When you are building a website it is quite the undertaking. You are building a new piece of the online real estate. This can be very exciting but sometimes people also find it scary. If you are worried about which platform you should use for your website, we are going to go over the pros and cons of Squarespace and WordPress.
How Flexible Is It?
If you are a web developer that wants to have a lot of options, you’ve probably looked into WordPress and noticed that there are thousands of plugins available for you to install on your site for just about any need that you have. Some of them are free and some of them are paid. Anyone is able to create plugins for WordPress since it is a free and open source software so this allows you to have a great deal of flexibility which many would consider a pro. On the other hand, the ability for anyone to create plugins is a con since there is no one to check to make sure that these plugins are of a high caliber.
When you look at Squarespace, it is not an open source software and it is not free. You will have to work with what is within their space and only their team of in-house developers is able to add features to their platform. You may not like the lack of flexibility, but you can be sure that everything has been properly tested before it comes out to the end user.
Is It Easy to Use?
Whether you are a beginner or you are an expert, it is still nice when a platform is easy to use. WordPress can be easy to use, but there are still some technical parts to it and a learning curve. There are a lot of great tutorials that are available and with the amazing community support, you may find you want to switch from squarespace to WordPress.
If you need to make things easy on yourself with WordPress, you can get a WordPress page builder plugin. There are different ones that will allow you to have the drag and drop frontend editing mode much like what you would see on Squarespace. On Squarespace that is something that is included. It is easy to use but still, there is a lot of flexibility that has been lost.
Do You Have Good Support?
If you are using WordPress, you are unlikely to get a lot of support from WordPress, but there are many different forums, videos, and community members that are more than happy to help each other out through the various challenges that happen. The chances are that whatever problem you are facing, you can go to Google and find a list of answers that will allow you to get what you need to fix the site and continue on about your day.
Squarespace, on the other hand, has vowed to give you customer support within one hour after you’ve requested it. If you feel like you are going to need a lot of handholding, you might want to go with Squarespace.
What Kind of Maintenance Is Required?
If you are worried that you aren’t going to be able to take care of maintenance with your sites, you should know that there isn’t a lot to do with either one of these platforms. The WordPress platform is being updated regularly whenever a fix is needed which is good, but it also could be a problem for some of the plugins or the theme that you have installed. Make sure to keep a check if you are using WordPress.
Squarespace is updated only through the development team and you won’t have to do the updates yourself so there is nothing to worry about. Complete newbies might find Squarespace to be a safer place to play, but if you want to be able to create a website that is SEO friendly and easy to customize, you are likely to want to go with the WordPress CMS.
What’s This Going to Cost?
While the WordPress software is free, you still have to pay for the hosting for your site so that you can have the site up. Depending on what your hosting package is, that could be anywhere from $3, $149 and up.
When you use Squarespace, you are able to have options to look into anywhere from $16 to $46. Their customer support is very good so if having access to their 24/7 support is helpful when you are building your website.
In the long run, you are going to have to pay around the same amount for WordPress as you are for Squarespace, it is just going to come out in different ways. You have to figure out which of the platforms is the best for you and go for it.
Conclusion
If you want to have more control over your site and be able to build out what you want without having to worry about someone looking in on you then WordPress might be the ideal option for you. On the other hand, if you need someone looking in on you and you to want 24/7 support then Squarespace might be the option that you want to go with. Weigh the pros and cons and decide which one helps you get to your goals fastest.
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