Trying to decide between using Squarespace vs WordPress for your website?

WordPress and Squarespace both make it easy to create a website, but there are some fundamental differences between the two that might make one platform better than the other depending on your situation.

In our comparison, we’ll try to highlight these differences so that you can make the right choice for your unique circumstances.

To make that happen, we’re going to focus on comparing WordPress vs Squarespace in the following categories:

• What types of websites you can build
• Ease of use
• Extensibility
• Design options
• Content creation experience
• Pricing and costs

We’ll also share a few tips on how to make WordPress usable in a similar way to Squarespace, which can help you get the best of both worlds if you’re still on the fence after reading this post.

What can you build with Squarespace and WordPress?

Let’s kick off our comparison by looking at the types of websites that you can build with Squarespace and WordPress.

What can you build with Squarespace?

Squarespace got its start primarily as a tool for building simple business brochure websites or personal portfolio websites.

However, it’s since expanded to also support ecommerce and membership websites. While it’s probably not the best option for heavy-duty ecommerce stores or membership websites, it’s more than capable of handling basic use cases.

Squarespace also supports lightweight blogging, though it’s probably not the best option for a dedicated blog because managing lots of blog posts can get a little bit tricky.

What can you build with WordPress?

One of the great things about WordPress is that you can essentially use it to build any type of website.

While WordPress started as a blogging tool, it has long since developed into a full-service website builder.

WordPress can handle basic brochure websites and portfolios, blogs, ecommerce stores, online courses, membership websites, social communities, and lots, lots more.

This is in large part thanks to its large library of extensions called plugins, which we’ll discuss later in this post.

While Squarespace is focused on more lightweight implementations for uses like ecommerce stores and membership sites, WordPress can handle both lightweight and heavyweight applications.

Even if your use case currently sits on the more “lightweight” side of things, having this flexibility is still useful.

It means you can be confident that you can customize your website and add new functionality as your business scales and evolves, which isn’t always the case if you choose Squarespace.

Ease of use

Next, let’s take a look at how easy it is to use each platform, including the setup process and what it’s like to maintain your site.

In general, both Squarespace and WordPress are beginner-friendly and you do not need any special technical knowledge to use either platform.

With that being said, Squarespace can initially seem a bit simpler than WordPress, thanks in large part to its hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a closed-source hosted website builder. This means that Squarespace takes care of hosting and maintaining the software for you. It also means you don’t have any access to the code underlying your website.

While this approach can have some downsides in terms of flexibility and control, its main advantage is simplicity.

Creating a website is as simple as registering for an account. You don’t need to worry about installing software, applying updates, etc.

Once you set up your site, you’ll be able to manage every part of your site from a dashboard that looks something like this:

WordPress

WordPress is an open-source, self-hosted website building tool.

In order to make a WordPress website, you need to purchase your own web hosting service and then install the WordPress software on that host.

While that might sound intimidating if you’re not a very technical person, the massive popularity of WordPress means that most web hosting providers make this process super simple.

Here’s an example of what it might look like using the WordPress installer at Rocket.net. Creating a WordPress website is as simple as filling out this form:

Once you’ve installed WordPress, you’ll be able to manage every part of your site using a code-free dashboard that looks something like this:

Because WordPress is open-source, you also have access to all of the code underlying your site, including the ability to edit it as needed.

However, you definitely don’t need to work with code. The ability to customize the underlying code is there if you want it, but many WordPress users will go their entire lives without ever looking at a line of code.

Extensibility

Extensibility is the idea of being able to extend your website with additional tools. Typically, you’ll see these called names like “plugins”, “apps”, “add-ons”, or “extensions”.

Having the ability to extend your website with new features is important because it doesn’t just give you the ability to customize your website now, but it also gives you the ability to scale and enhance your website as your business grows.

WordPress is significantly more extensible than Squarespace, which is one of WordPress’s biggest advantages.

Squarespace

For a lot of its existence, Squarespace did not allow extensions. This changed in 2019 when it launched Squarespace Extensions, which allow third-party developers to build their own extensions for Squarespace.

However, because of this comparatively short history and other limitations, the number of Squarespace extensions is generally quite small when compared to most other website building tools, and especially when compared to WordPress.

Additionally, Squarespace extensions are more focused on letting you integrate with third-party services, rather than adding new features directly to the website builder.

