High cost. A standard website starts between $12-18/month, with online stores increasing to $26-40/month. And these include the discount for paying annually. Not only are they more expensive on average, but the high-end eCommerce price is the most expensive, too – $40/mo. Luckily, we paid as much as stated on their website and not a penny more:
Unfortunately, these high prices don’t include email accounts. Those will still set you back an extra $5/month for each.
Our Squarespace support experience was not great. There are tons of resources available, but that’s also kinda the problem. There’s too much stuff and it’s not easy to find your way. We went looking for the live chat option, and unfortunately, that wasn’t much better. In order to reach the live chat, we had to fill out three drop-down boxes regarding our issue. Then, it still tries to send you over to an article or email. This repeated multiple times while we were waiting in the queue. They kept trying to send “how-to” articles, instead. Finally, we got on with an agent. But even that was slow. The entire process took around twenty minutes to get a simple answer to our question. And then, how did the support rep help? By sending us another link to a how-to article.
Email accounts cost $6/mo extra through Google Suite.
PROS of Squarespace
Despite the high price, Squarespace is probably the best pick for individuals who need image-based websites. Think of photographers and wedding planners.
Squarespace’s 200+ design templates that look good. Really good. They might be the most ‘professional’ looking options out there.
Squarespace sites almost look and feel custom. But they still have the same intuitive editor that allows you to customize things in seconds.
All of their plans have no storage or bandwidth restrictions.
Squarespace’s performance is good. The 99.98% uptime over the past six months is as good and reassuring. Speed is one of the fastest, too – averaging 326ms.
Squarespace average uptime and speed (last 6 months)
Recommended?
Yes and no. If you’re starting a site in a design-centric niche (think: fashion), it might be worth springing a few extra bucks for Squarespace.
Otherwise, for the vast majority of other people, it’s probably not worth the high price tag when you can get similar features for significantly less.
