Squarespace blog alternatives and why you need WordPress

Squarespace Blog

If you’re about to start building your blogging website, there’s a decent chance you’ve refined your choices to Squarespace blog and Squarespace alternatives like WordPress. These two tools provide many core features for websites and a wide assortment of functionality with third-party apps. While many alternatives cater to more niche demands, these two offer a foundation for almost any kind of website.

WordPress is the most popular of the many Squarespace alternatives due to its ease of use and wealth of features. If you already run a Squarespace website, you should take a moment to reconsider what WordPress has to offer. Choosing the right website-building tool will impact your budget and results, so look at these main points when comparing Squarespace vs. WordPress.

Squarespace vs. WordPress

What are you looking for in a website builder? For most people, the deciding factors typically are:

• Price
• Ease of use
• Compatibility

Both WordPress and Squarespace excel in these categories, but as you read on, you’ll begin to see that WordPress edges Squarespace out for almost any type of website.

Pricing

For small businesses and online enterprises, website hosting can be a significant portion of their budgets. Both Squarespace and WordPress offer a variety of packages with different website features at different prices.

SQUARESPACE

Squarespace breaks its website services into four plans ranging from Personal at $16 per month to Commerce Advanced at $54 per month. They also offer discounts for those willing to pay for a whole year upfront. Like most of their competitors, they have a two-week free trial to allow potential users to try out their features.

The different packages affect several areas. Higher packages allow you to create more pages and enhance customizability through CSS and scripts. Better packages also include increased access to more third-party apps and functionalities. Many of the website builder’s e-commerce features are also locked behind the more costly packages.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Personal plan is insufficient for anyone trying to run a business website. There is little to no customization and restricted access to e-commerce features, meaning that anyone trying to do any business will have to spring for at least the Commerce package at $35 per month.

WordPress

It has a more complex website pricing structure that allows for greater customization of individual experiences. WordPress itself is free. Users must find their hosting from a company that offers that service, often in tandem with development services. For business owners who are not particularly tech-savvy, this is their best option.

Squarespace brings together website building and hosting under one roof, and they charge a premium with it. WordPress users will be paying much less, as they will only be paying for hosting, often as little as $4 per month, or around $30 with additional features.

WordPress has several other factors that can affect pricing, including e-commerce features, third-party plugins, and premade themes. Being able to pick and choose which parts you want to pay for, rather than relying on Squarespace packages, gives users much greater control over their websites.

When comparing the website finances of Squarespace vs. WordPress, you can’t just look up two values in a table. You must consider the individual needs of your unique business and which platform provides the best rates specifically for you. However, pricing isn’t the only thing that can sway your decision.

Squarespace vs. WordPress Ease of Use

A website builder is a tool, and the outcome of using any instrument depends on how well the user can wield that device. Both Squarespace and WordPress go to considerable lengths to make their platforms accessible to users of all skill levels, with more advanced features for those who know how to use them.

Squarespace has a simple and easy-to-use website editor that allows users to make fundamental changes to predesigned templates. They can easily change minor elements like font sizes and colors. Navigation is simple, with the main menu giving a list of options when you click on it. Individual blocks are inserted via drag and drop, allowing users to configure their pages as they see fit.

WordPress presents a more comprehensive website content management system. Some might find it less intuitive, but the increased complexity allows for more direct control over layout and content. Pages are edited and then previewed, as opposed to the seamless experience of Squarespace. There are plugins available for WordPress that mimic Squarespace, but the more involved editing process is more versatile in the long run.

Squarespace and WordPress Templates

Even advanced users typically rely on templates for at least a starting point when using a site-building tool. These templates are easy to use and give your website a professional look without too much actual work on your end. There are both free and premium templates available to suit any budget.

Squarespace offers templates of their design, all of them quite nice looking and functional. They have over 125 available, which certainly sounds like a lot.  However, when you look at the available WordPress templates, Squarespace just can’t compete. WordPress templates are available through both an official source and numerous third parties, so there are thousands and thousands of available templates.

Squarespace templates are easy to use but severely lacking in customization. Making significant changes is practically impossible. WordPress, on the other hand, gives users complete control to change anything about the template. It serves as a starting point to build on without inhibiting any potential features.

There’s no question that WordPress wins when it comes to templates. The sheer quantity of choices far outstrips any other Squarespace alternatives, and each template is fully customizable.

Squarespace Blog: Is It Good?

WordPress was initially designed specifically for blogging. While the potential uses of WordPress have grown as its range of features has developed over the years, it’s still the best choice for blogging out there. Squarespace blog features simply cannot meet the same needs that WordPress can.

