Think of building a Squarespace website like owning a condo in a beautiful, high-end building. You call the shots in terms of picking d\u00e9cor and modifying your living space to suit your needs, but the condo corporation handles all of the building\u2019s maintenance and mechanical works from behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
How much does a Squarespace website cost?<\/h3>\n
Squarespace lets you dive in\u00a0with a 14-day free trial, and\u00a0you\u2019ll be prompted to pick a monthly (or annual) plan that best suits your needs.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a rough breakdown of your Squarespace plan pricing options as of November 2019. Keep in mind that all prices are in USD<\/strong>.<\/p>\n From the basic business plan, you can move up to a \u201cbasic\u201d commerce plan at $26\/month<\/strong> or an \u201cadvanced\u201d commerce account that checks in at $40\/month<\/strong> for the broadest possible feature set.<\/p>\n One thing to keep in mind is that unless you upgrade to the basic or advanced commerce plans, you can expect to pay three per cent credit card transaction fees on every sale you make with the basic, $18\/month \u201cbusiness\u201d plan.<\/p>\n Check out the full details on Squarespace\u2019s pricing page here<\/a>.\u00a0But before you dive in and sign on to a plan, read our post on what to consider when building your first website<\/a>.<\/p>\n The main competition for Squarespace would be other all-in-one drag-and-drop website builders like Weebly, Wix and WordPress. Keeping in mind every web building platform has something special to offer, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of Squarespace.<\/p>\n There is no free Squarespace plan beyond the initial 14-day free trial. It\u2019s strictly pay to play here and if you\u2019re not prepared to invest long term in a website builder, consider other website builder options with fully free plans, like Wix or Weebly.<\/p>\n Remember: Even if you step up to the \u201cpersonal\u201d Squarespace plan at $12\/month, you\u2019re still quite restricted as to what you can do.<\/p>\n Just as an example, the basic \u201cbusiness\u201d plan lists out at $18 monthly (or $216 annually) for the one-year plan. The month-to-month option, on the other hand, will cost you $26 per month or $312 for one year.<\/p>\n Just like any online tool, Squarespace gets easier to use with time but navigating the page editing tools isn\u2019t always self-explanatory. Fortunately, Squarespace does have a robust help and support section<\/a> on their site.<\/p>\n Yes, Squarespace offers a streamlined experience geared towards ease-of-use, but that can be limiting to some of you more advanced users out there. For instance, you may want to add more SEO options, install your own external plugins (apps) and add custom functionality, or have complete control over customizing your chosen templates. All these things aren\u2019t really possible within the Squarespace platform.<\/p>\n Squarespace\u2019s main claim to fame is their professional-grade pre-built templates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Squarespace boasts a great selection of professional, well-designed templates that make it easy to bring in your own photos and media and heavily edit elements like fonts\/typography, colour schemes and more to give every part of your website a cohesive look and feel.<\/p>\n Squarespace bakes absolutely everything into its platform, so there\u2019s no worrying about whether an app or extension is incompatible, running analytics on your site or staying up on your security updates. The idea is that you spend less time troubleshooting your site and performing maintenance if something breaks \u2013 and more time promoting your work or crafting great content.<\/p>\n Squarespace is known as a \u201cwhat you see is what you get\u201d web building platform. As you\u2019re adding text, images and other content, what you see on screen is exactly how it will look when published. This makes editing and updating content far more straightforward and \u2013 best of all \u2013 you don\u2019t need to know a single line of code!<\/p>\n Squarespace integrates nicely with several well-known third-party tools that you might want to use, like Google Analytics and Mailchimp.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re ever stumped or want to improve your web building prowess, chances are there\u2019s a corresponding walkthrough or how-to video on Squarespace\u2019s extremely robust knowledge base<\/a>. If you\u2019d rather talk through your issues with an actual human being, Squarespace also offers 24\/7 customer support via live chat and email tickets. However, we should note that the Squarespace support team doesn\u2019t provide phone support.<\/p>\n\n
What are the pros and cons of using Squarespace?<\/h2>\n
Squarespace cons:<\/h3>\n
There\u2019s no truly \u201cfree\u201d Squarespace option available<\/strong><\/h4>\n
If you want a discounted Squarespace pricing plan rate, you\u2019ll have to commit to a full year<\/strong><\/h4>\n
It\u2019s not quite as simple as other website building providers<\/strong><\/h4>\n
More advanced web designers might find the Squarespace environment limiting<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Squarespace pros:<\/h3>\n
Slick template design<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stg.cira.ca\/uploads\/2019\/11\/squarespace-templates.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nAll-in-one platform<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What you see is what you get<\/strong><\/h4>\n
It plays nice with others<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Customer support and info<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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