Squaresapce is a premium website builder which has gained immense popularity in recent past.
In this post i will look at the various premium plans offered by Sqaurespace.
Overview of Sqaurespace Pricing Plans
Squarespace offers a total of 4 pricing plans.
2 plans are geared towards website owners, while 2 plans are geared towards eCommerce store owners.
| Plan | Pricing (Paid Monthly) | Pricing (Paid Annually) | Best for |
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Important notes
- All plans are ad free
- All plans let you connect your custom domain to your squaresapce website
- Sqaurespace does not offer a free plan.
- All plan have unlimited storage and bandwidth
- All plans have SSL enabled by default
Also there is a significant prices difference between annual and monthly plans.
Lets take a look at each Pricing plan in detail.
1. Personal Plan
The personal plan is the cheapest plan offered by SquareSpace.
It costs $12/ month when you pay annually. If you opt for monhtly payment, the price increases to $16 USD / month
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The personal plan offers all basic tools required for building a professional web presence. There are no bandwidth or storage limit. Here is the list of features included in the personal plan
What’s included
- Free custom domain
- Free SSL
- Add up to 2 site contributors
- Basic Website Metrics
What’s Missing
- Ecommerce Tools
- Premium Blocks
- Ability to add customize the site using custom CSS and js
- Marketing tools
Recommended For:
The personal plan is recommended for building personal websites. The personal plan gives you unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth. Couple it with beautiful templates and you have perfect toolset for building a personal /business website.
The personal plan is missing marketing tools which you will require if you want to build an audience online.
2. Business Plan
The Business Plan gives you access to advanced site-building features, online appointment bookings, marketing tools, and basic eCommerce.
It costs $18/ month when you pay annually. If you opt for monthly payment, the price increases to $26 USD / month
Site Building Features
The business plan offers a variety of site building features.
- Customize website using custom css and js
- Premium Blocks and Integration with third party services.
- Appointment Booking
- Add unlimited contributors to website
- 1 business email account (free for the first year)
The business plan has a complete suite of site-building tools offered by Squarespace.
Features like custom scripts ensure that you can customize the website completely to match your business branding. It means that you get more control over your website which is missing in the personal plan.
Features like Appointment Booking mean that you can accept bookings on your website. This can be essential for services-based business.
Marketing Features
- Advanced Website Analytics
- Google credits
- Promotional Popups
The marketing features allow you to build an audience for your website.
The advanced web metrics features let you analyze how visitors interact with your website. For example, you can find out the most popular pages on your website or you can analyze which is the best traffic source.
The web metrics feature can be essential if you expect a decent amount of traffic on your website
Ecommerce Features
The business plan has an introductory set of features for running a basic eCommerce store.
Here are the included features:
- Essential Ecommerce features
- Inventory Manager, Product catalog manager, shipping tools
- Transaction fees of 3 %
- Add unlimited products
- Accept donations
It is missing advanced features like checkout on your domain, customer account, social media integration, etc.
The business plan lets you sell products but charges a 3 % transaction fee. It can add up if you are expecting a large volume of sales.
The business plan can be useful if you plan to sell a few items and are not expecting regular sales.
You can also think of the business plan as a cost-effective way to try out the ecommerce module offered by Sqauresapce.
If you find the ecommerce features robust for your use case, you can easily upgrade to higher plans to unlock additional features.
Best Suited for:
The Business plan is best suited for Services Business and Small business looking to build a professional online presence.
3. Basic Commerce Plan
Basic Ecommerce plan offers all features for running a professional, mid-sized eCommerce operation.
It costs $26/ month when you pay annually. If you opt for monthly payment, the price increases to $30 USD / month
Ecommerce Features:
Here are the additional features offered by Basic Ecommerce plan.
- No Transaction Fees
- Checkout on your own domain
- Customer Accounts
- Advanced E-commerce Analytics
- Instagram Integration
- Label Printing via Shipstation
- Accounting Integration with Xero
All these features will ensure that you can very very well run a mid sized commerce store with ease.
If you have repeat customers, then customer account feature will be essential for you. it will let customers access their order history.
Also integrations with Tools like Ship Station and Xero will make running a store quite manageable.
Best Suited for:
The Basic Commerce plan is best suited for running a mid sized ecommerce business. Even if you do a decent volume, you can easily organize and manage you store with inetgrated tools.
For example, you can print labels from directly inside your Sqauresapce dashboard. Also, you can easily export sales data to Xero accounting. All in all the basic ecommerce is a plan well suited for running an eCommerce operation
4. Advanced Commerce Plan
The is the priciest plan offered by Squarespace. It includes all the features offered by Squarespace.
It costs $40/ month when you pay annually. If you opt for monthly payment, the price increases to $46 USD / month.
Ecommerce features
This plan is made for serious eCommerce business. It adds to the features offered in the business plan.
Here are the additional features
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Gift Cards
- Subscriptions
- Real-Time Shipping rates
- Advanced Discount manager
- Access to Order API
All the above features are essential for running a high volume store.
Abandoned Cart emails have a very high conversion rate. So if you do a large volume, then chances are you will easily recover a lot of lost revenue. This feature alone makes it worth upgrading.
There are additional sales tools like Gift cards and discount manager which when used properly can boost your online sales.
With access to Order API, you can develop custom apps to suit your workflow.
You can also sell product subscriptions with the advanced commerce plan.
Best Suited for
High Volume Store with complex needs. In addition to selling standard products, you can also sell subscriptions while on the Advanced commerce plan. You can also extend the platform as you get access to the order API.
Frequently asked questions
Here are the most frequently asked questions about Sqaurespace pricing.
Does Sqaurespace offer a free plan?
Sqaurespace does not offer a free plan. They offer a 14 day trial for every plan though.
Even though there is no free plan, the included features more than justify the price Sqaurespace charges.
Does Squarespace offer Email accounts
Squaresapce offer email accounts via GSuite.
GSuite costs $6 USD / user / month. Whn you purchase a Business plan or above, Sqaurespace offers one G Suite account free for the first year.
Should I pay Monthly or Annually
There are two payment modes available Monthly and Annual.
Just like other website builders, Sqaurespace also discounts the annual plans when compared to monthly plans. Website Builder companies do this because it makes sense for them to get a year’s worth of money upfront.
Annual plans have 2 advantages
- The Annual plans are about 30% cheaper than the monthly plan on average.
- The annual plans offer a free domain for first year.
If you are trying Sqauresapce then I would suggest to pay monthly for first two or three months and if you think that Sqauresapce is with you, you can pay in advance for next twelve months and lock in the discount.
What are the domain renewal costs
Booking a domain through Sqaurespace costs $20 / year. It is a bit pricier when compared to domain registrars like Namecheap. At Namecheap the annual domain costs are $10 / year.
Even though booking a domain costs an extra $10 / year, it has a couple of advantages.
- First, there is no need to configure DNS settings if you book a domain via SqaureSapce.
- Second, WHOIS privacy is included. A lot of registrars charge extra for WHOIS privacy protection.
If you plan to buy and keep the domain registered with a third party, you will need to integrate the domain with your sqauresapce account. It will require a basic level of technical expertise.
If you are a beginner, then simply buy a domain from Sqaurespace.
Summary and Conclusion
Squarespace positions itself as a premium website builder. It does not offer a free plan and the cheapest plan start $12/month if you pay annually.
While Squarespace is not cheap, it is well worth the money. The features and the premium design quality easily justifies the price tag.
I would say Sqaurespace is a great value for money.