Squarespace Website Builder Review 2024: Features, Pricing, & Ease of Use
Liam Artman
Squarespace is a pioneer in the website building industry, boasting over 20 years of experience in helping users create websites. This platform seamlessly combines sleek design with eye-catching templates, simplifying the process of creating a stunning website. However, despite its many benefits, this website builder only has a 1.5/5 rating on Trustpilot. Why is that? It could be because Squarespace lacks in personal support, or because its templates are often overloaded with design elements, resulting in slow page speeds and ineffective SEO.
Squarespace is a website building platform, which offers stylish professionally designed templates.
The website templates library has 160+ professionally designed templates to choose from.
If you encounter any issues, you can refer to the Help Center, which has an extensive database. Unfortunately, it does not offer personal support for more advanced questions.
To discuss some topics with other Squarespace users you can go to the Forum section.
Squarespace Pros and Cons
We recommend Squarespace for…
- Complete beginners because the interface is very intuitive and user friendly
- Individuals looking for design-focused websites due to Squarespace’s stylish templates
We don’t recommend Squarespace for…
- Big e-commerce platforms due to scalability limitations
- Multilingual websites because of limited supported languages
Advantages:
- Professionally designed templates
- Intuitive, beginner-friendly interface
- Integration with Google Search Console and other extensions (Mailchimp, LiveChat, or Printful)
- Suitable for e-commerce
Disadvantages:
- Many Squarespace users have reported dissatisfaction with their customer service, as many issues often remain unresolved.
- Managing a website with Squarespace can be difficult due to bugs, particularly issues related to domain transfers. Squarespace often forces these transfers and sometimes even terminates domains.
- The extremely low page loading speed reduces SEO efficiency, as indicated by Google PageSpeed Insights
- Limited number of templates (less than 170)
- No autosave option puts all your progress at risk, if there are any connection issues
- There are no built-in free WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger widgets. However, for $60 a year, you can connect them using the Elfsight widget.
- Customization options are limited
Squarespace Website Editor
Squarespace has stylish, professionally designed templates and sophisticated aesthetic, making it perfect for creators who value visually impressive websites. Platform tries to balance user-friendly design with customization features, however it is overloaded with sleek heavy elements resulting in frequent bugs and lags.
Number of blocks
230+
Ability to create benchmark layouts
5/5
Ability to have full control over the design
+
Responsive Video Integration
+
The main advantage of the editor is advanced customization functionality along with high-quality templates
The main disadvantage of the editor is that customization options can be confusing for beginners and may require some time to fully learn how to exploit its vast feature set
Squarespace offers 160+ sleek templates, which are however hard to navigate due to their abstract names. While the number of templates is fewer compared to some competitors, each is meticulously crafted with attention to detail.
The interface is minimalistic and quite intuitive without any excess details, making it relatively easy to use, but its sophisticated design options can introduce a steeper learning curve than other platforms.
Squarespace has a block-based system similar to other leading website builders, like Bazium. Users can add various content sections, such as text, images, videos, and social media content.
Beyond basic website building, Squarespace includes an array of built-in features catering to various needs such as e-commerce, blogging, and appointment scheduling.
You can add various blocks to your Squarespace website and drag them around the section to find a suitable place for them and fully control the final design.
Summarizing:
Squarespace excels as a design-centric website builder that offers comprehensive features for those who prioritize style and functionality and are willing to invest some time in mastering its richer design capabilities and come to terms with Squarespace’s lags and slow interface.
Squarespace Templates
Squarespace offers 160+ website templates that are designed by professional designers and are very stylish.
These are the examples of how Squarespace’s templates look like.
Squarespace Support
Squarespace is renowned for its streamlined customer support services. It offers a range of support options designed to cater to both novice users and seasoned web designers.
Design Help
-
Online Chat
+
Tickets
+
E-mail
+
Zoom / Google Meets support
-
Main Features of Squarespace Support:
24/7 Email Support: Squarespace provides non-stop email support with typically quick response times, which is invaluable for resolving issues that are not immediate.
Comprehensive Help Center: Squarespace has an exhaustive online repository with guides, tutorials, and video workshops that cover nearly every aspect of website building and management.
Community Forum: Users can also seek advice and share solutions via the Squarespace community forums, which is a hub of active users and experts.
We tested Squarespace's support service, and here are the results:
Live chat responses are usually received within a few minutes during operational hours, though there are exceptions during high traffic times.
The support team understands design-related issues and provides practical solutions tailored to enhancing site aesthetics and functionality.
The lack of 24/7 live chat and direct phone support can be a drawback for users who prefer speaking to a representative or need assistance outside of standard hours.
Squarespace SEO
Squarespace is pretty limited in terms of SEO, especially for users who need extensive SEO features. Its templates have poor SEO performance, compared to other website builders that focus on SEO, like Bazium.
Google Perfomance Score
36
GTMetrix Grade
B
Pingdom Grade
C
Technical Optimization
3/4
For testing, we took the same website template and tested it in 3 services: Google Pagespeed, Solarwind Pingdom, and GTMetrix, which will show how technically ready the website is.
Squarespace’s template has scored a C grade on Pingdom, which is below average and signifies issues with SEO.
This website has a B grade on GTMetrix, which shows that optimization for search engines on desktops is not very efficient.
On Google PageSpeed Insights the template has scored even lower, getting into a very critical red zone with 47 points.
Almost all indicators show that SEO performance is ineffective and promoting your website with Squarespace templates might be a problem. Google has indicated that site speed (Core Web Vitals) is a factor in ranking websites in search results.
Squarespace WhatsApp / Facebook Messenger Integration
Squarespace does not have any WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger Widget built in the platform, so you’ll have to go to other businesses that provide it for extra costs (around 50$) and later on integrate it with HTML code, which is quite inconvenient and will result in less effective SEO.
Simple Integration
-
Sales-Driven WhatsApp / Facebook Messenger Widget
-
HTML Embed Widgets
+
How much does Squarespace cost?
Free Plan with Custom Domain
There is no Free Plan, you can only do a free trial for 14 days
Minimum Monthly Price Plan Billed Annually
$16 / 11€ / £12
Free Trial Period, No Credit Card Required
14 days
Assistance with Initial Domain and Design Setup
No