Squarespace Review

Pros

• Excellent templates and design tools
• Automated SEO
• Easy to use
• Accept custom orders and requests
• Self-schedule appointments (paid add-on)

Cons

• Limited integrations
• Limited eCommerce features

What Is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a software platform with a suite of user-friendly website building, appointment scheduling, eCommerce, in-person sales, and marketing tools. Users choose a designer template, customize it, then add extensions and integrations to create a custom solution.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers a limited 14-day free trial (no credit card required) without requiring you to enter your credit card information. After the trial period, users are given four paid subscription options.

You should probably start on the monthly plan until you decide Squarespace is the right website builder for you.

Personal

Squarespace’s Personal plan costs $23/month ($16/month with annual billing) and includes:

• Unlimited bandwidth and storage
• Automated site optimization for mobile devices (improves your site’s SEO ranking)
• Basic website metrics
• Up to two site contributors
• SSL security included (improves your site’s credibility and SEO ranking)
• SEO optimization guide
• Third-party extensions
• Free custom domain for one year (with annual subscriptions)
• 24/7 customer support

Note: You cannot sell items on the Squarespace Personal plan.

Link In Bio Website

Squarespace has launched a new product, Unfold, a free “link in bio” one-page website builder. It’s designed for content creators to add to their social media bios and link to other social media profiles/relevant web pages. If you’ve ever seen or used Linktree, you get the idea.

Choose a template, add links to all your content, then publish. Individuals on the free plan will get an auto-generated site link, while paid users can add a custom domain name.

You can link out to any URL in your link in bio website, including other social media accounts, Spotify, a resume, an online store, an appointment scheduler,  a personal “about me” website, and a “contact me” page.

Note: You cannot sell items on Link In Bio sites. You can link out to an online store, though.

Business

Squarespace’s Business plan costs $33/month ($23/month with annual billing) and includes everything in the Personal plan, plus:

• Unlimited contributors
• Fully integrated eCommerce, including tools to manage orders, inventory, taxes, shipping, product catalogs, and more
• Sell unlimited products and accept donations
• 3% transaction fee
• Professional email through Google Workspace (free for the first year)
• Advanced website analytics
• Promotional pop-ups and banners
• Mobile information bar
• Complete customization with CSS and JavaScript
• Premium blocks and integrations
• Announcement bar

Basic Commerce

Squarespace’s Basic Commerce plan costs $36/month ($27/month with annual billing) and includes everything in the Business plan, plus:

• No transaction fees
• Sync Squarespace with Square POS to take in-person payments
• Powerful eCommerce analytics
• Limited availability labels
• Checkout on your domain
• Customer accounts
• Product reviews
• Show related products
• Allow customers to get on product waitlists
• Sell products on Instagram

Advanced Commerce

Squarespace’s Advanced Commerce plan costs $65/month ($49/month with annual billing) and includes everything in the Basic Commerce plan, plus:

• Subscription sales
• Automated abandoned cart reminder emails
• Advanced shipping
• Advanced discounts
• Gift cards
• Commerce APIs

Squarespace Select

In addition to the above, Squarespace offers a plan for enterprise-level businesses called Squarespace Select. This exclusive subscription tier will include a dedicated account manager, prioritized tech support, SEO consultation, and tailored design assistance.

No pricing information is publicly available — you’ll have to contact Squarespace to see what the company can offer you.

Squarespace Extra Costs & Fees

Squarespace domains and business email addresses are free for the first year on qualifying plans. After that, Squarespace domains cost between $20-$70 per year. Google Workspace emails you get through Squarespace cost $6/user/month after the first year.

If you sell items from your Squarespace site with a Business subscription, you’ll be paying a 3% transaction fee. This fee is in addition to payment processing fees, which vary by processor/country. That’s why I recommend at least a Basic Commerce subscription to all eCommerce merchants.

Some Squarespace extensions are free, while others require a paid subscription in addition to your regular monthly Squarespace pricing plan.

Squarespace’s email marketing suite, Email Campaigns, costs an extra $7/month-$68/month ($5/month-$48/month with annual billing).

Squarespace Features

Squarespace provides a good variety of different tools and features, many of which work in the background, freeing your hands to manage your business. Let’s explore.

Squarespace Themes

Squarespace has always specialized in design. It’s the factor that differentiates Squarespace from the competition. Squarespace offers 130+ templates for users to choose from, all of which are impeccably designed and fashion-forward.

All Squarespace templates are automatically optimized for SEO performance on desktop and mobile devices. You can start with a template and can modify pages, take a template apart and start from scratch, and (depending on your plan level/skill set) inject custom code into templates to further customize the look and functionality of your website.

