Squarespace is an all-in-one hosting platform while WordPress comes in two different formats: a self-hosted version and an all-in-one version similar to Squarespace.

Deciding between these two platforms and whether to choose WordPress.org or WordPress.com can be difficult.

In this post, I compare Squarespace to WordPress, primarily how WordPress.com’s all-in-one platform compares to Squarespace’s.

WordPress vs Squarespace: Overview

On the surface, WordPress and Squarespace are nearly identical in terms of what they offer.

Both platforms offer cloud hosting, access to premium themes, drag-and-drop editing, managed security and updates, ecommerce features, and even their own AI website builders.

Deciding which option is best for you ultimately comes down to which platform you find easier to use and what kind of site you need to build.

To put it simply: Squarespace is a fantastic platform for simple blogs, websites and online stores, but WordPress, even WordPress.com, is much more scalable.

WordPress is also better for the preservation of your site.

Squarespace gets a bad rap for deleting websites, but the truth is almost all web hosts proclaim their right to terminate accounts or remove content in their terms of service.

The difference with WordPress is that you can take a backup of your site and install it on another web hosting server. This includes migrating a WordPress.com site to a self-hosted WordPress server.

You can’t do that with a Squarespace site since the platform doesn’t exist outside of Squarespace’s own environment. You have to completely rebuild your site’s design on another platform (you can export content).

As for costs, WordPress.com is far cheaper in the long run. Not only does it have a free plan, its premium plans start at $4/month (billed annually) whereas Squarespace’s starts at $19/month (billed annually).

However, access to real-time backups and one-click restoration are only available on WordPress.com’s Business plan or higher, which costs $25/month (billed annually).

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: Know the Difference

WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two different versions of the same content management system (CMS).

The difference is WordPress.com hosts and manages your site for you while WordPress.org requires you to set up your own hosting and manage security and updates yourself.

This is why it’s better to compare Squarespace to WordPress.com.

WordPress.org is much more flexible, but it’s a lot more difficult to set up and manage.

And while you used to not have access to third-party themes and plugins on sites built with WordPress.com, you can now find almost every major theme and plugin WordPress has to offer in WordPress.com’s directory.

If you want the flexibility WordPress.org offers without the hassle, use a managed WordPress host or a WordPress maintenance service.

Use Cases

• Squarespace – Simple websites, blogs and ecommerce sites.
• WordPress.com – Simple websites, blogs and ecommerce sites that grow quickly or experience traffic fluctuations.
• WordPress.org – Any type of website, especially high-traffic sites. Great choice for simple sites if you want more flexibility in hosting, server configurations or technical SEO.

Squarespace is the most suitable platform if you want to build a simple website, blog or online store.

It handles hosting and maintenance for you. To design your site, you import one of the platform’s templates, which features a complete design. All you need to do is replace the template’s dummy content with your own and adjust its styles to your liking.

WordPress is a popular choice for building simple websites, blogs and online stores. However, it’s also capable of creating membership sites, online course platforms, forums, directories, wikis, knowledge bases, social media platforms and any other type of website you can think of.

However, this flexibility is mostly attributed to self-hosted WordPress sites.

Creating these types of websites with WordPress.com is dependent on certain themes or plugins being available on the platform.

Which Option Should You Choose?

Choosing between these platforms depends on what you need them for and how much time you’re willing to put in to learn a new platform.

Fortunately, they’re all free to try. You can even try the self-hosted version of WordPress for free with free trials from hosts like Kinsta and Cloudways or by hosting WordPress locally with an application like Local by Flywheel.

Squarespace is more straightforward to learn because it features a single design system that’s used by every template created for the platform.

WordPress has a default design system known as the block editor, but there are several other systems available as well, including the theme-building capabilities available in plugins like Elementor and Beaver Builder or themes like Astra and OceanWP that allow you to choose your own builder.

More choices means more flexibility, but it also complicates things for beginners. All in all, while WordPress is more scalable, it’s not as easy to learn.

On the flipside, WordPress is cheaper to get started with.

