Squarespace Review: Is It Worth Your Money? [2024 Updated]

The eCommerce industry's explosion gives us opportunities to launch an online business in a trice. Hosted carts like Squarespace, for instance, can create a stunning and neat site after just a few clicks – but is it really worth it? Our Squarespace review will address the issue!

In the following lines, we will analyze intensively Squarespace functionalities and features to answer the following questions:

• What is Squarespace?
• What are the Squarespace features?
• Is Squarespace worth it?
• Our testing method
• Squarespace's competitors

Let's get the ball rolling!

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Squarespace Overview: What You Need to Know First?

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a powerful website builder with professional-looking templates, a simplistic section-based editor, and strong eCommerce features. With Squarespace, users can use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create web pages without knowing a single line of code.

What is Squarespace used for?

In its early days, Squarespace was developed as a blog-hosting service and published as a company in January 2004. The platform reached $1 million in revenue in 2006 and by 2021, it raised a total of $300 million in venture capital.

Currently, Squarespace positions itself as a content management system (CMS) solution to create and manage blogs, portfolio sites, and online stores. As of the writing, Squarespace market share is 5% of the top one million sites, and the platform hosts 3+ million live websites in total. Accordingly, it's the third most popular hosted solution on the entire internet.

Rather than being a CMS solution, Squarespace also aims to provide eCommerce solutions. More and more eCommerce features were added to the Squarespace system, such as Stripe, Getty Images, Paypal, etc. Currently, there are 134,671 live stores using Squarespace.

In contrast to open-source eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce or Magento – churning out lines of code to construct a site, Squarespace lets businesses of all types create professional websites with the drag-and-drop interface.

Squarespace pros and cons

With that being said, is Squarespace good? Take a look at the table below, where we summarize all the advantages and disadvantages of Squarespace.

Squarespace Review: All Features Analysis

In case you are in a hurry, look at the table below and have a grasp of what we will discuss in this Squarespace eCommerce review.

Squarespace pricing (4/5)

Pricing is always one of the most important considerations for any online business. Fortunately, you really get what you pay for with Squarespace.

Currently, the platform offers 4 pricing plans: Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. Except for the Personal plan, the other three work well for online businesses.

Squarespace does not offer a free plan, yet you are still able to experience the platform with a 14-day free trial. Then, upgrade to any paid plan, and you will have access to amazing Squarespace features, such as unlimited bandwidth and storage. Your Squarespace website will also be mobile optimized and SSL enabled by default. What's more, it's possible to connect the Squarespace site to your custom domain.

If you plan to grow your online business for the long term, consider switching to the annual subscription. This option helps you save up to 30%. For instance, with the Basic Commerce plan, it costs $432 when you pay monthly but down to $324 for the annual option.

In the following lines, we will give out detailed Squarespace reviews on every Squarespace pricing plan:

Design flexibility (4.5/5)

The main power core of Squarespace is right at the initial look. Generally, Squarespace templates are super professional, eye-catching with quality stock images, and a bit section-based. Some of them won a few Webby awards for the best design.

As of the writing, Squarespace offers 110 templates divided into 14 categories. Each of them fits your business or personal purpose, such as a photography portfolio or wedding-announcement website. Nevertheless, templates that are specifically designed and fully optimized for online stores are still in a limited range.

It's worth noting that since the Squarespace 7.1 version, templates are just variations of a “Family template” and share the same features and style options. What's more, it's not possible to change the template, but you can modify it thanks to the Page Section and Design Panel.

• Page Section: allows you to add as many sections as you want (content, block, gallery, etc) into your starting page and changes section style to fit your needs. However, the Page section is only available in certain templates.
• Design Panel: permits you to add and change fonts, colors, animations, etc., or make bulk changes to your site, giving your site a unique look.

You can even go the extra mile by going to the developer platform. This allows you to access template files behind your Squarespace website and edit them using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Since the Squarespace version 7.1, you can freely add as many elements as you want and make your site distinguishable from others.

Out of the box, Squarespace integrates with Unsplash and Getty. These integrations allow you to free images like Unsplash and paid (Getty) stock images from the huge libraries to your site.

Ease of use (4.5/5)

Following up with the Squarespace review, we'll move to discuss the Squarespace ease of use.

