WordPress™ powers over a third of all websites worldwide, but design costs are understandably high due to the complexity and never-ending add-on options. How does Squarespace ™compare?

What is WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

Automaticc is the company who owns both WordPress.org™ and WordPress.com™. WordPress.org™ is the free, open source, downloadable version. When installing it yourself, you take on the responsibility of backups, security, and all upgrades since it is free and open source.

WordPress.com™ offers backups, security and upgrades for a yearly fee. This sounds great except you lose a lot of flexibility as well. You are limited to only certain themes and plug-ins and you can’t alter your page structure. If you want to change a few items, you have to purchase a custom design upgrade and depending on the number of blogs you want to customize, the price can really start to go up. There’s also a content and copyright issue. Automaticc has the right to use your content for anything they like. They also reserve the right to terminate your access without cause or notice.

What is Squarespace™?

Squarespace™ is an all-in-one website builder with a user-friendly content management system. It has templates and style editor that let you make basic customizations your site without code (to an extent). Your website is built and hosted on Squarespace’s own servers. You can even purchase your domain name (the first year is free) and receive a year’s free G Suite account and set up a customized email address using your new domain. If you know HTML, CSS and Javascript, advanced customization is possible.

Squarespace™ includes a website builder, hosting, a domain for the first year, an SSL certificate (security), backups of your site, automatic upgrades, and other all-inclusive features.

Development

WordPress™ offers multiple themes and tens of thousands of add-ons giving the flexibility to create almost anything. The frustration is that not all add-ons may work with what you need and with each other.

Squarespace™ offers a much quicker development window because it has a single interface. Squarespace™ works with a set number of partners to provide options and they are all fully tested to ensure platform compatibility. Unlike WordPress™, there are no third-party plug-ins but designers with a background in CSS, HTML and Javascript can replicate a good amount of customization so the add-ons may not be needed.

Maintenance for Business Owners

WordPress™ can be intimidating to some business owners because of the vast amount of options. Unless you visit your site often, you may get frustrated navigating the backend to make changes or updates. It is not an intuitive CMS. There will be multiple add-ons which must be updated separately when new versions come out.

Squarespace™ was made for non-technical users. It’s backend is set up in outline form so it’s easy to get to whatever area you want to change whether it’s modifying content or adding a new image. Adding blogs, images to a gallery or new items to sell is all set up in similar formats so even if you don’t change your site that often, it is not hard to navigate.

eCommerce

WooCommerce™ is a WordPress ™plugin that allows you to sell unlimited products. Because hosting is not including, expect to pay an additional $5 to $100 per month depending on the size of your site. A WooCommerce™ theme usually runs anywhere from $40 to $100 (one time fee).

Squarespace™ offers a very easy way to set up an online store. There are options to track your orders, automate your inventory, save customer information, and offer discount codes. The drawback is that you may only choose from three payment gateways: Stripe™ (which accepts almost any type of credit/debit card. PayPal™, and Apple Pay™. You can also connect Square™ for in person point of sale purchases.

Pricing

While WordPress™ software and third party add-ons are not that expensive, business owners end up paying for development and maintenance time. In my experience, WordPress™ websites take at least four times longer than similar sites made with Squarespace™ and sometimes as much as ten times longer. In hourly design time, this is a small fortune. Wordpress™ sites tend to start around $5000 and can easily go up into the tens of thousands range.

Squarespace™ has an all-in-one price for its software, hosting, customer support, templates, analytics and more. It can range from $300 a year for the business plan up to $500 annually for the Advanced Commerce Plan. Most small business owners fall in the $300 to $400 a year plan. Because development time is fast, a small website (about 5-10 pages) can cost about $2000 while advanced sites may be more.

Summary

WordPress™ is a beast - both in the positive and negative sense. Flexible but frustrating, its extensive options may be just too much for the average small business.

For the majority of small businesses, Squarespace™ may be the perfect fit. It’s all-in-one simple approach to design, hosting, domain, and analytics, most business owners find that they will not need to pay for anyone to keep the site maintain. Website modifications like content or image changes are easy enough for almost anyone.

Can you set up your website yourself with Squarespace™? Squarespace™ wants you to think you can but the reality is, most business owners do not have enough of a background to create an effective website. Branding, content, image selection, and even colors and fonts can all positively or negatively affect a site’s ability to attract customers. Inserting SEO, backlinks, and even keyword-rich blog writing is an acquired skill but critical in ensuring your site starts to climb up a search engine ladder. While Squarespace does not have the advantage of third-party add-ons, a good web developer should still be able to use the Squarespace platform to use code to customize your website to your exact specifications.

Charlotte’s Web Designs, LLC specializes in website development for small businesses. With extensive coding and marketing experience, I have worked on over 100 Squarespace sites that are custom (no templates used), unique and memorable. Contact me or visit my portfolio here to learn more about this budget-friendly way to have your business compete with the best - at a fraction of the cost.

5-star Google-rated Charlotte’s Web Design, LLC is a sole proprietor web design and digital marketing firm specializing in custom, professional websites, SEO, branding, logo design, digital marketing, content writing, and graphic design with over 35 years of technology experience currently working with over a hundred small businesses. Please contact me for a free consultation.

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