8 Best Squarespace Alternatives in 2023 and Why You Should Consider One. There’s no doubt Squarespace is a super intuitive website builder. But there’s plenty of alternatives in 2023 that might suit your ecommerce store’s needs better. For instance, while one ecommerce store owner might enjoy the absolute control that comes with finding their own hosting solution, another might prefer the peace of mind a managed solution offers.
8 Best Squarespace Alternatives In 2023
In this article, you can know about Squarespace Alternatives here are the details below;
So you have multiple factors to take into account when you’re deciding on an ecommerce website builder. With self-hosting, for instance, you can integrate a myriad of different extensions and use various ecommerce tools to build your online store. This article lists the 8 best Squarespace alternatives so you can see which is right for your store.
Why Look For Squarespace Alternatives to Build Your Store?
Squarespace’s popularity stems from its functionality, and the ease with which it lets ecommerce store owners create, edit, and manage products and product catalogs. However, it’s possible it might not be the right choice for your store. That’s because it falters on the following:
Usability – Squarespace publishes your changes the moment you save them, which is troublesome if you want to introduce larger updates on your website. And it takes longer to perform basic website editing tasks.
Not Suitable for Multilingual/Larger Websites – This means that if you want to increase global and international sales, you cannot have a multilingual store.
Page Speed – Squarespace templates load quite slowly which leads to a poor user experience on smartphones, and affects the search engine rankings. Even though Squarespace advises on how to fix page speed issues, the solutions are rather restrictive, and wouldn’t support a medium-sized or even large product catalog.
8 of the Best Squarespace Alternatives and How They Stack Up
Since the “one-size-fits-all” approach doesn’t apply to picking a website builder, here’s a deep dive into 8 alternatives to Squarespace.
1. WordPress + WooCommerce Integration
Ideal For: WordPress, when integrated with WooCommerce, is an excellent choice for beginners. It’s easy to use, but still includes all the features you would expect from a sophisticated ecommerce platform. It’s suitable for all blogging, stores of all sizes, and portfolio websites as well.
Pricing Starts From: Free
Overview
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS), while WooCommerce is a self-hosted, customizable, and open-source ecommerce platform built on WordPress. Together, they allow you to build a super smooth, flexible, and open-source ecommerce website, which has no significant limitations. They offer you maximum convenience and ease to create, design, and publish products on different pages of your online store.
While choosing WordPress, make sure you go with .org rather than .com. This is because the former is self-hosted (which we highly recommend for security and flexibility), while the latter uses WordPress hosting.
What’s more, WordPress, with WooCommerce integration, can match your exact specifications because of the multiple themes and plugins you can choose from without spending an extra penny.
WooCommerce Starter Bundle
The WooCommerce integration allows you to use its own features, extensions and plugins, coupled with WordPress’s own. Since it is a self-hosted ecommerce platform, you need to choose a hosting provider for your store, You can also check out cPanel alternative as well. Cloudways offers managed WooCommerce hosting along with a starter bundle to help you launch your store within a matter of a few minutes!
The Cloudways WooCommerce Starter Bundle lets you launch a WordPress ecommerce store with pre-installed and pre-configured ecommerce tools, plugins and themes in just one click. On top of that, it follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, so it takes into account your needs and budget at all times.
This bundle allows 1-click integration with all popular WooCommerce plugins like:
- Checkout Field Editor
- Kadence Email Designer
- Coupon Shortcodes
- Cart Abandonment Recovery
- Google Analytics Integration
- Paypal Checkout Gateway
- Shipping and Tax
- Stripe Gateway
In short, you wouldn’t need to worry about which plugins to use, which one is best, etc. No hassle at all.
Features
When you integrate WooCommerce in WordPress, you can take advantage of these features to build your ecommerce store:
- Product inventory management (colors, sizes, etc)
- Sales reporting
- Processing ecommerce orders
- Versatile and well-rounded suite of features and tools
- Great for small businesses to large ones – competitive pricing, plethora of features
- Personalized coupons, easy integrations, convenient one-click checkout
- Big community for solving problems and concerns – doubled with Cloudways in the picture
- Auto-creation of store-specific pages such as a page to view shopping cart, and checking out
- Auto-display of newly added products on your store’s homepage
- Plugins for setting up versatile payment gateways (will come pre-installed with Cloudways)
- Easy one-click store launch with all the necessary plugins with Cloudways.