Since most people want to get rid of the “technical burden,” Squarespace aims for convenience and ease of use. The platform makes it super easy to start. All you need to do is go to Squarespace.com, pick a template that best fits your business, and click on ‘Start to Design.'

The editing system is quite straightforward. You can add texts, images, logos, and the appearance of your front store will be the same when you publish as it is when you modify.

Nonetheless, Squarespace website builder comes with a longer learning curve in comparison to other builders like Wix, Weebly, and Shopify. It's more section-based: you can’t drag and drop anything anywhere you want, and slows down a bit in the autosave mode. However, these help your website to be more structural and uncluttered.

eCommerce features (4/5)

Let's move on to the next part of this Squarespace review. Here, we take a look at all the outstanding features that Squarespace offers to boost your online business.

Inventory management

The Squarespace Inventory panel is quite easy to use. From here, you can control your inventory, find your item by search, add new products, edit stock levels, or bulk edit your product.

You can view products in two places: On their individual product pages and in the Inventory panel. The Inventory panel shows all products on your site, while a Products Page only displays the particular products added to that page.

Squarespace lets you import products from your existing Etsy, Shopify, or Big Cartel store via a .csv file. Nonetheless, customers, orders, and other pieces of data can also be imported manually. You can easily add a product picture, set prices, and description for your item. Squarespace allows you to add all kinds of products, from physical to digital products, services, or even gift cards.

Payment gateways

Squarespace offers a limited amount of payment gateways, including Paypal, Stripe, and Square.

Although just a few methods, it does cover most of the customer's payment needs. Paypal and Stripe are both popular international payments that let customers pay with debit and credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover (US) ) without creating or logging into an account. Additionally, Square allows merchants to use the Squarespace Point Of Sale to process in-person cash and card payments.

Performance analytics

Squarespace offers a decent range of reporting tools. The hosted solution brings you a real-time overview and detailed analytics of key factors such as visitors, orders, revenue, and so on.

Some of the best features of the analytics system of Squarespace include:

• Abandoned Cart: This function helps you to get insight into every abandoned cart and the success of your Abandoned Checkout Recovery email campaign.
• Traffic Source: See where visitors come from when they visit your site by channel. If you’re on the Commerce Basic or Advanced Plan, you can see how much revenue each channel – like social, email, and direct traffic – drives to your business.
• Activity Log: See a searchable list of every time a visitor accessed a URL on your site in the past seven days. Includes IP addresses.

Scheduling tools

Another highlight is the scheduling tools, which save you from spending too much time managing bookings. With just a few clicks, you can publicly share your availability so clients can book or reschedule appointments at their convenience. Plus, if you choose to link your account to Reserve with Google, your clients will be able to secure appointments straight from Google Search or Google Maps.

Some highlights worth mentioning:

• Clients can check your availability in real time and pay online in one smooth process.
• You’ll get instant notifications when new appointments come in. Everything syncs automatically with popular calendars like iCloud, Google, Office 364, and Outlook.
• Handling payments is a breeze, too. You may send invoices, accept deposits or full payments, and even offer packages, discounts, or subscriptions to draw in more clients – all within the same tool.

Client invoicing

With these invoicing tools, Squarespace makes it quite easy for you to get paid while still reinforcing the brand's image.

Specifically, you can send sleek, professional invoices that perfectly match your brand's style, allowing clients to pay quickly with just one click. Plus, the platform supports major payment options like debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, Afterpay, and more to help keep your customers happy during the checkout and boost conversion rates.

On another note, invoicing is just the beginning; Squarespace goes further to simplify client management as well. You can:

• Add an intake form right on your website to capture leads
• Manage client documents (proposals, estimates, contracts, etc.) in one place
• Store all submissions in Squarespace so you can jumpstart new projects directly from each lead.

Courses & Tutorials Creation

We are quite impressed that Squarespace can help you turn your knowledge into a profitable venture. There is a wide range of tools that guide you from course creation to promotion and sales. Plus, you can also choose a layout that aligns with your brand and use drag-and-drop editors to fully customize everything!

