A Squarespace alternative for small businesses.

I want to start by saying something you do not usually hear from a web designer writing about Squarespace: it is good software. The templates are tasteful, the editor works, the whole thing is put together by people who clearly care. If someone tells you Squarespace is junk, they are selling you something.

The reason people come to me anyway has almost nothing to do with the software.

Squarespace does not sell you a website

It sells you the tools and the time slot to build one. That is a meaningful difference and it is the whole ballgame for a small business owner. A subscription — Core is about $29 a month billed annually — gets you an empty, very nice-looking canvas. What turns it into your website is roughly fifteen to forty hours of your own attention.

Some of that is fun. Picking a template is fun. Then you hit the parts that are not: writing the about page in your own voice without sounding like a LinkedIn post, cropping forty photos so they do not look stretched on a phone, deciding whether your prices go on the site at all, discovering that the contact form emails are landing in spam.

The single most common thing I get hired to replace is not a bad website. It is a Squarespace site that is seventy percent done and has been seventy percent done since spring, still billing monthly, with placeholder text about the founder's passion for excellence still sitting on the homepage.

What Squarespace is genuinely better at

Being fair here matters, because if I oversell this you will find out and rightly stop trusting the rest of the page.

Changing things yourself at midnight. If you want to swap a photo or edit a price right now without messaging anybody, Squarespace's editor is genuinely good at that. That is a real advantage over any arrangement where changes go through a person.
Starting with no money down. A monthly subscription is easier on cash flow than a one-time build fee if you are opening next month and every dollar is spoken for.
Trying an idea out. If you are not sure the business will still exist in a year, do not commission anything. Put up a Squarespace page, see if the thing works, and hire a designer once you know it does.
Enjoying it. Some people like building the site. If you are one of them, that is not a problem to be solved — go build it.

The alternative, concretely

The alternative is not a different platform. It is a different arrangement: someone builds it once, properly, and you get on with running your business.

With me that looks like a written questionnaire that takes about ten minutes, a fixed price agreed before anything starts, and a site usually live in about a week. Builds start at $499. Hosting a small site is $149 a year, and the first year is often folded into the build — a recent proposal for an event rental company came in at $500 one-time with year one of hosting included and $149 a year after. Care plans, if you want someone maintaining it for you, are $149 or $349 a year depending on how much you expect to change.

No calls. I mean that literally, not as a scheduling preference — everything happens over email or text, because most of the owners I work with cannot take a call at two in the afternoon and should not have to.

The ownership question

This one is less dramatic than the internet makes it sound, but it is worth understanding. A Squarespace site lives on Squarespace. The content is yours and your domain is yours — you can always point it somewhere else — but the site itself, as a built thing, does not travel. Stop paying and it comes down. Want to move to something else later and you are rebuilding, not transferring.

A custom build is files. They can move hosts, they can be handed to another developer, they do not stop existing because a subscription lapsed. For a lot of businesses this genuinely does not matter. For anyone planning to be around in ten years, it quietly does.

How to actually decide

Skip the feature comparison. Ask yourself one question and answer it honestly: when, specifically, am I going to build this?

If you can name the weekend, use Squarespace. It will work and you will save money. If you cannot name the weekend — if the honest answer is "eventually," and it has been "eventually" for a while now — the subscription is not the cheap option. It is a recurring charge for a project that is not going to happen, and you would be better off paying once and having it done.

Common questions

Is Squarespace a bad choice for a small business?

No. Squarespace is well-made software and for a lot of businesses it is the correct answer. It is a bad choice specifically when you do not have time to be the person who builds and maintains it, because then you end up paying monthly for something half-finished.

What is the main difference between Squarespace and a custom-built site?

Who does the work, and what happens when you stop paying. On Squarespace you are the builder and the site lives on their platform as long as your subscription is active. With a custom build, someone else does the work once, you pay a one-time fee starting at $499, and you own the result.

Can I move my existing Squarespace site to a custom build?

Yes, and it is usually easier than people expect because the hard part — deciding what the business actually says about itself — is already done. Your domain moves with you; it belongs to you, not to the platform.

Is a custom site harder to update than Squarespace?

Squarespace's editor is better than most for changing things yourself. That is a genuine advantage and I will not pretend otherwise. With a custom build, small changes come to me by email or text and get done — which most owners prefer, but it is a different arrangement and worth being clear-eyed about.

What does a custom site cost compared to a Squarespace subscription?

Builds start at $499 one-time. Hosting a small site with me is $149 a year, and optional care plans are $149 or $349 a year. Squarespace's Core tier is about $29 a month billed annually and continues for as long as you keep the site. The structures are different enough that the right comparison is over several years, not one.

If you already know which one you are

The questionnaire takes about ten minutes and gets you a fixed quote in writing. If Squarespace is the better call for your situation, I will say so rather than take the project.

Start your project