WordPress vs. Squarespace: Which Platform is Right for Your Business?

Every business needs to have a strong online presence, and choosing the right web hosting platform and content management system can make a big difference in how your customers will perceive your business—and how happy they are with your website. Two of the most prominent options available for your business website are WordPress and Squarespace but knowing which platform will best meet your business goals can be a challenge. In this article, we’ll break down the pros and cons of each platform in order to help you make an informed choice. Ultimately, it comes down to your specific needs and which platform’s strengths best complement your strategic vision. 

Let’s start with the 800-pound gorilla of web publishing, WordPress.

WordPress

Because WordPress is so popular and dominant in its field, it is the default choice for most users. Indeed, the pros of using WordPress are quite impressive. They breakdown into four major areas:

1. Flexibility and customizability. WordPress gives you the greatest number of options for making your website look and behave the way you want it to. With thousands of themes and plugins, you can quickly and easily develop a website that looks and acts exactly as you envision it to. Design elements and functionality can be added easily and with minimal disruption. Beyond this, WordPress’s open-source nature means that you don’t have to accept off-the-shelf solutions and can modify code needed to address your specific needs, or just to customize it to make your site different from competitors’.  
2. Scalability. When you use WordPress, you know you’ll have a site that can grow along with your business. You won’t have to worry if your business takes off that your site’s architecture can’t handle high volume traffic or a massive increase in content. WordPress can do it all, from the smallest blog to the largest corporate site. Additionally, it supports e-commerce plugins that will let you conduct sales at any scale.
3. SEO. WordPress supports plugins that can infuse your site with advanced SEO features and customization, helping you connect with your customers.
4. Control. WordPress is designed to put you in control of your website. In addition to the customizability features, WordPress also allows you to choose from any hosting provider, meaning that you are not tied to one host or their performance and cost metrics. And, of course, WordPress ensures you have complete control over your site’s data and backups. 

However, while WordPress has many advantages and is wildly popular, choosing it for your business comes with some disadvantages. There are three big ones you should be aware of before selecting WordPress vs. Squarespace for your business website:

1. Difficult to learn. WordPress is not the most intuitive content management system, and it can require additional time to learn its ins and outs, particularly when pushing beyond the preset basic themes.
2. Costs. WordPress is free, but premium themes, plugins, and hosting may not be, and these hidden costs can take a bite out of your budget, especially if you find you need a specific service you weren’t planning on and get locked into paying for it.
3. Security. WordPress requires regular maintenance and updates to every fact of its architecture, not least because it must constantly guard against attacks. As the most popular content management system, hackers are constantly testing its vulnerabilities. 

Squarespace

By contrast, Squarespace is in many ways the opposite of WordPress. Many of its advantages lie in areas where WordPress has drawbacks and vice versa, but it’s often considered the superior choice. “If you will be blogging frequently, hoping to reach a large audience and ultimately seeking to create an income-generating stream, Squarespace will be the better choice to help you achieve your goals,” says Forbes magazine. Let’s start by examining two of Squarespace’s big strengths:

1. User-friendly. Squarespace is very easy to use and requires very little specialized knowledge. It uses an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface that is especially helpful for beginners and those who need to get a website up and running fast without a learning curve to get up to speed. Additionally, Squarespace has professionally designed templates that can be deployed with minimal customization while still looking good.
2. Covers all the bases. Squarespace includes hosting alongside content management and also handles maintenance and updates on its end, reducing how much work you have to put into keeping your website up to date. Squarespace has built-in e-commerce and SEO tools, so there is no need to pay for separate plugins. Beyond this, security is Squarespace’s responsibility, so you don’t have to put additional resources into keeping your code safe from hackers. Finally, Squarespace offers around-the-clock customer support so you can get the answers you need whenever you run into a problem. 

But, Squarespace is not a perfect service. It has some drawbacks in areas where WordPress excels. Three of those drawbacks can directly impact your business:

1. Relatively inflexible. Compared to WordPress, Squarespace is much less flexible and offers fewer options for customizing templates. Your site may end up looking like everyone else’s because you all share the same templates. Similarly, because Squarespace doesn’t allow you access to its code, advanced customization is often not possible. 
2. Not ideal for growth. If you plan to have a large and complex site, Squarespace may not be suitable, particularly when you need specialized functionality. The larger your site, the more control you often need over its functionality. 
3. Costs. Squarespace has higher monthly fees that WordPress for the most part when you factor in hosting plans. While Squarespace includes hosting (sold separately with WordPress), overall costs are higher because you get fewer features for the money with Squarespace. 

Which Platform is Right for You?

The experts are divided on which platform is better overall, in large part because so much depends on the user’s needs. When you consider which platform best fits your needs, think about what you want your website to do. If you need to customize your site heavily or use complex functions, if you are technically skilled and can handle the technical side of maintenance, and if you prefer being in control of your site from top to bottom on both the front and back ends, then WordPress may be the best fit for you. On the other hand, if you prefer to prioritize ease of use and comprehensive solutions with minimal technical expertise needed, prefer professional off-the-rack designs with minimal customization requirements, and prefer to have customer support on hand around the clock, Squarespace may be the best choice for you.