Which Website Platform is Right for Me?
Squarespace vs. WordPress | Common Considerations
Choosing a website platform is hard.
Even scary.
Even more scary if you don’t have any prior experience choosing a platform.
Nearly all of my clients express confusion with making a choice, but I’ve found that it often comes down to a few considerations.
Admin simplicity
Editing simplicity
Customizability & 3rd Party Plugins
File types and media storage
Admin Simplicity
Squarespace is great if you want to have a platform that contains your domain, hosting, and website management in one place. Yes, you might pay a bit more for this, but it could be worth it to have a single login, fewer financial transactions for your site, basic analytics, and a platform that automatically gives you SSL.
WordPress websites often have more complexity on the admin side of things. It’s not uncommon to have your domain name and hosting to have a login (or multiple logins), a login to a server, and, finally, a login to edit your site in WordPress.
Editing Simplicity
Website creation and editing might never be as simple as we want it to be, but Squarespace does a very good job of keeping things simple without removing all of your options to be creative and expressive. The bulk of editing a site can be very simple with little concern of “breaking” your site.
WordPress can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. The complexity is often determined by the theme you choose, the interactions and organization of page structures, and plugins.
Customizability & Plugins
Squarespace can be plenty customizable for a basic website. If you’re needing repeated elements, want more control of how your website looks between various screen sizes, or need to use 3rd party plugins or code, then the platform might not be the best choice… but keep in mind, the lack of customizability is also the strength of Squarespace. It’s hard to break it and it, typically, will look great on any screen size.
WordPress can give you a lot of customization for your website. You can start with a simple theme or even build every page from scratch. The more customized you make it, the greater your chances to either break something, or lessen the design or usability among various screen sizes. However, the ability to use plugins to replicate components can make a complex site much easier to build.
File Types & Media Storage
Squarespace has come a long way in meeting the varied needs of website users and managers. But the platform is still nowhere near as useful as WordPress when it comes to storing and managing various media. With most of Squarespace you will not have a media library and the media you load into your design is for that single design component only. If you want to repeat an image on another page or in a different size somewhere on the same page, then you’ll likely need to upload it again.
WordPress is the clear winner here. In contrast to Squarespace, you will have a library of all of your media files to access, place, and modify at will.