It is a very common situation for a small business owner (be it a creative venture, a healing profession or any kind of entrepreneurial adventure) when they look around on the website market they will come across this debate: WordPress versus Squarespace.
I love how Squarespace looks
First of all, I love Squarespace. I love the design, I love how they advertise (Keanu Reeves was gorgeous on his motorcycle, there is no debate on that). They always come up with cool creative persons in their advertisements that make me feel like, I want to be one of them!!! And I want to have a website they have!!! Yeah well this is the whole goal of advertising, right?
I like the simplicity of the admin area of Squarespace and it is truly optimized for the user. You don’t have to decide what payment service you will use, it is all there!
WordPress can be a mess. Not all themes are good, so if you choose a bad one you might experience hard times. And there are all those plugins, so a lot of decision has to be made. Well yes, WordPress is an open-source system, so a lot of people are involved in the development. It can be messy, that’s right.
It can be messy, but it can be clear as well if you know what you are doing. And also any design can be achieved with WordPress, so it can look as clean as a Squarespace site. Well actually a Squarespace site, if it is not set up properly, can look messy as well. No magic bullet, these things only work if you know what you are doing.
I am not going to go into details about the two platforms, you can find good articles about that, so let’s get to the point: I am going to give you my honest opinion about when you should use WordPress. I am talking about the self-hosted WordPress, so wordpress.org and not wordpress.com. WordPress.com is a service where they provide the hosting and limit the options with WordPress. WordPress.org is where you can download the whole WordPress solution, host it yourself, and enjoy the flexibility: as it is highly customizable with thousands of themes and plugins.
When you should choose WordPress over Squarespace
- you need more than one website (it is more affordable with WordPress to manage more websites).
- you need to be flexible and add special functions to your website. With WordPress plugins, you can add almost any function to your website, for example, see the draw a card page on my website. This page shows a random image and it was set up with a free plugin and I didn’t need to hire a developer for this or write custom code.
- It is highly scalable: better for larger or more complex sites.
- You want to keep your costs low, but it requires more expertise to do that.
When you should choose Squarespace
Choose Squarespace when you need one standard website to showcase your talent, products, and services and won’t need any special functionality. It is ideal for beginners with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You can try it out for free, look around, and see for yourself if this is something you are ready to do. The monthly cost might be a bit higher, but it doesn’t need special maintenance.
If you want simplicity and ease of use, go with Squarespace. If you need flexibility and customization, choose WordPress.
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