Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder ideal for beginners with no design or coding skills who want to build their own websites.
Already popular for its customizable Squarespace templates, it has recently launched its interactive design system, Squarespace Blueprint, which makes website customizations and personalizations easier.
Learn more about Squarespace Blueprint as I enumerate its pros and cons, Squarespace plans and pricing, and if Blueprint is a worthwhile tool.
Key Takeaways
- Squarespace Blueprint is an interactive design system that makes website building easier through a five-step design process.
- The design system breaks down the website building process so you can customize and personalize your website quickly.
- The Blueprint system is available through Squarespace’s Personal, Business and Commerce (Basic and Advanced) plans.
- Squarespace Blueprint is available with Squarespace plans and pricing options, which cost $23 to $65 per month.
What is Squarespace?
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder widely recognized for its professional-looking templates and easy-to-use interface.
It is a hosted solution with services aimed at helping small business owners with no web development skills build and maintain their own websites.
With over a hundred responsive all-purpose Squarespace templates and unlimited storage and bandwidth, the platform makes creating and maintaining a website easy.
With the recent release of its guided design system called Squarespace Blueprint, creating a website has become even easier.
What is Squarespace Blueprint?
Squarespace Blueprint is a new interactive design system that lets you create websites from the ground up using professionally-designed layouts and styling choices.
With over 1.4 billion design combinations, Blueprint is an interactive, five-step design guide that lets you customize and personalize your website until it is ready for launch.
Ideal for beginners, Squarespace Blueprint helps you create new websites with just your desktop, whether or not you have used Squarespace before.
To use Squarespace Blueprint, create an account and complete the five-step process consisting of the following:
- Providing basic information about your site;
- Building a home page;
- Defining navigation;
- Choosing colour schemes; and,
- Selecting font pairings.
Once the custom template is complete, you can adjust and personalize it to your preferences.
Squarespace Blueprint Features
The following are among the most remarkable features of Squarespace Blueprint:
- An interactive design experience that features a five-step process that lets you choose from real-time design choices that appear on your custom website;
- Handpicked layout and styling options that provide professional-looking layouts, colour palettes and font choices that offer both modern and traditional styles;
- Expert guidance from Squarespace that provides you with professional direction to help you set up your website;
- Live previews that show updates as you create your website;
- A progress bar that tracks your steps; and,
- A system that converts your preferences into a fully functional website that you can keep customizing until you are ready to publish it online.
Is Squarespace Free?
Many beginners ask if they can create a website on Squarespace at no cost. The question comes as no surprise to me since there are website-building tools that offer free plans.
While Squarespace is among the more established names in the industry, some individuals looking to build a website prefer to assess its suitability for their needs before they shell out their hard-earned money.
So, is Squarespace free?
Squarespace is not free, but it offers a 14-day free trial, so you can try it first and see if it is a good option for you. The free trial provides access to several premium features.
If you go with the paid service, there are various plans you can choose from that will suit your website needs and budget.
Squarespace Plans and Pricing
Below are the different Squarespace plans and pricing options that cater to varied customer needs:
- Monthly
- Personal – $23/mo
- Business – $33/mo
- Commerce Basic – $36/mo
- Commerce Advanced – $65/mo
- Annual
- Personal – $16/mo
- Business – $23/mo
- Commerce Basic – $27/mo
- Commerce Advanced – $49/mo
The plans come with a wide array of features. Here are the Squarespace plans explained:
Personal
The Personal Plan is best for personal websites that are not related to e-commerce. Numerous template choices and a custom domain are available.
The plan includes a host of other features, such as:
- Mobile-optimized websites
- Templates for every need
- Free custom domain
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Drag-and-drop editor
- Two contributors
- Squarespace extensions
- Custom merch
- Basic website metrics
- SEO features for site visibility
- Audience management
- Video Maker
- 30 minutes of video storage
- SSL security
Business
The Business Plan is appropriate if you want to sell online but are not operating a full-fledged online store.
The plan features include the following:
- Everything in the Personal plan
- Advanced website analytics
- Unlimited contributors
- Fully integrated e-commerce capabilities
- Complete customization with CSS and Javascript
- Promotional pop-ups and banners
- Professional email from Google
- Checkout on your domain
- Selling unlimited products
Commerce Basic
Ideal for online stores that are fully operational, the Basic Commerce plan provides tools for better store management and selling on social media.
