WordPress vs. Squarespace
Individuals and SMBs use website builder platforms to create professional-looking websites without the need for code and even run their ecommerce businesses. In a market saturated with many different website builders, it can be difficult to choose the best one for you and your small business.
We’ve written this guide to help you understand the most important differences between WordPress and Squarespace. Below, we discuss the key differences between each solution – including pricing, features, and the types of website creators each platform is best suited for.
All of our recommendations are based upon extensive research, discussions with website creators, and dozens of hours spent hand-testing the leading website builder software platforms. The details of our research process can be found on our website builder category page.
Comparison Summary
WordPress and Squarespace are two well-known website builder solutions. We rated Squarespace 90 out of 100 and WordPress 85 out of 100, respectively.
Squarespace was rated higher than WordPress because it is more feature-rich and easier to use for most small businesses. WordPress was rated lower because it is one of the least user-friendly platforms available, and you would need to download several plugins to optimize WordPress’s functionality.
When it comes to pricing, WordPress and Squarespace are comparable to one another. WordPress offers cheaper website plans, while Squarespace offers slightly cheaper ecommerce plans. When considering both platform’s features, excluding extensions or plugins, we’ve determined that Squarespace’s pricing is reasonable, whereas WordPress is relatively more expensive.
Both platforms include standard website builder features – including a drag & drop website builder, a WYSIWYG blog editor, ecommerce tools, SEO optimizations, and traffic and sales analytics.
Compared to WordPress, Squarespace is easier to use, and better for those who prioritize the visual design of their website. In contrast, WordPress is better for those who want more control over their website, and know the right WordPress plugins to install.
Here’s a few key differences between the solutions to determine which is best for you:
- You have more experience building websites
- You want stronger SEO optimizations – including editing your page titles and descriptions
- You want to customize your platform through the installment of plugins
- The visual design of your website is highly important to you
- You prefer a more user-friendly platform
- You want email marketing tools – including email newsletters, promotional emails, and sign-up confirmations
Table of Contents
- Comparison Summary
- WordPress & Squarespace Price Comparison
- WordPress & Squarespace Feature Comparison
- WordPress & Squarespace Top Feature Comparison
- Bottom Line
WordPress & Squarespace Price Comparison
Overall, WordPress and Squarespace are comparable in terms of price. However, WordPress offers a free plan and a cheaper personal plan, while Squarespace offers cheaper ecommerce plans. WordPress’s most popular website plan costs $14 per month and only offers one ecommerce plan that costs $59 per month. Most Squarespace customers pay for its $26 website plan and the platform offers ecommerce plans priced at $35 and $54 per month.
WordPress Pricing Details
WordPress’s pricing ranges from $7 to $59 per month. It offers both website and ecommerce plans. You can also save ~40% if you pay for the annual subscription upfront.
| Plan Type | Pricing |
|---|---|
| Personal | $7 per month |
| Premium | $14 per month |
| Business | $33 per month |
| Ecommerce | $59 per month |
Squarespace Pricing Details
Squarespace’s pricing ranges from $16 to $54 per month. It offers website and ecommerce plans at different pricing. You can also save 30% by purchasing an annual plan upfront. Here’s an overview of Squarespace’s pricing plans:
| Plan Type | Plan & Pricing |
|---|---|
| Website |
|
| Ecommerce |
|
WordPress & Squarespace Feature Comparison
For a full analysis of each solution’s features, read our WordPress review and Squarespace review.
| Feature | WordPress | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| SEO Tools | Yes | No |
| Automatic Tax Calculations | Yes | No |
| Email Marketing | No | Yes |
| Abandoned Cart Recovery | No | Yes |
| Automatic Shipping Rate Calculations | No | Yes |
| Visitor Engagement Analytics | No | Yes |
| Drag & Drop Website Builder | Yes | Yes |
| WYSIWYG Blog Editor | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile App | Yes | Yes |
| Comments | Yes | Yes |
| Displaying Most Recent Posts on the Homepage | Yes | Yes |
| Plugins/ Extensions/ Applications | Yes | Yes |
| Contact Forms | Yes | Yes |
| Coupons | Yes | Yes |
| Traffic Analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Sales Analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Social Media Marketing | No | No |
WordPress & Squarespace Top Feature Comparison
Below we provide our in-depth analysis of five key features that are included in WordPress and Squarespace – the website builder, WYSIWYG blog editor, ecommerce tools, marketing tools, and analytics. Overall, WordPress and Squarespace both offer effective features, but Squarespace is more user-friendly.
