Squarespace - Website Builders

Our Verdict

Squarespace stands out as a leading choice for users seeking to create a professional website with ease, thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop editor, stunning templates, and integrated tools like SEO, audience management, and e-commerce. It’s designed to simplify the process of building a fully functional website, making it ideal for beginners and professionals alike.

For those with advanced needs, Squarespace provides flexibility through support for CSS and JavaScript in higher-tier plans, allowing for deeper customization. Its robust e-commerce features enable shop owners to manage online stores effortlessly, though users should note the transaction fees on product sales.

By offering an all-in-one solution paired with 24/7 customer support, Squarespace is particularly appealing to individuals, creatives, and small businesses aiming for a polished and professional online presence without the need to hire developers or designers. Its proficiency in website building and e-commerce ensures users can create and maintain a site that meets their goals with minimal effort.

Pros

Combines website building, hosting, and e-commerce under one subscription.
Beautifully designed, mobile-optimized templates.
Helps improve your site's visibility in search engine results.
Intuitive drag-and-drop functionality for easy site customization.
Tons of integrations & eCommerce solutions.

Cons

Limited control over design.
Higher-tier plans can be expensive.

Products & Pricing

Squarespace offers four packages for regular sites and online stores, each with different features and prices. All packages include unlimited bandwidth and storage, as well as a free custom domain with annual purchase.

Basic

For $16/mo when billed annually, you receive beautiful templates, powerful tools, a free custom domain, useful AI features, and up to 2 contributors. As for accepting payments, credit card rates start at 2.9% + 30¢, online store transaction fees are 2%, and digital content/memberships transaction fees are 7%. You can also sell your products and services, send invoices for free, and sell content and memberships.

Core

At $23/mo when billed annually, this plan offers all the previous plan’s features, plus more. You get advanced website analytics, complete customization with CSS and Javascript, and a professional email from Google Workspace. Online store transaction fees are 0%, while digital content and membership transaction fees are 5%. You also receive professional shipping and tax services, and sales funnel analytics.

Plus

For $39 per month when billed annually, this plan once again, builds on the features of the previous plans. You get lower processing fees; credit card rates start at 2.7% + 30¢, and digital content and memberships transaction fees are only 1%. This plan also comes with API integrations for advanced sales functionality.

Advanced

This plan offers the most advanced features for just $99 per month when billed annually. Maximize your revenue with the lowest payment processing fees and cutting-edge commerce tools. Enjoy credit card rates starting at 2.5% + 30¢, with 0% transaction fees on online store sales and digital content or memberships.

Basic

$16 /mo

14-day free trial

Core

$23 /mo

14-day free trial

Plus

$39 /mo

14-day free trial

Advanced

$99 /mo

14-day free trial

In-depth review

Features & Functionality

Squarespace offers a versatile suite of features to help you design and manage websites tailored to your specific needs. Whether you’re launching an online store to sell products or services with seamless checkout options, showcasing your creative work with elegant portfolio templates, or highlighting your local business with customer reviews and contact details, Squarespace has you covered.

You can also create professional sites for restaurants with menus and reservations, promote services with appointment scheduling, build standout personal websites or CVs, offer online courses with integrated payment tools, or monetize exclusive content with memberships. Whatever your goals, Squarespace provides the tools to create a polished and professional online presence.

Style Editor

The page editor allows users to quickly change colors, fonts, layouts, and more to make each page unique without having development or design experience. Images and items can be dragged and dropped to the desired location very easily.

Mobile-Optimized

Squarespace templates are optimized for mobile use, and the advanced packages for online shops also include fully optimized shopping and checkout experiences for mobile users.

SEO Friendly

While there are no SEO-specific tools, Squarespace is optimized for SEO and allows users to edit image tags, insert headers, and more. The company boasts of its ability to create websites with SEO best practices in mind so that additional plugins are not needed.

Extensions

Squarespace allows users to add third-party extensions, making it even easier to design and manage your website. These tools are available across a range of categories including shipping and fulfillment, finance, inventory and products, and sales and marketing.

Custom CSS and Code

A CSS editor and code blogs can be added to create more advanced design changes or add your own features that are not already available in the site builder’s platform.

Adobe Image Editor

All images hosted on Squarespace can be adjusted with the Adobe Image Editor directly from your browser. Editing options include cropping, resizing, rotating, adjusting brightness, and more.

E-Commerce Features

Sell Products Online

Showcase your products at their best! Let your visitors browse your merchandise, add items to their cart, check out easily, and even leave product reviews.

Get Product Descriptions Up with Squarespace AI

Need help writing product descriptions? Squarespace AI acts as your creative assistant, generating on-brand copy and tailored recommendations to get your store online faster.

Manage Your Online Store

Take charge of shipping, fulfillment, taxes, payments, and more—all from one intuitive platform.

Flexible shipping options: flat-rate, weight-based, or real-time shipping rates.
Simple payment and checkout processes for a smooth customer experience.
Easy tax tools to keep compliance hassle-free.
Effortlessly manage orders and connect with customers.

Sell Services

Your online store isn’t just for products—use it to offer services, too!

Schedule appointments with Acuity Scheduling.
Create and showcase online courses.
Provide services with client invoicing tools.

Square Point of Sale (POS)

There is now Point of Sale available in the Squarespace Commerce app. It allows in-person payment processing to sync with offline sales, all while maintaining customer data, inventory, and sales analytics.

Multiple Ways to Sell

Squarespace is a great solution for those in eCommerce. They provide simple ways to sell not just products but even services, digital content, and subscription services from your website. With a Basic or Advanced Commerce Plan, you don’t even need to pay transaction fees.

Design & Templates

Squarespace offers around 70 unique templates in different categories, each with a sleek and modern design optimized for all devices. Once a template is chosen, it can be modified in the editor with new layouts, images, texts, colors, and fonts for a fully customized website. For users that prefer building a site from scratch, a website and online store can quickly be created without a template, allowing users to design their site starting with a blank white page.

Switching between templates is easy, and users can install multiple templates on a site at once and work on multiple designs simultaneously. Templates can be browsed on the website, filtered by keyword search, or filtered by category. Categories include online stores, art, nonprofits, fashion, entertainment, health & fitness, music, home & living, and more.

Ease of Use

Squarespace is an excellent option for anyone that wants to create a good-looking website or online store quickly and without any fuss. An initial draft of a site can be created in under a minute, and editing and customizing it is done in an intuitive interface. Each section on the site can be clicked in order to edit its images and content.

A drag & drop interface is also available to edit the layout of each page. Users can simply move sections around by dragging them with their mouse and dropping them in the desired locations. In terms of ease of use, Squarespace is highly suitable for users without development skills and does not require any coding unless very advanced features are required on your site.

Customer Service

Squarespace offers all paying customers 24/7 premium support. It also has an extensive support section on its website with guides, videos, webinars and a community forum to share knowledge and get help from other users. The forum is especially useful for more advanced customizations. The Squarespace support team can be contacted via live chat, which is open Monday to Friday, 4 am to 8 pm EST, via email 24/7, and on Twitter by tweeting and tagging @SquarespaceHelp.