Squarespace and WordPress are two most recognizable brands within the website building industry. Both are excellent choices generally. However if you simply are evaluating Squarespace versus. WordPress – the best idea fit for the project?
Before we glance at different factors between Squarespace and WordPress, we must define precisely what Squarespace and WordPress are.
Squarespace is a brand-in-one “hosted website platform.” A located website platform is how all of the components required for an internet site come in one bundle having a single monthly cost.
Squarespace offers the software to handle your site content they offer the designs and functionality. And more importantly, additionally they supply the hosting (also known as the server where your site files live) all-in-one cost.
WordPress is technically free website software that you simply manage your site content, designs and functionality. However it’s utilized in two various ways.
First, there’s self-located WordPress (also known as “WordPress.org). It’s free, open-source, community-supported software that anybody can install on any server that fits minimum needs. You have to pay for hosting, install WordPress and run your site the way you like. I authored a setup guide here.
Second, there’s WordPress.com. It’s a located platform service offered through the primary corporate supporter of WordPress. With WordPress.com, you will get any web site managing a limited, located form of WordPress free of charge. After this you purchase upgrades.
Yes – it’s confusing. I authored a little more concerning the distinction between WordPress.com and WordPress.org here if you wish to dig much deeper.
But here’s an example that actually works –
Imagine you’re searching for any home.
Squarespace and WordPress.com are generally like purchasing a condominium. You have everything within your condo. That you can do anything you want inside. The apartment association takes proper care of water, electricity, security and structural issues. They can have furnished unit options. However, you might also need to follow condo association rules. You’re restricted to their structure and you spend extra HOA charges.
Self-located WordPress is much like purchasing a house. That you can do anything you like. There’s no rules or limitations. But you need to take proper care of everything (or bring in help to consider proper care of it). It’s also as cheap or as costly as you would like so that it is.
Disclosure – I receive customer referral charges from companies pointed out on this web site. All data and opinion derive from my experience like a having to pay customer or consultant to some having to pay customer.
Located versus. Self-located Platforms
To evaluate Squarespace versus. WordPress – we’re going to check out things i believe are the main factors for most of us. We’ll take a look at Squarespace, Self-located WordPress and WordPress.com in every section.
Bear in mind though the primary tradeoff is going to be control/convenience. Squarespace & WordPress.com are generally located platforms thinking about supplying the very best, easiest experience. But to obtain the convenient experience, there’s a tradeoff with control & features.
If either doesn’t possess a feature you would like, you are able to’t simply add it. If you wish to migrate to a different platform – you are able to’t just pickup and then leave and begin elsewhere together with your identical website.
Whenever you self-host by yourself server – that you can do both individuals things. However, it’s also less convenient like a located platform.
That’s the main tradeoff to bear in mind. But like I’ve pointed out in other website builder reviews, this site setup guide and my ecommerce platform reviews – it’s and not the only tradeoff (that is what we should’re gonna discuss).
Prices
Squarespace has two website plans. The Private Plan runs $12/mo when billed yearly. It’s restricted to 20 pages. The Strategic Business Plan runs $18/mo when billed yearly.
Bear in mind by using Squarespace – which includes hosting, customer care, designs, etc.
WordPress.com includes a free arrange for a [yourwebsite].wordpress.com subdomain. The Private Plan runs $2.99/mo when billed yearly. You’ll have a custom domain, but it’s restricted to designs and space for storage. The Premium Plan run $8.25/mo when billed yearly. It adds extra space and a few more feature upgrades (though no Google Analytics support).
The Strategic Business Plan runs $24.92/mo when billed yearly. It adds Google Analytics, more design options and limitless storage.
Bear in mind that these two companies only allow a single site on diets.
Self-located WordPress is 100% free software application that you could install on any server. If you’re real geek, you are able to technically run it free of charge off a house server. But realistically, your primary cost is going to be having to pay for shared Linux hosting. You will get good hosting for under $3/mo when billed yearly – that renews at just $8/mo when billed yearly.
There are many great hosts with one-click WordPress setups. HostGator (who I personally use for many sites) has very economical plans (review).
InMotion Hosting is a little pricier overall but has excellent support along with a website builder-esque drag and drop tool for WordPress known as BoldGrid if that’s your factor.
In either case, self-located WordPress may have less expensive prices both relatively and absolutely regardless of what host you utilize.
With self-located WordPress, you’re not just obtaining a cheaper cost every month, you’re also getting the opportunity to have limitless features, limitless design options and *limitless websites.*
For those who have two, 3 or more website ideas, place these on a single self-located account without having to pay more. With Squarespace & WordPress.com – each new website is a brand new monthly cost.
The large prices asterisk with self-located WordPress is there are a many things you aren’t having to pay for – but they are still accountable for.
For prices with Squarespace versus. WordPress – Squarespace includes a better deal when compared with WordPress.com. However, self-located WordPress represents a far greater deal according to prices alone.
But let’s move to another asterisk/factors.
Onboarding & Consumer Experience
“Onboarding” describes the entire process of moving a completely new customer from signup to active user.