Types Of Payments Accepted With Squarespace

Square accepts:

• Stripe: You can connect your Squarespace site with Stripe to accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover (US merchants only), American Express, JCB, Diner’s Club, Afterpay, Clearpay, and Apple Pay payments.
• PayPal: You can also connect your Squarespace site to a PayPal business account to take PayPal and Venmo payments.
• Square POS: For in-person selling, you can connect your Squarespace product catalog to Square POS via the Squarespace point of sale iOS app (available only for US merchants.) Business owners take card payments with a Square credit card reader.

Selling On Multiple Sales Channels With Squarespace

You can sell on Facebook through Facebook Shops, make Instagram posts shoppable, and connect Etsy to your Squarespace store.

You can also link to Amazon products using Squarespace’s Amazon content block. Use the block to link to products you’re promoting or reviewing as an Amazon Associate. The Amazon block makes it easy to create an affiliate website.

Pinterest users can also connect Squarespace to their Pinterest business account to promote products and redirect users to their product pages.

To sell on sales channels such as eBay, AliExpress, Google Shopping, and (soon) Walmart Marketplace, you can connect to Channable, a third-party sales and marketing channel management extension.

Channable subscriptions start at $34/month.

Does Squarespace Offer Buy Buttons?

Squarespace offers buy now buttons, which you can embed in your product pages and marketing emails so that customers can be immediately redirected to a checkout page. This streamlined checkout process helps to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

You can also link to or embed Squarespace Scheduling URLs anywhere online.

Selling Internationally

Squarespace only allows you to sell in one currency at a time. Your store will display item prices in the currency associated with your payment processor.

Squarespace does not automatically translate your store’s written content into other languages, but you can use Weglot, a third-party extension, for translation.

Squarespace Marketing Features

Email Marketing

Squarespace has a dedicated email marketing product, Squarespace Email Campaigns, which includes:

• Template-based email builder that generates responsive emails based on your existing products, posts, and predefined design elements
• A promotional pop-up that asks viewers to subscribe to a mailing list
• Subscribe option at checkout
• Profile generator for each subscriber
• Integrated analytics dashboard
• Custom audience builder to create targeted email campaigns
• Email campaign builder and automations

Email Campaigns is an extra monthly subscription on top of your regular monthly subscription. You can create draft campaigns and build a mailing list for free.

Squarespace also integrates with Mailchimp.

SMS Marketing

Squarespace has an EZ Texting extension for you to engage in SMS marketing.

Social Media Marketing

Squarespace integrates with several social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

There are also creative tools, such as a social media post/story builder app and a video studio app, to create social media ads.

Paid Advertising

You can post paid ads on Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn. You can track the performance of paid ads through the traffic analytics panel of your Squarespace admin dashboard.

Squarespace Product Limits

There are no listing limits for physical products on any Squarespace business plans. However, you can only sell recurring subscriptions on the Squarespace Advanced Commerce plan.

Also, you can only sell in person starting at the Squarespace Basic Commerce plan.

Squarespace Scheduling

Squarespace offers a suite of scheduling tools (on a separate paid subscription) called Squarespace Scheduling. With Squarespace Scheduling, you can:

• Create a self-scheduling page, so clients can book their own appointments
• Send automated text/reminder emails
• Have customers pay invoices, deposits, bills, and tips on a secure online platform
• Sync personal and professional calendars
• Sell memberships and subscriptions
• Maintain HIPAA compliance

You may add Squarespace Scheduling to a Squarespace site, to a pre-existing website, or as a standalone scheduling webpage.

Note: You don’t need to have a Squarespace site, or any website, to use Squarespace Scheduling.

Squarespace Scheduling is ideal for individuals and small to mid-size businesses in the service industry. Photographers, caterers, wedding/event planners, salon/spa owners, fitness instructors, gym owners, counselors, and nutritionists will especially benefit from Square Scheduling.

• Related: If your business is in the beauty industry, read our post on the best POS systems for spas and salons. If you’re in the fitness industry, read our post on the best POS systems for gyms.

Inventory Management With Squarespace

Squarespace’s inventory management features include:

• Automated low-stock and out-of-stock alerts (email and SMS push notifications)
• Limited availability labels to alert customers about limited stock
• Variant drop-down menus on live product pages
• Custom product form, so you can sell custom physical/digital items and services (custom jewelry, photo books, baked goods, etc.)
• Schedule product publishing, which is great for scheduling things like collection releases and sales
• Hide and then re-list products
• Add individual and group product blocks on different pages of your website
• Customize store, product, cart, and checkout pages
• Organize products with categories, tags, and SKUs
• Sync products with Instagram and Facebook

If you need more than what Squarespace offers, you can install extensions (free and paid) to dedicated inventory management platforms such as inFlow Cloud, financial management platforms such as Quickbooks Commerce, wholesale platforms such as Candid Wholesale, and print-on-demand platforms such as Printful.