However, I should point out that if you want access to real-time backups and one-click restorations, you need to pay for WordPress.com’s Business plan at minimum, which costs $25/month if you pay annually or $40/month if you pay monthly.

You can also launch a simple self-hosted WordPress site with Cloudways for as little as $12/month.

The choice is simple if you plan on growing your site quickly, launching an ecommerce site that will likely experience traffic fluctuations or worry about losing access to your site. WordPress is better equipped to deal with these issues.

Managed WordPress Hosting: The Best of Both Worlds

Managed WordPress hosting provides extra services for WordPress users that makes maintaining a WordPress site much easier, especially for beginners.

It allows you to use the open-source version of WordPress (WordPress.org) while receiving many of the same benefits available with Squarespace and WordPress.com, such as cloud hosting, built-in security, and automated backups and updates.

It’s more expensive than shared hosting, and you’ll still be responsible for designing your site and maintaining its content, but it simplifies the more complex parts of managing a self-hosted WordPress site.

Popular managed WordPress hosts include Kinsta, WP Engine, ScalaHosting, Liquid Web, Pressable, Flywheel and Hostinger.

View our pricing page to learn how we combine WordPress maintenance and cloud hosting into wpXPRESS’ service offerings.

WordPress vs Squarespace: Comparisons

I’m going to break this section down into several different categories:

• Ease of use
• Setup, maintenance and security
• SEO and performance
• Design and customization
• Ecommerce
• Customer support
• Cost

Ease of Use

Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor is much easier to use to design web pages than the WordPress block editor.

While the block editor has more features for blog posts, it’s not as easy to use for designing web pages as Squarespace’s Fluid Engine or page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder.

Fortunately, Elementor and Beaver Builder are available whether you use WordPress.com or the self-hosted version of WordPress.

Setup, Maintenance and Security

Squarespace is easy to set up, and it requires no maintenance. The platform handles server updates, backups and security for you.

WordPress can be just as easy to set up and maintain, but it’s entirely dependent on which version of WordPress you decide to use and which host you sign up for.

WordPress as a whole is generally less secure than Squarespace due to it being an open-source platform that allows you to install third-party plugins. However, as long as you choose plugins carefully and keep them up to date, WordPress can be quite secure.

SEO and Performance

Squarespace and WordPress are both SEO friendly right out of the box. WordPress, particularly self-hosted WordPress sites, give you more flexibility when it comes to technical SEO configurations.

Both platforms are also capable of creating fast web pages by default.

However, if your Squarespace site becomes slower over time, you won’t have as many options as you would with WordPress when it comes to optimizing it.

Design and Customization

WordPress, especially self-hosted WordPress, has more design and customization options by far. This is due to the massive collection of tens of thousands of third-party themes and plugins created by the WordPress community.

However, Squarespace has enough templates, features and settings for you to achieve the designs you’re looking for.

Fortunately, both platforms have ways for you to completely design websites without code.

Ecommerce

Squarespace has nearly every feature you could ever need to create an online store, but there’s just no denying the power behind and level of support for WordPress’ primary ecommerce plugin WooCommerce.

Plus, WordPress is better for scalability and control.

Customer Support

Squarespace offers 24/7 customer support that covers anything related to Squarespace and official Squarespace templates.

However, Squarespace will not offer support for issues related to custom code or third-party templates and apps.

WordPress.com only offers 24/7 priority support on the Business plan or higher. Like Squarespace, support does not cover help with issues related to third-party themes or plugins.

Support is pretty complicated for self-hosted WordPress sites. It’ll come from your host, the developers of the themes and plugins you install, and the WordPress community rather than WordPress themselves.

Cost

Squarespace pricing starts at $19/month if you pay annually or $25/month if you pay monthly.

WordPress.com pricing starts at $4/month if you pay annually or $9/month if you pay monthly.

Pricing drops to $3.25/month if you pay for two years upfront and $2.75/month if you pay for three.

It should also be noted that these prices are only available for your first year. They increase after that, but only by a few bucks a month.

WordPress.org is free, but you’ll need to pay for hosting.

Third-party templates/themes and apps/plugins will cost extra.