- Super convenient to build products and get subscriptions
- Content marketing and SEO functionality doubles when used together (WordPress+WooCommerce)
Ease of Use
Building an ecommerce store on WooCommerce is tremendously easy and fast on Cloudways. In just one click, you can set up everything you need to sell online. The easy integration of our WooCommerce Starter Bundle will allow you to launch a professional and functional ecommerce store on WordPress with just one click.
Interface
The interface looks like this when you set up your store on WordPress with Cloudways. It gets even more simple and easy to use with our starter bundle.
Why Choose WordPress + WooCommerce Over Squarespace?
WordPress and WooCommerce are both self-hosted, which allows for more flexibility in terms of store customization. On top of that, together, they provide tons of awesome features to make sure your site is best in performance.
You should choose WordPress over Squarespace if you’re interested in features like: adding a blog to your online store, enhanced flexibility and customization, over 31,000 custom themes, open-source software, and numerous free and paid plugins that extend functionality.
Pros:
- Extremely flexible and scalable
- Free to use (you just have to pay for hosting, plugins, and add-ons)
- Super easy to use and understand
- Basically allows you to create any type and size of website you want
- Multilingual
- Can easily integrate stores and marketplaces like Amazon
Cons:
- Installation might feel like a task at first, unless you use a managed platform like Cloudways
- Similarly, if you choose a different hosting, you will have to install separate plugins for security
- Lack of dedicated support if you don’t have managed hosting
WooCommerce Starter Bundle By Cloudways
Get your ecommerce store up and running in one click with our bundle, which includes top-notch pre-installed extensions and plugins to offer a no-hassle, smooth experience.
2. Shopify
Ideal For: Building sites with a large number of products (e.g., more than 20,000).
Price Starts From: $19/month
Overview
Shopify is an ecommerce-only website builder and has all the tools you need to run a successful online store.
People choose Shopify because of its many built-in features and the third-party app marketplace. It has both free and premium themes and templates to choose from. This is another Squarespace Alternatives. Also check WeTransfer Alternatives
Here is a short guide to help you compare both Shopify and WooCommerce so you can choose the best Squarespace alternative from them.
When it comes to price gateways, you can choose Shopify Payments and Shopify Pay. Shopify also allows you to sell on online channels like Amazon and Instagram.
Features
Shopify provides some pretty interesting features, such as:
- Unlimited products
- Unlimited bandwidth and online storage
- Gift cards and discount codes
- Manual order creation
- Point of sale functionality
- Online sales channels
- Fraud prevention
Ease of Use
Shopify is a beginner-friendly ecommerce platform for business owners. It enables them to set up an online store quickly, without any coding knowledge. Plus, Shopify includes free and unlimited support for your business.
Interface
The interface is simple and easy to use. It’s the perfect place for people just getting started with their ecommerce store.
Why Choose Shopify Over Squarespace?
You should choose Shopify over Squarespace when you are looking to build a large, fully-fledged store.
Shopify allows multi-channel selling across social channels like Facebook and Instagram, and has a robust app store along with excellent customer support.
Pros
- An array of professional templates
- Best for POS applications
- Multilingual
- A built-in automatic tax calculator at check-out
- Can easily integrate stores and marketplaces like Amazon
Cons
- Since it’s 100% focused on ecommerce, it gives you only a few basic features to add a blog to your store or any rich content
3. Webflow
Ideal For: Webflow offers immense freedom in designing websites, which is perfect for designers who are looking to be creative and aesthetic. It also offers solutions for developing ecommerce stores, and is great for anyone who knows how to code.
Price Starts From: $18/month for a standard online store
Overview
Webflow is another alternative to Squarespace that offers a sleek, and professional user interface. It provides a Content Management System (CMS) and a flexible and visual web design editor if you want to add a blog to your online store and be creative with your ecommerce web design. This is another Squarespace Alternatives.
This web design editor comes with a drag and drop functionality that makes Webflow easy for those who can’t code. But its versatility can be best utilized by those who do have the coding knowledge to customize the back end.
Once you get a hang of things, Webflow speeds up your workflow by allowing you to rapidly create product pages on your ecommerce store.
Features
You can take advantage of the following features when using Webflow to build your ecommerce store:
- Intuitive website editor for web design to build CSS grid–powered visual layouts
- Content Management System (CMS)
- Clean, compliant, exportable code
- HTML embeds, HTML/CSS sliders and carousels
- Over 2,000 web font families
- Total creative control – designing and developing happen simultaneously
- 3D CSS animations
- Email support and community forum
Ease of Use
Webflow lets you design your ecommerce store using the drag-and-drop functionality on the front end. It also offers a community support platform.
