Squarespace : Full Review, Testing, and Presentation (2024)

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace, launched in 2004 in New York, is one of the oldest platforms dedicated to creating websites. With nearly two decades of existence, this company has grown in reliability and popularity, allowing the creation of millions of websites around the world.

• A pioneer in its field: Having emerged well before most of its competitors, Squarespace has helped set the market standards in the field of website creation.
• Experience and reliability: Its long-standing presence on the market testifies to its robustness and reliability, qualities sought by users when it comes to choosing a platform for the creation of their websites.
• Undeniable popularity: The millions of sites created with Squarespace attest to its success and popularity among users.

In conclusion, Squarespace has established itself as an essential platform for creating websites thanks to its age, reliability and popularity.

Features

Squarespace offers more than just web design tools. It offers a complete ecosystem for managing and growing your online presence. Here's a detailed look at what Squarespace has to offer:

Design Tools

Squarespace 7.1 introduced new tools that make building your website easier than ever.

• New design panel for easy customization of colors, fonts, and spacing
• Possibility to add pre-built sections to any page
• Creating custom layouts from text, images, and media

Squarespace's design tools offer unprecedented flexibility to create the website you've always imagined.

Social Media Integration

Squarespace makes it easy to link your website to your social media accounts.

• Integration with over 20 social media platforms
• Synchronize with Dropbox for easy access to photo collections
• Importing content directly to your site from Instagram, Twitter, etc.

With Squarespace, sharing your content on social media has never been easier.

SEO & Marketing Tools

Squarespace offers a robust set of SEO and marketing tools to help your website stand out.

• Managing titles, adding keywords and alternative texts
• Integration with Mailchimp for email marketing campaigns
• Squarespace Email Campaigns platform for integrated email marketing campaigns

Squarespace's SEO and marketing tools ensure that your website is always on top.

Squarespace Add-ons

Squarespace offers an app store to add additional features to your website.

• Four main categories of plugins: Shipping and Fulfilment, Finance, Inventory and Products, Sales and Marketing
• Carefully selected selection of third-party applications to help manage, develop, and optimize your site

With Squarespace extensions, your website can adapt to your specific needs.

Domain names

Squarespace makes it easy to buy and manage your domain.

• Easy domain purchase directly from Squarespace
• Possibility to connect your own domain if you already have one
• Free domain for one year for annual paid plans

With Squarespace, managing your domain is a breeze when creating a site or online store.

An intuitive interface and powerful creative tools

Drag-and-drop website editor

With Squarespace's intuitive website editor, designing your website is as easy as dragging and dropping items onto the page.

Creation tools

With a variety of Squarespace website building tools, you can create a unique and engaging website. These include:

• Video maker: A tool for creating and customizing high-quality videos.
• Logo Maker: A simple but powerful logo design tool.

Website templates

Each Squarespace website offers a variety of beautifully designed templates for all types of websites.

Powerful and versatile e-commerce

Squarespace offers robust solutions for a variety of online businesses:

• Selling your products: Whether they are physical or digital products, you can easily add them to your store and manage your inventory.
• Offer your services: Easily list the services you offer.
• Schedule appointments: Allow your customers to book appointments directly on your site.
• Selling courses and memberships: If you offer courses or subscriptions, Squarespace has the features to manage them.

With Squarespace Commerce, you get a simplified dashboard to manage inventory, orders, and shipping.

E-commerce extensions

Enhance and personalize your online store with e-commerce extensions.

Integrated SEO and marketing tools

Email marketing

Create and send professional emails that match your brand aesthetic.

SEO tools

Integrations

Squarespace offers a range of integrations to improve the efficiency of your website, whether it's promoting your blog posts on social media, integrating YouTube videos, or creating restaurant reservations that are easily accessible.

• Squarespace Scheduling: This tool allows you to show availability and manage appointments directly from your site. It offers features like automatic appointment reminders, confirmations, and tracking, as well as the integration of multiple payment processors.
• Media integrations: Including blocks for Google Maps, SoundCloud, and videos from various sources like YouTube, Vimeo, Animoto, and Wistia.
• Content sharing and promotion: With Google AMP and Apple News integration for a wide distribution of your blog.
• Feedback: With Disqus, you can facilitate and manage user feedback on your site.
• Payment processing: With integrations like Apple Pay, PayPal, Stripe, and Square.
• Shipping Management: With Easyship, FedEx, and UPS to facilitate the management of shipping rates and processes.
• Accounting tools: Like Freshbooks for managing accounting and creating invoices.
• Order Management: With Order Desk for automating order fulfillment.
• Font options: Including Adobe Fonts and Google Fonts for more flexibility in designing your site.
• Productivity and storage: With integrations like G Suite and Dropbox image sync.
• Marketing and analytics: Including Amazon affiliate tracking, Google ads, Google Analytics, and Mailchimp.
• Social media integrations: For a robust and diverse social presence.

In short, Squarespace integrations enrich your website, increase productivity, and allow you to optimize your workflow by providing connections to a range of essential and useful services.

Customer Support

Squarespace offers reliable and responsive customer service that is available through a variety of channels to meet all of your needs.

Chat and Email Support

The Squarespace technical support team is easily reachable via chat and email, offering quick and accurate answers to your questions.

