WordPress vs Squarespace for Small Business: Which is best?
Choosing the right digital home for your business can feel like an impossible task. That’s why in this post, I’m diving into two of the most popular website builders: Squarespace and WordPress.
Of course, it’s hard to say which one is better than the other, because ultimately, which one you pick depends on your business goals, technical knowledge, and web design priorities.
By the end of this comparison you’ll have a much clearer understanding of which platform is most aligned to your business. Whether you value ease of use, design flexibility, pricing, or customer support, this guide will help you determine whether Squarespace or WordPress is the best fit for you.
(Before we jump in, it’s important to note here that I’ll be referring to WordPress.org, not WordPress.com – the two are very different. WordPress.org is the most commonly used platform of the two, and if someone says they design WordPress sites, 99% of them are talking about WordPress.org.)
Prefer a quick summary? Click here to jump to the key points.
Platform Type
Squarespace
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder, which means when you sign up, everything you need to build a site is already integrated into it.
You’ll get web hosting, website-building tools and features, templates, unlimited storage, and you can even purchase your domain through Squarespace (although it’s nearly always cheaper to buy it on a third-party site and then connect your domain to Squarespace).
You do pay a monthly or annual subscription for Squarespace, but that includes security maintenance, server updates, backups and 24/7 customer support. Everything is taken care of for you as soon as you create your account.
And because it’s a closed-source platform, only their employees can create new features for the platform. It means everything is built by a professional, and you’re not vulnerable to security breaches or dodgy coding!
WordPress
WordPress is a self-hosted website builder. It’s free to use but doesn’t include web hosting or a domain, plus you have to take care of security updates and website maintenance yourself.
Although it’s technically free, you’ll need to factor in costs for hosting, and then decide if you want to learn the ins and outs of WordPress for yourself or hire a developer on retainer to ‘manage’ your site for you.
WordPress is an open-source platform, which means anyone with coding knowledge can create themes and plugins for the platform. These are available for users to add (often for a fee) to their own site to customise it and add functionality.
That means you get limitless customisation options! However, without adding these themes and plugins WordPress is actually quite basic, so it becomes almost impossible not to install themes and plugins.
Ease of Use
Squarespace
Thanks to its drag-and-drop website builder, Squarespace is super user-friendly – even for complete beginners. In fact, you don’t need any coding knowledge at all. It’s as simple as selecting a text box and typing into it, then dragging it where you want it to go.
Now I’m not saying it’s easy to design a professional-looking, unique Squarespace website, but its interface is very easy to use, so making changes to your site won’t cause you any headaches.
It’s easy to design your site on mobile too, you just switch to the ‘mobile view’ and drag all the elements on your page where you want them. Squarespace is a great option if you want complete control over your website – whether you’ve worked with a website designer or not!
It’s a very hands-off platform if you want it to be, build your website, pay your subscription and let it do its thing!
WordPress
Because WordPress relies on themes, templates and plugins for customisation, it does come with a steeper learning curve. You really need to get to grips with the platform to reap the benefits of limitless customisation and have some experience with coding too.
Or if you don’t mind paying a web developer to build and manage the site for you, then that’s always another option. But it’s kind of one or the other with WordPress – invest time into learning web development or outsource it to someone else.
More attention is needed to be given to WordPress too. You can’t build a site and leave it running, you need to log in regularly to manually do updates and security patches to protect your site.
Design & Customisation
Squarespace
Squarespace has a library of professionally designed templates that are the perfect starting point for building your website. As mentioned, the drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to customise them and they’re all mobile responsive too.
You can also design from scratch (which is how I work) to create something unique. Squarespace has ‘blocks’ (e.g. text and image, carousels, and accordions) which are pre-designed, which you can drag and drop onto the page and then just add your content to.
It’s super easy to switch to the mobile editor in Squarespace. Toggle across to it from the website builder mode then arrange it exactly how you want it.
All templates and sites are responsive in Squarespace, meaning they automatically adjust to the screen size. It’s just a case of rearranging the “elements” on the page so everything flows.
Built-in features (such as membership areas, portfolio pages and appointment schedulers) mean your website can be easily built for a specific purpose too.
However, there is a limit to Squarespace’s functionality, and if you’re looking for something more enterprise-level, WordPress has much more available. For that reason, the platform is best suited to small and medium-sized businesses.
WordPress
WordPress has thousands of themes, templates and plugins for infinite design options, making it the perfect choice for businesses that require complex features and functionality.
As WordPress is an open-source platform, anyone can upload themes and plugins for purchase. While this provides tons of design options, it also means that mobile responsiveness isn’t always a guarantee.
It takes a little more work to get your site looking how you want it to on mobile, and might not always respond how it should. Plus there’s no telling if your security has been compromised.
It’s a super flexible platform and you can basically create anything you want. You just have to know what you’re doing, as you’ll need to pick the plugins and themes that best suit your business, and be aware of the risks that can come with installing those too.
Pricing
Squarespace
Squarespace has different pricing tiers depending on your needs, starting from £16 p/month for a ‘Personal’ website to £43 p/month for an ‘Advanced Commerce’ website. But unless you’re a business selling lots of products, you won’t need the top tier.