Website Builder
WordPress and Squarespace include drag & drop website builders that let you design your website. Overall, WordPress’s website builder is more advanced, but Squarespace’s is better for visual design and is more user-friendly.
WordPress lets you build your website from scratch, or based on a template. You can upload 50 different types of multimedia including images, buttons, and social links, to a search bar, navigation panel, and polls. An advantage that WordPress has over Squarespace is that WordPress lets you view the sections of a website page in a list format. This helps you view the structure of your website and access certain sections without having to scroll too much.
Squarespace’s website builder lets you upload 25 different types of multimedia into your pages including images, videos, forms, buttons, and a search bar. A disadvantage of Squarespace’s website builder is that it does not let you build your website from scratch – you have to base your website design on one of its templates. However, Squarespace templates are more design-forward and better for showcasing visual work than WordPress’s in-platform builder.
WYSIWYG Blog Editor
WordPress and Squarespace offer WYSIWYG blog editors, which let you edit your content as it will appear when published. Overall, this feature is superior in Squarespace because it is more intuitive to use and lets you optimize your blog posts for SEO.
Both platforms let you upload the same types of multimedia you can upload onto your website pages into your blog posts. You can also tag your blog posts in both platforms, which help readers find specific content on your website, and search engines better understand what your content is about. An advantage Squarespace has over WordPress is that Squarespace lets you customize each blog post’s URL slug, title, and description.
Ecommerce Tools
You can use WordPress and Squarespace to run an ecommerce business. They both offer tools that help manage your inventory, orders, and calculate tax and shipping rates. Overall, Squarespace’s ecommerce features can support small to medium sized businesses. To take full advantage of WordPress’s ecommerce capabilities, you would need to install plugins like Woocommerce.
Advantages of Squarespace for ecommerce include:
- An in-platform abandoned cart recovery feature
- The ability to write SEO optimized product titles and descriptions
- Automatic shipping rates for FedEx, UPS, and USPS
- 0% transaction fees if you choose an ecommerce plan
Marketing Tools
Both WordPress and Squarespace offer tools that let you market your website once it’s been published. Overall, WordPress offers slightly superior SEO optimization tools and Squarespace offers superior email marketing tools.
Unlike Squarespace, WordPress lets you customize the page titles for different sections of your website – including your front page, blog posts, and other pages. After you’ve made your changes, you can preview how your SEO optimizations will appear on Google, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also edit your pages’ meta descriptions.
Squarespace lets you write email blasts, and send emails that are triggered automatically by certain events. You can customize email newsletters, promotional emails, sign-up confirmations, and abandoned cart emails. Squarespace also lets you create your emails from scratch or use one of their templates.
Analytics
WordPress and Squarespace both include tools that let you observe how your website and ecommerce business are performing in terms of traffic, and sales. Overall, we found these features to be slightly more superior in WordPress.
Traffic
Both WordPress and Squarespace let you monitor how many views and visitors your website has received, and where geographically your visits are coming from. However, WordPress also shows you which pages get the most clicks, most popular search terms, and your referers.
Sales
If you run an ecommerce business through WordPress or Squarespace, both offer dashboards that display your sales information. Both display graphical representations of your total revenue, number of orders, and average order value, as well as their percent changes between days, weeks, and months. However, WordPress also lets you view trends for the number of products that have been purchased, coupons used, refunds given, shipping charged, and tax charged.
Bottom Line
Overall, Squarespace is easier to use and better for those who prioritize the visual design of their website. We also find Squarespace’s ecommerce features sufficient and not too intimidating for new ecommerce business owners.
In contrast, WordPress is better for those who want more control over their website, and know the right WordPress plugins to install. It is better for experienced website creators.
If you’re interested, visit WordPress or Squarespace today to get started.