WordPress and Squarespace are two of the top website builders available – but which one comes out tops?
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems which is also a great option for bloggers and small businesses. Squarespace is a website created for building other websites.
Squarespace offers ready-made website templates neatly organized into different categories, so it’s a simple platform which is ideal for beginners, or people of no coding experience.
WordPress is a free and open source software which users can easily customize and modify. No coding experience is required, although it’s an ideal platform for developers and more advanced users to work with WordPress source code.
Both WordPress and Squarespace are considered to be all-in-one website builders for beginners, and they can both create visually appealing business or personal websites. The difference comes from the level of customization, flexibility, cost, and design.
The main audience for both WordPress and Squarespace are people without software development skills. WordPress and Squarespace exist so people can create websites easily without messing with source code. WordPress is also ideal for developers, as the platform requires customized functionality
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WordPress Overview
There are two different versions of WordPress; self-hosted WordPress and hosted WordPress. Self-hosted WordPress, which is open-source, allows users to change or customize the code easily.
Hosted WordPress is a software as a service (SaaS) program, so you pay a monthly fee and get access to various features to build your website.
Squarespace Overview
Squarespace is a software as a service (SaaS) website builder which is a lesser known website, and it also has two different versions. Users pay a monthly fee and get everything from templates to support to a domain.
The standard version of Squarespace is more user-friendly, for more beginner users, and is the most popular version of Squarespace. The developer’s version, like WordPress, allows for the modification of the source code. This allows for customized templates and additional functionality.
WordPress vs. Squarespace Comparison
1. Cost
Users can download WordPress for free, although they will need to pay for plugins, themes, and other costs like paying a developer and hosting so your WordPress website will be live.
The average cost of WordPress hosting is four dollars a month for smaller websites, and about forty dollars for fully managed hosting for larger businesses.
Many WordPress plugins, which add a wide variety of helpful functionality, can be found for free. Premium ones cost between thirty dollars and two hundred, and themes can be pricey as well.
Squarespace offers 4 different monthly plans. The personal plan is $16, the business plan is $23, the commerce basic plan is $27 and the commerce advanced plan is $49 per month. The number of pages you can build on each plan is restricted and nothing is offered in an unlimited capacity.
2. Functionality
WordPress and Squarespace are both rather user-friendly and have intuitive design interfaces, making it simple to change around text sizes, headings, and colors.
For Squarespace, the amount of customization you can do is largely determined by which template you choose to work with.
For WordPress, there is an increased level of functionality. You just have to complete edits to pages and posts in the back end. For Squarespace, you can edit the content live on the page, and see the edits as you make them.
3. Flexibility
Users can make any type of website they want and in any type of product or service industry with WordPress. There are also thousands of different plugins to add various functionalities to posts and pages within WordPress.
Squarespace has more limited flexibility, offering a wide range of features, but with a rather rigid page setup and structure. Some developers have created Squarespace plugins to add third-party features to pages, although they are more complicated to install.
It’s simpler to create visually appealing websites easily with Squarespace without tons of changes.
4. SEO
When it comes to search engine optimization, WordPress is the clear winner over Squarespace.
WordPress allows a variety of SEO plugins, which provides tips and improvements to overall on-site SEO efforts, while Squarespace has no equivalent.
You can also add meta data and alt tags in WordPress, while Squarespace allows captions, extracts and descriptions.
Security
Squarespace is a hosted platform, so the security falls on the company and not on the users. No need to worry about backing up your own content, although as the platform grows there could be outages from time to time.
WordPress that is self-hosted means that the security falls on the user. Keeping secure plugins up to date, installing regular updates and backing up all data is an important and constant step.
Conclusion
There are many pros and cons associated with both WordPress and Squarespace. The best way to choose which platform is best for your business is to see which one offers the features, user-friendliness, and cost-effectiveness for what you are trying to achieve.
WordPress is rather user-friendly and good for people with little experience, and the best option for any type of customization. There is also a massive catalog of various themes and plugins available so you can find anything you need for your website.
In addition to being a popular blogging platform, WordPress is also a powerful eCommerce solution. The cost associated with WordPress are also very low, with hosting and plugins bringing in the bulk of the cost for any website.
However, WordPress requires constant updating and backing up all content and data is super important. Managing your WordPress website hosting and security needs are another concern although there are excellent options for both available with WordPress.
Squarespace is the ideal choice for smaller websites and is considered to be more user-friendly from the actual website setup process to the entire user experience.
Squarespace has more limitations when it comes to design choices and any type of customization. It also has a much higher cost for hosting, although you aren’t paying for themes or plugins either.
For businesses that are looking to grow exponentially or experience a rapid period of growth, Squarespace does have its limitations which will hinder this. However, it’s important to choose the platform which is best for your business.