• Chat and email support: For direct and interactive technical support.
• Accurate and useful answers: Help with complex technical problems.
• Fast response time: Ensures effective problem resolution.

Online resources

At Squarespace, you have a variety of online resources, including video tutorials and a knowledge base rich in articles, helping users get started with the platform.

• Video Tutorials: Step-by-Step Guides to Make Learning Easier
• Knowledge base: In-depth articles on a multitude of topics.
• Community forum: To share experiences and find solutions to common problems.
• Support on Twitter: Squarespace is extending their support to Twitter, offering another way to reach their support team.

Cancellations and refunds

The refund policy at Squarespace is simple and transparent, with refunds available for plans paid annually within the first 14 days.

• Clear refund policy: For peace of mind when registering.
• Fast Refund: Refunds are processed in 3 to 10 business days.

In conclusion, Squarespace customer support is dedicated, responsive, and versatile, effectively meeting all of your support needs.

Pricing

Squarespace is a platform for creating websites and online stores that offers plans adapted to various needs. Here's a summary of the pricing and features for each plan:

Personal plan — €11/month

• Websites optimized for mobile devices
• Templates to meet all needs
• Free custom domain name*
• Save 26% in annual billing

Business plan — €17/month

• Numerous Personal Plan features, plus:
• Advanced website analysis tools
• Fully integrated eCommerce with 3% transaction fees
• Free custom domain name*
• Payment on the domain
• Save 29% in annual billing

Basic Commerce Plan — €24/month

• Extensive Business Plan features, plus:
• 0% transaction fees
• Powerful merchandising
• Free custom domain name*
• Save 14% in annual billing

Advanced E-Commerce Plan — €36/month

• Numerous features of the Basic E-Commerce plan, plus:
• Advanced shipping
• Advanced discounts
• Free custom domain name*
• Possibility to sell subscriptions
• Save 14% in annual billing

For more information, go directly to the Squarespace website. The plans are designed to make it easy for your customers to buy your products, regardless of your business needs.

*Free domain name offer for the first year of subscribing to an annual plan.

Security and Privacy

When creating a website, two aspects are essential: security and privacy. Squarespace has put in place a number of measures to ensure that these two aspects are thoroughly considered. Here are a few key points:

• Integrated SSL : All sites built with Squarespace come with a built-in Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. This means that all the information that is exchanged between your website and your users is encrypted and secure.
• DDoS Protection: Squarespace has implemented a series of protections to protect you from DDoS attacks. These measures ensure that your website stays online even when targeted by an attack.
• E-commerce security : For e-commerce sites, Squarespace provides additional security. Transactions are secure and Squarespace is PCI-DSS compliant.
• Compliance with privacy regulations : Squarespace is committed to complying with all global privacy regulations. This includes the European Union's GDPR, California's CCPA, and other regional laws.
• Cookies and tracking : Squarespace gives you control over the use of cookies and tracking on your site. You can choose what types of cookies to use and inform your users about their use.
• Confidentiality policy : Squarespace has a clear and transparent privacy policy. They are open about how they collect, use, and protect your personal information.

Security and privacy are major concerns for any online business. With Squarespace, you can be confident that these concerns are being addressed and managed effectively.

Alternatives to Squarespace

Squarespace is a powerful website builder, but there are other options that may better fit your specific needs.

Here are three alternatives to Squarespace to consider when creating a website:

1. Webflow

Webflow is a web design platform that offers flexibility and total control over the design of your site.

However, it has a steeper learning curve than Squarespace.

Features

• CMS with flexibility and total control over the design for site creation
• E-commerce functions to create an online store
• Steeper learning curve

Pricing

• Basic package: $12/month
• CMS package: $16/month
• Business package: $36/month

For those looking to have total control over their site design and are ready to spend more time learning how to use the platform, Webflow is a solid choice.

2. Weebly

Weebly is another alternative that focuses on ease of use. However, in terms of design, Weebly may be a bit more basic than Squarespace.

Features

• Easy site creation with this CMS
• More basic design patterns

Pricing

• Connect package: $5/month
• Pro package: $12/month
• Business package: $25/month

For those who value simplicity and ease of use, Weebly is a valid alternative.

3. Wix

Wix is a direct rival to Squarespace, offering a wide selection of website templates. However, not all Wix templates are optimized for mobile, which is an essential factor today.

Features

• Large selection of templates for creating a site
• Some models are not optimized for mobile
• Inability to change models after selection

Pricing

• Connect Domain package: $4.50/month
• Combo package: $8.50/month
• Unlimited plan: $12.50/month
• Business Basic package: $17/month

If you're looking for a wider variety of models and don't need to change designs often, Wix could be a good option.

Final Verdict

For the sake of honesty, I have to tell you that I personally really like Squarespace.

I've tested and evaluated it for other articles, and if I wasn't as obsessed with building websites the hard way (i.e. with code), I'd probably use Squarespace.

This review was fun to write because Squarespace released a completely new template system and made significant changes to its publisher over the last year. Does that mean it is suitable for your portfolio, your corporate site or your online store? That depends.

Squarespace is a high-end, end-to-end service that doesn't even offer a free plan, but only a 14-day free trial.

It is designed for people who want to create quality and very professional portfolio sites or professional sites, as well as for anyone who wants to manage an online store.

That said, it doesn't give you as much creative freedom as other creators, and if you don't intend to monetize your site, the cost may be too high.