Squarespace Review 2025: Is It Still Worth It?
Our comprehensive Squarespace review covers features, templates, pricing, ecommerce, and whether it's the right website builder for your business in 2025.
By Emily Park
Tested Jan 2025
9 min readSome links on this site are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Rating Overview
Ready to try Squarespace?
From $16/mo — $100-200 per sale affiliate commission
On This Page
What Is Squarespace?#
Squarespace is a premium website builder known for stunning design templates and an all-in-one platform approach. Founded in 2004, it has grown to power millions of websites for creatives, small businesses, restaurants, photographers, and online stores.
Unlike competitors that prioritize feature quantity, Squarespace focuses on design quality and simplicity. Every template is created by professional designers, and the platform handles hosting, security, and performance automatically.
Think of Squarespace as the Apple of website builders — polished, opinionated, and focused on delivering a premium experience rather than overwhelming you with options.
Key Features#
Award-Winning Templates#
Squarespace offers 150+ professionally designed templates, all mobile-responsive and organized by industry. Unlike many competitors where free templates look cheap, every Squarespace template feels premium.
Key template highlights:
- Built by professional designers — Not generic themes
- Fully responsive — Automatically adapts to phones and tablets
- Industry-specific — Filtered by business type (portfolio, restaurant, blog, store, etc.)
- Customizable — Modify fonts, colors, spacing, and layouts
- Interchangeable — Switch templates anytime without losing content
The Wells template is particularly popular for portfolios, while Bedford works beautifully for blogs. For ecommerce, the Beaumont and Paloma templates offer elegant product showcases.
Drag-and-Drop Editor#
Squarespace’s Fluid Engine editor (introduced in 2022) brought a modern drag-and-drop experience to the platform. You can place elements precisely where you want them using a grid-based system with pixel-perfect control.
Features include:
- Flexible grid system — Drag sections and blocks anywhere
- Content blocks — Text, images, buttons, forms, galleries, video, audio, maps
- Animation effects — Subtle animations on scroll for polish
- Responsive controls — Adjust mobile and desktop layouts separately
- Live preview — See changes instantly before publishing
The editor strikes a nice balance — more flexible than WordPress’s Gutenberg but not as overwhelming as Wix’s absolute positioning system.
Ecommerce & Online Stores#
Squarespace has evolved into a serious ecommerce platform, particularly strong for small to mid-size online stores (under 10,000 products).
Ecommerce features:
- Product management — Unlimited products (on Commerce plans), variants, inventory tracking
- Checkout — Integrated checkout with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Afterpay support
- Shipping — Real-time shipping rates from USPS, UPS, FedEx
- Taxes — Automatic tax calculation for U.S. and EU
- Abandoned cart recovery — Email customers who didn’t complete checkout
- Subscriptions — Sell subscription products and memberships
- Digital products — Sell downloads, courses, and digital goods
- Print on demand — Integration with Printful for merch
Payment processing runs through Stripe and PayPal, with Squarespace taking 0% transaction fees on Commerce plans (3% on Business plan).
Blogging Platform#
Squarespace started as a blogging platform and remains excellent for content creators. The blogging features rival WordPress in many ways.
Blog capabilities:
- Multiple blog pages — Create separate blogs for different topics
- Categories and tags — Organize posts for easy discovery
- Scheduled publishing — Write now, publish later
- AMP support — Fast mobile pages for better SEO
- Comments — Built-in commenting system or integrate Disqus
- Author profiles — Great for multi-author sites
- RSS feeds — Automatic feed generation
The blog post editor is clean and distraction-free, with formatting options, image galleries, and code blocks for technical content.
SEO Tools#
Squarespace provides solid SEO fundamentals out of the box, though serious SEO professionals may find it less flexible than WordPress.
SEO features:
- Clean, fast code — Automatically optimized HTML and CSS
- Mobile responsive — Critical for Google rankings
- SSL certificates — Free HTTPS for all sites
- Custom URLs — Edit page slugs and permalink structure
- Meta descriptions — Customize titles and descriptions per page
- Alt text — Add image descriptions for accessibility and SEO
- Sitemap — Auto-generated XML sitemap
- 301 redirects — Preserve SEO when restructuring
- Indexing control — Hide pages from search engines
One limitation: You can’t install third-party SEO plugins like Yoast or SEMrush, though Squarespace’s built-in tools cover 90% of small business needs.
Analytics & Insights#
Squarespace includes native analytics that cover the essentials without requiring Google Analytics setup (though GA integration is available).
