4 Reasons to Design Your Website on Squarespace
So many CMS choices, so little time…
Okay, if you're been researching a bunch of different websites & are trying to figure out which one is perfect for you to host your website (and you're tired of feeling like your head is going to explode) then this is the post for you!
As a little background, I've built sites with Wordpress using the Elementor plugin and with Webflow. While both WordPress and Webflow have their pros & cons as Content Management Systems (CMS), I ultimately settled on Squarespace because everything was just easier. That's not to say that I turned to Squarespace to take shortcuts, but I did end up on Squarespace to save time (and headaches).
After being on Squarespace for a bit now, here are the main reasons I see it being beneficial over other platforms.
1) Squarespace Support
I really cannot stress enough how important it is to know that there's a support team that has your back if things go wrong with your website. Especially if you're someone who never wants to look at any coding on your site.
I've worked with Squarespace support numerous times for clients’ website domain transfers and they've always made it a breeze. Even though I know how to connect CNAMEs and redirect DNS points, I always double check to make sure I'm not doing something wrong during the process that will lose my client's site in the ether.
Even though you're probably in a different situation and are only worried about your own site, this is still a major plus and can really ease the burden if you're ever worried about breaking something on your website.
2) A Small Learning Curve for Designing Pages (Relatively Speaking…)
Although Squarespace definitely has a learning curve for how to design pages, just like all websites, it's arguably the simplest to get the hang of. If you're watching Youtube tutorials to learn how to build your own site, this will help to lessen the amount of time that it takes you to get your site up and running.
Even if you're working with a web designer, it's still advantageous to be on Squarespace. That's because once the launch of your site is complete, you most likely don't want to be paying the web designer more money to take care of your site for you.
Having the ability to make small edits to your site after the designer hands it off to you and makes you the owner is a HUGE advantage of Squarespace. You might need to contact the designer again in the future for major changes, but you should be able to make small copy or photo changes on your site without having the fear that you'll break something.
3) Easy to Design for Mobile Pages
Alrighty, so you spent all this time designing your site for desktop & it looks fantastic. You're feeling on top of the world, you're ready to publish, move on with your life, and finally get back to your business.
But then you look at the mobile version of your site... and you realize that you're nowhere near done because everything is kinda messy.
The ease of mobile site design is one of the main things that sold me on Squarespace.
I'd struggled on other design platforms to get everything set up on mobile correctly once I had it exactly where I wanted it on desktop. For other builders, when you move something on mobile, it moves on the desktop version too, so it's a constant back and forth of pulling things around to where you want them to be.
With Squarespace though, it can't get much simpler. It's all click and drag, and it doesn't affect your desktop version when you move things around on the mobile version.
4) Everything is in One Place
Domain Hosting
If you decide to purchase a Squarespace plan, you're also able to purchase your domain name through them (and it's usually free for the first year!)
This goes back to the support point that I covered earlier in the post. If there's a problem for any reason, you're only dealing with one support company and they can see all your information in one place, which makes it far easier for technical support to fix your problem.
Quick story: Once upon a time, I was hosting a travel blog on a certain CMS. I'd purchased a design tool plugin because I hated the free templates that came with CMS. In addition to that, I also "owned" my domain name through a different site. So I was with one company for the CMS, one for the design template, and one for the hosting. That's three different support teams that I had to interact with when my site suddenly went down & I had no idea why.
All of that is to say that it made my life much harder than it actually needed to be whenever anything went wrong.
Types of Businesses that Squarespace Supports
Squarespace also holds everything you need for a business in a simple spot. Blogging, e-commerce, modern clean templates, and forms all play nicely together. That's a massive starting point for most businesses before you even have to start worrying about mixing in any kind of 3rd party integrations.
Overall - Why I Chose Squarespace for my Website
With the ease of page design, hosting the site, and fantastic customer support, the choice for me is Squarespace everytime.
Are there still challenges and learning curves with building a Squarespace site? Of course. Those obstacles will be there with every site.
But having the support team to turn to for issues is enough to sell me on Squarespace all by itself.