Essentially it’s helping new clients figure stuff out. Nobody loves to purchase something and immediately have regret exclusively because other product idea using the things they bought.
Like I pointed out within my Squarespace review, Squarespace has greatly improved their onboarding. Their backend is rather intuitive, but nonetheless has some quirks.
Using their pre-loaded designs, a novice really may have a working website in a few minutes. To enhance and personalize the website, it requires a little time to determine all Squarespace’s features. However they have customer care available to reply to any queries.
WordPress.com also offers a great onboarding process. Their backend requires new users to get on some vocabulary. If your goal would be to start publishing content rapidly on the nice website, WordPress.com beats Squarespace’s onboarding experience.
The likely reason it’s so competent (which we’ll go back to) is the fact that WordPress.com doesn’t genuinely have customer care for lower-tier plans – a minimum of away from the way Squarespace does. For that reason, WordPress.com almost *has* to create their setup intuitive to be effective.
Onboarding with self-located WordPress varies extremely among website hosts.
Actually, I produced an easy WordPress setup guide here together with WordPress tutorials since some website hosts have a tendency to provide your bank account information and then leave you to definitely it.
Some hosts like Website Hosting Hub or InMotion asks some signup questions and give back some starter sources. They’ll offer a WordPress builder application to assist. However for setup and onboarding, you’re still virtually by yourself.
You are able to email support for particular questions, but there’s no apparent “do this, then that” process once you install WordPress.
If terms like “FTP” or “Security Patch” or Googling for solutions are not formidable to you, you might appreciate self-located WordPress’ minimalist onboarding. It’s not complicated when you are beyond the learning curve.
However, for onboarding & consumer experience – WordPress.com includes a slight edge over Squarespace’s already excellent onboarding. Self-located WordPress is okay should you’d favour control of led tours.
Design Options
A typical myth in website building is the fact that a “WordPress website” or “Squarespace website” or “Shopify site” is really a specific website design or look. A lot of customers choose or eliminate a platform simply because they “don’t such as the look.”
Here’s the factor – must be software uses “themes” or “templates” like a base does not necessarily mean that you could’t have whatever design you would like.
The feel of a website is produced with HTML/CSS. Any software that enables you to definitely edit CSS is software that may generate nearly any design imaginable.
Squarespace, WordPress.com and Self-located WordPress all allow CSS editing.
Therefore the primary three questions become –
- How accessible are their “plug & play” designs?
- What’s the number of their premium “plug & play” designs?
- What lengths can an expert developer/designer opt for the look?
On question #1 – the 3 have great, accessible plug-n-play designs. Squarespace offers a number of free designs that you just select.
For WordPress.com and self-located WordPress, there are millions of free designs that you just select within the Appearance menu.
On question #2 – the 3 possess a pretty huge assortment of designs with self-located WordPress supplying probably the most options. For a long time now, professional designers/developers have produced premium “off the shelf” styles for WordPress. Many provide for Squarespace too.
However, the WordPress world is just much, larger. That bigger market draws more designers/developers.
At this time, you will find a large number of premium WordPress theme makers – even entire marketplaces like ThemeForest and MOJO Styles. Squarespace includes a similar world – however it’s less big.
For question #3 – the 3 permit designers (not developers) to complete their factor with self-located WordPress providing the finest freedom (for much better as well as for worse). Squarespace lately folded out support for common developer tools like Git whereas self-located WordPress can perform anything an expert developer could want.
WordPress.com has more limits than either Squarespace or self-located WordPress since they don’t allow scripts, FTP access or custom styles.
For design options, the 3 have good options with various “flavors.”
WordPress.com has a great deal of click and go styles. Squarespace includes a wide freedom and good designs having a smaller sized premium theme selection.
Self-located WordPress offers limitless choice & control, that is great, but could lead to further problems of their own with qc, security and/or code conflicts.
Technical & Personalization Features
The technical set of features illustrates the control/convenience tradeoff spectrum much better than anything using these three options.
WordPress.com has got the greatest quantity of control (no scripts with no FTP access) but additionally has got the easiest setup. It’s built-in features that merely work. And also the features that many users need/want exist.
Squarespace provides more control than WordPress.com but nonetheless isn’t open-ended. You may make many changes, add scripts and tweak many technical settings.
If you’re a developer, you will get access via Git or SFTP to create related files. However, you cannot make changes to functionality or implement anything you would like. That stated, the Squarespace system helps to ensure that the characteristics they will have work – plus they work nicely no crashing or conflicts.
Self-located WordPress enables limitless technical & personalization features. It’s also fairly convenient for novices to include new functionality. Self-located WordPress enables “plugins” that are little small-apps that you could supplment your WordPress install using the mouse click.
Whether or not this’s for much better Search engine optimization functionality, establishing an ecommerce site, adding appointments, bulk uploading information, adding a social networking or really whatever you can consider – it can be done with self-located WordPress.
Around the downside, it’s also possible to produce a code conflict in WordPress and crash your site. It’s not common should you stay with well-support plugins, but it’s something which can occur.
