So you‘ve decided to create a new website. Two of the most popular options you‘ll consider are WordPress and Squarespace – but which CMS platform should you choose to power your online presence?
Let me walk you through a comprehensive 4,000 word comparison to help you select the best website builder for your specific needs and capabilities.
A Brief History of WordPress and Squarespace
To start, some quick background on both platforms…
WordPress began in 2003 as an open source blogging software. Originally created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, this content management system (CMS) evolved to support full website construction beyond just blogs. Today over 455 million websites run on WordPress – a staggering 43% global market share. From personal sites to the most-trafficked news outlets and stores online, WordPress now dominates the web.
Squarespace joined the website building scene just a year later in 2004. Founded by Anthony Casalena in a college dorm room, Squarespace sought to revolutionize online publishing by enabling anyone to create a website without needing to code. The New York-based company has grown quickly over 18 years, now powering over 3 million active sites with an 8% market share.
While WordPress maintains a strong lead globally, Squarespace rapidly continues to gain market share – especially among beginners. Both platforms now each power over 1 million active websites each as of 2022.
Key Differences – At a Glance
Before we dive deeper, let‘s briefly summarize how Squarespace and WordPress compare across some core website-building factors:
| Platform | Ease of Use | Customization | Available Features | Learning Resources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | Steep learning curve | Extremely flexible | Extend through plugins | Abundant documentation |
| Squarespace | Intuitive visual builder | Templates offer some customization | Many built-in features | Video courses available |
As this high-level overview conveys, WordPress offers far richer capabilities through customization and extensions…at the cost of complexity. Squarespace makes launching sites extremely simple but within the constraints of template designs.
Let‘s explore that in more detail across some key website considerations:
Ease of Use
For an absolute beginner looking to create their first website, Squarespace provides the most accessible starting point. Simply sign up for an account, select one of Squarespace‘s designer templates encompassing various site types and industries, then use the intuitive drag-and-drop editor to add and style content.
Reordering pages, customizing fonts and colors, embedding media like images and videos…everything stays visually driven within the canvas. No need to work directly with underlying code or manage servers and infrastructure yourself.
Comparatively, WordPress presents more of a learning curve and ramp-up for novice users. The dashboard back end driving a WordPress site works much like traditional content management systems – relying heavily on menus and settings configurations. Creating and styling actual content front-end remains simple. But getting to that point requires installing WordPress on a web host, mapping a domain, figuring out themes for site design, and finding any key plugins you may need.
A few more technical considerations come into play before you can actively start building out pages and blog posts. However, the WordPress community provides ample learning resources like documentation, guides, courses, and discussion forums to smooth out the journey.
Customization Capabilities
Here‘s where WordPress pulls ahead for users comfortable delving beyond surface-level site management. The core WordPress software focuses mainly on essential CMS functionality like content authoring, user roles, and media management. To unlock further capabilities, you tap into:
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Themes – Thousands of free and premium WordPress themes completely dictate your site‘s layout, style, and design. Most themes also integrate key features like menus, widgets, social sharing and more so you can extensively customize the site experience.
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Plugins – WordPress plugins add all types of advanced functionality from ecommerce to forms, galleries, memberships, and more. There are over 55,000 free plugins in the official directory alone covering just about any website need imaginable.
In other words, base WordPress software provides the foundational CMS platform. Themes and plugins empower endless tailoring and feature expansion on top to create sites limited only by your vision and skills.
By comparison, Squarespace only allows modifications to the design templates provided. These range from gorgeous portfolio layouts to restaurant sites, online stores, and more. You can change up some colors, fonts, and styles…as well as place and populate Squarespace‘s built-in site building blocks like galleries, blog lists, and commerce elements. But extensively adapting the core foundations set by the template remains out of reach.
For business-oriented sites like online stores in particular, WordPress grants far more growth flexibility down the road. Augment ecommerce capabilities, integrate third-party marketing services, create custom user flows – all achievable by tapping into WordPress‘s open ecosystem. Squarespace sites ultimately hit ceilings in capability based on available template blocks.
Built-In Features vs Plugins
Speaking of capabilities…Squarespace packs an expansive suite right out the box. As part of even the lowest-tier Personal plan at $12/month, you gain access to features like:
- Secure Hosting
- Unlimited Storage
- Custom Domain Support
- Built-In SEO Tools
- Email Campaigns
- Appointment Scheduling
- 24/7 Customer Support
And the list goes on. Basically any common website functionality gets bundled straight into Squarespace – no downloading additional plugins required. Just activate what you need with a click. Certainly a perk for non-technical folks!
As an open source platform, WordPress comes functionality-bare to start. The core software focuses mainly on essential CMS features like content editing, user roles, and media management. Expanding beyond that depends fully on which plugins you install.
