Squarespace review – honest pros and cons

Squarespace has a reputation. Ask anyone who’s used it, and you’ll almost always get some version of the same response: the websites look beautiful, it’s easy enough to use, but it costs more than the alternatives, and it’s not as flexible as WordPress.

That reputation is broadly accurate. But it’s also incomplete – and for the right person building the right kind of website, Squarespace is genuinely one of the best platforms available.

This Squarespace review will tell you what it excels at, where it falls short, and, most importantly, whether it’s the right choice for what you’re trying to build. Because Squarespace is not a platform for everyone, knowing that upfront will save you time and money.

Squarespace at a glance

	USA	UK
Best for	Creatives, portfolios, small businesses where design matters
Starting price	~$16/month (paid annually)	~£11/month (paid annually)
Free plan	No – 14-day free trial
Ease of use	Good – slightly more structured than Wix
Design quality	Excellent – best templates of any hosted platform
SEO	Decent – solid fundamentals, limited advanced options
Ecommerce	Good – clean product presentation, some limitations at scale
Display ads	Restricted – not ideal for display ad monetisation
Portability	Moderate – blog content exportable, design less so

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a fully hosted website builder and content management platform founded in New York in 2004. It hosts millions of websites worldwide and is particularly popular among creative professionals – photographers, designers, artists, architects, and makers – as well as small businesses, restaurants, and independent retailers.

The platform is all-in-one. Your hosting, your domain (first year), your SSL certificate, your website software – all bundled into a single monthly or annual fee. You don’t need to arrange hosting separately, install software, or manage updates. Squarespace handles all of that.

What sets Squarespace apart from most of its competitors is design quality. The platform has invested consistently in building templates that look genuinely professional, and the default output from even a fairly casual user tends to be polished in a way that takes more effort to achieve on other platforms.

Squarespace pricing – what does it cost?

Unlike Wix, Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan – but it does offer a 14-day free trial, which gives you enough time to build a version of your site and see whether the platform suits you before committing. Pricing is quoted separately for the US and UK sites, so here’s both side by side:

	USA	UK
Personal One website, free custom domain for year one, unlimited bandwidth and storage, SSL, basic website metrics. No ecommerce, though you can sell up to one service.	~$16/month (paid annually)	~£11/month (paid annually)
Business Adds full ecommerce capability, though a 3% transaction fee applies on sales. Professional email from Google, promotional pop-ups, and advanced analytics. Most people who need to sell anything start here.	~$23/month (paid annually)	~£16/month (paid annually)
Commerce Basic Removes the 3% transaction fee, adds product reviews, Instagram shopping, and label printing. The right choice once your shop is generating meaningful revenue.	~$39/month (paid annually)	~£23/month (paid annually)
Commerce Advanced Adds subscriptions, advanced shipping, and commerce API access. For established shops with more complex needs.	~$99/month (paid annually)	~£35/month (paid annually)

Squarespace pricing is transparent and predictable – unlike hosting-based platforms where renewal price jumps catch people off guard, Squarespace’s plan prices are consistent. The main thing to watch is that the free custom domain in year one becomes a paid renewal in year two, typically ~$20–$25 in the US or £15–£20 in the UK. It’s also worth knowing that Squarespace has renamed these plans on some regional pricing pages (Basic, Core, Plus, and Advanced), so double-check the current names and figures on the live pricing page before you buy.

Ease of use

Squarespace’s editor is excellent but works differently from Wix’s pure drag-and-drop approach – and understanding that difference matters before you choose.

Rather than allowing elements to move freely anywhere on the page, Squarespace uses a section-based layout system. Your page is built from stacked sections – header, content block, gallery, footer – and within each section, you arrange elements in a structured grid.

This feels more constrained than Wix at first. You can’t just grab an image and place it wherever you fancy. But for most people, this constraint is actually helpful – it’s harder to accidentally create something that looks chaotic or unprofessional. The structure guides you towards layouts that work.

The section-based editor is also faster to work with once you get used to it. Adding a new section, choosing a layout, and dropping in content feels efficient and logical. The learning curve is slightly steeper than Wix in the first hour, and flatter after that.

Design decisions like typography, colour schemes, and spacing are managed through a style panel rather than edited element by element – which means making site-wide changes is quick and consistent. Change your primary colour in the style panel, and it updates everywhere.

For someone without a strong design background, Squarespace’s constraints are more of a feature than a limitation – they make it hard to produce something that looks bad.