WordPress Blog Features

WordPress is the best site builder tool for blogging content. The platform’s content versioning lets users maintain multiple backups of pages within the system, meaning that you can look back through the updates to any page and even do quick and easy rollbacks to previous versions. For a rapidly changing site like a blog, this feature can be a lifesaver.

WordPress also has superior HTML editing, giving complete control over content by providing direct access to page HTML, giving bloggers the complete creative control they need. Creative types will also benefit from the media library that stores and catalogs all media uploaded to the WordPress website for easy access and applications on other pages.

Your site will also benefit from the intuitive and comprehensive application of website categories and tags in WordPress. These features make it that much easier to bring the correct and relevant content to site users. Squarespace has nowhere near this level of versatility when it comes to tagging content.

Squarespace Blog Features

Blogging is the area in which Squarespace most clearly lags behind WordPress. A Squarespace blog doesn’t have any kind of content versioning for your site, meaning you will not have access to the stored edits of your pages that you may need. There isn’t even an autosave feature while making edits, making it a very hostile platform for editing blogs directly on your site.

There is also much less direct access to the site HTML, with the only actual functionality coming through code blocks within the editor. The media library functionality is also lacking, with only basic features for reusing images across the site. There’s no way to manage your media files for the entire site.

The lack of these features, along with much less versatile tags, makes a Squarespace blog the wrong choice for your site. Most Squarespace alternatives are much better prospects, but WordPress takes the cake when it comes to blogging needs.

Compatibility

Squarespace has plenty of features, but they are almost all severely restricted, and their third-party support pales compared to WordPress. With WordPress, you have more options for your site through plugins and apps, along with greater control over how they are presented and utilized on your site.

WordPress Plugins

The WordPress plugin ecosystem is thriving. Thousands of options are available for nearly any function your site needs. WordPress may have started as a blogging platform, but it can offer premium e-commerce performance and other sites through plugins. Installing and incorporating these plugins is generally intuitive, quick, and accessible.

Even when you can’t find a premade solution to your unique needs, you can enlist the help of a WordPress developer to design and implement custom solutions. The compatibility of WordPress lets developers do anything essentially, as opposed to Squarespace’s restrictions on custom features for your site.

Squarespace Plugins

Squarespace does have numerous ways to integrate various features on your site. These are primarily through partnerships with established organizations that offer integration with their services. Of course, nearly all of these offer similar, if not better, functionality with WordPress sites.

Squarespace is making an effort to catch up with the site customization of WordPress plugins through Squarespace extensions. However, there aren’t enough available extensions, with only several dozen compared to the thousands of WordPress site plugins. Squarespace can be enhanced by professional developers as well, but the process is much less efficient and can’t match the results of WordPress development.

WordPress is the best choice when it comes to integrating the third-party and custom features you need on your site. Squarespace works well for making a basic site look nice, but you just can’t enrich your site to the extent that you can with WordPress.

Squarespace vs. WordPress E-Commerce

Most users aren’t just setting up a Squarespace blog but some kind of e-commerce application. Squarespace does much better when it comes to e-commerce sites, but that isn’t to say it’s doing better than WordPress.

Squarespace isn’t just a site-building tool. It offers a complete package of services, including hosting and e-commerce features. As such, they place a strong emphasis on these features over site customization and other aspects. The built-in features of Squarespace e-commerce make it easy for businesses of all kinds to offer goods and services online.

A Squarespace e-commerce site has a built-in shopping cart system that customers will find intuitive and easy to use. There aren’t any limits on how many items you can sell. Your site can feature numerous e-commerce models, including subscriptions. Of course, many e-commerce features require the Commerce plan for your site, including their 0% transaction fee.

Squarespace also has many alternatives to meet any budget. They offer gift card and discount code functionality for your website and even physical point of sale integration for US websites. You can even set up a member’s area for your website with paywalls for content like courses and media.

Your e-commerce website will miss out on a few key features, though. Squarespace doesn’t support multiple currencies, making international commerce difficult. There are also issues with foreign tax rates. Some essential payment processors aren’t supported, although PayPal and credit cards are.

eCommerce Customization

WordPress e-commerce for your website takes a bit more work but also provides more versatility. There are many different plugins available for your website from third-party e-commerce platforms. Almost every major platform has a custom website plugin for WordPress that can be seamlessly integrated while still allowing maximum customization.

For anyone who has the technical experience themselves or goes with a website developer, WordPress gives greater access to e-commerce features. Squarespace is easier to use at the basic level but is ultimately more expensive and provides a less comprehensive solution for your e-commerce website.

Firetoss WordPress Websites

WordPress can give you a better website with more features than Squarespace. However, these improvements require technical expertise and careful design. Firetoss develops and builds WordPress websites for businesses of all kinds. Our team has the experience to create your custom WordPress website with all the features you need.

You can contact us today to see what we can do for your brand!