What Is Squarespace

Updated September 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

Squarespace is a hosted website platform: hosting, templates, editor, domain, ecommerce and email marketing sold as one subscription. A Squarespace consultant usually starts by explaining what that single subscription does and does not cover, and the hosting question tends to come up before any other. Hosting is included and cannot be bought separately, because the site only exists inside the platform: an export gives you content, not a working website. That single fact explains both the main argument for it (no maintenance of any kind) and the main argument against it (no portability, and no workaround for a missing capability).

What is Squarespace?

An all-in-one website platform: hosting, templates, editor, domain registration, ecommerce and email marketing sold as a single subscription. You do not install anything and you do not manage a server.

The category term is hosted website builder, and the defining characteristic is that the platform owns the whole stack. There is no separate hosting account, no plugin ecosystem to maintain, no updates to apply, and no version to upgrade. That is simultaneously the main argument for it and the main argument against it.

What squarespace.com actually sells, then, is not a website but a subscription to a system that runs one. Understanding that framing explains most of the platform’s decisions, including the ones people find frustrating.

Is Squarespace web hosting, and do I need hosting separately?

It includes hosting, and you cannot buy it separately or take the site elsewhere. There is no additional hosting bill because hosting is not a separable component.

This is one of the most common points of confusion, particularly for anyone who has previously run a WordPress site where hosting, domain, theme and plugins are four separate purchases from four different suppliers. A Squarespace custom domain does not have to be bought from Squarespace. If the name is already registered with a company such as GoDaddy, you can leave it there and point it at the site through DNS, or transfer it over to keep everything on one bill. Budget for the renewal if you take the free first year on an annual plan, since a Squarespace website domain registered that way then renews at the standard rate.

On Squarespace all of that is one line item. The practical consequences are worth stating plainly: you never have to think about server capacity, security patching or certificate renewal, and you also cannot move the site to another host, because the site only exists inside the platform. An export produces content, not a working website. When you compare Squarespace packages, the difference between tiers is the feature set, commerce above all, rather than a hosting upgrade, so choose by what the site has to do. Squarespace hosting costs sit inside the site subscription, and every website plan lists secure hosting and unlimited bandwidth as included. Mail is where a second bill appears, because Squarespace email hosting is its own decision: you can keep your current provider and connect it to the domain, or move the mailbox to Google Workspace or Essential Email by Titan and pay for it through Squarespace.

What is a Squarespace website, in terms of what you can build?

Marketing sites, portfolios, online stores, blogs, booking pages and membership areas. It handles all of those competently and none of them exceptionally.

That is the honest summary. Squarespace is deliberately generalist, and the range of things it does well covers what most small and medium businesses actually need. Squarespace website builder reviews tend to split into two camps, and the split mostly follows whether the reviewer wanted a finished site or a system to extend.

Marketing and brochure sites

The core use case, and where the platform is strongest. Fast to build, coherent by default, and low maintenance. A freelancer who needs three service pages and a contact form can run a Squarespace portfolio site on exactly the same template system as a larger company, with no extra build work. Keep a Squarespace site backup in the form of a fresh content export before every redesign, because the platform will not roll the site back to an earlier state for you.

Portfolios

A dedicated page type with grid and hover behaviors built in. Genuinely one of the better options available for visual work. For a photographer or designer, a Squarespace online portfolio keeps attention on the images, since the template deals with spacing and phone layouts without extra effort.

Squarespace portfolio pages: where they shine and where they run out

A Squarespace portfolio works best when the work itself carries the pitch: photography, illustration, interiors, architecture, film stills. Each project gets its own page, the grid handles browsing, and the template keeps spacing and mobile behavior consistent, so new work goes live without a developer.

Where it runs out is organization. A studio that needs to sort hundreds of projects by client, year and discipline, or let visitors search them, will find the section system tight, and that is the moment to compare it with a content-managed setup before the archive grows.

Online stores

Capable for straightforward catalogs. Less suitable as complexity rises: unusual pricing rules, deep inventory integration or high SKU counts. Anyone planning Squarespace online courses alongside a store should read the memberships section below first, because courses carry their own transaction percentage and behave differently from a physical catalog.

Blogs and content sites

Adequate. Fine for a company blog; limiting for a publication with complex taxonomy or a large archive. A Squarespace blog layout is quick to set up and tidy on a phone, but the arrangement options stop at what the template offers, which suits a company blog better than a magazine format.

Scheduling and bookings

A separate product within the ecosystem, sold on its own terms and reasonable for appointment-based businesses.

Memberships and courses

Supported, with their own transaction percentage on top of the plan. Worth costing carefully before committing.

Things it is not for

Complex web applications, anything needing a custom backend, and sites with unusual technical requirements. Those need a different tool entirely.

Squarespace versus WordPress: the actual trade-off

You are trading control and extensibility for the elimination of maintenance. Which side is better depends entirely on whether you have someone to do the maintaining.

The comparison is usually framed as a features argument and it is really a staffing argument. WordPress can do vastly more, and requires someone to keep it doing it: updates, plugin conflicts, security, backups, hosting. If that person exists, WordPress is more capable. If they do not, WordPress degrades quietly for a year and then breaks.

