Squarespace Website Builder Review: Best for Creatives and Artists?

Known for its templates and appealing aesthetic, Squarespace also makes it easy to sign up and find the right fit for you. Even if you can’t find the perfect template, Squarespace makes it simple to customize any template to meet your needs. With its smooth designs, Squarespace is a decent choice for almost any artist, freelancer, photographer, or designer looking for a cute website to showcase their work.

Overall, getting your site up, running, and looking the way you’d like is pretty painless with Squarespace, but it may take just a little bit more time than intended.  Keep in mind that Squarespace only allows a 14-day free trial, putting on extra pressure to sign up for a plan. 

Start your free trial with Squarespace.

Pros

• All Squarespace templates come mobile-ready, so no matter the device it’s viewed on, your site will always look great.
• Squarespace templates are fully customizable. The Squarespace website builder even comes with the option of saving or discarding any changes you’ve ever made to your site.
• Squarespace provides examples of active websites and even has ways for you to preview your website before publishing.
• You don’t need to have a lot of technical knowledge to work with Squarespace, all its templates are intuitive and user-friendly.
• Squarespace offers great promotional features and its ecommerce tools are versatile.

Cons

• Squarespace has experienced massive growth over the past few years, leading to the launching of several versions. This can cause confusion when needing to troubleshoot problems for the specific version of Squarespace you’re using.
• With all this growth, Squarespace’s customer service department hasn’t been able to keep up, leading to longer wait times and negative customer reviews.
• There’s no free option available, so after 14 days you must either pay for Squarespace to host your website or lose any work you’ve made so far.
• Squarespace has everything and then some, making it easy to feel overwhelmed by all the options and difficult to find where the advanced features are hidden.

Squarespace has four main pricing packages: Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. Keep in mind that the prices listed here are for annual subscriptions and that paying monthly may cost more.

Personal = $12/mo.

The Squarespace Personal Plan comes with a free custom domain for the first year, enhanced security, unlimited bandwidth and storage, and allows for up to two contributors. You also get access to search engine optimization (SEO) features for site visibility as well as basic website metrics like tracking visitors and other ways to boost your reach. As always, all Squarespace plans come with mobile-optimized websites and templates to fit almost any need.

When to use: The Squarespace Personal Plan is a great way to get started and host your very own, professional-looking website. Its templates make it easy to showcase your work, especially if you’re an artist looking to have your website match your aesthetic. However, at this level, there’s no way to accept payments, so this is really only a good fit for portfolios and landing pages.

Business = $18/mo.

With the Squarespace Business Plan, you get all the features of the Personal Plan, as well as unlimited contributors, access to professional email from Google Workspace™, plus ways to offer restaurant reservations and other booking services. If you’re tech-savvy there are features that allow you to add your own code to your template, further personalizing your site. At this package level, Squarespace also offers advanced website analytics, credits for Google Ads™, and promotional pop-ups and banners to draw customers in. If ecommerce is your jam, the Business Plan not only has ways for you to accept and process payments, but comes with ways to manage your inventory, sell unlimited products, accept donations, and offer gift cards as payment.

When to use: For just a few dollars more per month, this plan comes with so many extra features. A great fit for anyone ready to launch an online store or who needs to accept payment for services. There is a small transaction fee though, so keep that in mind.

Basic Commerce = $26/mo.

Coming with everything included in the Business Plan, the Squarespace Basic Commerce Plan no longer charges for transaction fees. Plus, with this plan, you can now sell online and in-person with the included Squarespace Commerce App. You can also offer customer accounts, sell your products on Instagram, and utilize the included merchandising tools and ecommerce analytics to grow your brand and snag new customers.

When to use: Any growing ecommerce store or small business focused on selling online and in-person would find this plan to be handy. Getting rid of transaction fees could actually save you money compared to the Business Plan, and selling on Instagram is a great way to connect with new customers.

Advanced Commerce = $40/mo.

Coming with everything already included in the Basic Commerce Plan, the Squarespace Advanced Commerce Plan has quite a bit more to offer. Abandoned cart recovery is included, as well as advanced shipping and discounts. You can offer subscription services as well as connect to third-party systems to take extra work off your hands, like order fulfillment or inventory management.

When to use: The Squarespace Advanced Commerce Plan is great for anyone with a rather large ecommerce presence looking to take some things off their plate. Any service-based business that wants to offer subscription services would find this plan useful as well. Plus, if you have multiple brick-and-mortar locations or a local presence that you want to be synced to your online presence, this plan can help.

Recommended

We think the Squarespace Business Plan is a solid choice. It comes with payment processing capabilities and helps to connect you to other resources built into the Squarespace platform that can help grow your brand. For the price, it offers quite a bit in several areas, making it one of the more flexible options out there.

Get started building your business website with Squarespace.

With its flashy features and advanced SEO and analytics, Squarespace is a great fit for almost any artist or designer looking to get a professional site up and running. There are some drawbacks, like having multiple versions and mixed reviews for customer support, that can give you cause to pause. Squarespace does truly offer a lot, and it can take time sifting through it all to find the features that will work best for your brand and website. However, if you’re willing to take the time, it could be a solid choice.

If you’d like more information on popular website editors, check out our review of the best business website builders.

After all we’ve discussed, We give Squarespace 3.9 out of 5 stars. Squarespace is elegant, easy to use, and offers a lot of features at any price point.

Visit Squarespace