Squarespace Review

An All-Encompassing Solution for Building a Strong Online Presence

In this Squarespace review, we’ll cover the company’s selection of products. If your business or personal blog isn’t on the world wide web yet, the platform has all the tools you need to build your online presence.

Squarespace started as a website builder back in 2003, expanding its offering with ecommerce functionalities a decade later. The year 2014 marked the release of the company’s logo maker. Two years later, the site builder added domains to their offering. In 2019, Squarespace launched its email marketing product, and after that, acquired Acquity, which further increased the company’s product portfolio to include online booking and appointment scheduling software.

The list of products this Squarespace review will cover ends with Unfold, a convenient tool for creating stories on social media websites. Unfold is the vendor’s second acquisition, and promises to further expand the site builder’s already sizable user base.

Squarespace Website Builder Review

While Squarespace has a slight learning curve on account of its multiple functionalities, users are satisfied with how intuitive the site builder is. Many recommend the platform to non-tech-savvy users and anyone who wants an elegant website. For that, we have to “blame” Squarespace templates, which have become the industry standard for professional-looking websites. According to numerous user reviews, the stylish themes are often the deciding factor for choosing this site builder over its competitors, such as Wix or Weebly.

With the launch of Squarespace 7.1, all templates provide the same functionalities, which is a huge improvement compared to the feature-specific 7.0 designs. There are over 120 Squarespace themes, all of them mobile-responsive. Changing templates isn’t possible with the 7.1 version, but also not necessary since you’ll have the same options and features across all templates.

The editing area is clean, and the slide-out editor is pretty straightforward. Squarespace reviews indicate that users appreciate how simple it is to add and manage site pages, sections, and blocks. The number of fonts is truly impressive, as are the various design customizations, video backgrounds, and cool website animations.

Squarespace’s native image editor is outstanding. It allows users to adjust brightness, saturation, and contrast, among other settings. The editor further supports a variety of image filters, as well as manual and automatic cropping with predetermined aspect ratios. The platform offers both free images from Unsplash and paid ones from Getty.

Squarespace complaints mostly point to the lack of autosave, so users have to save and confirm changes manually. Additionally, Squarespace websites can have two navigation levels only, which isn’t ideal for large sites. The site builder, however, is improving its products, so we’re sure they’ll soon address these issues.

Domains, Web & Email Hosting

Each website is hosted on Squarespace’s hosting infrastructure and gets a free SSL certificate. Much like other website building platforms, the company also offers a free domain with a yearly subscription. Alternatively, users can buy a domain through Squarespace.

Squarespace reviews show that users are happy to entrust hosting and domain management to Squarespace and focus on their site’s content.

Email hosting is part of the site builder’s hosting offer too. Thanks to the company’s partnership with Google, users can enjoy the search engine giant’s email hosting services for $6/user and manage their billing directly through Squarespace. Another perk of the builder’s yearly subscriptions is the free access to G Suite tools for the first year of a Squarespace subscription.

Squarespace SEO Review

As one of the best website builders, Squarespace cannot afford to trail behind its SEO rivals. Competition aside, Squarespace does a great job of optimizing their users’ sites for search engines.

Note that Squarespace doesn’t just assume that everyone is familiar with search engine optimization. The platform, therefore, offers an extensive SEO checklist and a lot of educational material on the topic, including articles, webinars, and video tutorials. Squarespace reviews indicate that the builder’s forum is another excellent resource.

The Squarespace SEO features include settings for each page, allowing users to add meta titles and descriptions. The platform automatically generates a sitemap, while users remain in charge of submitting it to search engines.

The site builder also makes it possible to modify page URLs, while the analytics tool is one of the best we’ve come across. It provides detailed traffic insights and keywords your visitors used to find you in search engines. There’s also a separate Squarespace Analytics app with excellent user ratings.

Squarespace Blog Review

Blogging is another exceptional experience Squarespace offers to its users. Adding new posts using the platform's intuitive editor is a frictionless process. Users can apply different text formatting options, add images, videos, links, and just about any content block the builder supports.

To help readers filter blog content more easily, you can add post tags and categories. The blog supports numerous design customizations, and post URLs can be easily modified. Managing comments is done through Squarespace’s native commenting system and Disqus. Plus, you can enable AMP on your Squarespace blog, add author profiles, and share your content on social media.

Squarespace Ecommerce Review

The vendor’s ecommerce tools let users sell services, subscriptions, gift cards, physical, and digital products. Users can easily add and manage products, and there’s no limit to the number of products you can sell on Squarespace. Each product can include images, videos, and rich descriptions. The Quick View feature is a neat one, allowing customers to view a product without having to open a separate page to do so.

Product reviews and the option to sell on Instagram also deserve mention. Looking at the Squarespace pros and cons, the platform supports payments via the world’s most reputable payment providers — PayPal and Stripe. Squarespace further supports in-person sales thanks to its partnership with Square and the Point of Sale extension. That said, adding more payment options could significantly improve the Squarespace ecommerce experience.

Squarespace plugins or extensions add extra functionalities to your online store. These include shipping tools, accounting and billing software, as well as marketing solutions.

As Shopify is one of the top ecommerce platforms, we were curious about how Squarespace compares to the ecommerce giant. The research for our Squarespace ecommerce review showed that although Shopify offers more ecommerce functionalities, it is not necessarily the ultimate winner in the Squarespace vs Shopify battle.

Many users admitted to having chosen Squarespace due to its impeccable product presentations, regardless of Shopify’s extensive feature offer. Plus, the Squarespace ecommerce capabilities cost much less. In other words, the ecommerce site builder might be an ideal solution for SMBs with a modest product offering — at least for now. We’ll see how the company will further expand its online selling capabilities.

