with buying the plugins you need from different vendors, which will fill your site with features. 

Squarespace vs WordPress: Which has the best Free Plan?

Well, WordPress wins this head-to-head by default – it’s the only provider that does actually offer a completely free plan, although it’s pretty limited in terms of what you’re given. Aside from an SSL certificate, domain, and access to some free themes, there’s not much else to write home about.

Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan but does offer a free, 14-day trial for anyone who wants to try out their software. You don’t even have to hand any payment details over to start the trial and you won’t automatically be rolled over onto a paid plan unless you decide you’d like to.

Best for Business Features: Squarespace

Squarespace beats WordPress hands down when it comes to business features. It excels in two areas – marketing and ecommerce – that make it the perfect choice for growing your business and selling products. 

Marketing

Squarespace’s marketing features mean there’s not really a better option when it comes to growing your business. You can track website visitor numbers, traffic sources, visitor geography, and various other important information. Squarespace’s Business plan offers additional sales and conversion metrics, so you can understand how customers contact you. 

However, it doesn’t have as many marketing app integrations as competitors like Wix and WordPress – Squarespace only integrates with MailChimp. But arguably, the fact it’s got so many features that can help you with this (including its own email campaigns platform), that it doesn’t need to.

SEO & Social Media

Squarespace also has some great SEO tools that will help you climb up the Google rankings, including title and keyword management – and, what’s more, they’re all ready for you to use in Squarespace as soon as you sign up. 

Squarespace ensures your site is optimized for mobile and provides both an SEO checklist for users to review and an SEO panel so you can edit your site title and description.

WordPress offers a pretty good selection of SEO tools as well, and all of its themes are already optimized to improve your google ranking. Unlike Squarespace, however, there’s no keyword support. On top of this, Squarespace offers a built-in translation feature so your site can be read across the globe – with WordPress, you’ll have to get a third-party plugin. 

Social media is another area where Squarespace does really well. It has support for all platforms and everything is built into the site, including the automated scheduling of posts. With WordPress, you have to use an add-on called ‘Publicize’, which works quite well aside from the fact it doesn’t support Instagram. 

Ecommerce

Both WordPress and Squarespace have ecommerce options but when compared with Squarespace, the main problem with WordPress is that they’re locked away in the provider's most expensive plans.

It‘ll cost a customer $300/year ($25/month) to access WordPress’s cheapest plan that offers ecommerce features; Squarespace’s Business plan is 28% cheaper, at $216/year ($18/month).

Squarespace also has a much wider range of ecommerce features – abandoned cart recovery, gift cards, product tagging on Instagram, limited availability labels, detailed ecommerce analytics, product waitlist are just a flavor of what Squarespace can offer – none of these features are available from WordPress.

Best for Blogging Features: WordPress 

WordPress will be the better option for anyone looking to start a blog or anyone who will be publishing digital content in bulk. With Google Analytics integration and WordAds, you’ll be able to compile data on who’s visiting your site and generate revenue from advertisements. 

As has already been mentioned, a lot of WordPress’s themes are produced for bloggers, so you’ll really be getting a site with everything you need to publish your content. 

Unlike sites like Wix, which are traditional website builders, WordPress is more of a blogging platform – so it has features like analytics, search feature, an archive, comments, social bookmarking and display categories.

Plus, WordPress has one of the cheapest personal plans ($4/month), and the Premium plan is also very reasonably priced ($8/month) – so getting yourself online won’t even break the bank. 

Best for Customer Support: Squarespace

Squarespace not only beats WordPress when it comes to customer support but also surpasses every other website builder in the game. 

Squarespace provides support via email, social media, and live chat and has both a knowledge base and a community forum. There’s a great knowledge base and community forum to learn from which are useful for quick fixes, and there are GIF and Image tutorials too, as well as onsite editor help. 

The last thing you want as a business dealing with products, services, and customers is having to troubleshoot your own technical issues, or your website going down during peak shopping times. So, choosing a website builder with a far-reaching customer support system is vital – and Squarespace won’t leave you with any regrets. 

However, Squarespace does not provide phone support, whereas WordPress does, so if that’s your preferred mode of communication when receiving help, you may want to opt for the latter provider. 

Best for Ease of Use: Squarespace

Squarespace takes an intuitive, drag-and-drop approach to website building and its designs are a lot less cluttered than sites like Wix. In short, it’s not difficult to make your site look pretty with Squarespace. 

