Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders available out there and the primary reason for its popularity is its ease of use and the features it offers – but that doesn’t mean it’s a great fit for everyone.
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Many creators are looking for Squarespace alternatives as Squarespace is a pretty complex all-purpose builder that may seem simple at first glance but has a learning curve involved.
Moreover, if you need to add features like advanced SEO features, automatically optimize images, multilingual experience, filter blog posts, or cookie banner options, then you’d find Squarespace quite limiting.
In addition, Squarespace is one of the more expensive site builders in the market and there are many Squarespace alternatives that offer similar features at much lower prices.
That said, there are tons of Squarespace alternatives out there that you can use to quickly and easily build your site.
To make it simpler for you to choose the right Squarespace alternative, I decided to test some of the most popular and reputed platforms to create a list of Squarespace alternatives.
Most of the platforms in this list take a similar approach to website building as Squarespace but are much easier to use and affordable.
So, let’s take a closer look at these platforms and understand what features they offer, their pros, and cons, as well as pricing plans.
I’m sure this guide will help you decide which platform is the best Squarespace alternative for you and your business needs.
Let’s get started!
Wix →
One Of The Best Overall Website Builders
Wix is an excellent Squarespace alternative for anyone who wants to create a website easily and quickly. It is one of the most user-friendly website builders with an easy, drag-and-drop builder that lets anyone build a website with absolutely zero-coding skills.
If you’re a seasoned developer who’s looking for more advanced development and customization, Wix has recently launched their EditorX where you can access more backend features of your website.
The good thing about Wix is that it has a dedicated App Market which includes 200+ applications (both paid and free) for third-party integrations.
Additionally, you can create a membership site using Wix’s Members app, whereas, in Squarespace, you’ll need to integrate with Memberstack to host your membership site, which will cost you additional time, effort, and money.
SEO Friendly
If you’re looking for an SEO-friendly website builder, then you’d be pretty impressed with Wix. It offers a host of SEO features such as the ability to add meta tags, page descriptions, sitemaps, adjust URLs, create page redirects, and much more.
Another good thing about Wix is that you can run email marketing campaigns on your website or blog within the same platform using Wix Email Marketing.
If you want to use advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to Wix Ascend, an all-in-one marketing solution to automate your marketing efforts.
Finally, Wix eCommerce offers a bunch of features like the ability to sell digital products, connect to print-on-demand services, a point-of-sale system, custom email receipts, recurring payment products, etc. So if you’re planning to run an online business, Wix would work well for you.
Pros
- Extremely easy to use and intuitive interface
- Comes with a separate mobile-view editor
- SEO wizard to give better SEO features
- Offers an extensive app market
- Allows you to host and launch your podcast
- Offers all-in-one email marketing solutions
- Automatic site backups
- Offers many features for eCommerce businesses
- Super affordable for what it offers
Cons
- Not all templates are completely mobile-friendly so you might have to edit your template separately in the mobile editor.
Wix is a great Squarespace alternative for professionals who want to build and grow their businesses. The platform is pretty affordable starting at $13/month. Even the highest pricing plan touches only $39/month which is quite reasonable and perfect if you’re just starting out or are on a stringent budget. I have talked about Wix in detail in this blog.
Shopify →
If you want to build an online store to run your eCommerce business, there’s nothing better than Shopify. It is a specialized site builder exclusively designed for eCommerce stores.
While Shopify is a great Squarespace alternative for eCommerce business owners, the platform might feel somewhat intimidating to users at first, given it’s slightly more complex as compared to Squarespace.
That said, Shopify offers a drag-and-drop builder making it easy for users to build their websites. Plus, you get a very well-designed pre-configured storefront, so if you’re a novice creator or want to set up your storefront quickly, you can do that with Shopify.
Shopify is laser-focused on eCommerce businesses, as a result, it offers features like the ability to monitor sales reports, track inventory, and manage customers, orders, products, discounts, invoices, etc all in a single packaged platform.
Moreover, if you want to use SEO features, Shopify offers inbuilt SEO capabilities to update Meta descriptions, tags, etc.
Another thing that makes Shopify a good Squarespace alternative is that it offers thousands of apps that you can integrate with your website with a few simple clicks.
Besides, Shopify supports 100+ payment gateways whereas Squarespace only supports Stripe and PayPal.
Pros
- Focused on eCommerce businesses
- Pre-built templates are excellent
- Easy-to-use dashboard to manage your website,
- Unlimited bandwidth, storage, and no. of products you can sell
- Offers a rich App store with 1000+ apps
Cons
- It might take some time to learn the platform
- The more apps you integrate, the more expensive it’ll get for you
- Shopify charges a transaction fee when you use external payment options
Shopify is an amazing Squarespace alternative if you’re specifically looking to create an eCommerce store as it has dedicated features for eCommerce business stores. It’s also suitable for bloggers who want to sell their digital products online like ebooks, coaching packages, etc.