For my health and wellness clients who want to get the best out of Squarespace, their £24 p/month ‘Business’ plan is perfect. And if you want to sell recipes, downloadable e-books etc., it’s a simple upgrade to the £28 p/month ‘Basic Commerce’ plan.
Every plan (not including ‘Personal’) includes templates, mobile optimisation, analytics, updates, security, unlimited storage, and a free custom domain for a year (although as mentioned it’s often cheaper to buy your domain elsewhere).
Note: It’s cheaper to buy your plan annually, as you’ll save up to 29% on your subscription.
WordPress
WordPress is technically free, but as mentioned at the beginning, you have to pay for hosting (which is anywhere from £10 – £400 depending on the number of website visitors you have and how much storage you need etc.).
Then there’s a theme to buy, plus any plugins you want to add functionality to your site. Some of them are free, but additional features like pulling through your Instagram feed and newsletter signups are an extra charge (but are included in Squarespace’s subscription).
And unless you’re okay with investing in learning the platform and how to develop a site, you’re likely to need to hire someone to update and manage your WordPress site too.
SEO
Your website’s SEO depends on much more than just how your website is set up. You’ll also need to consider the quality of your website content, the number of pages you have, and your overall marketing strategy. So while I compare Squarespace and WordPress below, it’s important to consider this too.
Squarespace
Squarespace websites come with built-in SEO tools, making it simple for beginners to complete essential SEO tasks. The platform itself is also built with SEO best practices in mind.
Squarespace provides a best practice SEO checklist so you can build the foundations straight away. You can easily add meta titles and descriptions to each page, plus add alt text to images and so on. Plus it integrates directly with Google Search Console so you can track how your website is being found online.
WordPress
There are more tools available for SEO (although usually for an extra fee). SEO plugins like Yoast provide recommendations on how to improve your SEO, and can be really helpful to maximise your site’s performance.
You need to put in the work though, just installing the plugins doesn’t automatically improve your SEO unfortunately. In short, they’re only as powerful as your knowledge of SEO is!
Customer Support
Squarespace
You get 24/7 support with Squarespace via live chat and there’s a ticket support system via email. There’s also a huge library of help articles and a support forum where you can search for questions that have been answered by Squarespace developers.
WordPress
They don’t have a dedicated customer support team, but they do have a community forum that’s useful for asking other WordPress users questions. The only downside is that it takes a little sifting through them to find specific answers to your questions.
WordPress or Squarespace: Which one should you choose?
Here’s the TL;DR version!
Platform Type
WordPress: Open-source, self-hosted = needs manual maintaining and updating. But is super flexible in terms of customisation
Squarespace: Closed-source, managed hosting = updates, security etc. is all taken care of by the Squarespace team. Less flexible but only really a concern if you are a large business wanting complex functionality.
Ease of Use
WordPress: Can be tricky to get the hang of, especially for non-techy people. Themes and plugins need to be installed for functionality and customsation. Likely to need to hire a developer to design and manage the site, or invest time learning how to code.
Squarespace: User-friendly drag-and-drop builder and backend interface make it super simple to make updates by yourself.
Design & Customisation
WordPress: Limitless customisation thanks to thousands of themes and templates. Basically you can create anything you want, but themes aren’t always created by professionals so something to bear in mind.
Squarespace: Not as flexible in terms of customisation, but much easier to design with the drag-and-drop builder. Plus all features are built-in and included in the subscription fee.
Pricing
WordPress: Technically free, but need to pay for web hosting, templates, plugins, and probably a developer if you don’t know how to manage your website (can get expensive)
Squarespace: Tiered pricing depending on your needs but everything is included so is potentially much cheaper.
SEO
WordPress: SEO plugins give lots of recommendations on how to improve your website’s performance, but are only as powerful as your knowledge as you need to action everything.
Squarespace: Designed with SEO best practices and has built-in SEO tools that make it easy for beginners to build the foundations.
Customer Support
WordPress: No support because it’s self-hosted, so you’d need to pay for this through your hosting provider.
Squarespace: 24/7 support via live chat, plus tons of tutorials online and a forum of previously asked questions.
So there you have it! It’s probably clear now why I chose to design on Squarespace over WordPress for my particular client base. The types of clients I work with don’t really need lots of complex functionality – everything they do need is possible with Squarespace’s built-in features.
Also, I don’t believe in handing over a website that my clients won’t have a clue how to use! I want them to have full control of their website (it is the home of their business, after all!) That’s more than possible with Squarespace because of how user-friendly it is, with simple dashboards and its drag-and-drop website builder.
Oh, I also didn’t mention e-commerce because if your business primarily generates revenue from products, then I will always recommend Shopify.
I know sometimes service providers might want to sell courses and e-books etc. as passive income and Squarespace does have a great e-commerce feature that’s perfect for that!
Hopefully, this has helped you to decide which platform is right for your business, because of course there are times when Squarespace isn’t the right one!
So which website platform will you choose – Squarespace or WordPress?