It’s much like having a house – you are able to develop a deck or add shutters if you wish to. Things will most likely be fine, however if you simply accidentally damage your home – it’s for you to repair.
About this consideration – there’s no real overall champion. It’s about what’s good for you.
Marketing & Search engine optimization Features
Marketing & Search engine optimization factors are much like the technical factors.
The 3 platforms are “good” for marketing & Search engine optimization for the reason that they cook well-coded, crawlable, HTML & CSS.
All of them support social media tags for example Facebook’s Open Graph.
That stated, there are many internet marketing tools that aren’t available because of the formerly pointed out technical limitations.
WordPress.com only enables Google Analytics using their Strategic business plan. Furthermore, they don’t allow tracking or conversion pixels (ie from Google or Facebook). Additionally they do not let specific technical Search engine optimization additions for example Schema, category page edits or any other technical fixes.
Squarespace enables more scripts and tagging. They likewise have more technical Search engine optimization options, but with Squarespace, you are able to’t do all of the Search engine optimization or technical marketing work. Around the upside, for a lot of beginner / small websites, applying tags & technical fixes aren’t (and cannot) be high priority.
The very best factor you should do is publish quality content that will get associated with and shared by many individuals (and won’t crash under sudden massive recognition) then WordPress.com and Squarespace permit you to do this.
If you wish to do all of the marketing things – a self-located WordPress website allows even beginners to apply highly advanced tactics varying from applying tags, tracking data to advanced Search engine optimization changes to running email opt-ins, schema, a/b tests and anything you may wish to accomplish.
So again, with marketing features the “winner” really depends upon your priority. In case your priority is easy, user-friendly publishing then WordPress.com and Squarespace do this well.
If you would likeOrrequire an entire technical marketing toolset – then you definitely’ll require a self-located WordPress website.
Customer Care & Service
Regardless of what you are or that which you’re building – you’ll likely need customer care.
WordPress.com approaches customer care differently. They are doing something to make customer care “scale” (also known as they aren’t answering exactly the same question again and again).
WordPress.com structures their backend to try and eliminate questions & problems. But if you have a problem, you need to publish it inside a public forum.
The contact page instantly searches old posts while you type to obtain your question clarified from your old publish. Whenever you submit, WordPress.com’s “Happiness Engineers” rapidly and concisely answer your question – either openly or via private email.
It’s all virtual, interesting, and efficient – although not for everybody.
Squarespace provides more traditional customer care via support tickets. They don’t do phone support but provide 24/7 support via email, chat and Twitter.
If you have a self-located WordPress website, you want to your webhost for intricacies and Google/forums for other conditions. I’ve reviewed a lot of website hosts and repair levels/approaches vary extremely.
Some the likes of InMotion (review), Website Hosting Hub (review), SiteGround (review), and DreamHost (review) are independent firms that positively purchase customer support – and will be more WordPress-specific issues than the others.
Others like HostGator (review), Bluehost (review) yet others have good hosting support but encourage upgrading to “WordPress hosting” to possess WordPress-specific help.
That stated, even though you have excellent hosting support, oneself-located WordPress web site is inherently unique.
Since WordPress.com and Squarespace operate located platforms – their customer support has less variables to utilize. They already know you are able to only personalize your website a lot, thus potential issues are restricted.
For those who have a very customized self-located WordPress website with a lot of plugins and theme edits, you’ll have to undergo a trouble-shooting process regardless of how good your webhost’s support is.
If you’re comfortable problem-solving and troubleshooting, a self-located WordPress site with a decent webhost would be the best fit. Otherwise, Squarespace/WordPress.com have a better setup.
Speed, Backups, Security & Maintenance
Greatly associated with customer care would be the problems with speed, security and maintenance.
If you work with WordPress.com or Squarespace – these aren’t your problems. They take proper care of the 3 included in the bundle.
If you’re self-hosting, you’ll have to regularly improve your WordPress install and plugins. Furthermore, you’ll have to use a fundamental security wordpress plugin and know very well what makes your website fast/slow.
None of those topics need a developer or deep technical understanding, but they’re topics you need to be familiar with.
Returning to the home example – it’s like altering the environment filter monthly and setting an alarm system. They aren’t complicated, but they’re under your control. My publish on essential plugins for WordPress is a great resource.
Squarespace versus. WordPress Conclusion
Squarespace and WordPress are very well-known brands permanently reasons. They’ve both made obtaining a website a lot simpler than it was once.
Both are healthy choices. If you’d prefer control of convenience – then decide on a self-located WordPress site. Use this site setup guide here.
If you’d prefer more convenience, convey more budget and wish an emphasis on publishing & simplicity of use – i then’d opt for WordPress.com.
If you’d prefer convenience and wish a far more general purpose website with traditional support – i then’d opt for Squarespace.
Other Sources
- How You Can Setup A WordPress Website on your own
- Essential Help Guide To Selecting An Ecommerce Website Platform
- WordPress.org versus. WordPress.com
- Squarespace Review w/ Pros & Cons
The publish Squarespace versus. WordPress (Self-located .org & WordPress.com) made an appearance first on ShivarWeb.
“”