As far as the pricing is concerned, Shopify starts from $29/month and the highest plan costs $299/month. You can choose the plan depending on your requirements and how advanced features you want to use for your website or online store.
WordPress →
If you find Squarespace limiting due to its restrictive editing process, you should consider using WordPress. It is an open-source content management system (CMS) that is extremely powerful and gives you much greater control over your website.
Given the rich features it offers, WordPress can be a bit challenging to work with at first, but the platform offers a lot of flexibility to creators.
Moreover, there are plenty of resources, guides, tutorials, and helpful material you can find online if you get stuck at some point.
Having said that, the website builder is quite similar to that of Squarespace offering A block-based editor.
One of the most interesting things about WordPress is that since the CMS is an open-source platform, you can easily find free versions of the premium themes and plugins that are otherwise paid.
So, you have to pretty much invest only in hosting (we recommend SiteGround for hosting). Or, if you want to opt for a complete package, you can use WordPress SaaS which serves as an all-in-one package.
Finally, WordPress offers 50,000+ plug-ins and integrations, allowing you to directly integrate different tools and platforms to your website within your WordPress dashboard.
Pros
- Excellent customization options
- Offers many plugins, themes, and integrations
- Shopify charges a transaction fee when you use external payment options
- Huge community base
- Has rich resources and training material online,
- An affordable option for what it offers.
Cons
- It has a learning curve involved
- It can get pretty expensive as you add more third-party add-ons to your website
WordPress has a pretty straightforward pricing plan where you can start with the free-for-life plan, which allows you to create great websites quickly, but you’ll still need to pay for hosting.
Paid pricing plans start from $4/month with a custom domain and live chat support. Next up is the Premium plan which costs $8/month with advanced tools for design, CSS, unique site support, and Google analytics.
Then, you have Business and eCommerce plans at $25/month and $45/month respectively with additional features like extra storage, more support options, themes, and plugins.
Weebly →
Weebly is another popular Squarespace alternative that offers an intuitive website editor to make it easier for users to build their websites.
Similar to Squarespace, Weebly also comes with drag-and-drop functionality and allows custom edits via HTML or CSS code. This way you have greater control and flexibility over your website design.
You can customize each page and experiment with different design layouts. Also, Weebly offers SEO functionalities to improve search engine visibility for your site.
When it comes to eCommerce stores, Weebly offers an elegantly designed dashboard that comes in quite handy while adding products, tracking inventory, managing sales, gift cards, coupons, etc.
From small businesses to medium-sized enterprises, Weebly caters to a wide range of online stores making it easy to build and manage your eCommerce store.
Moreover, Weebly offers 350+ apps that you can use to extend the functionality of your website. The good thing is that most of the apps offered by Weebly are completely free.
Whether you want to integrate an email service provider or a cart checkout tool, you can easily search and connect with the respective app from Weebly’s integrations.
Pros
- The drag-and-drop editor is easy to use,
- Allows multiple levels of navigation for easy visibility and control of your website pages,
- Offers a rich library of 350+ apps for third-party integrations,
- Provides good options for eCommerce stores.
Cons
- Doesn’t support “previous versions”, so you can’t undo your changes,
- Templates are not as flexible
In terms of pricing, Weebly is more similar to Wix than Squarespace. It offers a free plan which comes with a limited amount of storage and non-removable ads. The starting plan costs $5/month.
As you move to the next pricing plan, you’ll find that the premium-priced plans are more focused on eCommerce stores and provide many similar features that you’ll find in Squarespace’s eCommerce plans.
In a nutshell, Weebly is a decent Squarespace alternative, however, there are much better platforms on this list that serve as a better Squarespace alternative.
SiteGround →
SiteGround is an excellent hosting provider known for its strong performance and range of features at a very affordable price. While SiteGround doesn’t have a built-in website builder, it allows you to integrate your site with WordPress or Weebly.
If you’re looking for a platform that offers solid performance as well as functionality, then SiteGround is a good Squarespace alternative that should work well for you.
What makes SiteGround better than Squarespace is that it offers lots of impressive features such as daily backups, SSL certificates, email accounts, a free Cloudflare CDN account, and unlimited MySQL databases in even its most basic shared hosting plan.
Not only does SiteGround cater to beginners and individual creators, but it’s also an excellent option for businesses and teams who want to create full-blown websites with advanced capabilities.
That said, if you want to create a site for your business, you can access advanced features like white-label site management, WordPress staging sites, free site migration, SuperCacher, and many others.
There are multiple types of hosting plans available on SiteGround.
For instance, if you’re a beginner, you might want to opt for a shared hosting plan. However, if you are a professional who wants to create an advanced site with powerful features, you can easily go for a dedicated or cloud hosting package.
If you already have a site on Squarespace and want to migrate to SiteGround, I’d recommend you choose a managed WordPress hosting plan as it offers an easy 1-click installer for the CMS.
