Webflow vs Squarespace: Finding the Right Website Builder for Your Needs [2024]

Webflow vs Squarespace are popular website builders, each offering unique features and pricing options to help you create a professional online presence. In this article, LitExtension will explore the key features, advantages, and potential drawbacks of both platforms.

Here comes the agenda today:

• Ease of Use;
• Templates & Design Flexibility;
• Artificial Intelligence (AI support);
• eCommerce features;
• Marketing & SEO;
• Extensions & Plugins;
• Security & Customer Support.

Right now, let’s get in!

Webflow vs Squarespace: Understanding User Intent

Webflow is one of the leading solutions supporting users to build a well-structured site. With Webflow, users can access a full-featured interface and create an outstanding website design without codes. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform offering plenty of functions to create and manage an eCommerce store effectively. It is highly rated for creatives and can support bloggers and photographers in promoting their content effectively.

Before choosing Webflow or Squarespace, I think you should understand what kind of website you want to make and how much experience you have building websites. This will help you decide which platform is right for you.

Who Should Use Webflow?

Webflow is best suited for:

• Web designers and developers who want much control over their designs
• Agencies and freelancers building custom websites for clients
• Businesses requiring complex, interactive web applications
• Users who need advanced CMS capabilities for content-heavy sites
• Those looking to create unique, animated, and highly interactive web experiences

Webflow shines in projects that require a high degree of customization, complex interactions, or unique designs that go beyond traditional templates. It's particularly useful for creating marketing sites, web applications, and dynamic content platforms.

Who Should Use Squarespace?

Squarespace is ideal for:

• Non-technical users who prioritize ease of use
• Small business owners looking for a quick and professional online presence
• Bloggers and content creators who want a clean, minimalist design
• Artists and photographers seeking a visually-driven portfolio site
• Ecommerce beginners looking for a straightforward way to set up an online store

Squarespace excels in scenarios where you need to get a beautiful website up and running quickly, without the need for extensive customization or coding knowledge. It's perfect for creating portfolios, blogs, small business websites, and basic eCommerce stores.

Webflow vs Squarespace Pricing Plans

It's important to know how much Webflow and Squarespace cost before you choose one. Here's a comparison of their prices:

Webflow

After this part, you will have the right answer to “Is Webflow free?” or “How much is Webflow?”. Currently, Webflow offers 2 main Webflow pricing plans, including:

#1. Site plans

With Webflow site plans; you will have the Webflow editor and Webflow hosting plans to operate your site. To begin with, you need to pick one of the 2 following options:

#2. Workspaces

Workspaces solution allows you to design a site on Webflow but host it on your own server space. This might help you keep your store’s budget flexible in several situations. Here are 2 packages you can pick when working with Squarespace Workspaces.

If you choose to pay annually, you can save up to 33% on Webflow's monthly cost. That’s an impressive deal in the long run.

Squarespace

Compared to Webflow cost, Squarespace offers fewer pricing plans.

While Squarespace does not offer a free plan, you still have a 14-day free trial to get an idea of how this platform works. Make sure to utilize it to determine whether the platform can meet your requirements or not.

Webflow vs Squarespace: A Comprehensive Comparison

If you are in a hurry or simply want to skip the following walls of text, take a look at this table below for a quick comparison between Webflow vs Squarespace.

#1. Ease of Use

In this part, we will help you to clarify how simple it is to run an eCommerce store on Webflow and Squarespace.

Webflow gives you a lot of options to customize your website, but it might be confusing at first if you're new to website building. You'll need to play around with the settings to get your website to look just right.

That said, Webflow provides more design freedom compared to other platforms. You can use codes or create custom animations to make your page more personal.

Squarespace is easier to use than Webflow, especially if you're not a tech expert. You can change things like your logo, font, and colors to make your website look the way you want. But sometimes, Squarespace might save your changes automatically, which can be annoying.

You can refer to our detailed Squarespace tutorial to learn how to kick off your online business.

