In this post, you will learn about the differences between WordPress and Squarespace for building and running a website. So that you take a right decision according to your business plan, budget and needs.
WordPress and Squarespace both are popular and widely used to create website. You can create business, blog, online website using both. And you can integrate all these three in one website.
As time passes, both the business, technology and online marketing landscapes are constantly evolving. That is why a business website should not only be adaptive to change but also provide high return on investment.
In the era of changes coming in business by AI, the following things are the need of every business website. When you understand this, you will be able to take the best decision to choose create self-hosted WordPress website or use Squarespace.
1. Reliable, Fast and Good Hosting
The advantage of creating a website for business is that the customer can buy whenever he wants. But if the website is down 10 times in a week, then neither it will rank on Google and Bing nor will it benefit the business.
Squarespace is already hosted website builder software. With the use of this software, you create website. So, you do not need to buy hosting. So, uptime is depending on the Squarespace hosted server. When you buy Squarespace website package then your website creation process Start. Even you can start it through step-by-step wizards.
In WordPress.org the process of creating website start after buying your own hosting. Managed hosting is better than shared hosting for non-technical beginners. After that WordPress is installed then Themes, Page builder and other plugins have to be installed.
The process is lengthy and website uptime and speed is totally depends on your or hired WordPress developer or designer technical abilities and decisions.
So, in this case Squarespace provide you hosting, a step-by-step wizard to setup your website and technical support. While in WordPress you have to pay someone to setup website or do it your own.
2. Responsive, Mobile-Friendly and user-friendly themes
Website should be responsive, mobile friendly and user friendly. Every website visitor is important. In Squarespace you will get pre-designed responsive and good quality templates for this. In WordPress you have to find and need to select good quality responsive WordPress Theme manually.
If you don’t get a free theme specifically specific to your business then you have to buy premium theme. Else if both are not satisfying then you have to hire WordPress developer to customize. The cost is in premium theme and customization.
Built with WordPress you will get flexibility and option to customize any part of your website as per your business needs.
3. Search engine optimization comparison
Website SEO is important to get organic traffic to your website and save cost of paid advertising. In SEO website speed, design, user interface, content, user experience, on page SEO and many other small things are involved. To do all of these you need good and easy to use options for SEO.
In terms of SEO, you will get options for website optimization in Squarespace. In WordPress you have to use SEO plugins such as All in one SEO software or Yoast SEO plugins.
While to audit and analyze both type of website you have to use various external SEO analysis tools. With WordPress you will get more freedom and options to implement your own ideas.
4. Opportunities for innovation and customization Comparison
For consistent innovation and to get growth in business, you have to implement new ideas and need to accept new managed opportunities. For this, you need freedom in decision-making and execution.
You will get templates, sales options, and everything to run a business on Squarespace. But if you want more freedom, control in editing, and customization then you can’t do that with Squarespace.
While in WordPress in terms of freedom you’re free to choose any plugin, themes, design, API integrations, and custom development services for a specific feature or UX/UI goals. Still, WordPress also has its own limitations but in terms of flexibility and freedom, it’s better than Squarespace.
Understand more through this example:
Let us suppose a website is like a car.
You want a CAR that drives you to your destination. Now you will get that through the Squarespace website builder.
But if you want a car along with the option to change its structure, tire, functionality, features, sitting capacity, personal to commercial or want to convert a Car into a Truck then you can use WordPress. With WordPress, you can change your website design, structure, monetization, marketing, and sales features anytime. Such as you can convert an eCommerce store into a directory website through plugins or custom development and you can convert blog into eCommerce.
Freedom and flexibility are required after a certain level of success in business. As a beginner, you have to stay with specific strategies and design for the long term. That’s why Squarespace is for those who want to start a specific online business or eCommerce store, portfolio website, and booking services quickly and easily.
5. Comparison based on Ease of use and less technical management
In today’s world, you and your team should be more productive every day than the day before. And so, it is very important that your business website should be easy to manage. Suppose you get it done by paying someone money to crate. But if you have to search on Google every day for its use, then your time will be spent in understanding the techniques of the website instead of revenue generating activities.
That is why you use any method to create a website, it will work. But it should be easy to manage and update.