Interface
Webflow’s interface has a design similar to Photoshop. There is a large editor in the center and a set of tools on the sidebar.
Why Choose Webflow Over Squarespace?
Webflow is a better choice for those ecommerce store owners who want greater versatility. It is perfect for experienced developers, programmers, and web designers who want to complete a website which really stands out from the crowd.
It is a great alternative to Squarespace because Squarespace doesn’t allow the creative flexibility that comes with advanced level coding, as popular ecommerce coding languages like JavaScript can help you develop almost any feature.
Imagine you are a web designer who can create a robust ecommerce store using your knowledge of codes. You will only feel limited with the drag-and-drop feature and template-based tools that Squarespace offers to its users. This is another Squarespace Alternatives.
Pros
- Flexibility and control over design
- Allows you to add rich content in all formats (job listings, events, video carousels and more)
- Speeds up workflow with fewer clicks as compared to Squarespace
Cons
- Lack of simplicity if you are not comfortable with CSS
- No live chat or phone support
- Yearly sales volume limit of $50K unless you go for the plus and advanced plans
4. SITE123
Ideal For: Site123 is ideal for busy professionals who have little time to build or maintain a website or anyone with limited to no coding experience.
Price Starts From: Free
Overview
SITE123 is an easy-to-use website builder for your ecommerce store. It gives you 16 different design categories to choose from, including blogging, general business, online stores, hair salon services, gardening, and law firms. You just have to pick a design, upload content, and voila! Your ecommerce website is ready to launch. Also check Substack Replacements for Building Paid Newsletters
Although SITE123 offers a free plan, it is extremely limited so you might need to upgrade right away.
SITE123 comes in very handy for people who do not know how to code. However, it is very restraining for those people who choose to have the amount of flexibility and customization that comes with coding for a more robust online store.
That said, a couple things to keep in mind: one, you might not find designs particular to every niche, and two, your entire website will display on a single page.
Features
Some of the amazing attributes you can enjoy using SITE123 are the following:
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- App market
- Responsive store design
- 80 different currencies to choose from
- Paypal integration
- Coupons
- Accepts wire transfers and credit card payments
- Store inventory and conversion code tool
- Min/max order limit customization
Ease of Use
SITE123 is very easy to use and manage. It only involves a three-step procedure to take your ecommerce store live: select a template, upload your content, and launch your store. Simple!
Interface
SITE123’s website builder interface is extremely simple and easy to navigate.
Why Choose SITE123 Over Squarespace?
SITE123 is a lot easier to use, for one thing. It also offers live training and phone support that is not currently available with Squarespace. And it’s budget-friendly, as it allows users to enjoy a free version for as long as they want until they become comfortable enough to switch to the premium plans.
Pros
- Clean, modest templates and ready-made website
- Free plan
- Multilingual
- Easy to use, as if you are filling out a form to upload content
- Simple and accessible for beginners
- Supports Paypal and credit card in the premium version
- Has a CMS that allows you to add a blog to your online store
Cons
- Scant options for apps and add-ons
- Supports only bank transfers on the free plan
- Too many ads while you use the free plan
- No flexibility or design control, hence restrictive layout
- No way to tweak HTML/CSS code so limited customization
- Can’t integrate with stores and marketplaces like Amazon
- WooCommerce Starter Bundle By Cloudways
5. Wix
Ideal For: Wix has a great set of tools that can help new bloggers to put together their first website, they have features such as ADI and live editor designed to make sure your site is interesting and helpful. The mobile app allows you to update content on the go! This is another Squarespace Alternatives.
Price Starts From: Free
Overview
For first-time ecommerce store owners, Wix is a fairly easy to use alternative to Squarespace, and budget-friendly too! Like Squarespace, Wix offers users a drag-and-drop functionality.
Even though many love Wix for its super slick and urbane editor, the lack of access to CSS is a limitation for many ecommerce store owners who want to be creative and customize their ecommerce store. However, Wix has over 500 different templates to choose from, so it’s not like you don’t have options and templates to play around with when you choose to create your ecommerce store.
Features
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- Inventory management
- Order management
- Reporting and analytics
- API
- CMS
- Third-party app integration
- Customizable templates
Ease of Use
Wix is easy to use, and can almost remind you of using Microsoft Word. Its drag-and-drop layout system allows you to create the design of your website without fuss.
Interface
Wix has a super friendly interface. There is no coding or FTP knowledge required. You just need an email address to get started with Wix’s web hosting.
Why Choose Wix Over Squarespace?
