Squarespace Review
Responsive E-commerce design for mobile
Great for commerce & works with Square POS
Custom web domain included
No tech skills needed
Pros & Cons
- Mobile-friendly templates
- Easy to customize
- Modern template designs
- Partnership with Square makes it great for businesses
- Tons of integrations & eCommerce solutions
- Limited control over design
Plans & 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.
Website – Personal Package
Available for $16 a month when billed monthly or $12 a month when billed annually. This package is limited to two contributors and includes 24/7 premium support, SSL security, website metrics, and mobile optimization.
Website – Business Package
Available for $26 a month when billed monthly or $18 a month when billed annually. In addition to all of the features in the Basic package, this package includes more advanced metrics, unlimited contributors, a G-Suite email account for one year, $100 Google Ads credit, promotional popups, integrated eCommerce with unlimited popups and donations, and more. This plan has a 3% transaction fee.
Basic Commerce
Available for $30 a month when billed monthly or $26 a month when billed annually. Includes all of the features from the Business plan plus mobile-optimized checkout, unlimited products, commerce metrics, inventory management with coupons, customer accounts, no transaction fees, and more. The POS Square can easily be connected to your Squarespace Basic Commerce plan.
Advanced Commerce
Available for $46 a month when billed monthly or $40 a month when billed annually. Includes all of the features from the basic plan, plus abandoned cart auto-recovery, advanced shipping options, flexible discounts, gift cards, and orders API.
Users can sign up for a free trial that has limited features but is not time-limited. Refunds are only available when canceling an annual website subscription within the first 14 days.
Overview
Squarespace is a popular site builder founded in 2003, with millions of hosted websites around the world and team of over 800 employees. The company offers an interface similar to other popular site builders, however, its sleek designs and simple features make it a common choice among shop owners, small businesses, and freelancers.
Features & Functionality
Squarespace offers dozens of useful features related to design, images, layout, management, SEO, and more. This includes:
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.
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 for 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 Support
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.
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24/7 Help & Support
There is 24/7 help and support for premium customers -
Live Online Chat
There is online chat available. -
Email
The company’s support team can be reached via email. -
Video Tutorials
Webinars are available. -
FAQ
FAQ can be find via manual search in the Help Section -
Community Forum
An “idea forum” is present on the company website.
Final Word
Overall, Squarespace is an excellent choice for users that want to have their site up and running without much fuss. Shop owners can quickly create online stores without having to deal with complex codes or interfaces. While there are a few limitations when it comes to customizations, most users will find that they can easily create the site they want swiftly without having to deal with hiring designers and developers to help them out.
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Who owns the domain name; SquareSpace or the customer?
Can individual pages on the site have separate access passwords?
I want to transfer a domain name that I have had for years. It is currently under a “business” type of plan but is only a personal website. What plan would I have to subscribe to using your hosting options. What costs are involved?
Can you start with one plan and switch to another plan?
Can I edit my site when necessary, and can I call a tech should I have an immediate issue to resolve?