In today’s world, every business needs a website if they want to make progress in their related field. In this period of social distancing and pandemic, business owners and entrepreneurs are making their presence online. They are also getting huge response and running their business smoothly.

So a website is a must for any kinds of business in any sector. There are lots of website builder available which offers lots of features and functionalities. Out of all the website builders, WordPress and Squarespace are the best content management system (CMS) for any type of business.

Now the question is which one you should choose for your particular business. In this article, we will guide you by comparing WordPress and Squarespace to help you to choose the most suitable one for your business.

Interface/ Easy of use

Squarespace

If you want to create a Squarespace website, at first you have to choose a template. Squarespace offers you so many awesome templates with pre-built layouts, pages and formats. Every page has a block section and you can organize it with text, images and other content blocks.

After that, you can create a post with its built-in text editor. Using Squarespace is very easy and it’s dynamic editor makes it very smooth to change the basic elements and design, font size, font types colour and others. But as it offers pre-built pages so you limited customization options.

WordPress

WordPress offers you so many customization options but as a beginner, you need to spend some time to learn it. You need to understand the difference between post and pages. You can create pages from the page section and add your text, images and videos.

From the post section, you can create your content with text, images and videos. You can also optimize your content as SEO friendly. There is a preview button available to see the visual of your content before publishing it.

For the first time, it will take some time to learn all these things but over time, you will fall in love with WordPress as it offers so many customization and plugins to boost your performance.

Summary

For the beginners, Squarespace interface is easier and user friendly with limited customization option. But in WordPress, it takes some time to adjust but it offers you more customization and, it is also SEO optimized.

Pricing

Squarespace

Squarespace annual pricing cost you $12 per month for personal use, for business use it is $18, for commercial $26 and for advance commercial it is $40. Their monthly pricing is a little bit more than the annual pricing. In their annual plan, you can save up to 30% than the monthly plan.

WordPress

WordPress is free but you need to pay for some other tasks like building and maintaining your website. WordPress cost differs for different types of website like blog, business, news etc.

You also have hosting and domain coast. A domain name estimated coast maybe $12 per year and hosting coast should be around $3 to $50. There are also many cheap hosting available. But if you run an eCommerce shop, then you need better hosting to handle thousands of users.

Most of the popular plugins in WordPress are free but there are some premium plugins for extra features and functionalities.

Summary

Initially, WordPress is very less costly than Squarespace. Once your business grows over time, you can invest more money on your website. On the other hand, Squarespace has a fee for a professional with a transaction free business plan.

Themes, Templates and Design

Squarespace

In Squarespace, you need to answer some question about your business and it’s a goal so that the platform comes with its themes and templates based on your answers.

Squarespace offers many beautiful themes but it has less customization option. But you can redesign your theme by changing the font type, size and colours.

WordPress

WordPress has tons of free and paid collection of themes. All of the themes are fully customizable and you can redesign it as you want based on your business brand and identity. A plugin like Elementor and BeaverBuilder help you to add more features and without any coding experience.

Summary

WordPress and Squarespace both have huge themes and templates collection with beautiful design. But WordPress offers you a huge customization option than Squarespace.

eCommerce

Squarespace

Squarespace has templates for e-commerce and plugins for eCommerce related task. But all collections are limited so you have limited options. You can sell unlimited products in your eCommerce shop and their business a plan gives you a 3% transaction fee.

WordPress

WordPress has lots of option available for your shipping and payment gateway. WordPress Woocommerce plugin helps you to make your website fully eCommerce based. Just install the right plugin and you can have all the available payment option.

Summary

If you have limited payment option, it will lose many of your customers. In WordPress, with the help of plugins, you can accept all payment and shipping option. But Squarespace has limited features and functionalities.

Maintenance

Squarespace

Squarespace is a closed system so you don’t need to worry about updates and maintenance. It will receive regular maintenance and updates.

WordPress

In WordPress, you have to give some effort to update, backup and maintain your website. It’s important to maintain your website with latest release and security patches. It’s quite easy to update your WordPress website. In your dashboard, just click on the update option and you can easily update your site from there.

Summary

WordPress needs some extra effort to update and maintain. On the other hand, Squarespace offers more flexible and easy updates and maintenance.

Which Platform to Choose

Squarespace

Advantages

  • Easy update
  • Flexible maintenance
  • User-friendly interface
  • Pre-built templates

Disadvantages

  • Limited customization option available
  • No backup option available
  • Limited plugin
  • Limited payment gateway
  • A transaction fee in business plan

WordPress

Advantages

  • Limitless customization option available
  • Huge collection of themes both in free and paid
  • Thousands of collection of plugins
  • Support all possible mainstream payment gateway option
  • Backup option available
  • Less coast
  • Strong community forum
  • Easy updates

Disadvantages

  • Take time to adjust for beginners
  • Need some effort to maintain
  • Need to install the plugin and update it manually

So we can say that Squarespace is best for a business owner who doesn’t want any hassle and extra features and customization in their website. Just select a theme and build your website.

On the other hand, WordPress is best for business owners who wants limitless customization and features.