Squarespace vs. WordPress: Which is Best for Interior Designers, Stagers, and Organizers?
Several years ago, I made the executive decision to design websites exclusively on Squarespace. Prior to this, my agency was designing websites on nearly any platform, largely WordPress. However, we kept running into the same issues... Issues that cost my team hours of time and our clients hundreds of dollars. If you've ever thought, "I can't afford a custom website," it's probably because you were looking at a website designer who prefers WordPress or a similarly cumbersome platform and charges around $10K for a full build, SEO not included. Ha!
This just scratches the surface on why I prefer Squarespace. It's easy to use, even for non-techy people, but the end result doesn't look basic. In this blog post, I'm sharing exactly why we recommend Squarespace over WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and Showit.
Squarespace vs. WordPress: Which is Best for Home Professionals?
After years of having to send frequent invoices to clients, troubleshoot their frustration, and spend more time maintaining their websites than should be considered reasonable, here are four reasons I said "enough" to WordPress:
Plugins would break or need to be manually updated, either of which could cause the website to go down.
Designs looked clunky (to this day, I can spot a WordPress site instantly. They have that "look" about them).
Our clients weren't able to update their own portfolio images or edit text, forcing them to pay us every time for every update. While some website designers count on this as additional revenue, it never felt right to me. If you've paid us for the website, you shouldn't then become our captive anytime you want something changed.
While WordPress sites have a lot of integrations with outside tools, each integration requires a plugin. Because not all plugin developers are on the same level of professionalism or experience, these plugins often don't look good or behave correctly on the site. Again, clunky. And also, frustrating — especially if our client wants a site that will grow with their business rather than hold it back.
What about Wix, Weebly, or Showit vs. Squarespace?
Disappointingly, the visual and aesthetic components of Wix and Weebly have placed them firmly in the "tween" category of website platforms. The professionalism and crisp design elements are lacking, and they don't have key built-in features, such as the ability to auto-share blog posts to social media as soon as they are published (a Squarespace feature that is so helpful), or online call and appointment scheduling (Squarespace owns Acuity Scheduling and it's now a direct integration with them).
Showit is a beautiful website platform, but if you want to blog on your Showit website, you still have to use a WordPress blog as an add-on. It's kind of weird.
10 Reasons We (and Our Clients) Love Using Squarespace
All updates to the software are automatic and your website benefits from Squarespace's team of skilled developers to keep everything running smoothly.
Any Squarespace website can be completely customized with HTML or CSS code; Squarespace isn't a cookie-cutter template platform. Rather, their templates act as a launching pad for your completely custom website. If you are designing your own site and want to stick with their templated design, you can do that, too, and not have to worry about whether your website looks nice.
Squarespace websites are easy for our clients to update on their own, which means they don't have to pay us for future changes — unless that is what they prefer. We provide support for every website we design on an as-needed basis. Once your initial website design is complete, you won't be receiving monthly invoices from my agency. You only pay if / when you need a change made that you can't or don't want to do yourself.
Squarespace has built-in SEO enhancement features for your text. If you know nothing about SEO, you need Squarespace. They'll have you fill in your business information under the Settings, and they'll prompt you to give each page an SEO title and description. If your onsite SEO is already good, you don't need to do this. But if you're worried or you designed your own site and, again, don't understand SEO, this is a great feature to use.
Squarespace actually cares about the SEO of your images, which greatly enhances the SEO of your entire website. They give you an easy way to add keywords to your image files names, in case you forgot to do that before you uploaded your images. Simply double-click on your image, add your keywords, and click save. Done! You don't need to delete, rename, and re-upload the photo.
Squarespace automatically creates various sizes of each image you upload, ensuring your website will look good on all screen sizes (and yes, all Squarespace sites are automatically mobile-friendly). The only caveat to your photo sizes is that uploading images bigger than 2000 pixels will likely slow down your loading speed, which is true of ANY website platform. Also, uploading photos that are smaller than 600 pixels can often make the images appear grainy if used in too large of a space. Again, this is true of any website platform.
Squarespace customer support is absolutely amazing. Whether you have a problem with your domain or just can't figure out how to make your website look the way you want, their team is helpful and can look at your site to tell you what to do — at no additional cost to you.
Your Squarespace website grows with your business. You have the option to add awesome features like the ability to sell an online course or service package, create a membership, allow for online appointment scheduling, set up an online shop for physical or digital products, sell gift cards for your services, sell a subscription, and even host a podcast. But the best part? You only pay for what you need.
Squarespace is the first website builder to integrate with Google Search Console. Ever wished you could pour your website directly into the mouth of Google and get more of the right people coming to your website? Now you can. Plus, you'll get a monthly report emailed to your inbox that tells you in a glance which pages of your site are the most popular and which keywords people are using to find you.
Squarespace integrates with Google Analytics and the result is a visually stunning series of charts and easy-to-read graphs that tell you who is coming to your site, how they got there, and what they did while there. Easily know if one of your blog posts went viral or if a specific pin on your Pinterest account is driving tons of traffic to your site.
3 Myths about Squarespace that Could Hurt Your Business (if You Believe Them)
Myth: "My last website designer said Squarespace limited their creativity and wasn't as functional."
Truth: Squarespace limited that website designer's income because the client no longer relied on them for maintenance or hosting. Freedom to the clients!
To quote Squarespace, "You can customize any template’s style to make it your own and showcase your site’s content. However, templates are like your body’s DNA—there’s a lot you can change about your site's appearance and functionality, but there are style parameters and special features built into each template that can’t be changed. These parameters are carefully chosen by our Design Team to help you create a beautiful, professional-looking site without hiring a designer."
In short, this means it is pretty darn difficult to screw up your Squarespace site. The parameters they set in place are much like the baby gate at the top of the stairs. You don't have to panic when things get iffy.
Myth: "Squarespace websites have bad SEO."
Truth: Squarespace makes it kindergarten-level easy to have good SEO to a certain extent, but as with anything in business, you still need to know what you're doing or hire someone who does.
Myth: "Squarespace websites don't integrate with very many outside tools."
Truth: You can connect your Squarespace website to any social media account and all of the top online storage banks, such as Google Drive or Dropbox. You can also connect Amazon affiliate tracking, Mailchimp, Instagram shopping, and a host of other profit-generating tools. These integrations are native, which means you don't need to install any special code to make them work.
If you are ready to have a beautiful website that grows with your home industry business, you don't need to wait. Check out one of our professionally designed Squarespace templates, or ask us about creating a completely custom website for you. My team has designed 100+ websites on Squarespace, and clients tell us our process is surprisingly effortless.
Resources
Browse our website templates — specific to interior design, staging, organizing, and window treatments
