In this brief comparison of WordPress and Squarespace, we’ll explore key differences in customisation, ease of use, pricing, and core features. Whether you’re creating a blog, a business site, or an e-commerce platform, this guide will help you determine which website builder best suits your needs in 2025.
Table of Contents
Which platform will define your online presence in 2025, WordPress or Squarespace? In today’s dynamic era of website development, these two platforms have emerged as top contenders for individuals and businesses aiming to build a professional, standout website. Choosing between them isn’t easy, especially if you’re focused on delivering a unique design and a compelling user experience.
Themeisleblog shares that, as of 2025, WordPress powers approximately 43.4% of all websites, over 530 million globally. In contrast, Squarespace holds about 3.0% of all websites and a 3.3% share of the CMS market. Squarespace, meanwhile, is gaining fame among creative individuals, such as Heather B. Armstrong (Dooce), who has managed a deeply personal and visually stunning blog that captures the attention of millions of readers.
In this article, we have provided a detailed comparison of WordPress and Squarespace, so you can make an informed decision about which to choose in 2025. It doesn’t matter if you want to make a blog, run a small business, or only post social content for your friends. Still, knowing what makes them different will help you select the platform that fits your needs.
Key Highlights of The Article:
- WordPress is a versatile platform that offers flexibility and endless customisation options, but it needs more technical knowledge.
- Squarespace facilitates a user-friendly, all-in-one solution with astonishing templates, but it is less flexible than WordPress.
- WordPress is a superior choice for users who want full control over their website, while Squarespace is ideal for beginners or those who need a quick setup.
- Both platforms have potent blogging qualities, but WordPress leads in terms of plugins and customisation for blogging.
- Regarding SEO, WordPress is a bit more favoured because of its customisation capabilities.
WordPress or Squarespace – An Overview
Both WordPress and Squarespace are powerful website builders that cater to a diverse range of users. However, their approaches to website creation differ significantly. According to the CHS agency report, WordPress is a popular, free, and open-source content management system (CMS) used by over 40% of all websites on the Internet. It’s incredibly flexible, easy to customise, and is capable of managing your small blog to massive, complex sites. “WordPress requires you to have some ‘how to use a computer’ skills, unless you use a host like WP Engine.” Writing themes or plugins is admittedly not for beginners, though.
On the other hand, Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder designed for user friendliness. It includes pre-built templates, built-in hosting, and easy-to-use tools that make it possible for almost anyone to build a website without requiring any coding. Squarespace is known for its beautiful templates, which make it the perfect platform for creatives and anyone who wants an attractive website without needing to tinker with design.
Students are often tasked with assignments that require in-depth research on web design, user experience, and usability. They find it challenging to complete their homework within the given deadlines. Even top students struggle to complete these tasks on time. In such cases, an assignment writing service, such as The Academic Papers UK, is highly recommended. This service provider offers well-researched papers that enable students to manage their workload effectively while ensuring high-quality submissions.
WordPress or Squarespace – Features Overview
Here are some comparison features of WordPress and Squarespace mentioned below. First of all, we will go through the features of WordPress:
WordPress Features:
1. Open-Source:
WordPress, the free content management system, allows you to customise your website at your own will. Open-source software benefits both parties because the code is freely available to anyone, allowing you to tailor it to meet your specific requirements. WordPress has become one of the most popular content management systems worldwide.
A study by W3Techs estimates that WordPress is used by just over 35% of all the websites on the internet, a testament to its strong knowledge base and community-developed system. It is also open-sourced, which promotes innovation and development by thousands of developers. Its plugin and theme capabilities ensure users will be able to build unique sites based on their specific targets.
2. Themes & Templates:
WordPress is a great choice for any type of website, and thousands of themes are pre-built for you. These themes can be modified in WordPress’ theme editor as well as by customising CSS and HTML. According to a study by HubSpot, 94% of a user’s first impressions are related to web design, so the look of a theme is key to making a good first impression.
WordPress themes come with built-in freedom, allowing you to choose from the design options that resonate with your style. WordPress themes offer the flexibility to suit many different tastes, provide a jump start and allow users to customise every last detail.
3. Plugins:
With more than 58,000 plugins, WordPress offers a wide variety of plugins to help expand and improve the software, ranging from SEO tools to social media and robust security features. WPMU DEV’s research reveals that in all areas of web development, plugins are available to help enhance the platform.