Analytics features:
- Traffic overview — Page views, unique visitors, countries
- Sales analytics — Revenue, orders, popular products (ecommerce plans)
- Top content — Most-viewed pages and blog posts
- Search keywords — What visitors searched for (on-site search)
- Traffic sources — Where visitors come from (social, search, direct)
- Device breakdown — Desktop vs mobile vs tablet
The analytics are less detailed than Google Analytics but much easier to understand for non-technical users.
Domain & Email#
Every paid Squarespace plan includes a free custom domain for the first year (a $20-40 value). Domain registration is integrated, so you don’t need a separate registrar like GoDaddy or Namecheap.
Squarespace also offers professional email through Google Workspace integration. You can set up addresses like hello@yourbusiness.com directly from your Squarespace dashboard.
Pricing#
Squarespace offers four main pricing tiers (annual billing, monthly is ~20% more):
| Plan | Price | Best For | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal | $16/mo | Simple websites | 1 site, free domain, SSL, templates, basic analytics |
| Business | $23/mo | Professional sites | Everything in Personal + advanced analytics, $100 Google Ads credit, promotional pop-ups, 3% transaction fee for sales |
| Commerce Basic | $27/mo | Online stores | Everything in Business + 0% transaction fees, checkout on your domain, labels, Instagram shopping |
| Commerce Advanced | $49/mo | Growing stores | Everything in Basic + abandoned cart recovery, subscriptions, advanced shipping, selling on Amazon/eBay |
There’s also a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, giving you full access to test the platform.
Students and nonprofits get 50% off any annual plan.
Pros & Cons#
Pros
- Best-in-class template designs that look professional out of the box
- All-in-one platform — hosting, domains, SSL, analytics included
- Excellent customer support via live chat and email
- Clean, intuitive editor with Fluid Engine flexibility
- Strong ecommerce features for small to mid-size stores
- Automatic mobile optimization for all templates
- Built-in marketing tools (email campaigns, promotional pop-ups)
- No transaction fees on Commerce plans
Cons
- More expensive than competitors like Wix or Weebly
- Less third-party app integration than other platforms
- Template customization has limits compared to custom code solutions
- No free plan (only 14-day trial)
- Ecommerce features limited compared to dedicated platforms like Shopify
- Can't export your site to self-host elsewhere
Who Is Squarespace Best For?#
Squarespace is ideal for:
- Creatives and portfolios — Photographers, designers, artists who need stunning visual showcases
- Small business websites — Local businesses, consultants, agencies needing professional web presence
- Bloggers — Content creators who want a beautiful blog without WordPress complexity
- Small online stores — Selling 10-1,000 products with integrated checkout
- Restaurants and hospitality — Menu displays, reservations, and location features
It may not be the best fit for:
- Large ecommerce operations — 10,000+ products or complex fulfillment (use Shopify instead)
- Advanced developers — Those needing full code control (use WordPress or custom development)
- Budget-conscious users — Free or ultra-cheap options available elsewhere (Wix, Weebly, WordPress.com)
- Complex web apps — Membership sites, forums, or custom functionality
Squarespace vs Competitors#
How does Squarespace compare to other popular website builders?
| Feature | Squarespace | Wix | WordPress | Shopify |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $16/mo | $17/mo | $4/mo | $39/mo |
| Free Plan | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Templates | 150+ (premium) | 900+ (mixed quality) | 1000s (mixed) | 200+ (store-focused) |
| Ease of Use | High | Very High | Medium | Medium |
| Design Quality | Excellent | Good | Variable | Good |
| Ecommerce | Good | Good | Excellent (WooCommerce) | Excellent |
| SEO Control | Good | Very Good | Excellent | Good |
| Customization | Medium | High | Very High | Medium |
Squarespace wins on design and simplicity. Wix wins on features and flexibility. WordPress wins on power and control. Shopify wins for serious ecommerce.
Our Verdict#
Our Verdict: Squarespace
Squarespace delivers on its promise of making professional website design accessible to non-technical users. The templates are genuinely beautiful, the editor is intuitive without being limiting, and the all-in-one approach eliminates the hassle of managing hosting, domains, and security separately. While it’s pricier than alternatives and less flexible than WordPress, the premium experience justifies the cost for users who value design quality and simplicity. For photographers, designers, small businesses, and boutique online stores, Squarespace remains one of the best choices in 2025.
Best for: Creatives and small businesses who prioritize beautiful design and all-in-one simplicity over maximum customization
Try Squarespace Free14-day free trial, no credit card required