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. 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.

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.

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.

Marketing and brochure sites

The core use case, and where the platform is strongest. Fast to build, coherent by default, and low maintenance.

Portfolios

A dedicated page type with grid and hover behaviors built in. Genuinely one of the better options available for visual work.

Online stores

Capable for straightforward catalogs. Less suitable as complexity rises — unusual pricing rules, deep inventory integration or high SKU counts.

Blogs and content sites

Adequate. Fine for a company blog; limiting for a publication with complex taxonomy or a large archive.

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.

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.

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.

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