Introduction

Welcome to my Blog Post “Pricing of Squarespace – Is It Worth It?”

Squarespace’s user interface is designed to be simple enough for anyone to use – even if they have no prior experience with web design or development. It enables millions of people to build a brand, share their stories, and transact with their customers in an impactful and beautiful online presence. Squarespace was founded in 2003 in Anthony’s dorm room at the University of Maryland. Since its launch, many millions of websites have been created on the Squarespace platform.

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OverView

My View…
Squarespace is known for its sleek templates, easy-to-use editor, and powerful eCommerce features that make building a website quick and simple.
Best For…
Portfolio sites making you and your work look amazing.
Price…
Starting at $16.00 / month if billed annually.
Discount…
Yes, there are discounts available on up-front long-term commitments.
Promotion…
Not at time of publishing.
Our Rating for Squarespace is…
4.8 out of 5 stars (4.8 / 5)

For my related review on Wix Click Here and Zyro Click Here

Is It Worth It?

If you’re new to website design and don’t know where to start, Squarespace is an excellent platform for creating beautiful websites. If you’re trying to determine which site builder is right for you, definitely have a look at Squarespace. Our series of comprehensive reviews of the 5 best website builders will help guide your final decision by taking a close look at each contender.

Squarespace is the ideal website builder for:

  • Small and Midsized businesses with the goal to have a very modern website.
  • Companies that want to be seen more frequently online.
  • Bloggers & Vloggers.
  • Photographers and creatives building online digital portfolios.
  • Anyone who is starting a booking site.
  • eCommerce sites.
  • Affiliate Marketers.

Outstanding Feature

Out of all the platforms available, Squarespace offers a remarkable collection of chic website templates, perfect for anyone seeking unique design customization options. If you’re worried about your business’s image, then this should be your go-to platform. The templates are easy to customize, so you can get a professional look without having to spend extra time and money on a designer.

Key Features Include:

  • Drag and drop Website Builder – Blocks are drag-and-drop features that allow you to customize your pages with different types of content, like text, images, buttons, and forms.
  • Blogging toolset – Blog posts need not be mundane or one-dimensional. With some creativity, you can add multimedia content, tagging, categories, and comments, and push your post to social media platforms for more engagement.
  • eCommerce – With the Cart & Checkout Settings panel, you can control your store policies, ask for extra information if needed, and change any other settings.
  • Squarespace Extensions – The Squarespace Extensions library has plenty of reliable third-party tools (30+) to help with vital website functions, like sales tax compliance, drop shipping, SEO, and social media marketing.
  • Marketing & Driving Traffic with built-in SEO Features – The suite of SEO features available from Squarespace can make implementation much easier, including image optimization, title formatting, indexing and searchability, automatic tagging, and more.
  • Email Campaigns – Send on-brand emails as beautiful as your website with Squarespace Email Campaigns, this is the integrated email marketing feature
  • Analytics Dashboards
  • Mobile – From the very beginning, every site Squarespace makes is compatible with mobile devices.
  • Website Builder Mobile App: The Squarespace website builder app is available for both iOS and Android devices, letting you edit your site from anywhere.
  • SSL Certificates: Squarespace provides your website with a free SSL certificate. In today’s age, SSL certificates are essential for any site- especially if you want visitors to know that yours can be trusted.

Feature Takeaways:

Portfolio – Oh the possibilities!

With Squarespace, you can look forward to a wide variety of features and capabilities for your portfolio. For example, you can quickly add pictures to pages, posts, and galleries. Adding videos is also speedy and simple.

You can also add audio files to pages and posts, making it even easier to engage with your content. With drag-and-drop capabilities, you can easily organize images without any problems. Plus:

  • Masonry galleries
  • Easy focal point editing
  • Click-through URLs on images
  • Lightboxes

Squarespace functionality is included for an immersive experience.

The Squarespace image editor is a user-friendly way to resize, crop, adjust and rotate images within your browser. You can also look forward to enjoying focal point capabilities along with the ability to import image metadata.

eCommerce

Squarespace makes it easy to add a store feature to your site with just a few clicks. You can answer some questions and let Squarespace take care of the rest.

Designs are only a part of the work–you’ll also need to add products. If you already have a store, then you can import your items using a CSV file, or use the UI for managing products. The latter is more detailed but still easy enough to learn quickly.

After some practice, you’ll be able to update images, create different pricing tiers for variations of the product, and even collect additional information from customers via forms. You can increase your sales even more by changing the “Add To Cart” button text to something more compelling like “The Benefits of this Awesome product are…. Must Buy!”

Other features included allow you to:

  • Sell both digital and physical products.
  • Offer discounts and sales.
  • Sell gift cards.
  • Create mailing lists.
  • Sell subscriptions.
  • Sell via social media.
  • You can accept payments through PayPal, Stripe, or Square.
  • Get automatic tax calculation.

If you want to increase sales, you can send automatic reminder emails to customers who have abandoned their digital shopping carts. Though I know as a regular online shopper that I really don’t need more clutter in my email inbox, apparently this is an effective strategy for many stores. Fortunately, if you use Squarespace, you have the option of turning this feature on or off.

Integration (Squarespace Extensions)

Squarespace offers 32 different extensions in categories including shipping/fulfilling orders, inventory/products, finance, and sales/marketing.

In addition to Squarespace’s own services, you can also integrate with third-party providers such as Tock Reservations, OpenTable, SoundCloud, Zola (an online wedding registry platform), Bandsintown, and Amazon.

One of the most important features of Squarespace is its integration with Zapier, which lets you connect to over 1,000 additional apps. If you’re on a Business or Commerce plan, you also have access to Squarespace’s APIs, which let you build your own integrations with other software.

