Let’s take a look
Squarespace has revamped its website building tools in the last few years, and it deserves a proper looking at. Up against WordPress, the most widely used blog and CMS in the world, you might think it’ll pale in comparison, but Squarespace has some intriguing benefits, so lets take a brief look at the difference between the two.
WordPress: custom-ability
Wordpress is a free and open platform, so anyone can create a plugin, a widget, and website themes for others to download. This is great, because virtually every option you might ever want has been thought of and is on the WordPress database ready to be installed onto your site. However, this also means that there’s a lot of junk. About 90% of the plugins and site themes are flirting with awful, and most of the good ones have to be bought. Again, there are endless options, so you won’t ever feel limited. However, sometimes it’s best to have some website building expertise when discerning between one plugin or another. This same idea is congruent with the help forums. There are so many users and so many threads, it’ll be difficult to find the answer your looking for. That being said, WordPress has excellent functionality especially once you acclimate yourself. It can produce extraordinary results, which is pretty impressive for a free platform. It can also be simple and easy to use for someone who just wants a small blog or website. Whatever you need, WordPress can deliver, just be prepared to put aside some time to overcome the learning curve.
Squarespace: intuitive interface
Squarespace, on the other hand, is curated and quality controlled. Every option Squarespace offers is highly functional, reliable, beautiful, and smooth. Their interface isn’t only easy to use, it’s something of a pleasure. Features, themes, and plugins all work and integrate seamlessly, and everything is already rather beautifully designed, so it only takes a few tweaks here and there to make something elegant, beautiful, and unique. It cannot be overstated that Squarespace really is a fantastic interface and produces perfectly gorgeous results.
HTML & CSS editing capabilities
Where Squarespace begins to fall short is in it’s custom-ablity. If you want a platform that allows you to tweak or even overhaul bits and pieces of the back-end HTML or CSS, WordPress is going to be the better choice. Squarespace does have custom-ability for the coders out there, but because of its high functioning interface, its back-end customization can be a bit cumbersome, complex, and clunky. If WordPress caters to the computer whiz like a PC would, Squarespace caters to the design freak like a Mac.
Price, the killer
Another enormous difference is in the price. Unless you need to buy a higher grade site theme or higher quality plug-ins (which you certainly might) WordPress is free. Squarespace has three different price points, all of which will undoubtedly hurt your wallet more than WordPress, even if you buy fancy new themes and plugins.
All in all
Both WordPress and Squarespace are enormously capable platforms, and both should be taken seriously as fantastic content management systems. However, the differences between the two are huge, and it’s a smart idea to look into both options before starting a site of your own, because once you get going, switching is not cheap nor easy.