Squarespace Shipping Tools

Within Squarespace, you can add flat-rate, dimensional/weight-dependent shipping, and (on the Advanced Commerce plan) calculator-calculated shipping options. You can set the flat-rate shipping to $0 to offer customers free shipping. There are also local pickup and Etsy profile shipping options.

You can ship via USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL. Read our post on how to get the cheapest shipping rates to decide which carrier is right for you.

Squarespace also connects to shipping tools, such as Easyship, Shippo, and ShipStation.

Dropshipping

Squarespace offers integrations with several of the best dropshipping suppliers, including Printful, Printify, and Spocket. This focus on print-on-demand and fashion item dropshipping is most likely because Squarespace is designed for creative types and fashionistas, among other business types.

Squarespace SEO Tools

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of making your website as understandable and as helpful as possible for both users and search engines (Google, Bing, etc.).

The more optimized your website is, the higher you’ll rank in search results and the higher the likelihood that people will land on your website.

Squarespace offers the following SEO tools:

• Mobile-friendly pages are automatically generated with every template, which improves the user experience when browsing on mobile
• SEO checklist to make sure your website is optimized right from the start of your website building journey
• Easy image, meta description, and product tagging to help search engine robots “read” and rank your website in search results
• Automated sitemaps, which essentially tell search engine robots the setup of your website and help them navigate your web pages
• Google My Business integration, which allows you to list your in-person business on Google and helps you show up in local search results
• Google Search Console integration, which allows you to submit your web pages to Google for search engine robots to review and index in search results
• SSL certificate to show users (and search engines) how safe your website is for browsing and shopping
• Squarespace content delivery network (CDN), which stores your website data in the data centers closest to your site visitors and serves up your web pages faster for them
• Automated viewer-friendly URLs, so your web pages are understandable just by the page titles
• Automated markup, which helps search engines categorize and show different types of information, such as price, star rating, event dates, article/product FAQs, article author’s name, date an article is published, and more

Squarespace makes SEO very easy for non-technical people who want to make a beautiful website and still rank highly in search engine results.

Read our post on how to improve your business website to learn more about SEO and other (potentially easier) ways to attract users to your website.

Blogging

Squarespace’s blogging system is one of the platform’s strengths. From the ability to schedule posts to the ability to have multiple authors posting to the same blog, Squarespace’s blogging truly stands out. You can even host a podcast on a Squarespace blog.

Users can anonymously show their interest or appreciation of your products and blog posts. Users can log in to comment or comment anonymously as well. You can also have the option to send comments to a queue for approval, disable comments after a certain amount of time, and block spam.

Squarespace Discounts & Coupons

You can create highly custom discounts with Squarespace and Squarespace Scheduling.

Schedule your promotions in advance and set a discount end date to create a sense of urgency in the minds of potential customers.

You can offer discounts on entire orders, orders over a set amount, individual products, products within a certain category, and discounts based on membership status.

Unless you are on the Advanced Commerce plan, your customers will need to use a promo code to get discounts at checkout. Users on the Advanced Commerce plan can set discounts to apply automatically at checkout and limit the number of times a buyer can get a discount.

Pro tip: Place your promo code or advertise your automatically applicable discount in an announcements bar at the top of your website and within a pop-up so that site visitors are aware of your limited-time-only offering.

Form Building

Squarespace’s editor gives you access to a number of attractive customizable contact forms. This is especially useful for service-based businesses and businesses that offer custom products.

Add as many form fields as you need. You can include checkboxes and radio buttons, in addition to text fields.

Developer Tools

For the most part, Squarespace isn’t designed for developers. It’s made for regular people to get a beautiful, highly functional website up and running quickly. You won’t immediately have complete control over your website template the way you do with WordPress or Drupal websites.

You may enable “Developer Mode” on your Squarespace site, which allows you to edit markup, styles, and scripts on the Squarespace web platform. You can also use development tools and modules such as a local development server and core Javascript API to edit your website.

Note: Enabling Developer Mode is an irreversible action. If you disable it in the future, you will essentially lose all custom content. Additionally, Squarespace will not update templates with custom content, and you are not able to switch your template in Developer Mode.

In-Person Selling Tools

Squarespace has partnered with Square so that users on the Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce plans can take payments in person. You’ll need a Square chip and tap reader and the Squarespace Point of Sale app (available on iOS) to take in-person payments.

Smart Image Handling

Since Squarespace templates are meant to be very aesthetically pleasing and easy to use, it’s no surprise that the web builder has “smart image handling” features, including:

• Optional Image Zoom
• Set Focal Point (to ensure the best part of your image is centered in any thumbnail)
• Galleries
• Automated image scaling
• Automated text wrapping
• Display effects
• Progressive image loading so that the images on the top of your website load first, speeding up loading times for visitors

Is Squarespace Easy To Use?