For example, if you want to build an online store with Squarespace, you can find extensions to integrate with popular shipping and fulfillment tools like ShipStation and Easyship.

Squarespace divides its extensions into four different categories:

• Shipping and fulfillment
• Inventory and products
• Sales and marketing
• Finance

It’s important to note that you can only install Squarespace extensions from the official Squarespace Extensions library. You cannot install third-party plugins, which is another advantage of WordPress.

WordPress

WordPress has always been built in an open way that allows you to extend your site with plugins.

WordPress has significantly more plugins available than Squarespace extensions. There are 59,000+ free plugins available at the WordPress.org plugin directory alone, plus thousands of free and paid plugins available from other sources.

Like Squarespace, you can find lots of plugins that help you integrate with other third-party services that you’re using, including pretty much all of the services for which you’ll find Squarespace Extensions.

However, WordPress plugins can also add standalone features to your website that don’t rely on third-party services.

For example, the Gravity Forms plugin lets you use a drag-and-drop editor (pictured below) to build pretty much any kind of web form. This includes contact forms, payment forms, email subscribe forms, lead gen forms, user registration forms, business process forms, and more.

You can find WordPress plugins for very small things, such as tweaking a certain setting. Or, you can find plugins for very large additions, such as letting you create an ecommerce store or deliver online course content.

Even if you don’t need all of this extensibility during your initial launch, having access to it in the future can be very valuable. As your business grows and scales, your website’s needs might change.

With WordPress, your website can always grow alongside your business thanks to the huge number of plugins that are available. With Squarespace, that might not always be the case.

Design options

In terms of design options, Squarespace and WordPress both use the same fundamental approach:

1. You choose a theme/template as your website’s starting point. Squarespace offers hundreds of options while WordPress has thousands.
2. You can customize your chosen template using interface options and visual editors.

However, one notable difference is that WordPress lets you change themes without losing content – sort of like changing clothes. However, Squarespace does not let you easily switch templates once you make your site live.

Squarespace

When you create your website with Squarespace, Squarespace will give you the option to choose from its library of premade templates or have AI create a template for you.

Either way, you’ll be able to control the final design of your site using a visual, drag-and-drop editor:

Again, one very important detail with Squarespace is that you cannot easily change your Squarespace theme after you launch your website. If you ever want to change themes, you essentially need to rebuild your site using that new theme.

WordPress

How you customize your WordPress theme will depend on the specific theme that you’re using. Regardless of the approach, you’ll be able to customize all of the important details about your theme using visual interfaces – no custom CSS needed.

Another advantage of WordPress is that changing themes is super easy, even if you’ve already launched your site. When you change themes, all of your blog posts and page content will still be there – just using the design of your new theme.

To control the design of individual pages, such as your site’s homepage, you have different options.

One option is to use the default WordPress editor. While the default editor doesn’t offer full visual, drag-and-drop design like Squarespace, it does offer a mostly visual block-based design experience.

If having a fully visual design experience like Squarespace is important to you, you can install one of the many popular WordPress page builder plugins, such as Elementor.

Content creation experience

While you can use the more visual design experiences in both tools to create unique page designs, both Squarespace and WordPress also offer a more text editor-like experience for creating text content, such as a blog post.

Squarespace

For more text-focused content, such as blog posts, Squarespace offers a simpler block-based editor.

In addition to a Word processor-like text block for text content, you can also add other blocks to embed media and other elements.

WordPress

When creating text content such as blog posts, most people use the default WordPress editor. It uses a similar block-based approach to Squarespace’s editor.

To add text content, you can just click and type. Then, you can also add other blocks to insert media, adjust the layout (e.g. creating a multi-column design), insert web forms (e.g. using the Gravity Forms plugin), and more.

If you’d prefer a different editor experience, there are also tons of WordPress plugins that you can install to adjust the content creation experience. These include more visual, drag-and-drop-style editors, as well as even more lightweight text-focused editors.

Pricing and costs

Comparing Squarespace vs WordPress costs can be a little bit tricky because there are a lot of variables.

While Squarespace largely uses SaaS billing where you pay a fixed fee each month, the cost of a WordPress site will depend on the choices that you make.