For example, an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO optimises content, while the WooCommerce plugin supports E-commerce integration. WordPress plugins have transformed the platform into a comprehensive, all-in-one tool for all types of users, enabling them to optimise site performance, user experience, and search engine rankings, without requiring any coding.
4. Customisation:
In WordPress, there are a plethora of customisation options, but users can also modify the code of the website in the background. That makes it possible to build very customised sites that are perfect for a particular user.
A study by Smashing Magazine suggests that one reason employers love WordPress is that it gives them the freedom to publish what they want, when they want. Developers have access to PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript if they want to tailor the backend, but users with less technical skill can still use page builders to design the site visually. Whether personalising the theme or adding custom tools, WordPress makes it possible for users to provide a unique experience to their readers.
5. Content Management:
The key feature of WordPress is content management. It comes with a user-friendly dashboard where users can create, edit, and manage content comfortably. According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 58% of marketers generate content marketing, and it’s the primary key to their marketing success.
WordPress is a user-friendly content management system. It enables businesses and bloggers to add fresh content to new blogs on various topics, such as the latest dissertation topics in Marketing. It also offers features for managing posts and pages, organising content by category, and has a user-friendly content editor. It makes the process more efficient, allowing for constantly updated, dynamic websites. This is why it’s so popular among sites that update with regular content.
Squarespace Features:
While discussing the comparison features of WordPress and Squarespace, we will now examine the features of Squarespace in detail:
1. All-in-One Solution:
An all-in-one platform that combines hosting, design, and content management to create your website, Squarespace simplifies the web design process. A report published by Statista described how over 2 million websites were using Squarespace, proving the all-in-one method to be a success.
The fact that Squarespace is an all-in-one platform means you don’t have to obtain your hosting or manually integrate third-party plugins to achieve your desired site functionality. This appeals to small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to create a professional website without having to navigate multiple services.
2. Drag-and-Drop Editor:
Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor enables anyone to create a beautiful website without needing to know how to code it themselves. Based on the research work of the Nielsen Norman Group, this tool significantly enhances the user experience of a website, making it easier for users to design websites.
Beginners, too, will be able to create complex layouts by dragging elements, such as images, text blocks, and videos, into position. Its simplicity and streamlined design options are one of the reasons Squarespace is popular among creatives. This makes web design accessible and user-friendly for bloggers and business owners to create without worrying about technical aspects.
3. Design Templates:
Squarespace is well-known for its stunning and modern design templates, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it is a popular choice for creatives. Smashing Magazine research indicates that elegantly designed templates directly correlate with better user engagement, especially for visually oriented industries, such as photography or fashion.
Squarespace builds for your site are both stylish and responsive, because unexpected visitors won’t be the only ones checking out the menu and swiping to close. The platform offers a variety of easily customisable templates for multiple industries, including portfolios and e-commerce, enabling users to establish a strong online presence within a short amount of time.
4. E-commerce Capabilities:
Squarespace is best for selling online: One of the most powerful website builders for ecommerce is Squarespace, which has everything built in for you if you want to open an online shop without using any third-party add-ons. According to BigCommerce, a large number of online businesses utilise a platform that integrates e-commerce functionality, with easy-to-use and quick setup being the top benefits.
Courtesy of Squarespace, Squarespace brings the full package with ecommerce features that range from inventory management to secure payment processing to personalised product pages, so you can turn the virtual key and open your official online storefront in no time. An integrated suite of features that enables entrepreneurs to focus on their businesses, rather than complex technical issues.
5. Security:
Squarespace has excellent security features in place for its users, including SSL certificates, which ensure your website remains secure as it’s transmitted from the server to the visitors’ browsers. As per SiteLock’s report, a significant number of websites are being hacked, and SSL certificates play a crucial role in securing sites.
Squarespace has an integrated security system in place to protect against attacks, such as data breaches and hacks. This doesn’t mean you need to install updates and manually maintain the system. For small businesses and individuals who may not have the technical expertise to implement security patches, this provides peace of mind that the platform is sufficiently secure for building professional and personal websites.
WordPress or Squarespace – Templates Library
The templates library played a pivotal role in WordPress and Squarespace. Important points are given below.
