Squarespace has pretty much all you need to build and launch a website. However, it has limited extensions, which makes it best for building basic sites. On the other hand, WordPress has hundreds of thousands of themes, widgets, and plugins as an open-source content management system. You can select from a huge collection of plugins and themes if you want to customize your site’s functionality and design. The official directory alone has 55,000 plugins, and more than 30,000 WordPress themes are available on third-party marketplaces and the official repository.

This Squarespace vs. WordPress review will reveal the advantages of using WordPress over Squarespace. 

Advantages for Blogging: Advanced customization

It’s easy to add and manage a blog on Squarespace. Use the block editor to set up an unlimited number of posts, build landing pages for multiple blogs, enable comments, create post excerpts, tag and categorize posts, and share your posts on social networks.

Squarespace lacks auto-save, and the maximum number of heading styles you can use is three. Some content creators find this frustrating. Squarespace is fine if you need a simple blog.

WordPress was originally a blogging platform. It offers customary blogging options such as tags, categories, and a drag-and-drop block editor. However, it also features more advanced options. You can secure pages and posts with a password, create a blog in a language other than English, make your content private, and assign user roles and permissions.

You can edit your source code or install a plugin to add further functionality to your blog. These advanced customization options make WordPress superior not only to Squarespace but to many other website-building platforms.

Advantages for SEO: Versatility

Squarespace offers neither SEO plugins nor add-ons. There is no way to optimize and compress images or add internal links if you have experience with this. Squarespace doesn’t have any tools to make automatic suggestions about those site elements. If you’re already familiar with SEO practices, you’ll do fine with Squarespace.

Then again, you wouldn’t be reading this guide if you were an expert. WordPress is far more versatile when it comes to SEO, which makes it the better option. Without SEO, nobody will find your site. WordPress lets you optimize your site through plugins as well as the back-end. You can download WordPress plugins such as Yoast SEO, Redirection, WP Rocket, or Google XML Sitemaps. They will automate or at least simplify the process of optimizing your content, XML sitemaps, page speed, and images.

Advantages for website management: More control

Squarespace lets users make changes from one single location. They can set up analytics, change content, add custom CSS, tweak design styles, control the basic SEO settings for a page, and decide which social share buttons to display.

This is quite a bit of control over website management, but it’s nothing compared to the level of control WordPress offers. This is because Squarespace does not have any third-party plugins. As mentioned, WordPress has over 55,000 plugins that you can use to enhance your site’s functions. You can install and add a plugin for social share buttons, manage ads, etc. There is a plugin for practically anything you can imagine because of how vast the WordPress community is.

Squarespace is far simpler, with only a few free and premium tools to extend website functionality. Online stores that choose Squarespace can choose from up to 15 extensions designed specifically for such retail platforms. In every other respect, your choice is limited to the preset features.

Price: It’s a tie, more or less

Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan, which sets it apart from many other website builders. It has a personal plan for $16 per month and a business plan for $23 a month. The personal plan features unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free custom domain for a year, and templates to build a custom site quickly.

The personal plan supports up to two contributors to a site. It does not support advanced website analytics or premium integrations. Moreover, e-commerce operators cannot integrate their platforms with Squarespace on this plan. It’s likely you’ll have to upgrade to the business plan.

And WordPress? Its software is free, but you’ll have to pay for a domain name and hosting to start your site. You might also need to buy plugins and a premium theme if your site requires an extensive level of customization. According to a report by Website Builder Expert, managing a WordPress site costs from $11 to $40 per month.