Design and templates

This is where Squarespace genuinely earns its reputation.

The template library is smaller than Wix’s – around 140 templates compared to Wix’s 900+ – but the quality is consistently higher, and the gap is significant. Squarespace templates are designed with real craft. The typography choices are sophisticated, whitespace is used generously, and the overall aesthetic is closer to what you’d expect from a professional designer than a template library.

Unlike Wix, Squarespace templates are interchangeable. You can switch templates after you’ve built your site without losing your content – the content migrates, the design changes around it. This gives you considerably more flexibility to evolve your site’s look over time.

All templates are fully responsive – they automatically adapt for mobile, tablet, and desktop – and the mobile output is typically strong without manual adjustment.

For photographers, the portfolio layouts are particularly impressive. Squarespace’s image handling and gallery options are among the best available on any platform, a significant reason for its popularity among creative professionals.

SEO

Squarespace’s SEO capabilities are solid – better than many beginner websites need – while stopping short of the control that WordPress offers serious SEO practitioners.

What Squarespace does well:

Customisable title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs for every page and post. Automatic XML sitemap generation and submission. Clean URL structures that search engines handle well. Alt text for images. SSL is included on all plans. Automatic redirects when you change a URL. Page speed that’s generally good out of the box without needing to configure caching plugins.

Where Squarespace falls short:

Technical SEO options are less granular than WordPress. You can’t install an SEO plugin like Rank Math that gives you full control over schema markup, canonical tags, and advanced SEO settings on a per-page basis. URL structures, while clean, are less flexible than WordPress – you can’t create the deeply hierarchical URL architecture that advanced SEO strategies sometimes call for. Blog content management is capable but not as sophisticated as WordPress’s publishing tools.

For a portfolio site, a small business site, or a restaurant – where the goal is looking credible in search results rather than ranking competitively for high-volume content keywords – Squarespace’s SEO is more than adequate.

For a content site where ranking in Google for dozens or hundreds of keywords is the primary growth strategy – WordPress gives you more tools, more control, and a higher ceiling.

Ecommerce

Squarespace has one of the strongest ecommerce offerings of any design-led hosted platform – and its biggest advantage is exactly what you’d expect: product pages look beautiful.

In a world where customers make split-second decisions about whether a shop looks trustworthy, presentation matters enormously. Squarespace’s product page templates are clean, spacious, and professional in a way that few platforms match at this price point.

What’s included:

Physical and digital product sales. Subscription products. Service bookings (integrated with the Acuity scheduling tool). Inventory management. Discount codes and gift cards. Abandoned cart recovery on higher plans. Multiple payment methods, including Stripe and PayPal.

The limitations:

The 3% transaction fee on the Business plan is a meaningful cost for high-volume sellers and the main reason to upgrade to Commerce Basic once your shop starts generating real revenue.

Product variant management is less sophisticated than Shopify’s for complex products with many options. The app ecosystem, while growing, is smaller than Shopify’s – which means some functionality you might need (advanced shipping rules, specific integrations) may not be available.

For a small shop where visual presentation matters – handmade products, art prints, clothing, photography prints, food products – Squarespace ecommerce is genuinely excellent. For a large catalogue or a pure ecommerce operation where conversion rate optimisation is critical, Shopify is the stronger platform.

Blogging

Squarespace has a capable blogging tool that most casual bloggers will find perfectly adequate.

You can create posts, organise them by category and tag, add featured images, schedule posts in advance, and manage comments. The editor is clean, and the output looks good.

The limitations show when you compare it to WordPress. The editorial workflow is less sophisticated. Bulk content management – editing multiple posts, reorganising categories at scale – is more cumbersome. SEO control at the individual post level is less granular. For someone publishing a handful of posts a month, these limitations won’t matter. Someone managing a high-volume content operation will.

Display advertising and monetisation

Like Wix, Squarespace has historically had restrictions on display advertising, making it less ideal for anyone planning to monetise with ad networks.

Squarespace has strengthened its stance on third-party advertising in recent years and now allows more ad integration than before. However, the level of control over ad placement and implementation is still more limited than with self-hosted WordPress, and some premium ad network requirements are easier to meet on WordPress.

If display ad revenue is central to your monetisation plan – building a content site with the goal of qualifying for Mediavine or Raptive – self-hosted WordPress is the more capable long-term platform.

