Squarespace Pricing: How Much Does It Cost – And Is It Worth It?

At its cheapest, Squarespace costs as little as $16 per month, and at its most expensive it costs $52 per month. It offers four pricing plans in total – a basic website builder package, and three more geared toward ecommerce stores of varying sizes.

It’s not the cheapest website builder out there – GoDaddy and Hostinger both cost less, for instance – but our research found Squarespace to be the best website builder for US businesses. If you’re looking to create an attractive and modern website but don’t want it to take forever, Squarespace would be our top recommendation.

On the other hand, Squarespace is one of the best value options for small online sellers – its ecommerce plans are cheaper than rivals Wix or Shopify’s, yet offer comparable functionality. Stay tuned for a full breakdown of Squarespace’s pricing and hidden fees, as well as who each Squarespace plan is designed for so you can find the best fit for your business.

Squarespace Pricing Plans: Each Plan Explained

If you want a side by side comparison of each Squarespace plan, look no further than the table below. If you want to know more about what each plan will get you, just read ahead.

Overall, Squarespace offers great value for money for business owners and professionals, despite not being the cheapest option out there. It combines great website design with solid marketing tools and multichannel integration.

Even on its cheapest plan, you get unlimited storage and free invoicing, plus 100+ design templates to choose from. By contrast, rival Wix only offers storage on its most expensive plan, at $159 per month, compared to Squarespace’s $16. That’s part of what makes Squarespace the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses.

Squarespace Personal – $16 per month or $25 per month

Best for portfolios and blogs

Squarespace Personal is, as the name suggests, very much tailored to personal websites. The platform’s cheapest tier offers a somewhat limited range of services when compared to the others, but if your goal is to showcase your work and publicize your contacts, it does the job.

Key features the plan comes with include:

• Unlimited bandwidth and storage
• SEO tips
• Mobile optimisation
• A free custom domain (for the first year)
• Basic website health analysis
• Free invoice sends

You’ll also get access to an array of gorgeous templates to choose from, and Squarespace drag-and-drop editor, which makes it easy to edit and customize your website’s design. Squarespace’s editor used to be a little tricky to use, but over the years it’s become much more user friendly and is on par with Wix’s.

Who’s it for?

Squarespace Personal is a great option for blogs, portfolios, showreels, and showcasing projects. We especially recommend it to professionals looking to create an aesthetically pleasing and modern-looking website, since Squarespace’s design is far above the competition.

However, if you’re just looking for a basic website, and don’t care too much about how it looks, there are cheaper and easier options than Squarespace. GoDaddy is our pick for speed and simplicity, while Jimdo has a decent free website builder plan, albeit with limitations. Check out our GoDaddy review and Jimdo review to find out more.

We don’t also recommend it to businesses looking to sell online, or collect donations. While you can send invoices on the Personal plan, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Business plan to get fully-integrated ecommerce.

Squarespace Business – $23 per month or $36 per month

Best for small businesses

Squarespace’s Business plan provides great value for money, allowing you to start selling online for a much lower rate than traditional ecommerce platforms.

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Along with all the features of the Personal plan, Squarespace’s Business plan also includes:

• A free Gmail and Google Workspace account (for the first year)
• Complete customization with CSS and JavaScript (in English: you can add elements to make your website look super slick)
• Ecommerce integration (checkout page, inventory management, unlimited products and more)

You can accept payments by using Squarespace Payments, or by integrating a third-party payment processor. Squarespace works with PayPal, Square, Stripe, as well as pay-later schemes and digital wallets.

Important to note, however, is that on the Squarespace Business plan you pay a 3% transaction fee, on top of regular credit card processing fees. This added fee is waived on the Commerce Basic and Advanced plans. If your sales are or will be occasional, that won’t pose a problem, but if you deal (or plan on dealing) with a high volume of sales, this isn’t the option for you.

Squarespace Commerce Basic – $28 per month or $40 per month

Best for growing online stores

Squarespace Commerce Basic is geared towards businesses running an online store and includes more sales features than the Business plan.

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For starters, with Squarespace Commerce Basic, you’ll pay a 0% transaction fee. You’ll still have to pay credit card processing fees, but there’s no additional fee, as is the case on the Business plan. This makes Commerce Basic a better option than Business for regular online sellers.