So, in terms of that Squarespace is great for those who have a small team or are solo entrepreneurs. You have to spend less time on the management of technologies and due to that, you can spend more time on sales and marketing that actually drive revenue. Squarespace is managed by a single company so the accuracy and updates quality are maximum.
While WordPress is open-source software, anyone can contribute to the development of its ecosystem. Due to that, you have to update and maintain each individual item that you have integrated into WordPress through plugins and themes. But 50% of the time is consumed with technicalities in WordPress if you want to make it a feature-rich website with a great User experience and Interface especially if you want to do it on your own.
WordPress is good for large websites and when you have a team, money that can invest time, resources, and skills to continue with WordPress.
While if you’re looking only to start a blog website on your own and want to learn everything related to WordPress along the way, then you can choose WordPress. Else, Squarespace is much better and less time-consuming.
6. Security & Backup Comparison
With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can automate the entire backup of your website, and database. As per the information I got, Squarespace and all other websites are run from their servers and so they obviously backup that. Might be it’s not for an individual website. While you can duplicate or make a copy of your website with Squarespace. And you can migrate the Squarespace website to another host or WordPress as well.
But self-hosted WordPress website is independent or the content everything inside the website is managed and controlled by you. How you manage this will depends on your WordPress and Website security knowledge.
7. Pricing and cost comparison
As per the current pricing details found on the Squarespace website, if you pay annually, you can save 30% and then this cost you only $23 per month in business plan. Everything else included in that such as domain, hosting, template price, marketing features, analytics, and SEO etc.
While WordPress is free to use. But you have to pay for hosting, premium themes, SSL, plugins, and installation and maintenance services. In the long run, managing and scaling a WordPress business website is more costly than Squarespace. Even buying good hosting for WordPress will cost you $10 per month.
While you can start using Squarespace for just in $16 dollars per month in a personal plan without paying for maintenance and installation.
You can cheap WordPress hosting to start creating a website. You can use most of things for free such as themes and plugins.
But when it’s about business you should do focus on good quality instead of cheap pricing. It’s because in business you can’t create a new website each year.
8. Technical Support and maintenance Service Comparison
With Squarespace, you will get technical support services for any fault and bug in Website. But in WordPress, you have to search everything on google on your own for solutions.
For support and more advanced solutions in WordPress, you have to depend on your own technical knowledge and research skills. Many times, you will need the help of freelancers to set up more advanced theme and plugin integrations. And those services are paid and you need to pay money.
While Squarespace also looks and promoted as an easy option but it is also difficult for those as well who even don’t have basic computer skills.
A website is not just a combination of theme or templates and plugins, it’s a business.
A business should be built with marketing strategies and customer goals. That is why it’s important to consider your own short and long-term goals before creating website or investing money. And also analyse your technical capacity to handle website or hire people for website design.
Conclusion
In which business condition choose to use Squarespace to create website:
- When you do not have time to learn WordPress and manage all the technicalities.
- When you want a business website within hour such as a website for event or government of campaign or press release.
- When you cannot manage hosting, themes, plugins and all the technicalities on your own and you don’t want to hire freelancer as well. But can-do basic website things on own.
- When you do not have long terms plan and business goals for this website or from this website.
- When you want to reduce the cost of technology management.
- When you want to sell product online, want to get booking, appointment and all of these things and want to create a website on your own and don’t like Wix or nor WordPress then use this.
- When you’re not interested in long term plans but focus on earning money fast then use square space.
In which business condition choose to use WordPress to create website:
- When you just need one landing page or single page website just to generate leads. With cheap hosting, use of free theme and page builder WordPress is best.
- When you want to save money from initial investment and want to invest more in theme, plugins and features once the 1st invest start getting results.
- You have very good basic computer and internet knowledge and familiar with WordPress and online business.
- When you want to start affiliate marketing website then use WordPress.
- When you only want to do blogging then use WordPress.
- When you want to get traffic from blogging, sell services and sell products then you can use WordPress.
- When you have a the plan and you can hire freelancer to create or customize website for business needs.
- When you want to learn WordPress Development and want to create portfolio website.
- When you want to start a blog and want to earn money from blog by monetizing through google AdSense and affiliate products.
I hope you have got almost all the basic answers of website creation in this post. But then if you want to know more then read the following post. If you still want a personal consultation, feel free to contact me.
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