This way, you can easily choose the template and features of your site, and the platform will automatically install the relevant templates and plugins. Once this installation is over, you can easily access your fully-functional WordPress site within a few minutes.
Overall, SiteGround is a great Squarespace alternative that not only offers more functionality and performance but also comes at a very affordable price.
Pros
- Unlimited bandwidth, email accounts,
- Offers SSD storage, SSL certificate, cPanel, staging sites, etc.
- Provides automated migration,
- Offers daily backups and 1-click WordPress install,
- Comes with a built-in CDN and secure shell (SSH),
- Starts at $3/month for a shared hosting plan.
Cons
- Limited data storage
Given that SiteGround offers a wide range of advanced features, it may seem like it’s expensive – but that’s not true. SiteGround’s hosting plans start at $6.99/month.
Next up is their most popular plan GrowBig which costs $9.99/month and the highest pricing plan GoGeek costs $14.99/month. The higher plan you opt for, the more websites, storage, and visitors you can access. Read my SiteGroud Review here.
HostGator →
HostGator is another popular hosting provider that also works as an amazing Squarespace alternative. It comes with a very interesting website builder that’s quite similar to Wix in many ways. However, it isn’t as feature-rich as Wix.
One of the reasons why HostGator works as a good Squarespace alternative is that it’s very easy to use and is a lot cheaper.
It offers a simple drag-and-drop website builder and tons of customizable templates. While these templates aren’t as well-designed as that of Squarespace, HostGator allows you to customize your template easily.
Moreover, HostGator offers a Site History feature that allows you to revert your site to a previous version without any hassle.
Although HostGator is widely known for its hosting capabilities, it’s steadily evolving as a site builder as well. It’s well-suited for business websites and can also support online stores that only sell physical products.
Having said that, if you’re looking to build a blogging website or a full-fledged eCommerce website, HostGator might not be the best option for you.
Do we still recommend HostGator as a Squarespace alternative? Definitely, but only because it is very easy to use and comes at a very affordable price.
Pros
- Much simpler to use than Squarespace,
- Offers an easy drag-and-drop functionality for building websites,
- Provides excellent hosting support and functionality,
- Better technical support,
- Comes at a much more affordable price.
Cons
- The platform isn’t as advanced as Squarespace.
As far as pricing is concerned, HostGator is very affordable and it offers a bunch of features that are applicable to all of its pricing plans.
For example, you get free migration, a cPanel control panel, unmetered bandwidth, 1-click installs, 99.99% uptime guarantee, unlimited MySQL Databases, and much more with every web hosting pricing plan.
The basic web hosting pricing plan costs $2.75/month and the highest pricing plan costs $5.95/month.
HubSpot CMS →
HubSpot CMS is a website builder designed by Hubspot, a content marketing and campaign management service provider. It’s a great Squarespace alternative to site building, while also offering powerful marketing capabilities baked right into the platform.
HubSpot CMS allows you to create a website with advanced marketing features that helps in optimizing user experience as well as drive conversions.
It’s almost like a one-stop solution for your site building, management, and marketing needs. So you can easily choose from a library of modern, pre-designed templates and start building your website.
With a simple drag-and-drop editor, you can customize the layout and change the font, styles, module, colors, and more as you progress. Meanwhile, seasoned developers can use local development workflows and tools to build their websites.
The best thing is that HubSpot CMS integrates with inbound marketing strategies such as SEO, live chat, forms, and CRM information – which is amazing for creators.
Besides, you can even manage content across multiple languages and use A/B testing to check which version of your site is performing better.
Pros
- Easy to use drag-and-drop editor,
- Offers universal themes for easy editing,
- Provides advanced SEO, forms, live chat, and other features,
- Offers strong marketing capabilities built into the platform.
Cons
- It involves a slight learning curve,
- Pricing can be expensive for small businesses.
HubSpot CMS is not the most budget-friendly platform out there, especially as a website builder. The professional plan costs $270/month and the enterprise plan costs $900/month which is suitable for medium and large-sized businesses. But we wouldn’t recommend it for individual professionals or smaller businesses.
Squarespace Alternatives: Which One to Choose?
In this review, we have discussed many good platforms, their capabilities, strengths as well as weaknesses, and more importantly, how are they a good fit as Squarespace alternatives.
I hope this guide helped you pick the right platform for your business needs. However, if you’re still confused as to which one is the best Squarespace alternative for you, here are my quick recommendations, depending on your business goals.
- If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, powerful, and affordable site builder, I’d recommend you go with Wix.
- Or if you’re a seasoned developer looking to build a completely custom website with greater control and flexibility, I’d recommend you choose WordPress.
- Or if you want to build an online eCommerce store, then look no further than Shopify- one of the world’s most popular and trusted eCommerce site builders.
Whether you want to build a website from scratch or migrate from Squarespace to a better platform, I’ve listed the best platforms you can try out there.
If you have any questions about the platforms mentioned above, please drop a comment below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