Other benefits to keep in mind:

• Squarespace lets you build interactive lessons with videos and chapters, giving your students a structured and engaging path to monitor their progress.
• You have the flexibility to sell your courses either through lifetime access fees or subscription options.
• If you opt for Squarespace’s 0% transaction fee plan, you get to keep all your hard-earned profits as your business expands.

Apps and add-ons (3.5/5)

Besides the core functionality, Squarespace also adds a growing ecosystem of third-party apps and extensions. However, this seems to be a disadvantage compared to its competitors. Currently, there are only 35 apps related to eCommerce and accounting available, including Shipping and Fulfillment (6), Finance (4), Inventory and Products (12), and Sales and Marketing (13).

SEO & Marketing features (4/5)

Another highlight is the SEO & marketing features. We have had quite a pleasant experience so far, though the platform can still do better regarding certain aspects:

Squarespace SEO Features

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the most important elements when it comes to choosing a site builder. Especially since Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan like other hosted platform competitors, paying customers definitely expect more from their SEO tools.

In the following line of the Squarespace review, let’s see all the advantages that Squarespace SEO offers:

• Security: according to Google, the HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) mode of Squarespace, which is a ranking signal, helps to improve the security of your site.
• Sitemap.xml file: a table of contents that will let search engines know what pages your site has. Squarespace automatically generates and links with your sitemap, which lists all the URLs and image information (name, publication date…) on your site with proper priority for perfect indexing.
• Built-in mobile optimization: Google considers this as an element to rank your page higher. Squarespace makes your content and template automatically resize based on the size of the browser window viewing your site.
• Uptime site loading: Google will penalize you if your site is down so many times. Squarespace is on top of the CMS Page Speed Performance Ranking Both Desktop And Mobile due to its great server system and AMP (creates lightweight versions of web pages to help them load faster on a mobile device).

Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement. For example, the Alt tag sometimes can be quite complicated since how you add alt text to an Image Block depends on the layout. Plus, the 301 and 302 redirect function is  not automatic like other platforms.

Squarespace marketing features 

As one of the leading website builders, Squarespace pays attention to both traditional marketing methods (such as email) and more modern approaches (social media and ads): 

Email marketing

Squarespace email campaign allows you to craft email campaigns as per your wish. It also allows you to easily keep track of your campaign and make necessary adjustments by tracking email campaign analytics.

No need to worry about finding an email template for your campaign. You can choose one of the available email themes or create one from scratch.

Social integration

There’s no doubt that social media is a big part when it comes to marketing your business. With Squarespace, you can link your accounts with over 20 social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Sync with Dropbox for simple access to photo collections, or import content straight to your site from Instagram, Twitter, and more.

Additionally, you can encourage your customers to share your content more by enabling the ‘Share Button.' 

Creating Ads

Advertising might be one of the best ways to bring your business to customers around the world. Squarespace provides you with some of the best ways to make the best use of your Ads campaign with the integration of Instagram, Facebook Pixel, Facebook Dynamic Ads, and so on.

You can make your Instagram tag, track your campaign using Facebook Pixel, automatically create Ads for your product with Facebook Dynamic Ads, or place Ads on your site with Google AdSense. Moreover, you can even redeem your Google Ads credit when you spend a given amount and use this credit to create ads for your site.

AI Tools (3.5/5)

Since its release, Squarespace has introduced two key AI tools to speed up your store's design. One is Squarespace AI, which helps you create and edit text content. From our own experience, this tool can produce amazing results when given detailed and descriptive prompts, and it doesn't take that long for beginners to get used to them, either.

Text generation aside, Squarespace also incorporates the Squarespace Design Intelligence functionality to ensure the store's stylish yet professional look right from the start. Once you find a theme that matches your vision, feel free to adjust its colors, position, headers, and more using this AI tool until the end result aligns with the brand's aesthetic and message.

On the other hand, we do think there's still room for improvement. It would be great if Squarespace could offer AI functionalities for more complex tasks (such as sorting customers or managing account data), similar to Shopify Magic from Shopify.

Loading Speed and Hosting (3/5)

Another great highlight we want to mention in our Squarespace review is Squarespace's overall web performance. The platform provides a complete web performance package that includes website hosting in EVERY pricing plan (plus a free domain name). That's certainly great news for eCommerce store owners now that they no longer have to worry about separate hosting and domain services.