Its features include:
- Everything in the Business plan
- Powerful merchandising
- Point of sale
- Product reviews
- Customer accounts
- Advanced merchandising features
- Selling on Facebook and Instagram
- Limited availability labels
Commerce Advanced
This plan helps boost your e-commerce sales with features that encourage customers to purchase from your online store.
The plan features include:
- Everything in the Commerce Basic plan
- Advanced shipping
- Advanced discounting
- Selling subscriptions
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Commerce APIs
Advantages of Squarespace Blueprint
- Simplicity and ease of use
- Ready-made templates
- No coding skills required
- Significant e-commerce features with most plans
- 14-day free trial
- SEO and marketing tools
- An all-in-one solution from web hosting to selling online
- Low maintenance
- Drag-and-drop editor
- Squarespace customer service through email, Facebook Messenger and live chat
Downsides of Squarespace Blueprint
- Limited customizability
- Absence of auto-save features
- Fewer extensions and plugins compared to other website builders
- Occasional software crashes and functional issues
- Switching templates requires starting from scratch
- No phone support
- 3% transaction fees on all sales when using the Business Plan
Squarespace Alternatives
Squarespace is one of the best website builders today that makes it simple and easy for users to create and maintain their websites. But it is not always the perfect solution for everyone.
If you are looking for excellent Squarespace alternatives, the top two are Wix and Shopify.
Squarespace vs Wix
Squarespace vs Wix is not an uncommon comparison since they are two of the biggest names in website building. While they share that reputation, they have striking differences between them.
Squarespace provides professionally-curated options, while Wix leans towards providing more customization capabilities.
Wix has an unstructured editor where you can position elements anywhere, while Squarespace is more structured and lets you arrange the elements into rows and columns.
In terms of storage capability, Wix users have a maximum of 50GB, while Squarespace offers unlimited storage.
When it comes to backing up content, Wix has set it on automatic, whereas Squarespace requires manual backing up of content.
Both platforms have the primary features that give website builders what they need to build websites from scratch.
Squarespace vs Shopify
On the surface, Squarespace and Shopify seem entirely similar as both let you create a website without design or coding knowledge and set up an online store to sell products.
Squarespace, however, is a general website builder, while Shopify is an entire platform that lets you build an online store.
But as Squarespace has added e-commerce solutions to its features and Shopify has included more content-creation capabilities, their similarities have grown.
So, the question now is: Which one is more suitable for your needs?
When faced with the Squarespace vs Shopify dilemma, you must determine if you want to create a content-driven website or build an online store.
Squarespace is more appropriate if you want to develop an informative website using tools for design and content management.
In creating an online store, Shopify is more fitting, owing to its heritage as an online-store-building platform with an extensive e-commerce feature set not fully available at Squarespace.
Shopify e-commerce tools include dropshipping and inventory management options, third-party app integrations that enhance store functionality, advanced point-of-sale features, and broad payment gateway choices.
Is Squarespace Blueprint Worth It?
Squarespace Blueprint is suitable for users without technical proficiency who need a simple and easy-to-use website builder with basic e-commerce features.
If you are looking for a tool that helps you create a website without seeking professional help, choosing Squarespace Blueprint may be more beneficial for you.
Everything you need to build an e-commerce store is available, from building an optimized website to domains, hosting, analytics, merchandising, shipping, discounting, etc.
But if you want advanced development features and more customizability, or if your e-commerce site is already in the growth stage, you may want to look at Squarespace alternatives.
The platform has limited customizations and choices of plugins and extensions, so you may look for more than what Squarespace offers.
FAQs
Squarespace is not free, but it offers a 14-day free trial to let you try the platform before signing up for the service. It provides monthly and annual options for its Personal, Business, Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced plans.
Squarespace offers the option to create your template through its user-friendly platform. To build one, you only need to supply the title of your site, set up your homepage, add pages, pick out your colour palette, and select your font pairing.
Start by choosing a website template from the numerous choices with pre-built pages featuring various content and layouts. Customize and personalize the template to fit your style and brand. Choose and secure a custom domain name and gradually add your website content.
Creating a website at Squarespace typically starts with a template, which is the starting point for developing the design of your website. How the templates work depends on the version of your site. Visit the Template comparison charts to understand the features of the different template offerings.
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