Squarespace vs WordPress: Which One Is Right For You In 2024?

Deciding the better choice between Squarespace and WordPress is really tricky as they both have been designed from different perspectives. 

But when you look to create a better site or online store, most experts would recommend you these two platforms. But why would you listen to anyone without judging your own?

Thus, to ease your effort and save time, here we have come up with a detailed honest comparison between these two platforms. And if you stick with us till the end, you’ll have better clarity of which one you should opt for. 

Let’s move forward. 

Squarespace Vs WordPress: A Quick Glance ( Ratings Out Of 5)

FeaturesSquarespaceWordPress
Value For Money4.64.1
eCommerce Features4.84.0
Themes and Designs4.54.2
Ease of Use4.54.3
Blogging Features4.44.6
Customer Support4.24.4

Squarespace vs WordPress: Key Differences

Here are the key differences between Squarespace and WordPress.

  • WordPress is a great platform for bloggers because of its plugins and better SEO features, whereas Squarespace does offer CMS tools, but it is not as great as WordPress.
  • Setting up a Squarespace website is much easier than WordPress because you don’t have to worry about buying a custom domain and website hosting.
  • You would need coding knowledge to create a WordPress website on your own or a page builder plugin. But with Squarespace’s editing tools, you don’t need any coding knowledge to create your website.
  • The pricing of Squarespace is clear, and you can choose a plan depending on your requirements, whereas creating a website on WordPress can cost more because you need to buy a custom domain and also website hosting.
  • Squarespace gives you basic eCommerce features to help you start selling, whereas WordPress has a WooCommerce plugin that has plenty of eCommerce features to create an amazing online store for your business.

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Pros & Cons

Before diving into more details, we’ll see some key benefits and drawbacks of both of these platforms. 

Squarespace Pros

  • Modern and expertly designed templates
  • Easy-to-use
  • Up-to-the-mark SEO features
  • Excellent site speed
  • Drag-and-drop editor
  • It allows data import and export

Squarespace Cons

  • It doesn’t offer any free plan

WordPress Pros

  • Wide range of plugins and integration
  • Out-of-the-box SEO features
  • Excellent blogging features
  • It’s an open-source platform
  • Great Customer support

WordPress Cons

  • Not a good choice for eCommerce store owners
  • Backdated templates and designs
  • More dependent on plugins

Now, we’ll check their functionalities in detail and see which has better options to offer. 

Squarespace Vs WordPress: eCommerce Features & Tools

When it comes to comparing their eCommerce functionalities, both Squarespace and WordPress help you create a standalone store and sell products. Whereas Squarespace helps you create an eCommerce store with all its built-in features, WordPress mostly relies on plugins like Woocommerce. 

Here we’ll check their eCommerce features individually.

Squarespace eCommerce Features 

If you are looking for a website builder with integrated built-in eCommerce features, Squarespace is the choice. From physical goods to services to digital products, you can sell anything and everything on Squarespace. 

Squarespace vs WordPress - ECommerce Stores

Apart from that, Squarespace doesn’t limit your product selling capacity. Thus, you can sell unlimited products and scale your business growth. 

Moreover, you’ll also benefit from its other top-notch built-in features, including – 

  • Squarespace POS would let you sell in person and keep the product inventory and payment in sync with your online store. ( but it’s only available in the US)
  • Social selling on Facebook and Instagram
  • Abandoned cart recovery feature
  • Multiple payment gateways, including credit cards, debit cards, ApplePay, Stripe, and so on.
  • Squarespace’s “Afterpay” feature is great for increasing sales and attracting new customers.
  • Multi-currency selling 
  • Local pickup
  • Gift cards and coupons

( Remember, you have to opt for Squarespace Business plans to get access to all these advanced features)

WordPress eCommerce Features

WordPress has very less built-in eCommerce features. Or, we should better say, it’s not designed to run a successful eCommerce store

But if you are bound to sell with WordPress, you have to rely on its plugins like Woocommerce and Ecwid. But we would always choose the former one because of its effective features. 

If you use the Woocommerce plugin with WordPress, you will benefit from – 

  • Selling products on Google shopping
  • Multi-lingual and multi-currency selling option
  • Using Jetpack would secure your site from spam and boost site speed
  • Inventory management
  • Multiple payment gateways
  • Numersion third-party integration

Winner: Squarespace

The result is evident. Though the WordPress Woocommerce plugin is a smart and effective choice for building an online store, why would you spend more when you get advanced features in one place on a pocket-friendly budget?

Thus, Squarespace wins here.

Squarespace Vs WordPress: SEO Features

Be it for content management or eCommerce selling, SEO is a non-negotiable aspect. We’ll check here which one of these two wins in this case. 

Let’s go!

Squarespace SEO 

Every Squarespace site and store comes with numerous advanced built-in SEO functionalities, including –

  • SEO page titles and description
  • Built-in sitemaps
  • Automatic markup and SSL security
  • Clean URL for every product category
  • Mobile Optimization 

WordPress SEO

As we are talking about WordPress SEO, take our word that it’s unbeatable. WordPress is widely known for its phenomenal SEO functionalities. These are –

WordPress SEO
  • It allows you to customize the website permalink.
  • Manage SEO titles and Metadata
  • Image optimization
  • Super-fast page loading
  • Mobile Optimization
  • SEO-friendly URL structure
  • Best SEO plugins like Yoast 

Winner: WordPress

Though Squarespace gives neck-to-neck competition to WordPress in the SEO factor, but some advanced features like 301 redirect, canonical URLs, and image optimization make WordPress the ultimate winner.

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Themes & Designs

A beautiful-looking site attracts everyone. And who has aced this feature? Let’s see.

Squarespace Themes & Designs

It doesn’t matter whether you want to create an online store or your own portfolio; Squarespace has every kind of option for you. Starting from personal to professional services, Squarespace offers in-demand, advanced, and quality templates for users. All you have to do is to choose a category, and Squarespace will open up uncountable options for you.

Squarespace - Template

Additionally, each template on Squarespace is flexible, customizable, and created by world-class designers. You can customize every element via the drag-and-drop method, meaning you don’t need to spend extra money hiring web designers.

Moreover, if you are busy and don’t have time to design your website on your own, Squarespace offers a dedicated designer who will create a killer website for your business.

WordPress Themes & Design

Now, if we come to WordPress themes, they are unlimited. Currently, WordPress has 9k+ free templates. So, it’s a great turn-on. 

WordPress Themes & Designs

But these templates are not as modern and updated as Squarespace’s. You need to customize a lot to get their best version, and designing them on WordPress is quite tricky. 

Winner: Squarespace

No need to say Squarespace is the clear winner here. Though Squarespace’s themes are limited, they are more advanced than WordPress templates. 

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Ease of Use

If any website is easy to navigate, it boosts UX. And a great UX leads to more conversions. Thus, here in this section, we will check who leads in this case.

Squarespace Ease of Use

There was a time when Squarespace was really hard to use. But day by day, it has made huge rectifications and kept it clean and minimal to handhold all the newbies. 

Squarespace -Ease Of Use

You don’t need prior coding or tech knowledge to navigate Squarespace’s features. Its “drag and drop” editor would let you rearrange and edit your site within a fraction of a second. Moreover, while editing, Squarespace will guide you with blocks and text, which we appreciate. 

WordPress Ease of Use

Though WordPress is widely used on the internet, it’s not as easy to navigate as Squarespace. You need someone’s guidance to create a website with WordPress. 

WordPress Ease of Use

But after two or three usages, you’ll get everything about this platform. 

Winner: Squarespace

After using both platforms, we find Squarespace is way easier to use than WordPress. And its features and editing methods are flexible and user-friendly.

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Apps & Integrations

If you are unsatisfied with any website’s built-in options, you need third-party integrations to enhance your site. And, in this competitive era, it’s a must-have.

Squarespace Integrations

As of now, Squarespace has around 54 plugins to help you manage and expand your site. These include Aftership, Channable, Mailchimp, LiveChat, Printify, Spocket, Syncee, etc. 

Starting from eCommerce store management to sale enhancement, Squarespace has a bucketful of integrations. All you have to do is to connect those apps to your site. And that’s it! 

WordPress Integrations

If we talk about WordPress Integrations, they are limitless. Till now, WordPress has more than 60k+ integrations under its belt. 

Being an open-source platform, WordPress is fully dependent on Plugins. Thus it’s quite natural that it would offer every kind of integration one need to build a standalone store or site. 

To name a few, there are Yoast, Zapier, Quiz Maker, Woocommerce, and much more. Most importantly, they are categorized under different sections, making it easier for users to find them easily. 

Winner: WordPress

As you can clearly see, WordPress has a wide range of integrations and plugins than Squarespace. Thus, we’ll make WordPress to be the winner here. 

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Blogging Features

Every brand is now fighting to pop up in customers’ feeds. Thus, Content Marketing is now trending everywhere. 

But who is leading in this case?  We’ll see now. 

Squarespace Blogging Features

 Though Squarespace has mainly been designed for eCommerce owners, its blogging features are limited. These include – 

Welcome to Your Site
  • Free blogging templates
  • Add featured image and excerpt
  • Alternate social sharing image
  • SEO optimization
  • Automated social sharing option
  • Comment settings
  • Summary blocks

WordPress Blogging Features

No need to say WordPress is a dedicated CMS. Thus, it’s especially been created for blogging and content marketing. Even most marketers specially choose WordPress for blogging.

WordPress Blogging Features

 These are the main advanced blogging features WordPress offers – 

  • Free Blogging templates
  • Social sharing option
  • Get access to HTML and edit your blog page the way you want.
  • Super-fast loading speed
  • SEO optimization
  • Monetize your blogs
  • Post scheduling feature

Winner: WordPress

WordPress takes a slight edge in this section as it has more advanced blogging features than Squarespace.

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Pricing Battles

Here comes the most important part of the whole article. How much do they cost? Are they value for money? Let’s see.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace mainly offers 4 types of pricing plans to users – 

Squarespace - Pricing
  • Personal: $16/month
  • Business: $23/month (most popular)
  • Basic Commerce: $27/month
  • Advanced Commerce:  $49/month

Each plan offers unlimited bandwidth and 30 mins video storage. Personal and Business plans are good if you want to create a personal site. But if you are looking forward to creating a standalone store and selling online, you have to opt for its commerce plans. 

( Pro Tip: You’ll save 30% if you pay annually.)

WordPress Pricing

Like Squarespace, WordPress also offers 4 types of pricing Plans – 

  • Personal: $5/month
  • Premium: $9/month
  • Business: $15/month
  • eCommerce: $27/month

If you are looking forward to creating your online store, we will recommend you to go for its eCommerce plan only. Otherwise, it’ll be a bit difficult for you to sustain your brand. 

However, the Premium plan is great for freelancers and individuals looking to create personal branding.

Winner: Squarespace 

Though Squarespace is a bit more expensive than WordPress, we find it worth it as it has compiled all the advanced features you need to run a successful store. Thus, Squarespace takes the lead here.

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Customer Support

A better customer support team is always helpful for users, especially when you are a newbie. Now, we’ll see who offers great support to the users.

Squarespace Customer Support

Squarespace disappoints here. There is no other way to contact the team member except for sending an email. Thus, it is a turn-off as it doesn’t offer any live chat or phone support.

WordPress Customer Support

As of now, WordPress is not offering any phone support. But it does have unlimited email and live chat support. So, we’ll give a huge thumbs up to it. 

Winner: WordPress

Neither of them has up to mark  Customer support system. But, still, WordPress has a slight edge as it offers live chat support to the users. 

Related Read:

Squarespace Vs WordPress: Which One You Should Choose?

As per our research and experience, we find both of them have different functionalities as they target different sets of audiences. So – 

Choose Squarespace If:

You want a trendy, attractive-looking website with just a few clicks of the mouse. Also, if you are looking forward to creating a completely standalone eCommerce store with several advanced functionalities, Squarespace ranks high in the queue. 

Choose WordPress If:

Your first priority is blogging and content marketing.WordPress is unbeatable in this case. But if you want to build an online store, it’s better to go for Squarespace. 

Now, it’s up to you! We have already clarified all the dimensions with evidence. And, considering every point, we find Squarespace ultimately wins the game. 

What’s your call? Let us know below. 

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