In comparison to Squarespace, Wix is a much more popular website builder. What makes it better than Squarespace is its first-class app market and the fact that it allows more advanced and steady integration with all apps, even Shopify. It also allows you to create an unlimited number of pages on your website, which is great if you have a large product catalog.
The fact that it offers so much more value at a friendlier price tag than Squarespace makes it a great alternative.
Pros
- Over 500 different templates
- Free plan
- Wix app market and easy integration
- Drag and drop interface
- Good site speed
- Overall collection of features
- Help and support
Cons
- Templates are not interchangeable
- You have to pay for reporting and analytics
- Your site is not transferable
- The premium version only supports a single site
6. Weebly (Owned by Square)
Ideal For: Weebly is ideal for small business sites and portfolios. You can build a great-looking site with Weebly’s simple drag-and-drop editor.
Price Starts From: $12/month for online store
Overview
Square ecommerce, previously known as Weebly, allows you to create an ecommerce store, create a responsive website, and integrate with some of the most popular apps. It also offers easy publishing and sub-domain options along with a drag & drop website builder.
It grants you the freedom to code and use HTML and CSS to extend the functionality of your ecommerce store. Using this feature, you can incorporate any web design trends you might want to display on your site as well.
Its functionality is quite similar to Squarespace, but it comes with an extensive variety of ecommerce features which beats Squarespace.
Features
Square ecommerce gives you access to a number of features like:
- Drag and drop website builder
- Full-width page editor
- Responsive templates
- Easy publishing
- Integration with apps
- Free Sub-domain
- Domain registration
Ease of Use
Square Ecommerce lets you create and publish attractive sites, blogs, and online stores quite easily. The free account limits the number of themes and other features you can use, but does keep a decent photo library.
Interface
The site builder features an intuitive interface.
Why Choose Square ecommerce (Former Weebly) Over Squarespace?
In comparison with Squarespace, Square ecommerce offers more tools to facilitate an ecommerce store setup, like its automatic tax calculator for US stores.
With Square ecommerce, you have Paypal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and Square integration, while with Squarespace you only have Stripe (credit card + Apple pay) and Paypal payments available to facilitate your customers. This is another Squarespace Alternatives.
When it comes to customer support, Square ecommerce has phone support, while Squarespace doesn’t offer that as yet.
Square ecommerce also allows integration with third-party apps, and has a huge app center containing 250+ shipping solutions that grant your store more functionality than Squarespace. Squarespace Extensions marketplace features a limited selection of mostly ecommerce add-ons.
Squarespace allows you a 14-day trial, while Square ecommerce allows you a free plan to start your ecommerce website. This also makes Square ecommerce a much better alternative to Squarespace.
Square ecommerce also has a greater depth of navigation, which means you can build a larger store on it as compared to Squarespace. This is because of the number of hierarchical levels it allows you to add to the navigation. For e.g., Electronic accessories > Audio > Headphones and Headsets.
Pros
- Easy, drag-and-drop website building
- Convenient in setting up an ecommerce store
- Plethora of templates to choose from
- Integration with other apps and add-ons
- A dedicated team that’s constantly improving and adding new features
Cons
- Limited customization – because it is a specific platform, and you can’t tinker much with some formatting and placement options
- Uploading images takes a long time and you can’t work on any other part of the site until that is complete
- Limited number of plugins
7. Strikingly
Ideal For: Strikingly is best for creating beautiful single-page websites for personal use or landing pages for small businesses.
Price Starts From: $12/month
Overview
With Strikingly, a new shop owner can easily have access to unlimited sites, mobile-friendly templates, drag-and-drop page builder, and basic image editing features and functionality. They can display upto 500 products at max, and also have a blog with their ecommerce store.
Strikingly has a free plan to offer, but the ads are a problem because the free plan runs on ads. You can choose to upgrade to two premium plans if you feel you need more features. With the premium plans, you can build upto 20 pages.
You can have product landing pages, events, or a portfolio where you can display all the information that matters to you and your customers on one great looking page.
Features
Some of the praise-worthy features of Strikingly are as follows:
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- Flexible order management
- Customizable templates
- 24/7 chat and email support
- No transaction fees
- Integration with Paypal and Stripe
- Easy updates
Ease of Use
Strikingly is easy to use, like most drag-and-drop site builders. Once you are familiarized with the fantastic, straightforward interface of this website builder in pro plan, you can design and run a single-page online store in a few hours. Web developers will also appreciate this feature because they can easily modify or edit the design on their own. This is another Squarespace Alternatives.
Interface
The interface of this website builder is extremely intuitive. Just select a template, add your visuals and text content, and Strikingly will fit in the content for you.
