Why I chose Squarespace as my website builder
Why I choose to build websites with Squarespace for my design clients and myself over using Wix, Wordpress, or Shopify.
If you're in the early stages of building your brand and business, you may be struggling to narrow down which website builder (also known as a CMS or platform) is the best choice for you. I'm going to focus on three of the main competitors to Squarespace in this post. Many arguments can be made for and against any of these platforms. However, today I'm going to speak from my personal experience working on them for both myself and for clients. I'm going to review Wix vs Squarespace, Wordpress vs Squarespace, and Shopify vs Squarespace.
Wix vs Squarespace
You don't need me to tell you that social media is a critical element of marketing your online business. Your ideal client is on Facebook or Instagram, scrolling away and your amazing photo stops them mid scroll! They're captivated by it, they must know more about who this badass boss is. They begin their creeping session, scroll through your feed, look at your bio, and maybe if the stars align they click on the link to your website. This is their first experience with you, your brand and your business, which means you'd hope their experience with your website is a perfect one. If you build your website with Wix, this probably won't be the case.
I'm sure you know the design of your website on mobile is important, but it is easy to forget how important because you spend so much of your time on your laptop as a business owner. It's easy to focus on the desktop version of your website because it's what you see the most, but it's probably not what your clients/customers see, especially on their first visit.
"Okay Linds, I get it. The mobile design of my website is important."
Right! So a good mobile website experience is essential, what does that have to do with WIX?
The good about Wix
When working on Wix websites for clients, I enjoyed the experience for the most part. The templates are flexible, the widgets have variety, and overall you can end up with a great looking website. The main issue I have with Wix can be broken down into two parts.
The bad about Wix
Part 1: The mobile editor in Wix. I found when working with it you could get the design how you liked it on desktop and then when you switched to the mobile view of the website and edited it, often the changes wouldn't stay, or there would be random elements "stuck" in a spot you didn't want them. There was more than one occasion where the account manager I was working with would ask me about something on mobile, and I was pull-my-hair-out frustrated because the things she wanted to be changed had been changed (and saved) multiple times, but the mobile version was not reflecting the changes. The good news, eventually we were able to redesign the website for the client on Squarespace. Yay!
Part Two: they have a mobile and desktop editor instead of one responsive design.
Responsive design meaning the design of the website changes based on the size of the screen you view it on. If you do happen to be on a desktop while reading this, Drag the bottom right corner of the window bigger and smaller so you can see how the content of the website adjusts based on the size of the window.
For the last 6+ years, I've considered having a responsive website the standard I want for myself and for my clients.
Wordpress vs Squarespace
Agh Wordpress, my old arch enemy. I'm going to start with a positive to prove that I'm not bitter about the time spent as a Junior Designer close to tears because I was struggling through changes in the backend of a Wordpress website. Clearly, I'm over it and not traumatized at all.
The good about Wordpress
Wordpress wins as far as flexibility goes. You can do things in Wordpress that you can't do in Squarespace and when you're working with specific large organizations, they may require Wordpress or something similar. It is easier to find plugins for Wordpress than Squarespace, especially when you have really specific or niche requests. (Also, because of the way that Squarespace is built you don't often need plugins for it.)
The bad about Wordpress
I have never found Wordpress intuitive to work with. It can be very challenging to work with. Considering the amount of time I spend building and tweaking other people's websites I know that if I'm struggling with a platform, that many of my clients are going to struggle with it as well. This means that making simple updates isn't so simple, and it ends up eating up a lot of time or costing more money to pay someone else to make those changes for you.
The other issue with Wordpress is the plugins. I did just list the plugins as a positive, but there is one massive downside to them. They are made by many different people, so you never know if all of your plugins are being updated correctly when Wordpress updates happen. This is often where you hear about people running into security issues with Wordpress. One or more elements on their website were not updated after the most recent Wordpress update, and that left a security hole that allowed someone else to get access to their website.
For a more detailed article about choosing Squarespace over Wordpress check out this article by Catwood Websites.
Shopify vs Squarespace
I'm going to say something about Shopify that will sound like common sense, but I don't think a lot of people consciously realize this. Shopify is an online store builder, NOT a website builder. That means it is an excellent platform if you are building an online store. Is your business selling handbags online and in person? Great! Shopify might be a perfect option for you.
The good about Shopify
If you have a large online store or have complicated systems for shipping products, Shopify is a great option!
The bad about Shopify
If you have a business that has multiple streams of revenue and needs various types of pages, I would stay away from Shopify. My best way to describe it is that Shopify has gorgeous homepage designs and well laid out product pages but if you need to build any other types of pages (blogs, sales landing pages, pages with image galleries, etc.) the editor for these options is very limited. I have also found the backend of Shopify a bit of a pain to work with as well. It is not as intuitive as I'd like.
Why I choose Squarespace for my design business
The top reasons I chose to work with Squarespace are:
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The responsive design of Squarespace. I still check the mobile versions of websites as I build them to ensure everything is working/aligning as predicted, but I don't have to design a separate mobile site.
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It's easy for myself and my clients to work with. I found the learning curve with Squarespace was the least difficult of all the website platforms I listed previously. Also, Squarespace offers webinars, a specific forum with questions you can ask and answer, as well as guides and videos you can access. They also provide chat and email support for when you need to get in touch with them directly.
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The built-in Squarespace CMS (Content Management System) allows you to easily edit pages, text, images, videos, forms, blog posts and site cosmetics without coding experience.
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Your Squarespace website is self-hosted, meaning you pay for the cost of hosting in your Squarespace plan. You don't have to worry about paying for or upgrading the hosting on your website!
I’m not alone in my love of Squarespace, check out this article by BossProject about why they choose Squarespace over any other builder.