Squarespace vs Wordpress: Pros and Cons

Squarespace vs WordPress

There are plenty of website builders out there, but which is the best? We’ve worked with Wix, Google Sites, Shopify (E-commerce), and more, but our favourites are Squarespace and WordPress. WordPress is the most popular site builder in the world, accounting for 40% of the worlds websites (according to Kinsta). Every platform has its strengths and weaknesses. What it really comes down to is what YOU are looking for in a website. Let’s compare Squarespace vs WordPress…

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when building a website:

Will I manage this website by myself?
Do I want to sell products from my website?
Do I require a lot of customizability?
- OR – am I okay with using templates?
What are some of my main goals?
- Sell online
- Increase brand awareness
- Get more email subscribers
- Showcase my services
- Write blogs & articles
- Share high quality photography and video
Will I be able to provide consistent maintenance and updates to the site?
How much am I willing to pay per year?

Shopify – Ideal for E-Commerce Websites

I know this blog is mostly about Squarespace and WordPress, but we want to give a quick plug for Shopify. If you are just looking to create an online store, Shopify is a great option. Shopify gives you the ability to quickly create a website that serves as on online store. In our opinion, it is by far the easiest way to manage your inventory, shipping and payment options. They also have very solid customer support should you run into issues. It is the perfect solution for those who are looking to do nothing but sell products on their website. If you’re looking for a website that offers more (blogs, about pages, etc.), you may want to look into other options. Shopify does offer options to include small sections of information like testimonials and business info, but it’s not ideal for creating full pages of non-commerce content. Learn more about Shopify here.

WordPress – Highly Versatile

As we mentioned above, WordPress is the most popular site builder on the market. It is quite reasonably priced, and often comes with your hosting plan. Hosting plans are traditionally purchased separately through providers like GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Hostgator. However, WordPress also offers its own hosting now should you wish to keep everything in one place. Here are some of the pros and cons of using a WordPress site…

Pros

Highly customizable
- Allows you to integrate custom coding and javascript to make the website exactly the way you want
  - That being said, you don’t have to do coding if you don’t want to!
- Huge selection of plugins; which are applications that help you customize your website
- Good option for people who want to keep their options open in regards to what they use their website for
SEO friendly
- Sites built with search engines in mind
- Plugins like Yoast SEO offer free SEO advice and monitoring
- Easily edit and review things like alt text, image descriptions, file sizes, and more
- Generally fast as long as you optimize content and use good hosting
Mobile friendly
- More than 50% of world’s internet traffic comes from mobile devices
- WordPress themes are built with this in mind
Good security
- Sites generally come with built in SSL and HTTPS
Blog friendly
- Important part of SEO
- Built in blog section with automatic category and tag options
- Autogenerates blog template pages and archives posts
Well designed backend interface
- Easy to navigate and intuitive
E-Commerce compatible
- Can sell through your website with WooCommerce
Information galore
- Because of the overall size of the WordPress community, there is an endless supply of support forums
- Chat support also available to help resolve issues depending on your plan

Cons

Sites are breakable
- If you edit your website incorrectly, it is possible to break it
- This can cause down time and result in a lot of stress
- Also makes users leery of making changes
Can be confusing
- If you don’t consider yourself relatively tech-savvy, WordPress might not be for you
  - Even though the interface is well designed, some people may find the amount of options and customizability overwhelming
Less aesthetically pleasing
- Don’t get us wrong, you can definitely make a nice website through WordPress
- However; a lot of the pre-built themes and templates on WordPress are not that good looking
  - People often purchase custom themes to combat this – which can be quite expensive
- In general, WordPress sites look much more business-like
  - If you were going for a more creative and laid back vibe – Squarespace may be better
Requires more management than Squarespace sites
- Theme, plugin and core updates are required
- Custom built themes can become outdated as WordPress versions advance – requiring costly updates
- More likely to experience errors and glitches when things are not updated consistently

Squarespace – Easy to Manage and User Friendly

Squarespace is a newer platform, but is quickly gaining popularity. Particularly with young professionals and artists who want to DIY their website. Squarespace is basically the “Apple” of website builders. It is easily the most user friendly platform that we’ve found to date. It is the optimal choice for those who want to create, edit, and manage their own website. Here’s a quick list of Squarespace Pros and Cons:

Pros

Quick and easy to learn
Aesthetically pleasing templates
- Great for photographers and artists
Easy to manage
- Does not require regular updates
Built in analytics tracker
Third-party integrations
- Integrate email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Zapier and more with the click of a button
- Connect to other apps and services like Opentable, Soundcloud, Google Ads and more
- Excellent social media integrations
- Easy to create collection/ inquiry forms
E-Commerce friendly
- E-commerce set up that we find more intuitive than WooCommerce on WordPress
Cannot break your site
- Unlike WordPress, Squarespace sites can’t break
- This gives you peace of mind while making changes to your website
Good support (chat)
Mobile Friendly
- Squarespace sites display well on mobile devices
Built in access to stock images (through Unsplash)

Cons

Less SEO friendly than other sites
- Can’t edit ALT text on images
- Larger images (stock images are often large files)
- No on-site content analysis tools
- Essentially must optimize your content prior to uploading to site
  - Especially IMAGE SIZE
  - It is vital for your site speed and performance that you reduce the file size of these images before uploading
- They do have AMP – which is good for increasing the speed of your mobile site
  - Be sure you have this enabled
- Still a newer platform – it’s possible this will improve
Less customizable
- Aside from some minor CSS shortcuts, there is less customizability
- More confined to the preset Squarespace templates
- Makes it difficult to build the site EXACTLY the way you want it
More expensive than WordPress
- The basic plans are reasonable, but if you want the full experience you have to pay for it
No autosave or revision history
- This is an annoying omission that sometimes results in lost content
- Be sure to hit save when you’re done making edits!
- Also makes it impossible to revert to older versions of the site

Summary

All things considered, there are pros and cons to every website platform. In conclusion, we recommend Squarespace for the DIY, less tech-savvy individual. WordPress is for the person who wants to have unlimited creative control and make their website exactly the way they want it. And for the person who just wants to set up an online shop, we recommend you create your store through Shopify!

Our consultants at 1707 Creative would be happy to help you decide which platform would best suit your business. You can book a strategy call with us, or contact us for more information.

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