We are also impressed with Squarespace's loading speed, which is as fast as 0.7 seconds under normal conditions. Still, we must say that performance does vary, meaning the speeds might slow to around 9 seconds or even longer, especially if you're not using the latest version of Squarespace (version 7.1 at the time of writing).

Therefore, you must always keep your site updated to ensure the best performance. Of course, you may consider installing third-party apps to improve loading speed, but Squarespace's admittedly small extension store offers quite limited options to choose from.

Security (4.5/5)

Squarespace is inherently secure, all plans come with free SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. When it comes to payment, Squarespace also offers PCI-DSS compliance for all payment methods.

Additionally, Squarespace also provides two-factor authentication, sometimes shortened to 2FA. This adds an extra layer of security to your account and website. Moreover, Verifying your account ownership will be applied whenever you contact Customer Support; this helps protect your privacy and content.

Support (4/5)

In general, Squarespace offers a great support system compared to other platforms. These include Knowledgebase, Email, live chat support, Webinar, Forum, Guides, and videos, plus a Developer Center.

The strength of Squarespace lies in supporting its detail. They always provide in-depth answers or articles on the knowledge page. One more plus is that their live chat is pretty responsive. Additionally, they even provide a Developer Center for those who have an advanced understanding of web design, CSS, and HTML… to create fully custom sites or build everything from scratch and integrate with third-party tools.

That said, there are still some Squarespace limitations. There is no phone support, long response time (especially at peak time), and live chat is not always available.

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Should You Choose Squarespace?

To sum up this Squarespace review, here are our thoughts about this hosted platform.

Squarespace is a powerful website builder and eCommerce platform. It comes with a wealthy set of valuable features: a beautiful, flexible template design and a great mobile app. However, the platform does need a lot of improvements, such as phone support, applying more payment gateways, SEO features, and extensions.

The platform also offers a wide range of plans and features for all kinds of businesses. However, for a large-scale company, it limits the customization possibility due to the hosted essence. That said, it still makes the best fit for small to medium businesses.

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Our Testing Methodology

As experienced testers, we aimed to provide a comprehensive Squarespace review across all pricing plans. Hence, our team strictly followed these steps to guarantee the best results:

Step 1. Divide the team

First, we divided our team into four groups, each tasked with testing one of the four Squarespace pricing plans. Each group created a store for their chosen plan in order to fully explore the extent of its capabilities:

• For Personal Plan: A simple blog-focused site for a travel blogger
• For Business Plan: A portfolio + selling site for a freelance graphic designer
• For Commerce Basic Plan: An online bookstore selling physical and digital books
• For Commerce Advance Plan: A high-end fashion boutique with advanced eCommerce features.

Step 2. Key features cross-check

After building the websites, we carefully went through the list of key features discussed above for each respective plan. All groups documented their findings and cross-checked them with other groups to ensure consistency while also identifying significant differences among the plans, if any.

Step 3. Double-check with customer reviews

Finally, we reviewed customer feedback from trustworthy forums and online sources to validate our findings. The goal is to pinpoint any major contradictions between our observations and customer experiences; if there were any, we would re-test those areas to see whether we encountered similar issues.

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What Are The Biggest Squarespace Competitors?

As of our writing, Wix and Shopify are often mentioned as Squarespace's main competitors.

We must say Wix is more similar to Squarespace, as both focus on website-building features rather than eCommerce-exclusive ones. On the other hand, Shopify is the best option out of the three if you are looking for extensive eCommerce features and AI tools to improve the business workflow.

Let’s have a closer look at their differences:

For a closer look, check out our Wix vs Squarespace vs Shopify comparison.

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Squarespace Review: FAQs

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Squarespace Review: Final Words

I hope this Squarespace review can help you to decide whether you should open or migrate your site to Squarespace.

If you intend to perform a thorough Squarespace migration, we offer a great migration service that helps you transfer your data from the current eCommerce platform to a new one accurately and safely. LitExtension #1 eCommerce Migration Expert currently supports more than 140 shopping carts available in the market and has performed 280,000+ successful migrations.

Feel free to contact us for more information! Join our Facebook Community or browse our Retailer Blog to get more eCommerce tips and news.