Uncategorized Squarespace Website Builder Review for 2022 – Forbes Advisor UK – Forbes
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Updated: Jan 4, 2022, 7:11am
Squarespace is an all-in-one website creation platform best known for its stunning website designs. The popular website builder makes it relatively easy to establish your online presence, manage your site and even set up an online shop. Between its affordable pricing and intuitive interface, Squarespace offers a great package for new business owners. If you’re considering building a website, you’ll want to take a close look at Squarespace’s 100-plus stylish design templates as well as its blogging and eCommerce features. Other tools like Squarespace Members Areas, the Tock Reservation System, Squarespace Scheduling and Squarespace Email Campaigns offer additional functionality to your site.
1
Starting price
£1.50 per month
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce (low-priced plan)
No
1
On Zyro’s Secure Website
Squarespace launched in 2003 and now has a team that’s over 1,100 strong. The company boasts that millions of websites have been created on its platform.
Squarespace is a fully hosted website builder, which means you don’t have to purchase hosting services separately as you would with some other services. The intuitive drag-and-drop Squarespace website editor simplifies the process of creating a website, making Squarespace a popular option for those lacking the design and coding skills to build a professional-looking website from scratch.
You’ll receive a free domain for your first year with any plan if you pay annually instead of monthly. Otherwise, Squarespace domain costs range from £14 to £51 per year. All domains include an SSL certificate and WHOIS privacy. Unlike other domain providers, Squarespace does not gouge you on domain renewals; you just renew at the same rate as the initial purchase.
You don’t have to purchase your domain through Squarespace. If you already license a domain through another service, you can easily connect it to your Squarespace site. If you have trouble doing this, you can reach out to Squarespace’s support team for help.
There are four Squarespace plans, with monthly licencing fees ranging from £9 to £40 depending on what tier of service you use and whether you want to pay monthly or annually. Squarespace does not offer a free plan, though it offers a free 14-day trial. For comparison, Wix’s paid plans range from £10 to £36 per month, and the GoDaddy Website Builder plans range from £5 to £22 per month.
The primary differences between the plans are the number of features offered. E-commerce functionality is available on all plans except the Personal plan.
For £12 per month (or £8 a month when paid annually), the Squarespace Personal plan comes with unlimited bandwidth and storage, SEO features, full access to the Squarespace template collection and 24/7 customer support via chat and email. The Personal plan also includes basic website metrics and up to two contributors.
For £19 per month (or £13 a month when paid annually), the Squarespace Business plan includes all the features of the Personal plan plus a professional email from Google, advanced website analytics, promotional pop-ups and banners and complete customization with CSS and JavaScript. The Business plan also includes fully integrated e-commerce with a 3% transaction fee.
For £25 per month (or £19 a month when paid annually), the Squarespace Basic Commerce plan includes allBusiness plan features plus point-of-sale functionality, customer accounts and merchandising. The plan also lets you sync your products with Instagram so you can sell there, too. Transaction fees are eliminated on this plan.
For £39 per month (or £29 a month when paid annually), the Squarespace Advanced Commerce plan includes all Basic Commerce plan features plus abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping options, advanced discount and promotion features and the ability to sell subscriptions.
The Squarespace website builder comes with a variety of tools that help with business promotion and performance. The sheer number of tools offered makes Squarespace one of the best website solutions available today.
Grow and communicate with your audience using Squarespace Email Campaigns, which features attractive email layouts that complement your website design. You’ll pay £3 to £50 per month for this premium service.
Monetise your content by creating a members-only area on your site. The cost for this Squarespace feature is £6 to £29 per month.
Add an appointment scheduling feature to your website so clients can book and manage appointments online. Calendar management plans range from £10 to £36 per month.
Use the Squarespace Tock all-in-one reservation system to manage reservations and take online orders. This service is custom-priced, so you’ll need to request information on the Squarespace site to learn more about this service. Squarespace charges a 3% commission on takeout and delivery orders.
Squarespace is an excellent web builder that generally earns strong reviews from users. Still, there are a few things you want to know about before you launch your website on this platform.
Squarespace uses a drag-and-drop editor that simplifies the website build process. The editing tool is not quite as intuitive as Squarespace purports it is—especially for true beginners. The good news is that the Squarespace Help Centre offers detailed instruction on using the editor, and customer support is just a quick chat or email away.
In 2020, Squarespace introduced version 7.1, and along with it came several significant changes. With version 7.0, every template was customisable, and you could switch templates anytime you wanted. However, changing 7.0 templates often required multiple steps as not all templates included the full breadth of Squarespace features.
With version 7.1, switching templates is no longer an option. That’s because Squarespace includes access to every design feature in every version, so you don’t have to start over. However, if you’re on version 7.0 and want to upgrade to 7.1, you will need to rebuild your site. Squarespace offers detailed guides for walking you through this process.
Squarespace limits you to one sub-navigation menu. While this isn’t an issue for smaller websites, it could be problematic for large sites with deep levels of content.
Squarespace offers customer support via online chat and email. Phone support is not available, which can be problematic when you need to troubleshoot a complex problem quickly.
1
Starting price
£1.50 per month
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce (low-priced plan)
No
1
On Zyro’s Secure Website
The Squarespace site builder is a popular choice among solopreneurs like artists, authors, coaches, bloggers, and small businesses, such as restaurants, salons, financial services, and fitness centers. It’s not a great solution for large, complicated eCommerce sites or those with advanced technical website-building skills.
With Squarespace, you can build a simple, mobile-responsive website in a matter of a few hours. Ecommerce functionality allows you to monetise your site while Squarespace’s add-on features, like email, calendar management, and reservations, provide robust functionality that many business owners find helpful.
While there are cheaper platforms on the market, like Wix or GoDaddy Website Builder, the value for the features and design flair Squarespace offers is worth the modest additional expense. If having an attractive, modern website design is important to you, Squarespace delivers.
While WordPress offers more design flexibility and features than Squarespace, those with limited technical and design skills sometimes struggle with WordPress. Squarespace is a relatively easy-to-use website builder that offers a drag-and-drop editor and stunning design templates, making it a popular choice among those who want a DIY website option.
If you seek great design and a simple builder, and you’re willing to give up custom features and some design flexibility, Squarespace may work best for you. If you need considerable design flexibility and custom features, WordPress is the better choice.
The best Squarespace template for you depends on your business needs. Squarespace offers more than 100 templates for a variety of websites, including online stores, professional services, restaurants, blogs, podcasts, events, and fashion. Popular Squarespace templates for bloggers are Five and Palmera, while Maca and Holly are favorites for online shops.
Squarespace is an excellent blogging platform for beginners. Many bloggers prefer Squarespace because the website builder makes it easy to create a beautiful website quickly. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform, which means you don’t have to acquire hosting services or mess with plug-ins to accomplish basic blog functions. The templates are gorgeous, and the drag-and-drop editor is intuitive.
There are a few downsides to using Squarespace for blogging. Squarespace costs more than other blogging platforms, you have access to fewer templates, and design customisation is limited.