The downside of being supremely uncomplicated is that Squarespace is a lot less customizable than sites like Wix – but if you’re satisfied with the preset templates offered, then you won’t need to make drastic changes anyway. 

Although WordPress.com relieves the user of many of the complex coding duties associated with WordPress.org, it’s still got vast room for improvement.

Another point in Squarespace’s favor over sites like WordPress is the fact it really provides an ‘all-in-one’ package – WordPress relies heavily on add ons, plugins, and third-party apps, and it’s not always easy to keep track of exactly which ones you need.

WordPress certainly isn’t known for providing a user-friendly experience, and although WordPress.com relieves the user of many of the complex coding duties associated with WordPress.org, it’s still got vast room for improvement. Again, as was mentioned before, the lack of congruence between the editing view and how the page appears in a tab can cause issues, especially for new users.

WordPress.org, on the other hand, is quite a complicated program that can easily become intimidating for beginners. There’s a reasonable level of coding knowledge assumed and the fact that design and editing are very separate tasks means there isn’t a drag-and-drop function. 

This may be useful for large businesses that expect significant traffic potential, but the coding knowledge and the fact you’ll have to shop around for plugins for almost everything is a big downside. 

Squarespace & WordPress Alternatives

It’ll be clear to you by now that Squarespace is the clear winner when put up against WordPress. But how does it far when compared to other providers?

Squarespace & WordPress vs Wix

Wix’s first paid plan starts at $14/month, which means it’s a lot more expensive than both WordPress and Squarespace. There is a free version of Wix, but like WordPress’s free version, it’s limited. Wix also runs a free trial policy for its premium plans, like Squarespace.

Overall though, Wix’s price, much like Squarespace’s, is justified – Wix bested them both when we tested the most popular website builders on the market.

Despite being an “all-in-one” website builder – Wix still has an excellent and vast market of third-party apps to choose from.

Wix offers a similar suite of SEO and Marketing tools as Squarespace but is slightly easier to use thanks to a highly intuitive drag-and-drop interface that gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to design. You can also translate all of your content into different languages inside Wix. Feature-wise, Wix beats both. 

Despite being an “all-in-one” website builder – you never really have to leave the program if you want a certain feature or function – Wix still has an excellent market of third-party apps to choose from – so even WordPress’ vast library of plugins is given a run for its money. 

We’d even recommend it as a blogging platform over WordPress, as it provides many of the same functionalities, but is a better all-around website builder – however, the pricing will put some people off and make WordPress the go-to option. 

Similar to Squarespace, Wix is a vast and varied program designed to provide a platform for any business, operating in any industry, to expand its online presence and/or sell products and services. The wealth of third-party apps means it's easily scalable too. 

Squarespace & WordPress vs GoDaddy

GoDaddy is another popular website-building platform you should consider. The provider's cheapest plan is available for just $6.99/month, but there’s also a 30-day free trial if you don’t want to spend anything. 

GoDaddy has a useful ADI if you want to get started quickly (an ADI essentially gets you to answer a few questions and generate an oven-ready website based on your answers) but this is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it makes setting up GoDaddy seamless and easy, but on the other, it can mean sites look generic. 

Like Squarespace and Wix, GoDaddy focuses quite heavily on SEO and even highlights which parts of your site could do with a makeover to bring you further up the Google rankings.

However, GoDaddy has got a much wider range of templates than it did a few years ago, which makes it a more reasonable choice for a wider variety of businesses and individuals. 

Like Squarespace and Wix, GoDaddy focuses quite heavily on SEO and even highlights which parts of your site could do with a makeover and in turn help you climb up the Google rankings. Some more advanced features are missing – like canonical tags – which sites like Wix and Squarespace both provide. But if you’re an SEO novice, you should seriously consider GoDaddy over a site like WordPress. 

However, in fairness to WordPress, GoDaddy doesn’t have as many features to help out bloggers or digital publishers, including writer profiles, analytics, or an archive. 

GoDaddy will suit small, independent businesses – it’s a nice middle ground between having helpful features – many more than WordPress – whilst remaining a lot simpler than Wix or Squarespace. 

Squarespace & WordPress vs Other Providers

To give you a better idea of how Squarespace squares up to the rest of the market, have a look at our table just below: