In the past, creating a website needed extensive coding and laborious work. There are now far more efficient methods available. Using a website builder, for instance, will enable you to launch your website quickly. A website developer makes it possible for you to develop your website from the convenience of your own home without needing to employ outside assistance, regardless of whether you are a freelancer, blogger, or owner of a small business.
Webflow and Squarespace are two prominent website builders that enable customers to construct and publish websites without the need for coding. Although, choosing which platform is the greatest fit for your needs can be challenging because each has a different set of features and pricing options.
In this article, we’ll review Webflow and Squarespace to help you determine which platform is best suited for you.
Webflow vs Squarespace: A Quick Comparison (2023)
| Webflow | Squarespace | |
| About | Webflow is a built-in browser design tool that lets you visually design, create, and launch responsive websites. | Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that allows customers to register a domain, set up a website, sell digitally, and market their brand. |
| Best Suited For | Agencies and industry experts. | Small business owners and individuals. |
| Blogging | Using a sophisticated CMS, you may develop extremely personalized blog templates. | Schedule, publish, and organize blog posts using categories and tags. |
| Pros | Wide range of templates and resources. | Easy to set up and straightforward user interface |
| Cons | Steep learning curve and limited code customization | No phone assistance, and lack of an autosave feature |
| Free trial | Available | Unavailable |
| Customer Reviews | 3.7/5 stars | 4.2/5 stars |
What Is Webflow?
Webflow is a visual website-building platform that does not require any coding. However, it also serves as a CMS and hosting platform in addition to being a web design tool.
Designers can create customizable, professional-level websites using the Webflow editor in a fully visual environment. In essence, you get the benefits of using a visual editor as well as the flexibility of building a completely customized website from the ground level.
Webflow Pricing – How Much Does Webflow Cost?
Webflow offers a free plan, wherein before releasing your website, you can test out and become familiar with its design capabilities. When you’re prepared to launch, you must decide from the site and account plans.
What Is Squarespace?
Squarespace is a one-stop destination for building a website and creating an online presence. They are best known for their wonderfully made templates. Although they are primarily geared toward creative specialists like photographers, designers, and artists, you can use their designs to build a personal, commercial, or eCommerce webpage for anyone.
Squarespace Pricing – How Much Does Squarespace Cost?
Unfortunately, Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan. However, a 14-day trial is offered and then there are four price tiers to pick from. Squarespace also provides Squarespace Select which is an enterprise solution that is priced specifically for each organization.
In-Depth Comparison Of Webflow vs Squarespace Features
| Features | Webflow | Squarespace |
| eCommerce | Available | Available |
| User Interface | Easy | Easy |
| Backup Security | Available | Not Available |
| Switching Process | Manual | Manual |
| SEO | Supported | Supported |
| Third-party Integration | Supported | Supported |
| Community and Customer Support | Phone Support Not Available | Phone Support Available |
Webflow vs Squarespace: eCommerce
Webflow offers an all-inclusive and straightforward eCommerce suite with all the standard features, including the ability to sell real and digital goods, develop distinctive product variants, and collect payments from over 200 countries for a minimal convenience fee.
In contrast, Squarespace’s higher-tier subscriptions provide sophisticated business tools like Google Ad Credits, extensive analytics, and professional Google emails. Additionally, Squarespace’s key advantage is its all-in-one email promotional tool, which lets you design, manage, send, and evaluate personalized marketing emails and newsletters without the need for integrations.
Winner: Both Webflow’s and Squarespace’s sophisticated eCommerce solutions include everything you require to manage a sizable online store. However, when it comes to eCommerce, we would suggest Squarespace due to the lower cost.
Webflow vs Squarespace: User Interface
Since there are so many customization possibilities, Webflow’s design freedom comes at a cost – it may take some time to become adept in all of them. And to get the most out of it, you’ll need to have a basic understanding of technology, be familiar with programs like Sketch or Figma, and be willing to put in the effort to learn the system.
Comparatively speaking, Squarespace is significantly simpler. Without any additional assistance (which is available if you require it), you can pretty quickly become familiar with the system by using its straightforward and minimalist interface.
Winner: Website builders are essentially supposed to be easy to use, and since with Webflow there’s a steep learning curve involved, the winner here is Squarespace.
Webflow vs Squarespace: Backup Security
Having a current copy of your website saved is always a good idea in case something goes wrong and while Weflow automatically generates backups for your website, Squarespace doesn’t.
Webflow automatically generates backups, and even with the free plan, you can revive the two latest backup versions of your websites.
On the other hand, Squarespace’s editor doesn’t automatically save your progress for you, which is a frustration we experienced when using it. Instead, you’ll have to keep hitting ‘save’ as you go to maintain a backup of everything. However, Squarespace does create backup copies of your website, stores them on both primary and backup servers, and enables you to revive deleted web pages for up to thirty days.
Winner: The winner for backup security has to be Webflow but since Squarespace has a relatively reasonable backup strategy, we can consider it a tie as well.
Webflow vs Squarespace: SEO
On this front, Webflow and Squarespace are almost equal – both feature strong SEO editing options, allowing you to accomplish all of the fundamentals (customize URLs, page titles, descriptions, etc). However, they also offer more sophisticated SEO features, such as the ability to create sitemaps, alter your robots.txt file, and set up 301 redirects.
Both also come with a few special benefits. By letting you implement AMP for your blogs, formatting product data to attract rich Google results, and providing direct interaction with Google data through its keyword search tab, Squarespace goes above and beyond to make sure that your website is Google-optimized.
In contrast, Webflow gives you the entire control over your site’s responsiveness, which can help you improve its mobile-friendliness, a crucial ranking criterion for Google. Additionally, you can determine the structures of auto-generated meta descriptions and titles for your blog posts.
Winner: Since both Webflow and Squarespace have their pros, this has to be a tie.
Webflow vs Squarespace: Third-Party Integration
Webflow has a long list of innovative features, such as personalized forms, engaging Google Maps, custom animations, and an easily implemented eCommerce feature. It can be customized with a huge variety of features thanks to the HTML/CSS working capabilities. Additionally, Webflow has a broad collection of plugins and widgets that allow it to integrate with popular apps. For instance, the cross-platform plugins Memberspace’, ‘Elfsight’, and ‘Power’ all integrate well with various site builders.
In contrast, Squarespace has an expanding directory of extensions that includes apps for taxes, drop shipping, and other things. Additionally, you can connect with a variety of third-party integrations by purchasing third-party plugins. Squarespace also has a strong eCommerce functionality, which includes the capability to create client accounts, if you require it. They have a solid eCommerce system that offers a satisfying user experience.
Winner: The winner for third-party integrations has to be Webflow, given its vast set of third-party integrations.
Webflow vs Squarespace: Switching Process
You will need to manually transfer your content if you want to convert an existing website to Squarespace or Webflow. While images will need to be uploaded again, the majority of content can simply be imported. Although the manual nature of the process is somewhat frustrating, it still doesn’t necessitate any programming expertise, which is a plus.
Still, if you like to explore things on your own, you’ll undoubtedly like browsing Webflow’s vast library of materials on Webflow University, which includes lessons, videos, and walkthroughs. In addition, there is a bot, a blog, and a community to guide you.
Winner: Since both webflow and Squarespace have a manual switching policy, this has to be a tie.
Webflow vs Squarespace: Community And Customer Support
Website builders are renowned for being slow to respond to help requests, but we can vouch for the fact that Squarespace isn’t one of them. Thanks to Squarespace’s live chat feature, you may obtain responses almost immediately. They also offer 24/7 email assistance and a thorough knowledge base.
However, if you’re seeking personal Webflow help, they may be a little slower to answer. This is due to the fact that they don’t offer phone or live chat assistance; the only available method is email, and they claim to answer within 1-2 working days.
Winner: Hands down the winner for community and customer support is Squarespace.
Advantages And Disadvantages of Webflow
Webflow is a popular website builder with more than 3.5 million users and a wide range of templates. Here are some of the website builder’s benefits and drawbacks:
Advantages of Webflow
- Wide choice of templates: Webflow offers a wide range of templates and the layouts are customizable down to the most minute details.
- Visual builder: Webflow is a visual site developer that lets you design responsive, expert-level websites.
- Wide range of resources: Webflow gives designers a wide range of tools to create unique interactions, such as hover states and auto-loading components.
Disadvantages of Webflow
- Steep learning curve: The learning curve for Webflow is steep, and it typically takes most users roughly an hour per day for about two weeks to become accustomed to the software.
- Limited code customization: Webflow provides limited code customization, so a web developer can’t modify the code in its most minute details.
Pros and Cons of Squarespace
Squarespace is a popular software if you need help creating and optimizing your website with beautiful templates and an easy interface. Here are some of the benefits and drawbacks of Squarespace:
Pros of Squarespace
- Well-designed templates: Squarespace’s wide array of stunning templates are the most visually appealing of any website builder.
- Easy to Set-up: Squarespace allows you to create a professional website with no coding skills required.
- Excellent User interface: Squarespace helps inexperienced web designers look skilled. It has a fairly simple user interface and doesn’t require complex coding skills.
Cons of Squarespace
- No phone support: Squarespace does not provide phone assistance; instead, customers can contact them via email or live chat.
- No multi-currency feature: If you wish to sell in several currencies on Squarespace, you’ll need to set up separate stores because you can only select one currency, which must match the currency of your payment processor.
- No autosave feature: Squarespace doesn’t offer any feature to autosave your edits and posts, and you’ll have to do them manually.
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The Final Verdict: Webflow vs Squarespace (2023)
When comparing the two tools, it is evident that Webflow is intended to serve the demands of a more experienced, business-oriented customer base whereas Squarespace is intended to be used by regular users who wish to create their first website. Additionally, both platforms, as previously stated, offer different pricing plans for the customers to choose from depending on the features and tools they need.
Webflow and Squarespace are both quite popular and effective website builders. Having said that, picking one over the other is not a functional decision since both software can be utilized to build outstanding websites quickly. Instead, the choice between the two comes down to the level of control consumers desire.