Email marketing

Although some may claim that email marketing is outdated, it can still be an effective way to reach your target consumers. You can use Squarespace’s built-in feature to easily take advantage of email marketing campaigns for things such as announcing a sale, publishing a new blog post or sharing important news.

Using Email Campaigns in conjunction with the Commerce platform will help improve the overall experience for both you and your customers.

Also using email campaigns with eCommerce provides several additional benefits, including the ability to build a loyal customer base and keep customers informed about new products. You can also use email campaigns to promote sales and discounts.

Squarespace Security

With Squarespace, you’ll never have to worry about security because all plans come with free SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. Also, PCI-DSS compliance (security standard for companies and organizations that handle payment information from consumers) is included for all payment methods.

However, for extra security, Squarespace uses two-factor authentication (2FA). Also, anytime you contact customer support, they will verify your account ownership to help protect your information and content.

Customer Support

You can always count on Squarespace for customer support via email or Twitter 24/7. If you need to speak with someone directly, you can use the live chat feature on the desktop.

Committed to providing excellent customer support. Squarespace have established a community forum where you can get quality feedback from top professionals. The only downside is the lack of phone support.

If you’re lost and not sure where to begin, Squarespace has plenty of helpful webinars and video tutorials in their Help Center.

However, before going through all that effort, make sure to check out their Contact Us page, you might be able to find answers to your questions without any help!

Furthermore, Squarespace has a plethora of guidelines for its customers including but not limited to:

  • Partnering and sponsorships.
  • PR and communications.
  • HR inquiries.
  • Security escalations.
  • Technical support issues.

Likes and Dislikes

Likes

  • Designs that look amazing and function well on mobile devices.
  • 110+ Responsive templates that you can use for any purpose.
  • The e-Commerce platform allows customers to purchase and download digital items.
  • The blogging tool allows you to schedule posts so that you can stay on top of your blog easily.
  • You get a free SSL certificate.

Dislikes

  • Limited design flexibility.
  • Lacks phone support.

Squarespace pricing plans

Is It Worth It?

PlanCost / MonthlyCost / Annualy up frontFeatures
Personal$23.00$16.00This website package includes 20 pages and support for an unlimited number of products, as well as a tool for accepting donations.
Business$33.00$23.00You can sell as many products as you want and build a website with an unlimited number of pages. You’ll be able to take advantage of promotional pop-ups, Google email accounts, and Google AdWords credits. All this is for a fully integrated eCommerce store that only charges a 3% transaction fee.
Basic Commerce$36.00$27.00A plan with no transaction fees (besides credit card fees) and all features from the Business plan, including unlimited products, free custom domain, mobile optimization, SSL security, and powerful commerce metrics.
Advanced Commerce$65.00$49.00You not only get all of the features from our previous plans but also the checkout is placed on your own domain. Plus, receive powerful commerce metrics including inventory, orders, and taxes as well as coupons & abandoned cart recovery features. In addition ship in real-time with flexible discounts, gift cards (and much more).

Squarespace Add-Ons

While other site builders include features such as membership tools and email marketing in their various plan offerings, Squarespace has separated these into Add-Ons. Therefore, when comparing the Squarespace website builder to its alternatives, you should take into consideration whether it’s more important for you to have access to these types of tools.

The prices shown for the Squarespace Addons represent the monthly cost when billed annually. You can also pay monthly, but at a higher rate.

  • Member Areas
  • Squarespace Scheduling
  • Email Marketing

Member Areas: 

To restrict and charge for access to content, for members only.

  • Starter: $5 / month for a single member area and 7% transaction fees
  • Core: $18 / month for three member areas and 4% transaction fees
  • Pro: $35 / month for 10 member areas and 4% transaction fees

Squarespace Scheduling: 

Scheduling in Squarespace is an appointment booking system that can be used on its own or integrated with your Squarespace website. It offers a robust system for multiple team members, employees, or locations, including calendar syncing, custom payment settings, card vaulting, and automated appointment reminder emails.

  • Emerging: $14 / month for one calendar
  • Growing: $23 / month for two to six calendars, Send SMS reminders to your customers and offer packages, gift certificates, memberships, or subscriptions.
  • Powerhouse: $45 / month for seven to 36 calendars and to add multiple time zones for staff/locations, custom APIs and CSS, and satisfy HIPAA* compliance regulations (applies only to the USA)

Squarespace Email Marketing: 

You can only use Squarespace’s Email Marketing tools if you have a subscription to one of their plans. All the plans include features such as unlimited subscribers, advanced analytics, mailing lists, and sender profiles.

  • Starter: $5 / month for three campaigns and up to 500 emails
  • Core: $10 / month for five campaigns and up to 5,000 emails
  • Pro: $24 / month for 20 campaigns and up to 50,000 emails
  • Max: $45 / month for unlimited campaigns and up to 250,000 emails

Conclusion

The superb website builder that Squarespace offers, delivers users a wide range of templates to choose from, all of which are fully responsive and look great on any device. You can use Squarespace to create an eCommerce website, as they have a built-in eCommerce platform that is easy to use and allows customers to purchase and download digital items. In addition, all plans come with free SSL certificates, PCI-DSS compliance, and two-factor authentication for extra security.

Customer support is available 24/7 via email, and there is a community forum where you can get quality feedback from top professionals. Although phone support is not available, Squarespace has plenty of helpful webinars and video tutorials in their Help Center. Security is never a concern because all plans come with free SSL certificates and PCI-DSS compliance.

Finally, pricing plans start at $16/monthly when you pay monthly or $40/monthly when you pay annually – making Squarespace competitively priced compared to other website builders in the market. Overall, Squarespace is a great option for those looking to create a responsive eCommerce website. Visit their website today to learn more.

For my related review on Wix Click Here and Zyro Click Here