#2. Templates & Design Flexibility

With Webflow, you can experience over 2,000 themes covering various topics like CMS, eCommerce, portfolio, UI Kit, etc. Of these, you will have a chance to use over 50 free designs to optimize your site’s layout. However, Webflow doesn’t allow you to switch templates which means you need to start again from scratch. This might be inconvenient and time-consuming.

However, Webflow still sets itself apart with its powerful design capabilities and flexibility:

• Full control over HTML, CSS, and JavaScript without coding
• Advanced interaction and animation options
• Pixel-perfect positioning and layout control
• Ability to create complex, multi-page websites with unique designs for each page

What about Squarespace templates?

Currently, all Squarespace themes are compatible with the latest version 7.1. Hence, you can choose whatever suits your needs and customize it to your heart’s content. Squarespace allows you to add content with Page Sections or style your store using the Site Style Panel.

The only downside is that Squarespace only provides 168 templates, which is much fewer than Webflow. However, the majority are well-structured and vibrant to catch your customers’ sight easily. Or else, you can click Build Your Own Template to have all manual customizations from scratch.

#3. Artificial intelligence (AI) Support

As we move further into 2024 and beyond, AI is changing how we build websites. Both Webflow and Squarespace are using AI to make it easier to create websites: Squarespace is focusing on making it easier for beginners, while Webflow is helping professionals.

With Webflow, you can use an AI copilot to leverage the incredible power of the Webflow Editor. There are a lot of tasks you can do, such as:

• Generate static and CMS content quickly;
• Have auto-generated optimized SEO settings/ image alt tags;
• Create Custom Code editor’s code;
• Easy to translate site content into various languages.

Moreover, you can freely create unique templates only by filling out AI image prompts to describe all the details in your templates. Wait for a short while, and your final design is ready.

What about Squarespace AI support?

To provide AI-supported products to users, Squarespace has partnered with Google and Open AI. With these integrations, you can easily create unique and impressive content within a few minutes.

Similar to Webflow, Squarespace also allows you to generate and rewrite texts through AI prompts. Below are several outstanding tasks you can work on with Squarespace AI:

• Create text blocks and email text sections;
• Optimize image block captions;
• Automatically generate product descriptions.

Let's compare a bit. Squarespace's AI can create website designs based on your brand. It's good for people who want a simple, professional-looking website. Meanwhile, Webflow's AI can help you personalize your website and make it work better. It's good for people who want a lot of control over their website's design.

But, how easy are they to use?

• Squarespace's AI tools are easier to use for beginners.
• Webflow's AI tools are more powerful but might be harder to learn.

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#4. eCommerce Features

Let's talk about Webflow eCommerce features first.

To start selling online with Webflow, choose an eCommerce plan and set up your products. Whether you register for Sites Plans or Workspace, you need to pick a proper eCommerce package to start your eCommerce business.

Once having the right setups, you can add and organize your products in categories immediately. You can complete this task manually or automatically through the support of external services like Zapier.

With Webflow, you can do the following tasks:

• Customize the checkout process and manage inventory;
• Support various languages and currencies;
• Allow plenty of payment methods, including credit/debit cards, web payments, and PayPal credit;
• Provide 4 shipping methods: percentage of total order cost, item weight, quantity, and price.

When selling on Squarespace, you can easily manage your stock with the Squarespace Product Inventory panel. It’s simple to do everything, from adding new products to modifying stock levels.

More importantly, the number of products added to your Squarespace store page will vary depending on your store’s version. For example, Squarespace version 7.0 only allows 200 products, but you can add up to 10,000 products with version 7.1.

There are three gateways for Squarespace payment: Stripe, Paypal, and Square. You can also use Squarespace POS to complete in-person payments.

Squarespace offers 2 built-in shipping options: depend-on-weight and flat shipping. To activate carrier-calculated shipping, you need to register for the Commerce Advanced or Premium plan. However, this method is only available in the United States.

#5. Marketing & SEO

The next concerns we want to compare Webflow vs Squarespace relate to marketing and SEO. To make your store outstanding on search engines or in your customers’ sight, you should focus on marketing plans from scratch.