The Commerce Basic’s additional sales features will help turn your website into a more complete online store. Additional features include:

• Customers to create their own accounts
• Indicate stock availability for products
• Display related products to customers
• Offer signups to product waitlists
• Display customer reviews

On that note, on this plan, Squarespace gives you several tools through which you can monitor your best-selling items and sales trends, and bulk-manage inventory. You also get to check your visit-to-sale conversion rate and, through an in-built Facebook link, you’re able to sell your products directly on Instagram as well.

Who’s it for?

Considering the amount of features on this tier, it’s excellent for small ecommerce businesses that have been based in the digital realm from the get-go and are experiencing increasing sales. If your business ticks any of those boxes, just head to Squarespace and get started.

We don’t recommend Squarespace Commerce Basic to businesses looking to sell subscriptions, as this feature is reserved for the Commerce Advanced plan. It’s also not the best platform for businesses looking to accept bookings and take payments for them. For that, you’d need to pay an extra $16-$49 per month for Squarespace’s Scheduling add-on. Rivals Wix and GoDaddy don’t charge extra for this feature, and you can start taking bookings for $29 per month on Wix, and $14.99 on GoDaddy.

Squarespace Commerce Advanced – $52 per month or $72 per month

Best for established online stores

Squarespace Commerce Advanced is the platform’s top-tier ecommerce platform and comes with all the perks mentioned so far, plus some extras to turn your business into a fully operational ecommerce store.

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Among the specialized tools at your disposal, this plan allows you to:

• Sell subscription products
• Set up abandoned cart email reminders for customers
• Automate discount offers at checkout
• Set dynamic shipping for customers depending on their address
• Offer free shipping to qualifying orders

At $52 per month, Squarespace’s most expensive ecommerce plan is much cheaper than Wix’s ($159 per month), or Shopify’s ($399 per month). While price isn’t always an indicator of quality, in this case, it is. Squarespace Commerce Advanced is by no means a bad ecommerce platform, but rivals Wix and Shopify offer more advanced features on lower-tier plans.

With Wix, for example, you can start selling subscriptions on the $29 per month Core plan, and Shopify’s cheapest plan, Basic for $29 per month, comes with all of Squarespace Commerce Advanced’s features and more, like support for international selling and loyalty program creation. In our Shopify review we explain why it’s a better option than Squarespace for ambitious sellers looking to manage a complex inventory set-up.

Who’s it for?

Squarespace Advanced Commerce is a good choice for established online stores looking to up their sales.

However, it’s not an option we’d recommend for larger ecommerce projects since it just doesn’t have the sales features for the job. If you’re an ambitious ecommerce business, we recommend Shopify instead.

But, if you’re keeping your operation small and local, and website aesthetics are important to you, by all means, visit Squarespace and sign up. It remains the best option for creating a truly stunning website, and it can handle a moderate amount of sales.

Does Squarespace Have a Free Plan?

Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan, so you will need to shell out some money to get your hands on it.

That said, you can try any of its plans for free for 14 days. After that time expires, you can even request a one-time seven-day extension if you contact Squarespace’s customer service team.

The trial is a good opportunity for you to try the plan that looks like the best fit for your business, and then grow or scale down accordingly when it comes to actually buying. Because of this, and the fact that it allows you to sample most of Squarespace’s features without having to commit, we recommend doing a trial.

Squarespace Fees and Costs: Billing Cycles, Ongoing Costs, and Hidden Fees

Squarespace is pretty clear about what it charges, so for the most part, you’re not in for any surprises. Here’s a breakdown:

Squarespace billing cycles

• Paying in advance for a whole year an 27% to 36% depending on your selected plan. Your subscription will renew automatically, whether you pay by year or by month.
• If you cancel your subscription after the first 14 days of an annual billing cycle, you’ll receive a partial refund
• You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time, and but changes will only take effect at the end of your billing cycle

Transaction and payment processing fees

• Transaction fees: 3% transaction fee on the Business plan, and 0% on both Commerce plans. These apply whether you use Squarespace as your payment processor or not. Be warned, you still have to pay payment processing fees.
• Squarespace Payments card processing fees: 2.9% + $0.30 for most cards, including debit and credit and international
• Squarespace Payments AHC payments fees: 1%
• Klarna fees (with Squarespace payments): 5.49% + $0.30
• Afterpay fees (with Squarespace payments): 6% + $0.30

You can use Squarespace Payments as your payment processor, or you can integrate a third-party processor into your Squarespace online store. Squarespace works with PayPal, Square, or Stripe. All have slightly cheaper fees, for the most part, than Squarespace payments, so it’s worth checking them out.