We’ll take a more detailed look below, but here are some general conclusions that you can draw:

• If you’re on a tight budget, it is possible to build a functioning WordPress website for a cheaper price than Squarespace.
• The exact pricing differences between the two will depend on your specific use case, and both Squarespace and WordPress can be more or less affordable in different situations.

Squarespace pricing

Squarespace uses fixed subscription plans that you can pay on a monthly or yearly basis. There is no permanently free plan, but you can test it out with a 14-day free trial.

There are four different plans and each plan gives you access to a different set of features. Some of the cheaper plans also have added transaction fees if you want to accept online payments, which we’ll cover below.

The cheapest option is the Basic plan, which costs $25 per month when paid monthly.

Monthly pricing:

Annual pricing:

If you plan to sell products, services, or memberships, it’s also important to note that you might need to pay an additional transaction fee to Squarespace on top of your subscription plan. This transaction fee is also on top of credit card processing rates, which are usually around 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

For example, the Basic plan adds the following transaction fees paid to Squarespace:

• 2% of any sales through your online store
• 7% of any digital content and memberships

The Core plan removes the transaction fee for online store sales, but you’ll need to go all the way up to the Advanced plan to remove the transaction fee for digital content and memberships.

WordPress

While the core WordPress software is 100% free and open-source, there are some other costs associated with making a WordPress website. How much WordPress costs will depend entirely on your specific use case.

The only must-have for creating your site is web hosting. This can cost as little as $5-10 per month on the low end, which is often fine for many WordPress users. However, if you want a more premium service, this cost might also grow into the $15-$30 per month range.

Then, there are the variable costs of creating a WordPress website:

1. Theme – While it’s totally fine to use a free theme, some people might want to use a premium theme. Usually, these cost around $60.
2. Plugins – While there are 59,000+ free plugins at WordPress.org, you also might want/need to purchase some premium plugins depending on your use case.

Plugins can cost as little as $5-$10 or into the hundreds of dollars, with lots of variation in between. For example, the Gravity Forms Basic license costs $59/year.

Given all of this, it’s absolutely possible to build a functioning WordPress website for around $5 per month if you’re on a tight budget ($60 per year). However, a more realistic estimate might be somewhere in the $200-$400 per year range, which can still often work out to be more afforable than Squarespace.

Additionally, WordPress will never charge you extra transaction fees. So, if you’re selling products or services, you won’t need to worry about giving up any of your revenue.

How to make WordPress behave like Squarespace

If you like the flexibility of WordPress but you still want more of a “Squarespace experience”, let’s finish by quickly discussing some ways to make WordPress like Squarespace:

• Easy setup experience – If you want the ability to create a website just by registering for an account and you don’t want to ever think about updates or maintenance, consider using a “WordPress website as a service” platform like WordPress.com. Just make sure to use at least the Business plan so that you can install your own plugins.
• Forms – While Squarespace has its own built-in form builder, WordPress doesn’t. To fix this, you can install the Gravity Forms plugin, which can handle pretty much any type of web form.
• Visual, drag-and-drop design – If you want to match Squarespace’s visual design, you can install one of the many WordPress page builder plugins.

In addition to the all-purpose tools above, you also might want additional WordPress plugins for specific parts of Squarespace, such as WooCommerce to make an ecommerce store or a membership plugin to create a membership website.

Final thoughts

In the end, choosing between WordPress vs Squarespace really comes down to your specific situation.

Squarespace’s main benefit is its simplicity. You can make a website just by registering for an account and you never need to deal with installing or maintaining the software underlying your website.

However, achieving that simplicity comes with some pretty big literal and metaphorical costs.

First off, while there are some variables that can change things, it’s generally more affordable to build a website with WordPress than with Squarespace.

Cost should not be your only consideration, though. WordPress is also significantly more flexible in giving you options to add new features and integrate with different services.

Even if you don’t need that flexibility on launch day, having access to that level of flexibility can be essential as your business grows and scales.

While WordPress is not quite as simple as Squarespace, WordPress is still something that even non-technical beginners can manage. Plus, the global popularity of WordPress means there are plenty of resources out there that can help.

All in all, if you have big plans for your website, it probably doesn’t make sense to sacrifice flexibility just to access a slightly simpler website building experience.

Over the long term, WordPress will give your business a flexible foundation that can grow and change as your business grows and changes, which is essential to achieving success online.