Are you also wondering which website builder is better for you? Is it WordPress, or is it Squarespace? Both platforms have their benefits and drawbacks; this article will clear up your doubts.
By the end of this WordPress vs. Squarespace article, you will figure out which one is the best platform to meet your website requirements.
This is a detailed article, and we’re going to differentiate both the platforms depending upon several factors like:
Ease of Use, Templates, Editing and UI settings, SEO perspective, Support, Security, and Pricing
Considering the above points, you’ll get a clear idea about the platform you wish to go with for starting a website.
WordPress VS Squarespace
WordPress is the most popular Content Management system having more than 35% of the world’s websites built on it. It is easy to use, has built-in plugins and themes, support from the developers, hosting providers, and a massive community for help.
On the other hand, Squarespace is a wholly hosted website builder platform that came in 2003. Millions of websites are built on Squarespace because you got almost everything in a single platform, saving time and configuration effort.
Let’s jump into the points and compare both the platforms.
Ease of Use
WordPress is an easy to use open-source platform for beginners who want to create a website. For adding any feature, you choose from selecting various plugins, most of them are free. If you’re a beginner, you might have zero knowledge about the designing aspects. But with WordPress themes, you’re completely covered and need to select a theme that looks good to you.
Squarespace, on the other hand, is relatively more comfortable to use for beginners. You can register with an email address and ultimately build a website under 10 minutes. You are provided with various questions, and depending upon the answers, you can select a template, edit the content, choose a domain name, and go live with the website.
Design Templates
As discussed in the above point, WordPress has a variety of themes available in the WordPress repository. You can select any theme at your convenience and install it on the website. The theme will include all the CSS styling to the website, and you can customize the look and style from the theme customizer as well. Apart from free themes, many product companies provide paid themes and support depending upon the pricing plans.
Squarespace provides a range of good looking templates included in every plan. There are various templates to choose from, but the number of templates is less when compared to the themes and templates available in WordPress. All the templates are customizable, and you can add or remove the features from the templates. These templates are easy to edit, come with drag-and-drop features, and are responsive, so you do not need to worry about the look on mobiles and tablets.
Editing and UI settings
WordPress has been improving tremendously over the past few months. Earlier it has only the classic editor option, and then came the Gutenberg editor. As of now, WordPress is completely turned into a Gutenberg block editor where you have many in-built blocks as well as the blocks offered by block plugins. Also, continuous updates are coming up to edit, add images, and make changes faster with auto-save features.
The editing in Squarespace is similar to the page builder experience in WordPress. You can add, remove, change the element position, resize the elements, change the background, color, typography, everything at a single place without wasting any time is dragging things. Although the experience is overall fast, it lacks the reusability features present in WordPress. One of the significant drawbacks in Squarespace is the unavailability of the autosave features.
SEO Perspective
In WordPress, SEO can be done with ample precision using many free plugins like Yoast SEO, Rankmath, and many more plugins. Apart from the plugins, WordPress themes are also SEO-optimised, and many come with schema support, which makes it easy to understand for the search engines.
Coming to Squarespace, it also offers SEO features like options to generate a sitempa.XML file, clean and minimal HTML, website speed, etc. But as compared to WordPress, there are no inbuilt plugin features that can be used for SEO purposes. You can manage the on-page SEO aspects like page title, page description, meta tag, meta descriptions, etc. for better ranking in search engines.
Support
Being the most widely used CMS, WordPress, is pretty good when it comes to timely support. On any website, you will be using several plugins and some themes. In case of an issue with some particular theme or a plugin, there is a WordPress forum where you can raise and issue. It depends on the plugin or theme author how fast they resolve your issue. Generally, any author replied within 24 hours, and your issue will be resolved.
Squarespace also prioritizes support with their pricing plans and packages. They have a vast community and an organized knowledge base section. Apart from this, you can connect with the customer support team via email or live chat for any support query. Squarespace support is fast and reliable, and they’re usually available 24/7.
Pricing
WordPress.org is open-source software, and it is free. However, setting a website needs a domain and hosting. You can choose a domain registrar like GoDaddy, and depend upon the type of website; you will get several hosting providers offering shared and dedicated hosting.
Since Squarespace is a singly hosted website building platform, you will need to create an account to purchase a domain and hosting on this platform itself. If you’re looking to start a simple website, you can choose their basic plan, starting at just $12/month when billed annually.
A business plan starts at $18/month, and online store plans start at $26/month(billed annually)
Conclusion
We have analyzed all the points in detail. In case you’re just looking to start a simple website, or this is going to be the first website, you can try using Squarespace. Create an account at Squarespace, start building a website, and in case you get comfortable with the platform, you can opt for a basic starting plan starting at $12/month.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a business website, we whole-heartedly recommend WordPress because it is easy to handle business-related activities like continuous SEO, email marketing campaigns, numerous blog posts, etc. Many industry giants use WordPress because of its simplicity and multi-user abilities, which is necessary for any business.
With this note, we conclude our WordPress Vs. Squarespace article and leave the decision up to you for selecting a platform. In case you have any queries, please feel free to let us know using our contact form or commenting below.