WordPress Templates:
There are thousands of templates available on WordPress for various purposes, such as blogging, e-commerce, and corporate sites. It is user-friendly, as this system works with both free and paid themes, and it can cover a variety of niches. Popular cases, such as The New York Times’ blog, rely on WordPress templates for a seamless user experience and functionality.
1. Customisation:
The depth of customisation with WordPress themes is second to none. Users can change layouts, fonts, and colours, and delve into the code for something that’s entirely custom. For example, sites like TechCrunch have fully customised designs, allowing for professional-level customisation while still benefiting from the advantages of WordPress.
2. Third-Party Themes:
There’s a vast, diverse world of third-party themes that awaits WordPress users. These encourage the development of themes for the platform as well and provide more focused designs. The most popular marketplace for premium templates and themes. As per reports, Xero Central company has developed a template that offers boldness to ground its engaging, vibrant designs, yet remains in line with its brand, and views their site.
Squarespace Templates:
Squarespace offers a neatly presented template library, designed with visuals in mind. They’re perfect for creatives and designers with their beautiful design and user-friendly features. According to the Squarespace case study, it is an app that freelance photographers use to better showcase their portfolios and images to prospective customers.
1. Polished Designs:
Squarespace is well-known for its fashionable, mobile-responsive templates. These are especially attractive themes for creatives in photography and design, where much of what we find exhilarating, workable, or original is the visual impact that delivers a powerful punch. Ensuring you stand out, aesthetically strong templates have been used by well-known photographers, such as Brooke Shaden, to present their portfolios superbly.
2. Limited Customisation:
Squarespace, for all its beautiful design, has less flexibility when it comes to customising your website than WordPress. The platform has “template lock-in,” which means people can’t easily change templates, potentially limiting flexibility for those who want more options for their business. One case study suggests that small businesses might find it challenging to rebrand unless they overhaul their site entirely.
WordPress or Squarespace – Setting Up
WordPress or Squarespace settings are considered an essential step in managing the mechanisms of both.
WordPress Setup:
- Hosting: With WordPress, you will need to organise your hosting. This offers flexibility but requires technical setup.
- Installation: Setting up WordPress via most hosting services is relatively easy, but the setup process generally takes longer than with Squarespace.
- Theme Setup: Once installed, you can install your theme, plugins, and set your settings – all things that may require a little technical knowledge to do.
- Upkeep: Themes, plugins, and WordPress core all need to be updated frequently.
Squarespace Setup:
- First, Everything You Need to Get Started, All in One Place: Squarespace streamlines not only the hosting but also the domain and template setup for your website.
- Easy to Use: The drag-and-drop element system makes the website builder intuitive and easy to learn, allowing users to start creating their websites in minutes.
- Maintenance-Free: Squarespace takes care of the updates and maintenance, as it’s a fully hosted solution.
WordPress or Squarespace – Blogging Experience
Blogging reaches a pivotal moment with platforms like WordPress and Squarespace, each offering powerful features to elevate your content.
WordPress Blogging:
WordPress blogging is highly customisable, making it flexible for bloggers who can easily add categories, tags, and custom post types to their posts. This is also useful for well-organised content, such as SEO and user engagement.
Blogging Plugins:
One of the biggest attractions of WordPress for blogging is its numerous free plugins. With tools such as Yoast SEO, Akismet, and Jetpack, blog functionalities can also be optimised, as content can be easily optimised and shared. According to WPBeginner research, plugins are essential components for enhancing blogging functionality, including social sharing and comment management.
1. Control of Content:
Bloggers have full control over how their blog looks and works when using WordPress. 10 You can also select your theme, layout, and structure as required. According to a study by Statista, it’s this level of control that’s why more than 66 million blogs run on WordPress, and why it’s the first stop for anyone wanting to blog seriously.
Squarespace Blogging:
Squarespace boasts an elegant, graphically appealing UX, making blogging a snap for even the least tech-savvy users. In a 2025 TechRadar review, the drag-and-drop editor is highlighted for non-techies who want to start their blog without foregoing beauty and style.
1. Bullet in Features:
Squarespace comes with all the necessary features you need, including scheduling posts, categorising content, and social sharing. And, according to G2 reviews, all those out-of-the-box features mean users can get up and running rapidly, a simplicity favoured by bloggers who prefer ease of use over versatility.
