Squarespace is a great all-in-one solution for creating websites and online stores, with unlimited bandwidth and storage. It has powerful tools for e-commerce, marketing, and analytics. Its editor is quite intuitive, but it keeps you updated by only allowing you to place web page elements within the defined grid format. Overall, Squarespace is one of the best options for building websites, especially if you plan on having a website full of images.
PROS
- Very easy to use
- Excellent technical support
- Competitive pricing
CONS
- The editor is somewhat limited.
- You can’t add custom code.
Squarespace Video Review
Overview
Squarespace is a website building tool that was originally developed in 2004. With an intuitive user interface, like other e-commerce platforms, it makes website creation quick and easy for non-programmers.
Squarespace offers a modern and attractive design, unlimited bandwidth and storage, and excellent marketing tools.
It’s ideal for those looking to create a website or online store with an attractive, image-centric design and an intuitive, clean interface. However, its limited plugin collection makes it a poor choice if you need a site with advanced features like a community forum or complex forms.
How Squarespace Works
Creating an online store on Squarespace starts with a short questionnaire that asks what you plan to do with your site, what types of products and services you sell, and where you are in the development stage of your online business. Your answers will determine what features your site will start with.
All of Squarespace’s features, from page design and e-commerce to marketing and analytics, are accessible from the main menu, but the interface never feels cluttered or complicated. Despite Squarespace’s powerful features, it’s one of the easiest website builders for new users to use.
Squarespace Features and Tools
Fluid Engine
Squarespace offers a drag-and-drop editing tool called Fluid Engine. This feature is a revamp of the existing drag-and-drop functionality that provides an easy-to-use canvas and toolset for designing online store layouts.
You can take web design to the next level by using intuitive tools to create custom designs. Additionally, its excellent responsiveness makes it easy to edit both mobile and desktop websites.
Unmetered bandwidth
All Squarespace plans include unlimited data transfer with no usage limits. This is relatively unusual in the market. Squarespace’s competitors often charge a fee for bandwidth and force you to upgrade to a more expensive plan if you exceed the set limit.
Unlimited storage
Again, Squarespace impresses by offering unlimited storage on all plans. Most competitors have strict storage limits on their lower-priced plans and expect customers to upgrade to more storage as their business grows. With [Provider Name], you can upload as many images and videos as you need without worrying about going over your limit.
SSL security
Squarespace includes an SSL certificate with all plans. This means your website visitors will see that it’s secure and will be more likely to trust it. All data sent to and from your site will be encrypted, ensuring the security of e-commerce transactions.
Creating a website with Squarespace
After completing a questionnaire about the focus of your website, you can choose from nearly 120 high-quality designs. From there, edit your pages in the site editor, replacing images and text as you see fit.
Squarespace uses a contextual drag-and-drop editor, so when you edit a section of your online store or website, unnecessary menus are hidden. This keeps the interface organized and is great for beginners, but you may often find yourself searching for a feature you’re interested in until you get the hang of it.
The editor is also relatively restrictive. For example, you can’t just insert a video into the middle of an existing text box; instead, you have to create a separate video section to insert it. This can be frustrating at first, but it can help inexperienced designers follow modern web design best practices and make their sites responsive.
The latest version of Squarespace (7.1) uses a new template system, which basically means you can change templates as you wish. Until now, replacing templates was possible, but difficult.
If you decide to change providers, you can export your Squarespace site. However, the export options are very limited. For example, you can export text from your blog pages, but exporting images is not as straightforward.
Adding Multimedia to Your Squarespace Website
You can upload your own images to Squarespace while editing your web pages. You can also choose from free images from Unsplash or premium images from Getty right from the interface.
Videos are also supported, but they must be less than 500 MB in size. Alternatively, you can embed videos hosted on YouTube or Vimeo.
Adding images to Squarespace is easy, but adding videos isn’t, which may be a deliberate decision by Squarespace to discourage users from opting out of the service’s unlimited storage.