Squarespace removes the whole category of work. It also removes the option of doing something the platform does not support, and there is no workaround for that.

Squarespace vs Bluehost and Hostinger

These are two kinds of product rather than three rivals. Bluehost and Hostinger are web hosting companies: you rent server space, usually run WordPress on it, and keep responsibility for how the site is built and looked after. Squarespace sells the finished platform and keeps the site inside it.

That makes Hostinger vs Squarespace a question about who does the upkeep and how much freedom you need. A host lets you run server-side code such as PHP, which Squarespace does not support, and a WordPress site can move to another host. The price of that freedom is updates, plugins and backups that someone has to own. Both hosts also offer AI site builders, so check which product a quote describes before comparing prices.

What Squarespace is genuinely good at

Producing a coherent, responsive, professionally presented site quickly, without a designer and without anything breaking afterwards.

It is worth being specific about this rather than damning it with faint praise. For a business with no in-house technical capability, Squarespace reliably produces a better result than the realistic alternative, which is not a bespoke site but a neglected WordPress installation or no site at all.

• Mobile responsiveness that works by default rather than requiring attention.
• Visual coherence, because the section system constrains the ways a page can be arranged.
• No maintenance burden of any kind, which is worth more than most buyers estimate.
• Predictable cost with no surprise bills for traffic spikes or plugin renewals.
• Genuinely good portfolio and image-led page types.
• Straightforward ecommerce for a catalog of manageable size.
• Support that exists and answers, which is not universal in this category.
• A short path from nothing to a live, respectable site.

Where Squarespace frustrates people, and why

The editor is opinionated, custom code is constrained, and there is no conventional backup. All three are deliberate consequences of the platform owning the stack.

None of these are bugs, and knowing why they exist makes them easier to plan around.

Layout is constrained

Content sits in sections and blocks rather than being positioned freely. This is what keeps sites coherent on mobile and what frustrates anyone expecting precise control.

Custom code has limits

Code injection exists, but you are working around the system rather than extending it, and platform updates can break what you added.

No plugin ecosystem

Third-party extensions exist but are add-ons layered on top rather than integrated. They are the first thing to break.

No conventional backup

There is no restore-to-a-previous-date. Keeping your own export before any significant change is the only real protection.

Limited data access

You cannot query the underlying data or integrate at the database level.

You cannot leave with the site

An export gives you content, not a working website. Migration means rebuilding.

Who should and should not use it

Should: businesses without technical staff who need a good site quickly and want to stop thinking about it. Should not: anyone with unusual requirements or an in-house developer. Judged as Squarespace for business use, the question is less about features than about who maintains the site: a Squarespace business website suits a company that wants to publish without ever managing a server.

The clearest way to decide is to write down what your site must do that a standard configuration cannot. If that list is empty, Squarespace is very likely the right answer and the deliberation is wasted time. If it has items on it, check each one against the platform before committing, because working around a missing capability is where this platform becomes expensive.

What happens if you outgrow it

You rebuild elsewhere, and you plan the redirects. There is no migration path that carries the site over, so outgrowing the platform is a project rather than an upgrade.

This is worth knowing at the point of choosing rather than at the point of leaving. Businesses that outgrow Squarespace generally do so for one of three reasons: the store became too complex, an integration became necessary, or the site became large enough that editing it in the section system became slower than the alternative.

None of those is a failure of the platform, and none of them is an emergency. The practical advice is simply to keep your content exported periodically and to accept that the eventual move is a rebuild with a redirect map, budgeted as such.

Requirements before platform

Write down what the site must do that a standard configuration cannot. That list decides the platform, and it is usually empty.

Honest cost comparison

Squarespace pricing against a WordPress build including theme, plugins and maintenance. See what Squarespace actually costs.

Launch done properly

Redirects, titles, Search Console and the settings that are expensive to fix later. See publishing a Squarespace site.

Your own backups

The platform has no restore function. See how to back up and export.

Customization within the limits

What is possible and what is a workaround waiting to break. See the customization guide.

How Progression can help with Squarespace web hosting

Hosting is bundled with the subscription, so the real questions are speed, security, backups and moving a domain safely. We build and care for Squarespace sites, set up domain and email connections correctly and tell you plainly when another platform would suit you better. Email and domain records are checked, since they often break during a move.

Tell us what the site does and where the domain is held, and our written plan follows. Details sit under Squarespace design, plus ongoing site care and moving a site. Speed testing runs on real phones.

Get a free proposal

Related guides on platforms, frameworks and hosting

Squarespace bundles hosting with its builder; most other routes separate them. For the general picture see web hosting types compared and website hosting for small business; for WordPress see the WordPress hosting guide; for custom sites see Vercel vs Netlify and Cloudflare vs AWS.

• Squarespace vs WordPress: the platform comparison.
• WordPress alternatives: Squarespace among the options.
• Website migration services: moving off Squarespace.
• Website speed optimization: Core Web Vitals on any host.

Frequently asked questions