2. Freedom to design:
Squarespace doesn’t give you as much freedom to customise your site as WordPress, but its drag-and-drop templates are clean and sleek, making them easy to adjust for bloggers looking for a polished aesthetic. Its responsive templates reportedly appear dreamy and are particularly adored by the creative types, which means photographers, artists, and bloggers can give their work a glossy finish with little effort.
WordPress or Squarespace – Which One’s Best for Selling?
Here are some queries raised about which one is the best performer between WordPress and Squarespace. Their comparison is given below:
WordPress for Selling
WordPress is a robust e-commerce platform, providing the flexibility to personalise one’s e-commerce website with plugins such as WooCommerce. With WooCommerce, you can handle products, inventory and process payments easily, and it is perfect for anybody who wants to sell stuff online.
WPBeginner found that a whopping 30% of all top 1 million websites are powered by WordPress, which is some pretty impressive market share in the e-commerce sector.
Additionally, WordPress offers thousands of customisable themes that you can use to create a unique store that matches your brand. Features such as its SEO plugin, Yoast SEO, can contribute to raising your site’s profile and, in turn, bring more traffic and sales.
Squarespace for Selling
Squarespace offers e-commerce solutions for the hands-off user who doesn’t want to be a slave to coding, providing a fairly embedded, drag-and-drop e-commerce solution. The service is perfect for creatives and new businesses; beautiful templates are easy to customise too, and the editor is not only intuitive but also designed for mobile use.
As per website builder expert data, when it comes to user friendliness for newbies. Squarespace is a top performer.
It includes e-commerce functionality such as product management, secure checkout, and inventory tracking, so you don’t need to install other plugins. However, unlike WordPress, its customisation features are fewer. Squarespace is ideal for businesses that prioritise aesthetics and simplicity. Squarespace could have a simpler solution for you.
WordPress or Squarespace – Plug-Ins Availability
WordPress Plugins:
● Unlimited Plugin Library
WordPress offers thousands of plugins, allowing you to include just about anything you can imagine on your site, from social media integration to tools for security and search engine optimisation.
● Customisation:
With WordPress plugins, you can add incredibly powerful features without coding, so it works for nearly any kind of website you can think of.
Squarespace Plugins:
● Limited Plugin Ecosystem:
Squarespace has fewer plugins than WordPress. And you’re stuck with the bells and whistles built in.
● Third-Party Integrations
Squarespace provides a few of these, unlike WordPress, which can add on plugins due to its extensive plugin market.
WordPress or Squarespace – Which One is Best For SEO?
WordPress
When it comes to search engine optimisation, WordPress outshines by being more customisable. Thousands of plugins, such as Yoast SEO and RankMath, are available to help users better optimise their content. WordPress offers more control over on-page SEO by letting you modify metadata, sitemaps, and URL slugs.
Furthermore, its huge community of third-party tools supports advanced tactics such as schema markup, image optimisation, and increased site speed. WordPress websites perform better than Squarespace websites thanks to these customisation and optimisation choices, and Ahrefs even found in a study of over 1 billion pages that WordPress websites rank better than equivalent sites built with Squarespace.
Squarespace
Squarespace is simple to use, and it provides a few built-in SEO features, such as clean URLs, SSL certificates, and mobile optimisation. However, its lack of flexibility is a con for people who are looking to do more advanced SEO work.
Although Squarespace does provide some integrated elements, such as automatic sitemaps and basic content management, the ease of use is on par with WordPress, but it’s missing the wide range of plugins. According to a review by Moz, Squarespace websites are less likely to rank for key search terms due to the lack of control over granular SEO settings, such as page titles and meta descriptions.
WordPress or Squarespace – Pricing
The pricing differences between WordPress and Squarespace are based on several factors, some of which are listed below.
WordPress Pricing:
- Google’s Blogger is free, but users must pay for additional features, such as a domain name. At the same time, there are other personal stakes associated with WordPress (hosting, a domain, themes, and plugins).
- There are numerous high-quality themes and plugins available, with either a one-off fee or a subscription option.
- The personal annual price of WordPress is $48.
Squarespace Pricing:
- Squarespace is a subscription service, offering different pricing plans tailored to the features you require (i.e., Personal, Business, E-commerce).
- Hosting, templates, and support are bundled into the price, which may help with budget planning.
- The personal annual price of Squarespace is $192.