Additional Squarespace website costs

• Domain names: Squarespace offers a free domain for your first year, but after that, you’ll pay £10-£20 per year to keep it
• Professional Gmail and Business Google Workspace: You’ll get a free Gmail and Google Workspace account in your first year, but after that, you’ll pay between $72 and $259.20 per year, depending on your Google Business plan
• Apps and extensions: If you choose to integrate third-party apps and extensions into your Squarespace website or online store, you might have to pay fees to use them. Depending on the software, it can be free or come with monthly or annual costs.

Squarespace POS Costs

Squarespace has a free POS app, only available in the US, which can be used for selling in person. The app is only available on iOS, and so requires an iPhone or iPad, which need to be purchased separately if you don’t already own one.

The POS app is also only available for users on the Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced plans.

To sell in-person with Squarespace, you also need to have a Square account, since the Squarespace POS app can only be paired with the $59 Square card reader.

As a reminder, Square and Squarespace are two separate companies. If you want to sell in person with Squarespace, you’ll need to use Square as your payment processor, for both in- person and online sales. This means processing fees will be different than they are with Squarespace Payments. With Square, processing fees are:

• In-person: 2.6% + 10¢
• Online: 2.9% + 30¢

Who’s Squarespace POS for?

Squarespace POS is only designed for online sellers that occasionally sell in-person, at markets or pop-ups for example. The advantage of using it over a separate system is that your in-person sales data will be integrated with your online sales data, making reporting easier.

However, if you do an even mix of online and in-person selling, or primarily sell in-person, we don’t recommend Squarespace POS, since it’s not a fully-fledged POS system, and doesn’t work with any hardware besides Square’s small card reader.

For businesses that want a complete kit for both online and in-person selling, we recommend Square or Shopify. Both providers have online store builders and a suite of POS hardware. Square is the cheaper option, and comes with a free online store builder and POS app, while Shopify is more expensive, with its POS system starting at $89 per month. It’s a good option for ambitious online businesses that want to open up a physical store.

For more POS recommendations, check out our picks for the best POS systems for retail.

Squarespace Scheduling Pricing: Is It Worth It?

Squarespace Scheduling is an extra service provided by the platform. It’s tailor-made for businesses that work with appointments. Clinical consultations, space rental, classes of any kind – it doesn’t matter: if a date and time need to be booked, Squarespace Scheduling does the trick.

The thing to pay attention to is that this handy tool doesn’t come within Squarespace’s main pricing plans, so you would have to shell out a bit more to get it. Rivals Wix and GoDaddy include scheduling and appointment booking as part of their standard offer on most plans, charging extra for it, so we’d recommend them over Squarespace if you need this feature.

With Squarespace Scheduling you do get a discount (albeit not as big) if you bite the bullet and go with a yearly plan. You can choose between three tiers:

• Emerging ($16-$20/month): Perfect for very small businesses with a single calendar and small team. It allows calendar syncing with selected email providers, has ecommerce integration, and automates email reminders.
• Growing ($27-$34/month): Geared towards businesses with more employees and a few locations. You can create and sync six calendars, handle bundled and recurring bookings, and send reminders via SMS as well as email.
• Powerhouse ($49-$61/month): For growing businesses with a substantial staff that needs to manage several calendars. You can create up to 36 calendars and sync them, plus, you have more room to personalise the scheduler with custom CSS.

As far as value for money goes, Growing is the best plan. You get access to almost all of the tool’s features for about half the price of the costliest version. Powerhouse only makes sense if your business is a multi-location megachain, with all your locations taking appointments – in which case, congratulations!

Squarespace vs the Competition

If you want to build a visually pleasing and modern-looking website, or run a small online store, then Squarespace is a good option. It’s an especially cheap way to start selling online, with its ecommerce plans costing less on average than rivals Wix or Shopify, while still offering great functionality. Wix’s pricing, for example, starts at $17 per month, as opposed to Squarespace’s $16.

Of course, you can start selling for free with Square Online (an unrivaled offer), but your website won’t look as great. Square’s free plan has limited template designs and requires you to upload all your own imagery (no stock images available).

However, if you just need a simple yet functional informational website without the need for it to look fresh off the runway, competitor GoDaddy, which starts at £6.99 per month, is a better option. It’s the easiest and fastest way to build a website, based on our testing, allowing you to get online without spending as much.

If you’re planning on growing an online business and expanding internationally, we recommend Shopify, as its most expensive plans are designed to support larger retailers. But of course, since it’s very advanced, Shopify costs much more than Squarespace.

Overall, our research shows that Squarespace is one of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses, but you could outgrow it easily.