Marketing Functionality with Squarespace Websites
Squarespace offers email marketing as an additional paid feature, with prices ranging from $5 to $48 per month. This allows you to send personalized email newsletters, but there are a few features for automatically sending emails based on user behavior.
Squarespace has excellent blogging features. It also integrates well with Instagram and Facebook, allowing you to automatically direct users to your Squarespace store pages from these social networks
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SEO Functionality and Add-Ons with Squarespace Websites
Squarespace has excellent search engine optimization (SEO) features for building websites. Sitemaps and markup are automatic, and all pages are automatically optimized for mobile devices. All URLs are static, making them easier for search engines to crawl. There’s an SEO dashboard where you can edit all the important SEO features of your site, such as how it appears in search results.
Squarespace’s plugins are limited. There are less than 30 extensions, and almost all of them allow you to add new products to your site for dropshipping. If Squarespace doesn’t offer the feature you need, it’s unlikely you’ll find it in the list of add-ons.
Ecommerce
Squarespace Commerce is a comprehensive platform that makes it easy to set up an online store. With Squarespace’s intuitive interface, even those with no prior experience in web design or e-commerce management can set up an online store.
Payment Processing
Squarespace Commerce offers flexible payment options and chargebacks to help ensure your customers complete their purchases. You can integrate PayPal, Stripe, or Apple Pay with your Squarespace Commerce site and pay their processing fees. Squarespace Commerce’s mobile-optimized checkout system provides a seamless checkout experience designed to increase conversion rates. The platform also offers SSL security to protect sensitive customer information.
Scalability
Whether your business is small or large, Squarespace Commerce offers a set of features to suit your needs. The platform provides users with the tools and resources they need to scale their online store as their business grows.
With advanced inventory management features like real-time tracking and low-stock alerts, businesses can effectively manage their inventory. Commerce also offers a variety of analytics and reporting tools to help users monitor their store’s performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize their business.
On the other hand, many important e-commerce features are reserved for the more expensive Advanced plan. This includes abandoned cart recovery, which competitor Wix includes in all its e-commerce plans.
Squarespace Customer Support
Squarespace offers 24/7 support via email and live chat during business hours, Monday through Friday. There is no phone support. In our tests, email responses took 6 to 7 hours, while live chat was fast.
Squarespace’s user guides, FAQs, webinars, and videos are good. There’s also a very active community forum. Overall, Squarespace does a good job in terms of support, but we would have liked to see extended live chat hours and a phone support option.
Squarespace Pricing
Pricing & Special Offers
Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial, but you can’t activate your site until you pay for a plan. All four plans can be paid for monthly or annually, with a 25-30% discount for annual payments.
Squarespace vs. Wix
Wix is probably easier to use for beginners and offers more templates than [insert username], but Squarespace’s templates are of higher quality. Wix has a much broader list of plugins than Squarespace, but it doesn’t create responsive websites like [insert username].
Squarespace vs. GoDaddy
GoDaddy has a particularly simple interface, which makes it a better choice than Squarespace for beginners. It’s also significantly cheaper. However, this simplicity comes at the cost of theme selection and design customization.
Squarespace vs. WordPress.com
Squarespace is easier to use than WordPress.com, but WordPress.com beats it in terms of power and flexibility. For developers building larger sites, WordPress.com offers a huge list of plugins and templates that can transform a site, and if you want to learn all the ins and outs of WordPress and even delve into the code from time to time, WordPress.com is worth a look.
Bottom Line
Squarespace is one of the best online store builders we’ve tested. While its minimalist interface takes about an hour to learn, once you get the hang of it, you can create great responsive websites very quickly.
Squarespace’s high price is the main reason to look for other options. However, since all plans include unlimited bandwidth and storage, the terms are more fair, especially if you plan to upload a lot of multimedia content to your site. And with Squarespace’s attractive templates, you’re practically guaranteed a modern and sleek site that will wow your visitors.