Squarespace Email Marketing Review

Much like the website templates, the platform’s email templates are simply gorgeous. Creating email campaigns is an intuitive process, with a lot of customization options available. Users can use these campaigns to share their latest blog posts, promote products, or invite subscribers to an event — Squarespace has a template for every occasion.

We cannot leave out Squarespace Analytics from this section, since the reporting tool is especially handy for tracking email delivery, open, and click rates.

While the email marketing platform has some really neat features, we’ve found some Squarespace limitations related to customer segmentation and automations. The customer segmentation options cover only subscribers’ names and email addresses, while automated campaigns are triggered when someone purchases a product or subscribes to a mailing list. A/B testing is not available either, but there’s a way to go about this by sending out two email versions to different subscriber groups.

Despite the lack of some features, we expect Squarespace to further improve their email marketing product, as the product has enormous potential and an affordable price tag, starting at $5/month.

Squarespace Online Scheduling Review

The Squarespace online booking and appointment scheduling software marks the group’s first acquisition, which put the leading appointment scheduling tool, Acuity, under the Squarespace flag.

Setting up services you’ll offer to your clients is a seamless process during which you can set up pricing, session duration, and work hours. Calendar integrations offer a lot of choices, including Google Calendar, iCloud, and Outlook. Users can accept payments via Stripe, Square, and PayPal. We particularly like the option for email reminders and letting customers schedule their appointments. The scheduling tool integrates with some of the best video conferencing software, too.

Squarespace complaints meanwhile revolve around the lack of a free product version. The prices for the scheduling tool start at $15/month, but there’s also a free trial allowing users to take the product for a test drive.

Squarespace Logo Maker Review

The logo maker is another easy-to-use solution from the Squarespace product family. It comes with a rich selection of icons from the Noun Project and a decent selection of fonts. The Squarespace logo maker also comes with the alignment tool allowing you to position text and icons properly.

Certain limitations stretch to the logo maker tool as well, with the final result downloadable only as a PNG of up to 5,000 pixels. The vector-based version is not supported either. You can’t add multiple icons to a logo, and you need to invest a lot of effort to make your logo unique, as Squarespace uses the Noun Project as the icon resource.

On the flip side, the tool is free for Squarespace users, and you can easily add it to your Squarespace website.

Squarespace Unfold Review

The last product in our review of Squarespace is the site builder’s template editor that helps create stunning stories for Instagram — Unfold. It offers 150 templates, and a rich library of stickers, filters, and fonts. Unfold is available on Google Play and Apple Store. This Squarespace app has excellent user reviews, confirming users’ fondness of this social media tool.

Squarespace Customer Service

The Squarespace customer support is truly impressive, and one of the site builder’s main strengths according to user reviews. To get in touch with the team, you can send them an email at any time. Twitter is another support channel available 24/7.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for the Squarespace phone number, you should know that the company doesn’t offer phone support. The company has a few reasons for not offering this communication channel. As they explain, live chat is faster, more convenient, and allows seamless screenshot sharing.

The company doesn’t only talk about live chat benefits but offers unparalleled support through this communication channel. We got in touch with the Squarespace live chat agents on several occasions and always got detailed, accurate information in just a couple of minutes. The live Squarespace support is available from Monday to Friday from 4 AM to 8 PM EDT.

Squarespace further offers an extensive knowledge base, video tutorials, user forum, and webinars.

Squarespace Pricing

Unlike Site123 or Weebly, the builder doesn’t have a free version. Users can instead sign up for the Squarespace free trial that lasts 14 days.

The Squarespace plans include Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, Advanced Commerce, and Select. Each of these plans comes with free hosting, unlimited bandwidth and storage space, access to the builder’s templates, SSL certificate, basic reporting tools, and 24/7 support.

The Personal plan covers these features and supports two site contributors, but lacks ecommerce support. The plan’s regular price is $16/month, while the Squarespace website cost decreases by 25% with the purchase of an annual subscription.

The Business plan unlocks access to the platform’s ecommerce capabilities. Users can sell an unlimited number of products, including gift cards. Marketing tools include advanced analytics tools, promotional banners, and $100 worth of Google Adwords credits. Other features are a free G Suite account, premium blocks, and CSS, and JavaScript customizations. Keep in mind that Squarespace fees of 3% apply to sales only with this plan. It costs $18/month when paid annually.

The Basic Commerce plan, which shares the same core and marketing features with the Business plan, also supports selling on Instagram and in-person with the Squarespace Commerce app, and ecommerce analytics. Plus, your customers can create an account on your site and checkout through your domain.

The Advanced Commerce plan includes all Squarespace features, including advanced shipping and tax options, automatic abandoned cart recovery emails, subscription sales, and access to the Squarespace Commerce APIs.

Lastly, the Select plan comes with a dedicated manager, SEO expert consulting, and much more. The price is available upon request.

Squarespace Promo Code Offers & Discounts

Reviews of the platform indicate that users are satisfied with different ways to save some money on the builder’s subscriptions.

Each plan offers significant savings with yearly subscriptions, helping users get anywhere from 13% to 30% off the regular pricing. The dedicated Squarespace coupon page lists all the latest coupons and discounts. The current Squarespace promo code, GIMME10, gets 10% off any Squarespace plan and is only valid for the first purchase.

The Squarespace student discount takes 50% off the first year of your subscription. Be sure to check eligibility requirements to get the best deal on Squarespace subscriptions.

Our Verdict

Our Squarespace review ends on a positive note. We recommend the platform for its impressive template collection, the advanced image editor, and the overall ease of use. We also like Squarespace’s robust analytics tool, great ecommerce capabilities, and top-notch live chat support. That said, the builder could add the autosave feature and further perfect its email marketing product. But, overall, Squarespace is undoubtedly one of the best website builders and ecommerce solutions on the market.