Squarespace makes things easy for you right from the start of the process. After you start your trial and choose a template, you’ll be taken to the editor. From there, you can add pages or change your website’s overall design from the options on the left of the screen.

To start editing your site, click the Edit button above the website preview window, and the preview window will expand to fill the screen, and you can then edit, adjust, and rearrange your website’s sections and elements to your heart’s content.

Squarespace’s latest version, 7.1, makes website creation more intuitive than ever; no coding skills are required.

However, if you’ve already built a Squarespace website using the previous editor (7.0), you will have to rebuild your website if you want to take advantage of the new features.

Customer Service & Support

Squarespace’s customer service has received excellent reviews over the past two years. These are the support options available to you:

• Contact Form/Email: Squarespace offers 24/7 email support.
• Live Chat: Live chat is open Monday through Friday, 4 AM to 8 PM Eastern Time. There is a 24/7 chatbot available for simple questions, and you may request a human at any point.
• Community Forum: Join Squarespace’s active forum to get help from other users.
• Help Centers: Squarespace has an extensive help center you can use to learn more about the software. You can use the search bar to find answers to your questions quickly.
• Hire A Designer: Find a Squarespace partner to help you design your store. These partners charge their own rates.
• Webinars & Workshops: Join one of Squarespace’s hour-long webinars that discuss building your site and launching your online store.
• Blog: Read the blog for industry tips and Squarespace product news.
• Social Media: You can reach out to Squarespace on Twitter and Facebook Messenger from 4 AM to 8 PM Eastern Time.
• Dev Center: Find resources for developers, including API docs, the developer platform, and Squarespace Circle (Squarespace’s guides and forums to help developers launch a design business).

My own experience with Squarespace’s support was quite positive. I received a response to my web ticket by the next day, and the representative I contacted by live chat was able to answer all of my questions within a minute or so.

Squarespace Integrations & Add-Ons

Squarespace currently offers 32 built-in extensions in shipping/fulfillment, inventory/products, finance, and sales/marketing categories.

Squarespace also integrates with third-party services, such as Tock Reservations, OpenTable, SoundCloud, Zola (an online wedding registry platform), Bandsintown, and Amazon. You can also integrate a Squarespace Scheduling page with your website.

Most importantly, Squarespace integrates with Zapier, a service that lets you connect with over 1,000 additional apps.

Finally, Squarespace also has APIs available for users on the Business and Commerce plans. You can use these APIs to build your own integrations with other third-party software.

Squarespace Reviews

Negative Squarespace Reviews & Complaints

Squarespace has garnered hundreds of reviews online, both positive and negative. Here’s a sampling of the criticism found in Squarespace reviews posted by users:

• Limitations In Customization: Users are frustrated by the limitations they encounter with Squarespace. These comments mostly referred to web design limitations, but some mentioned the limited options for integrations.
• Relatively Expensive: Some Squarespace users think that the pricing plans are too costly and would like access to a lower-level plan. Other users complain that they were unaware of Squarespace’s annual auto-renewal policy and were billed for the next year when they were planning on discontinuing their accounts.
• Limited eCommerce: Although you can run an online store on Squarespace, it isn’t the best option for many online sellers. There are only a few payment processors to choose from, and you will not have access to as many eCommerce features as you would with dedicated eCommerce software.

Keep in mind that accessible, widely-used services such as Squarespace tend to get a lot of criticism and praise.

Positive Squarespace Reviews & Testimonials

Squarespace’s positive reviews consistently name three things to love about the platform:

• Easy To Use: Squarespace is highly usable. Anyone can learn the basics of the software in just a few hours.
• Aesthetics: Squarespace is well-known for helping users create beautiful websites. The base templates are clean and elegant, and you can easily add your content to make it look even better.
• Quality Customer Support: While Squarespace’s customer service comes in for a fair bit of criticism, other users have found the live chat, in particular, to be attentive and helpful.

Final Verdict Of Squarespace

Squarespace is an excellent drag-and-drop website builder for business owners in a number of industries. This website builder is primarily for creative business owners who want to show off a professional portfolio and book clients and service-based business owners who want to collect custom forms online. It’s also well-suited for content creators who want to sell memberships or monetize digital assets and restaurant owners who want a beautiful website with an online menu and ordering features.

It’s not the best website builder for businesses that want to focus heavily on eCommerce, need extensive third-party software integrations, or individuals who are interested in building a highly customized website. Squarespace probably won’t work well for large businesses, either.

Sign up for a free 14-day trial (no credit card required) before making any monetary commitments. If you decide that this web builder is for you, read our post on how to build a Squarespace website for guidance on how to set up a Squarespace site that fits your needs.

If you’re not sold on Squarespace, read our post on the best eCommerce platforms to find the best website builder for your business.

Squarespace FAQs

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Squarespace	Start Trial

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Squarespace for yourself.

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Squarespace	Start Trial

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Squarespace for yourself.

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