WordPress or Squarespace – Our Recommendation
Choosing between WordPress and Squarespace depends on your needs:
- For Beginners: If you’re new to website creation, Squarespace might be a better choice due to its ease of use and all-in-one setup.
- For Advanced Users: If you require a high level of customisation and control, WordPress is perfect. It’s ideal for bloggers, developers, and those building large, feature-rich websites.
Which is Better: Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress?
All three platforms have their advantages and disadvantages, but Wix is very easy to use because it’s a drag-and-drop builder for users with the least computer knowledge. It is also useful since using the available templates and remaining flexible doesn’t make it scalable for bigger websites. It is well known for its attractive templates, which are why it’s popular among photographers and designers. Even so, WordPress offers a lot more customisation options than Gothenburg.
Self-hosted WordPress is recommended for individuals who already possess the necessary experience and ability. It can be customised extensively with the help of plugins and themes, but the platform differs from hosting sites, and it requires additional learning. Choose the platform that suits your needs: an easy-to-use Wix site, a visually appealing and practical Squarespace one, or the sturdy and flexible WordPress.
Which Platform is Better than WordPress?
When looking for a WordPress alternative, Wix and Squarespace are the companies most often mentioned.
Since Wix is designed with drag-and-drop editing, anyone who does not want to learn code can use it. It comes with numerous options for personalisation through an App Market. WordPress has a reputation for its flexibility; however, WordPress makes it easy to build beautiful and fast websites for those who do not want to code. The simple interface and helpful AI-powered features have made many people turn to Wix.
Squarespace stands out due to its sophisticated and attractive themes, which suit creative types and small companies that focus on design. It includes e-commerce, blogging features, and SEO, although it lacks the extensive range of plugins and upgrade possibilities found in WordPress.
Essentially, working with Wix is a bit simpler, even if it doesn’t focus on design in the same way as Squarespace. And if you aim to build a website with robust features and excellent scalability, WordPress is the best choice.
What Are The Cons of Squarespace?
Although Squarespace is an amazing platform for building websites, it also has a few disadvantages. Its designs are wonderful, but using them isn’t quite as flexible as using WordPress. As a result, people who prefer making highly personalised websites may face some challenges. One last thing to keep in mind is that Squarespace’s eCommerce tools don’t offer as many options as Shopify on its own.
Although WordPress doesn’t have many third-party plugins, they are still available for those who want them. Lastly, Squarespace tends to be on the expensive side when compared to websites that charge little or nothing for their first plan.
What Is the Best Website Builder for a Small Business?
Many people consider Wix one of the best options for building websites for small companies. You can create your pages right away using the drag-and-drop tools, explore many templates, and make eCommerce transactions simple.
Wix offers a free plan, as well as various paid plans, making it suitable for all types of users. You can also use the app market to enhance the site, and its SEO will help attract more traffic from search engines. Wix suits businesses that want to create a website quickly and affordably, using very little computer knowledge.
Which Blog Platform is the Best?
People use WordPress to customise and adapt it to their specific needs. WordPress includes tens of thousands of both free and paid themes, as well as tools that add new site features, and an editor for simple site editing. Because WordPress is open source, you can manage everything on your website and choose its design.
It also offers excellent options for SEO, which is crucial for bloggers seeking to attract visitors through search results. If you need a website that is both easy to use and powerful, WordPress is the best choice, as it allows your website to develop without any hassle.
Final Thoughts
All in all, WordPress and Squarespace have their own unique sets of features for different users. Since WordPress offers numerous flexible, customisable, and scalable options, it is best suited for individuals seeking complete control of their website. It is ideal for those who require multiple advanced functions (such as e-commerce or content management) and conduct most of their work online.
Alternatively, Squarespace is a user-friendly platform that focuses on design aesthetics and simplicity, making it a great option for creative people or big or small businesses that value beautiful, ready-made templates and an easy-to-use, intuitive system. The one for you will depend on what’s more important to you: flexibility and customisability or ease of use and design.
Many students learn to use platforms like WordPress and Squarespace to enhance their skills. However, balancing this learning with their academic workload, such as submitting assignments, can be challenging at times. In these situations, the top-rated assignment writing platforms in the UK can provide valuable support. These services offer not only expert guidance but also comprehensive research, analysis, and well-written assignments, enabling students to excel academically and stay ahead of their peers.