Webflow gives you all the power to control SEO-relating concerns, such as SEO markup, redirects (301), indexing rules, automated SEO, etc. Another outstanding point is the AWS Powerd hosting stack. This keeps your site running fast and smoothly, which helps you easily gain your visitors’ experiences.

When it comes to marketing features, Webflow impresses users with flexible CMS. Thus, you can freely customize anything you want, such as:

• Import content through CSV;
• Have custom fields without plugins;
• Create content-tailored layouts.

Also, you should integrate with email marketing plugins like AWeber, SendPulse, or Get Response to boost your marketing campaigns’ values.

Unlike Webflow, you can not find any automatic 301 and 302 redirects on Squarespace. Moreover, it’s difficult to get a rich snippet, as well as add an alt tag. Nonetheless, Squarespace still satisfies your store’s fundamental SEO requirements and works well with Google Console and Google Analytics.

With Squarespace, you can utilize built-in marketing tools, such as email marketing, ads, and social media integration, to boost your business’s sales. Especially, you can freely share your store’s content on over 20 social networking sites with only one Share button.

#6. Extensions & Plugins

If you want to make your store well-functional, don’t miss out on getting the support of extensions and plugins. In the following paragraphs, let’s discover what plugins and extensions Webflow vs Squarespace can provide.

You can easily access a vast collection of Webflow plugins to enhance your eCommerce ability. These plugins help address common issues such as anti-spam, content marketing, and CRM. However, you need to check the Webflow plugins’ prices on your own because Webflow doesn’t update this information.

Although Squarespace only provides 40 extensions, the majority are free and simple to start on your eCommerce store. More importantly, you will be able to approach core eCommerce ability, including

• Shipping and fulfillment;
• Finance;
• Inventory and products;
• Sales and marketing.

To begin with, you can refer to these extensions’ pricing plans and features directly in the Squarespace extension library for optimal options.

#7. Security & Customer Support

Setting up an eCommerce store can be complicated, and you might encounter unexpected errors or struggle to ensure its security. Therefore, it's essential to consider the quality of security and customer support provided by the platform you choose.

With Webflow, your site will be protected by a strong security program – satisfying Critical Security Controls and ISO 27001 standards. Moreover, Webflow always requires two-factor authentication to enhance identity and access management.

When working on the Webflow platform, you will not get live chat or phone support from its professional team. Instead, you will have to browse solutions on your own through the five-step process.

Let's talk about Squarespace.

Squarespace provides SSL certificates and PCI-DSS-followed payment gateways in all pricing plans. This can help you strengthen your site’s security without getting any external assistance. Like Webflow, Squarespace also supports two-factor authentication.

Squarespace offers one of the leading customer support services for eCommerce solutions. You can freely contact the Squarespace technical team 24/7 through email or live chat. For useful tips, don’t forget to visit Squarespace webinars, guides, and forums.

Areas for Improvement in Both Webflow vs Squarespace

Both Webflow and Squarespace are great website builders, but I think they could be better in some ways.

Webflow:

• Steeper learning curve, especially for non-technical users
• More complex pricing structure that can be confusing for beginners
• Limited built-in marketing tools compared to some competitors

Squarespace:

• Limited customization options compared to more advanced platforms
• Lack of a true staging environment for testing changes
• Restricted access to underlying code, which can be limiting for advanced users

Both Webflow and Squarespace have some problems. Agencies might find it difficult to remove their branding, and the billing can be confusing. Also, if you have a big online store, you might need a different platform for selling products.

FAQs

Final Words

Our blog has just provided a detailed comparison of Webflow and Squarespace in pricing and 7 core criteria. In general, both these platforms provide a wide collection of outstanding features and strong security that can support your eCommerce store effectively.

However, if you pursue a design-tailored plan, Webflow can do better. To get excellent customer support and eCommerce values, you should pick Squarespace.

LitExtension, #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert, hopes you have a deeper understanding of Squarespace vs Webflow differences. Check out our LitExtension Blog or join our Facebook Community Group for more valuable insights.