While we can appreciate that a debate on content management systems wouldn’t stir up much in most small business owners, it certainly gets us going! When small businesses are looking to create their first website or move across to something new and better, the competition that we hear come up most regularly is Wordpress.

As far as CMS’s go, you’d be hard pressed to find two more dissimilar than Squarespace and Wordpress. Truly the chalk and cheese of DIY website design. It should be no surprise that when it comes to our favourite, we go Squarespace every time.

In this post we’ll be listing out all the reasons why (and there are plenty!) we believe Squarespace is a much better tool for small business owners to use for their websites. Before we get stuck in, let’s introduce our CMS competitors.

What is Wordpress?

Wordpress is a free to download and use (aka ‘open source’) web development software. Unfortunately, this rarely means that any websites created with Wordpress are actually free - it’s just that the vast majority of costs are hidden from users as first glance. Not a particularly strong start.

While it's possible to host your own website, the vast majority of small business owners lack the time, technical ability or server size to do so. Instead, like most normal people, they’ll end up paying for their hosting which can cost anywhere from around from £10 per month.

Once you’ve set up your hosting, you’ll need to set up your email and domain name registration. Of course, these costs are additional, or you can opt for a paid package from a third-party host like Google or Microsoft. Already those ‘free website’ costs are racking up.

Unlike Squarespace, Wordpress templates (more commonly known as themes) are incredibly basic and don’t include all the necessary features. Instead, these additional features like SEO tools, contact forms or blog set ups are managed by a series of different plug-ins that you download from different developers and install onto your Wordpress Theme. While it’s possible to download these for free, good quality plug ins usually cost extra money and you may even need to pay a subscription to use them. Plus, nightmarishly, the constant updating and management of these plugins is not the developers responsibility - it’s yours! What this means is you have to stay on top of updates for potentially 10s or 100s of different plugins, any one of which could break your site if handled incorrectly. Thanks but no thanks.

Squarespace on the other hand…

Squarespace have never claimed to be a free platform. You pay a monthly subscription to use Squarespace and this can range from as little as £12 a month to up to £35 a month depending on the features you need. While these monthly subscriptions may seem a lot at first, with the time & energy you’d save by not buying heaps of plug ins and managing everything yourself (like with Wordpress) it’s likely most businesses would save money using Squarespace.

You can buy your domain and email address directly through Squarespace, and hosting is included in your monthly subscription. Plus, all features like SEO tools, contact forms etc are handled within the platform - not by third parties. This makes your website far easier to manage, as everything is safe in one place.

While it’s possible to create a more feature packed website using Wordpress and their endless plugin library, for the needs of most business owners, the tools of even the cheapest Squarespace subscription are more than enough. Not to mention that sweet, sweet peace of mind you get from not having to manage everything yourself!

Now that you’ve got a brief overview of the two systems, let’s get into the 10 reasons we prefer Squarespace over Wordpress for small business owners.

Squarespace requires no custom code to create a beautiful website

Squarespace offers its users an intuitive, clean drag & drop interface that makes creating and editing pages a breeze. Unlike Wordpress, who will give you basic layouts through themes, but requires code to edit them. Everything you see in the Squarespace template store has been created without the need for code, and the design options are endless!

Squarespace websites are easier to customise with your branding

Squarespace uses a fantastic system called Site Styles to brand your template with colours and fonts. This allows you to choose your colour palette and apply different combinations to Colour Themes that are then applied universally across your website. While this takes a little bit of time to set up initially, once your Site Styles are ready to go they are applied across all content - even new pages - automatically! All without any code or clunky editor plugins like you need for Wordpress.

Wordpress is overcomplicated for the needs of most small business owner

Do the huge library of plugins and software add-ons mean that any number of complex websites are possible using Wordpress? Absolutely. Is the level of stress required to figure out these plugins and keep them updated worth it for most small business owners? Absolutely not. The ecommerce, SEO and marketing functionality included as standard within Squarespace are more than enough to create a beautiful website that performs well on search engines and is easy to use for your customers. The rest is just noise.

Out of date software or plugins used by Wordpress can pose a security risk

Remember we mentioned all those plug ins? And how the responsibility of keeping them up to date falls on your shoulders? Well, just in case that’s not enough of a headache, falling behind on your updates leaves your Wordpress website wide open to hackers. If you’re storing customer data and not correctly updating the 18 different plug ins your site needs to function regularly, you’re leaving your business and customers at massive risk of a data breach. Squarespace manages all this updating and security for you without ever getting you involved.

Squarespace's mobile optimisation features are effective & easy to use

One of the biggest impactors of your website’s SEO is it’s mobile responsiveness. If your website doesn’t work just as well (daresay, even better) than it does on desktop, then your website isn’t considered accessible and your search engine ranking will suffer. Thankfully, Squarespace includes an on-page mobile editor that makes creating a mobile friendly site a piece of cake. There are even clever hacks you can use for an improved mobile experience if you do fancy playing with some simple CSS.

Squarespace sites are easier for designers & developers than Wordpress

We’ve already talked about Wordpress’ build-a-bear approach to web design (if all the bear’s limbs came from different shops that is) but we can’t stress enough how complex this makes managing your site. If you did ever want to pass your Wordpress website over to a designer or developer, they need to be familiar with all the various specific plug ins you use. Squarespace on the other hand is the same platform-wide. Any Squarespace designer worth their salt will understand the back end of your website as well as they know their own.

Squarespace offers a range of additional business features all in one place

If you did want to grow your business with additional features like courses, project management or ecommerce tools, you don’t need to resort to the millions of Wordpress plugins to make it happen. Squarespace offer their own range of paid extras, and they’re all helpfully handled within the main Squarespace platform. That means you can have access to all of these amazing tools all in one place with no worries about updates or security risks.

Squarespace websites are incredibly easy to style with CSS if you choose

While no CSS or code is required to create a gorgeous website using Squarespace, you can absolutely include it if you choose to. Additional CSS styling is super easy to add to Squarespace sites, and the great thing about working with CSS is that it will never damage or ‘break’ your website! This makes it a really low risk option for extra styling. These additional options make Squarespace one of the most customisable website platforms out there.

Squarespace offers greater consistency of platform and features compared to Wordpress

Unlike Wordpress, where each plugin and feature is created by a different developer with zero link to Wordpress as a platform, Squarespace designs and builds everything related to the platform ‘in-house’. This means there’s a much greater consistency of design and functionality, making the learning curve for new Squarespace websites much less intimidating.

Squarespace sites come with in-built analytics that cover small business essentials

Is it possible to get some of the most in-depth, data-heavy SEO analytics software on open-source platforms like Wordpress? Yes. Does the average small business owner need even a quarter of those features? It’s very unlikely. Squarespace includes SEO Analytics features with all plans on business or above and it includes everything you need to make the most of your website. Track your traffic, sales, acquisition sources and more using Squarespace’s own Analytics software. If you need something more in-depth, you can also include Google Analytics in your Squarespace website which leaves the bells and whistles SEO plugins of Wordpress obsolete!