This is one of the most common questions I get asked from friends, clients, and people in general when they find out I design on both platforms. Truthfully I like both, but for very different reasons. It’s easy for me to recommend one over the other to someone when I know what some of their priorities are.
So below I’ve outlined some of the main priorities people have and what platform is best based on that priority. I’ll be talking about ease of use, pricing, customizability, time/effort/maintenance, and customer service. I will continue to add to this post as I experience more priorities so save this post and come back to it in the future.
Ease of use: Squarespace!
The customer experience and going through the process of creating a website is as easy as it possibly could be. WordPress can be difficult for beginners. So if you are not tech savvy or just don’t want to take the time to learn everything and go through all the steps to create and launch a site on wordpress, then go with Squarespace. With wordpress you have to buy your domain name, find a hosting service, install wordpress, buildout wordpress, upload themes, upload plugins, secure the site, design the site. Etc.
Pricing: WordPress, but it depends on a few factors…
Squarespace pricing is a little more expensive. Hosting: $12-$40 per month depending on which plan you go with. Domain: the first year of your domain name will be free, then it’s $20/year after that. WordPress: wordpress itself is free but you need to get a hosting service and domain name from a separate provider. Each provider will have a different price so it will take more time to shop around and find the price that is right for you, but the flip side of that is you can shop around and find the best price for you. Site ground, Blue Host, Host Gator. It can also be complicated when you have your domain and hosting through different providers. That is another can of worms.
Customizability: WordPress
WordPress has a ton of customization features because it’s open source, that means that themes and plugins are created by independent third parties and are virtually endless. There are infinite options. Squarespace has around a hundred themes and maybe 30 plugins. But that doesn’t mean squarespace isn’t customizable, if you know CSS code you can definitely style it exactly how you like.
Time/Effort/Maintenance: Squarespace
Squarespace has built in features that gives you security, automatic updates, and helps you be more hands off with your website. WordPress are vulnerable to bugs, you need to constantly update it, security can be an issue if you don’t have that set up. There are a ton of independently moving variables in a wordpress site, whereas squarespace is all taken care of for you so it takes more time and energy to maintain your wordpress site.
Customer Service: Squarespace, but a good WordPress host can be great too.
Because WordPress is free and open source you can’t just call them and ask questions which is a problem for people who are new to building websites. There are a lot of moving parts to your wordpres site, so if you need help with a theme or plugin you won’t get help from WordPress or your host usually. You can contact your host provider for a lot of issues but the wuality of the customer service depends on your host. There are so many different hosts out there so you would need to do your research. In my experience Bluehost has excellent customer service and have never had issues with them. Squarespace has good customer service and I find it convenient that everything is contained so you can call them with anything regarding your site.
As you can see there’s no straight answer becuase everybody will have different priorities and an array of different moving parts. I hope this helps at least provide you with some information to better help in your decision!