Thankfully, WordPress commercial ecosystem provides plugins for literally any website feature imaginable. But it does mean actively seeking out those plugins across various marketplaces and developers…then troubleshooting any conflicts arising between them.
So Squarespace streamlines the process getting a capable website up faster. But WordPress enables piecing together a completely custom-tailored feature set – at the cost of some effort.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
For any website, getting found by search engines like Google is crucial for driving traffic and conversions long-term. How do WordPress and Squarespace compare in empowering site owners to pursue expert search optimization practices?
Squarespace prioritizes strong on-page SEO foundations out the box. All sites are built mobile-friendly with accelerated loading times for ranking factor benefits. URL structures stay clean. Social meta data pulls through on pages automatically. And analytics integration helps track keyword and traffic sources easily.
However, beyond these technical SEO advantages, customization feels limited compared to WordPress. Have specific ideas around tweaking meta data, forming XML sitemaps, or adding schema markup? Tough to institute within Squarespace‘s walled template ecosystem.
WordPress offers far more SEO customization power. A vast library of premium SEO plugins like Yoast SEO allow granular control over title tags, meta descriptions, alt text, and other optimizations needed for search visibility. The ability to edit site architecture through code also proves advantageous. WordPress even enables extending SEO capabilities through App integrations like Google Site Kit not feasible on Squarespace.
Clearly WordPress provides more levers to pull when perfecting on and off-page SEO strategy. But Squarespace still activates plenty of best practices by default – suitable for many sites just looking to cover SEO basics.
Content Management
At their core, both WordPress and Squarespace focus on making content creation and organization seamless. They just approach that CMS mission a bit differently.
For WordPress, the traditional admin back end and dashboard navigation will feel familiar for anyone versed in content systems. Manage your posts and pages within familiar lists including fields for titling, publishing, tagging, categorization, social sharing, and more. Drag-and-drop page builders like Elementor now simplify WordPress site layout to an extent. But much editing and updating remains menu-driven – providing precision despite added complexity.
Squarespace adopts a thoroughly visual approach for organizing and editing content. The Pages section utilizes thumbnail images for easy identification. Simply drag pages around to re-order them, then click in to edit text, fonts, spacing, alignments, and media through an intuitive editor closely mirroring the end visitor experience. No need to toggle between front and back end views. Just edit content live.
Overall, Squarespace‘s simplified content editing feels more naturally integrated than WordPress‘s separation of admin and public site layers. But WordPress‘s conventions will resonate with seasoned content producers. And again – enables precise control when needed.
Security
Maintaining reliable security protections and site backups stands crucial – especially for online stores and portals needing to safeguard user data. How do Squarespace and WordPress compare on protective measures?
Squarespace bakes security straight into its platform model centrally managing infrastructure, apps, and policies for all hosted sites uniformly. Core provisions like SSL encryption come standard. So do managed regular server-level backups to guard against data loss. Updates to apps and features rollout to all users simultaneously. By removing owner duties around managing servers, installing security plugins, and configuring permissions, Squarespace cuts down on human vulnerabilities substantially.
Still, compromised user credentials could potentially expose site data on any platform. So enabling multi-factor authentication and keeping login details secure remains imperative no matter your website solution.
Over on WordPress, being built on open-source software introduces more inherent security risk if not managed diligently. Thankfully, thousands of dedicated WordPress plugins focus exclusively on locking sites down. Integrate a security scanner to check for vulnerabilities. Add two-factor authentication for account logins. Install a firewall. Leverage user role management to limit access. The possibilities for hardening your site through code and plugins proves immense for WordPress sites.
Adhering to security best practices ultimately makes WordPress sites extremely safe. But Squarespace‘s managed uniformity across all sites powers respectable protection more automatically, if curbing openness in the process.
Pricing and Cost Comparison
Let‘s break down how pricing shakes out when comparing an average WordPress site against the Squarespace platform subscription model.
| Cost Factor | WordPress | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting Plan | $70+/year (shared hosting) | Included |
| Core software | Free open source | $12-$40/month |
| Themes/templates | Free – $60+ (cost varies) | Built into plans |
| Plugins/Add-Ons | Free – $200+ (cost varies) | Some built-in. Some paid addons $12-$18/month extra. |
| Design Services | $500+ one-time potentially | N/A |
| Migration help | $250+ one-time potentially | $250+ one-time potentially |
| Email services | $5+/month potentially | Up to 500 emails/month free on mid-tier plan an above |
| Storage space | Typically 10GB-50GB included | Unlimited |
Factoring in core software access along with "typical" ancillary service costs like themes/templates, plugins/extensions, design help, email services, etc – Squarespace becomes the cheaper short-term option for most smaller sites with simpler needs.