If ads are a secondary income stream or a future consideration rather than your primary plan, Squarespace’s limitations are less of a dealbreaker.

Portability

Squarespace is more portable than Wix, which is worth knowing.

You can export your blog posts as an XML file, which you can then import into WordPress. You can export your products as a CSV. Your domain can be transferred to another registrar.

What you can’t take with you easily is your design. The Squarespace-specific layout, section structure, and template styling don’t translate to other platforms. If you move to WordPress, you’ll be rebuilding the visual side of your site from scratch, though your content will migrate reasonably cleanly.

For a blog-heavy site, Squarespace’s export functionality means a move to WordPress is manageable. For a design-led portfolio site, more of the rebuild falls on the visual side.

Squarespace pros and cons

The good:

• Best design quality of any mainstream hosted platform
• Interchangeable templates – can switch without losing content
• All-in-one pricing – hosting, SSL, CDN all included
• Clean, polished editor that guides you towards good-looking results
• Excellent image handling and gallery features
• Transparent pricing with no renewal price shocks
• Capable ecommerce with no transaction fees on Commerce plans
• Solid customer support and excellent documentation
• More portable than Wix

The not so good:

• No free plan – only a 14-day trial
• More expensive than Wix at comparable plan levels
• SEO ceiling below WordPress for content-heavy strategies
• Display advertising restrictions – not ideal for ad monetisation
• 3% transaction fee on Business plan ecommerce sales
• Less flexible than WordPress for advanced customisation
• Smaller app/integration ecosystem than Shopify or WordPress

Who is Squarespace best for?

Squarespace is the right choice for:

Photographers, designers, artists, and creatives who need their website to look as good as their work. Squarespace’s design quality and image handling make it the strongest hosted platform for visual professionals.

Small businesses where brand presentation matters – restaurants, boutiques, studios, and independent retailers. The professional polish of a Squarespace site can meaningfully affect how credible a business looks online.

Anyone who wants an all-in-one managed experience without having to think about the technical side. Squarespace handles hosting, security, updates, and performance so you don’t have to.

People building a small shop alongside a portfolio or content site, where design and ecommerce both matter.

Squarespace is probably not right for:

Anyone planning to build a content site monetised primarily with display ads – self-hosted WordPress is more capable for that use case.

Serious ecommerce operations where inventory depth, variant management, and conversion optimisation are critical – Shopify is the stronger platform.

Content creators who want the maximum SEO control and publishing tools for high-volume content strategies – WordPress is better equipped for that.

People on a very tight budget – Wix’s free plan and lower entry-level pricing make it more accessible.

How does Squarespace compare to the alternatives?

Squarespace vs Wix: Squarespace wins on design quality and portability. Wix wins on ease of use, free plan availability, and entry-level pricing. For design-led projects, Squarespace. For speed to launch and maximum beginner accessibility, Wix. Read our full Squarespace vs Wix comparison →

Squarespace vs WordPress: WordPress wins on SEO control, design flexibility, display ad compatibility, long-term cost, and ownership. Squarespace wins in ease of use, out-of-the-box design, and managed hosting simplicity. For anyone serious about content, SEO, and monetisation – WordPress. For anyone who wants a beautiful, low-maintenance site without technical setup – Squarespace. Read our Shopify vs WordPress comparison →

Squarespace vs Shopify. For ecommerce, Shopify is the stronger platform at scale. Squarespace is better for a site that combines a small shop with portfolio or content. For a serious online store, Shopify. For a creative business with an online shop as one component – Squarespace.

Squarespace review: the verdict

Squarespace deserves its reputation for design quality – and that quality genuinely matters for the people it’s built for. If you’re a photographer who needs a portfolio that does justice to your work, a restaurant that needs to look credible before a customer even reads the menu, or a maker who wants product pages that make people want to buy, Squarespace is the best hosted platform for those goals.

The limitations are real, too. It costs more than Wix. It’s less flexible than WordPress. It’s not ideal for display ad monetisation. And for a content site where SEO is the primary growth strategy, WordPress is the more powerful long-term choice.

But chosen for the right reasons, Squarespace is excellent. The platforms that try to do everything rarely do any of it brilliantly. Squarespace does design brilliantly – and for a meaningful group of website builders, that’s exactly what matters most.

Not sure whether Squarespace is the right platform for your specific situation? Take our two-minute quiz for a personalised recommendation.