Why I’m A Squarespace Website Designer

I feel confident handing my clients the keys to their new website after we launch. I know they’ll be able to easily make updates and adjustments to their new site on their own, because of the Squarespace platform.

Why use Squarespace?

I use Squarespace because it’s really, really easy to work with. Especially if you have a design background and know what you’re doing. But I know ‘Easy’ is also a relative term.

If you haven’t spent most of your adult life designing and building websites, you might not find Squarespace as easy as I do.

But, compared to all the web builders I’ve worked with Squarespace is the one I can most easily help my clients use after I’ve designed a website for them. Squarespace is pretty intuitive and most people just ‘get it’.

Squarespace is also a hosted website service. That means you don’t have to find a hosting service in addition to your website designing platform. It’s what’s called a ‘turn-key’ solution.

You sign up for a subscription and everything required to get a website launched is included (for a price, of course!).

You get one invoice, all of the internet ‘stuff’ and tech is included.

I’ve heard a hosted solution is like having a rental instead of owning your own home. Often this analogy is made as if renting is a bad thing.

My perspective: I love renting. I’ll take a hosted website service any day of the week.

Why? I own a small rental apartment but we rent the apartment we live in. When something goes wrong in the apartment we rent, we call the landlord.

The landlord organises the plumber, the electrician, calls the building maintenance, etc. It’s not our problem.

When something goes wrong with the apartment I own, it’s my headache.

I have to organize all the emergency repairs, go to the meetings to decide which building repairs are made in any given year, do all the paper work for the property taxes.

Yes, it’s an investment, but there is work involved.

In this analogy the ‘work’ relating to your website headache, problem or emergency involves tech stuff. Most of my clients have no interest in being IT specialists or troubleshooting tech problems.

If something goes wrong, they talk to Squarespace support and 90% of the time it’s Squarespace’s job to fix it. Luckily, Squarespace support is also really good.

That’s why when it comes to your website, I say ‘renting’ is the way to go.

Finally, I just like the Squarespace aesthetic better. My design style tends toward the clean and minimal.

Squarespace has built their platform to provide a lot of what I call ‘design guard rails’ so that it’s a little more difficult to create a really messy looking site.

Wix, for example will let you do almost anything design-wise. I don’t think that’s a good thing for non-designers.

Should you use Squarespace or Wordpress?

I get what I call a lot of ‘WordPress refugees’; clients who have their websites on Wordpress and can’t stand it one. more. minute.

These are real messages:

“I am so done messing around in Wordpress!"

“The Wordpress backend is unwieldy"

“We had a WordPress theme. The theme didn’t update this year and the website fell apart. We need a new website!"

“My WordPress website is painful and annoying to manage"

And these are just the handful that I could dig up searching for ‘WordPress’ in my email.

Many, many people love WordPress. There is a reason it has so much market share. I even started out offering WordPress sites.

After some time though, I got frustrated by all the tech headaches that came along with using plug-ins.

I’m also not interested being a web master, constantly fielding tech support requests or upselling clients a website maintenance package. And you will need a maintenance service if you aren’t super technical and don’t want to manage your Wordpress site yourself.

I can’t tell you how many clients come to me with Wordpress sites that are essentially broken and unusable. They didn’t understand that plug-ins need to be updated or their website was hacked etc., and why would they? They want to run their businesses not their websites!

I want to launch a client’s website, tell them to go forth and conquer and move on to the next client.

Not to say I don’t provide post-launch support. Every Launch In A Day one day website package I offer comes with personalized video tutorials and 30 days of email support.

People who are comfortable getting into the technical weeds and want a lot of control over their websites are well suited for using WordPress.

Again, this doesn’t describe most of my clients.

I often use this analogy: Squarespace is like a Mac and WordPress is like a PC. Squarespace shields you (or depending on your perspective, blocks you) from a lot of the inner-workings of the platform. You trade control for ease of use. That’s fine by me.

Pros and Cons of Squarespace

Squarespace* can be an all-in-one platform. You can purchase a domain, create newsletters, sell products, set up your scheduling and now host your private digital content, like courses.

That doesn’t mean it does all of these things well, though.

I currently use Squarespace Campaigns. I love the simplicity but sometimes get frustrated by it’s limitations. I started using Squarespace scheduling but now use Dubsado because I needed the power of a full small business CRM.

Generally speaking, a website platform does best what it was originally designed for.

In the case of Squarespace its’ original purpose was for creatives and small businesses to create beautiful, polished and professional websites, this is where it really shines.

Ready to get a Squarespace website launched for your small business?
Let me help you do it in just one day!