Why Choose Strikingly Over Squarespace?
Some ecommerce store owners want to have a simple, plain, one-page ecommerce store, and for that reason, Strikingly is a more appropriate choice for users looking at Squarespace alternatives to meet similar needs.
These users only need basic functionality and a straightforward platform with no distractions or additional features to confuse them. They don’t seem to find the same ease with Squarespace.
Pros
- Beginner-friendly, simple, easy to use
- Slick and clean single-page layout
- Multiple websites with the pro plan
- Budget-friendly
Cons
- Limited SEO functionality
- Limited customization as it’s a no-code solution
- Limited editing and aesthetics
- Not ideal if you want to scale your business
8. BigCommerce
Ideal For: BigCommerce is ideal for building advanced and large ecommerce stores.
Price Starts From: $29.95/month
Overview
BigCommerce is a paid ecommerce platform that allows business owners to set up a large-scale online store and sell their products online. This is another Squarespace Alternatives.
Since it is an open SaaS, it lets you work on both the front-end and back-end with maximum ease and speed. You can quickly upgrade the design, upload products and scale without experiencing any lagging.
Moreover, when you want to check how your ecommerce store is performing, BigCommerce lets you use its professional reporting tool which can help you look at your store’s insights and analytics.
Some people would be comfortable with the fact that BigCommerce ecommerce platform is hosted on its own server, while other people wouldn’t want to place all their eggs in one basket.
The website builder is most popular among those people who want to build a super large store from the get-go.
Features
BigCommerce has some really great features to support your super large online store:
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- Customizable design themes
- Professional SEO tools
- Abandoned cart saver
- Credit card, Paypal, Authorize.net, Heartland, and 2Checkout integrations
- CMS
- Inventory and order management
- Third-party app integration
- Reporting and analytics
Ease of Use
BigCommerce’s drag-and-drop functionality allows users to rapidly build custom websites..
Interface
BigCommerce provides a simple user interface to manage your orders, products, and ecommerce store, to ensure your success.
Why Choose BigCommerce Over Squarespace?
The reason BigCommerce is a good alternative to Squarespace is that it allows you to sell an unlimited digit of material or digital products. Squarespace only allows 200 products on a single store page, and each product can have up to 100 variants. This is another Squarespace Alternatives.
BigCommerce comes with considerably better SEO features. It offers a significantly wider variety of payment gateways that help you as a store owner to facilitate your customers and offer them greater ease during checkout.
BigCommerce also provides significantly more comprehensive point-of-sale options than Squarespace.
Squarespace cannot offer a lot of functionality to super large online stores, and for that BigCommerce comes in quite handy!
Pros
- Range of customizable templates
- Drag-and-drop page builder
- Integration with a variety of payment gateways
- Ability to sell unlimited products
- Discount coupons/gift vouchers
- Automated image optimization
- Reporting and analytics
Cons
- The templates are slightly hard to manipulate
- Tracking information missing on customer orders
- Can add more shipping options
- Not a lot of free templates for small businesses who can’t afford unique designs
- Expensive
- Limited help and support
Why Choose bigCommerce over Squarespace?
Cloudways offers 1-click installation, top-notch pre-installed extensions and plugins and basically all that’ll take your store to new heights.
A Quick Comparison Between Squarespace Alternatives
Here’s how the different Squarespace alternatives stack up against each other.
Wrapping Up
We assume you are now clear about which Squarespace alternative you should choose for your store’s needs, size, and budget. We personally recommend using our WooCommerce Starter Bundle to launch your online store in seconds! You will get all the essential extensions and plugins pre-installed and configured, and guess what, all of this is just one click away from you! If you don’t believe us, try out our 3 days free plan and experience everything first-hand.
Here are more blogs from our alternative series that you will find interesting:
Wix Alternatives
Shopify Alternatives
Oberlo Alternatives
Etsy Alternatives
Magento Alternatives
Wix vs. Shopify – Which One Suits Your Ecommerce Store?
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Why shouldn’t you use Squarespace?
If you want a self-hosted, fully functional, and scalable ecommerce store, then you should start looking for Squarespace alternatives. Squarespace is great, but it doesn’t offer much customization and room to be creative. Integration with third-party apps is available but limited in comparison to its alternatives.
Q2. Is there anything better than Squarespace?
When it comes to a website builder, there is no better or worse. It all depends on your needs. Keeping this in mind, there are many alternatives to Squarespace that are better and offer more customization and features. You just have to see which one from among them is best suited to your individual needs.