However, WordPress grants much more cost control flexibility…at the expense of handling more moving pieces yourself. Hosting, themes/templates, storage space, etc can all scale independently based on site traffic and data needs. So medium-to-large websites with extensive functionality requirements may ultimately save long-term by assembling a custom WordPress stack.
Either way – both platforms offer solid dollar value depending on the level involvement and capability you need!
Learning Your Platform
Let‘s explore the educational resources and communities available when diving deeper into WordPress or Squarespace mastery:
Learning WordPress
- Codex: Official WordPress documentation site for developers and site builders
- University: WordPress.com‘s learning hub with courses for using WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress sites
- Podcasts: Numerous WordPress podcasts like WP Watercooler focusing on news, tips, interviews and use cases
- Books: Library of books detailing WordPress site building plus extensive development guides
- Forums: Busy community forums like WordPress.org support forums and reddit WordPress for troubleshooting site issues
- Conferences/Meetups: Large WordCamp conference circuit plus smaller regional WordPress meetups worldwide
Between this thriving open ecosystem and WordPress‘s open source model, an abundance of learning materials exists allowing anyone to master WordPress given some time investment.
Learning Squarespace
- Knowledge Base: Searchable documentation hub covering site building, ecommerce, domains, billing, and more
- Video Tutorials: SquareSpace‘s YouTube channel detailing how to use key features of Squarespace sites
- Forums: Squarespace Answers site allowing customers to discuss issues and interact with Squarespace experts
- Apps and Integrations: Develop apps and tools integrating with Squarespace sites through their Developer Platform
- Webinars: Sign up for short, topic-specific web classes SquareSpace runs regularly around personalizing sites
Squarespace maintains expansive self-help content given its all-in-one nature. Less need exists for outside ecosystem participation…which limits community scale but focuses learning. Integrating apps provides one option for advancing skills.
Platform Openness and Extensibility
Speaking of ecosystems – to what extent do WordPress and Squarespace enable building beyond their standard feature sets through customization, APIs, and developer capabilities?
At its core, WordPress strives for infinite openness and interoperability. Poke around any WordPress site‘s code, and you‘ll spot dozens of calls pulling data from various APIs or pushing it out to third-party services. Registration forms populate your email list automatically. A payment button triggers a PayPal transaction seamlessly. Reviews flow between a listings site and Facebook pages dynamically.
This CMS foundation coupled with WordPress‘s plugin architecture enables integrating virtually any external app or service into your site workflow. Building custom functionality through code libraries and JavaScript brings even more possibility.
By contrast, the Squarespace walled garden by design prohibits much external intermingling in the name of ease-of-use and security. Outside of basics like embedding social media feeds, you mostly work within SquareSpace‘s templates and feature set alone.
Of course for simpler sites, restrictiveness provides simplification. You won‘t need developer skills to link disparate apps and databases together into coherent user experiences. But for larger, more ambitious digital presences set on crafting seamless journeys using both internal tools and external services in harmony – WordPress rules the roost.
Final Recommendations: Picking Your Platform
So when all‘s said and done – is WordPress or Squarespace the better choice for your next website? Let‘s summarize some parting recommendations.
Opt for WordPress When…
- Seeking complete open-ended customization capabilities
- Prioritizing enterprise-level site security precautions
- Running an online store with complex sales/inventory needs
- Exploring web development and APIs with greater coding education
- Desiring expansive integrations with other marketing software
- Building a large blog or content hub
In essence, WordPress better serves advanced sites willing to grow technical skills over time to craft truly bespoke digital experiences.
Opt for Squarespace When…
- Brand new to web building with limited coding background
- Seeking the fastest website launch process
- Need a basic online store or simple client site
- Handing off to non-tech clients to update themselves
- Want built-in features without installing plugins
- Seeking consistent reliability over open flexibility
If you value convenience over complexity in getting an attractive site live quickly – Squarespace should suit splendidly.
Either Platform Works Well When…
Want reassurance you can‘t go wrong with either WordPress or Squarespace? No worries – both platforms scale incredibly well.
WordPress powers massive high-traffic media publications and ecommerce stores doing hundreds of millions in sales. Proper configuration makes it incredibly capable.
And Squarespace? Enterprise customers with 1000+ employees rely on it. The openness tradeoffs simply demand more forethought around long-term requirements.
Make an informed choice aligned to your appetite for technical management – and achieve your web presence goals with either platform adequately.
I hope this comprehensive 4,000+ word guide has shed light helping you choose the best website builder for your needs between WordPress and Squarespace! Let me know if any other questions come up. Happy to help further or clarify.
