Squarespace.com review

First impression

Squarespace is a popular web development and hosting firm founded by Anthony Casalena in New York City, New York, USA in 2004. The American web development and hosting giant makes simple web development and hosting for people and businesses.

It has an intuitive interface, a set of customizable templates, and a bundle of tools to create and manage websites, including e-commerce features, blogging software, and in-built analytics.

Squarespace has a very intuitive interface that both new and experienced web developers can easily use, and is supported by a team of around 1800+ highly trained and skilled professionals.

Trial Period

They provide a 14-day free trial site, which allows you to familiarize yourself with Squarespace and explore all its features in depth before committing to a subscription. You don't need a credit card to begin your trial.

Billing Cycle

New Squarespace customers are eligible for a 10% discount on the first purchase with code GIMME10 (such promotions and codes can change at any time and are one-time only) when checking out and can opt to sign up monthly or annually.

They now accept American Express, Diners Club, Discover (US Dollars only), Japan Credit Bureau (JCB), MasterCard, SEPA direct debit (Euros only), and Visa cards as valid payment.

It must be pointed out, however, that even if they accept Maestro cards, Visa Electron, MasterCard SecureCode, and Verified by Visa, payment to these cards might be declined due to bank policies. Another form of payment without 3D Secure features must then be used in case of payment decline.

Control Panel

Squarespace also had its own, custom-built dashboard for all of its plans. It allows one to manage their sites, domains, and other subscriptions from one location.

Limits

Squarespace offers four different plans: Personal, Business, Commerce Basic, and Commerce Advanced. All of these plans offer essential features such as SEO tools to help your site become more visible, unlimited bandwidth, hosting of videos, access to the Fluid Engine website builder, 2048 Bit SSL / SHA-2 SSL Certificates for security, and the Squarespace AI - an Artificial Intelligence content generator which can assist you in writing drafts of text content for your site based on prompts or existing text.

The Personal Plan is suited for individual blogs or sites and supports up to 2 authors. The remaining plans, however, are infinitely flexible and customizable using CSS and Javascript.

The primary area of difference among these plans lies in the package of commerce features that are offered for online shops. For instance, the Personal Plan offers no or limited selling tools, while the Commerce Plan offers a complete set of selling tools. These tools include Point of Sale functionality, Domain Checkout functionality, and the ability to sell products on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram.

Website Builder

The Fluid Engine is the newest upgraded version of Squarespace's classic editor. While both the Fluid Engine and their classic editor utilize drag-and-drop technology, the Fluid Engine is special in the fact that it incorporates a grid system which gives users a wider variety of block layout options, enhanced background establishment options, and more advanced content customization options. As a result, website building is a quicker, simpler, and highly flexible process.

The user can easily customize one of over 100 professionally designed, mobile-responsive templates to choose from (new ones being introduced regularly), all without learning anything about HTML, JavaScript, or CSS. Perfect whether you're building a blog, portfolio, e-commerce site, or mix of the three.

Security

Squarespace is serious about security and has implemented several measures to protect both user data as well as the sites on its platform, and even has a dedicated Security Operations Center (SOC), which monitors for threats and vulnerabilities 24/7, so your site (and their platform) is always safe.   

All websites come with a free SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption as standard to secure data transfers between users and websites, as well as Content Security Policies (CSP) to control and minimize the risk of cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Their data centers are protected with physical security, including access controls, CCTV cameras, and restricted access to authorized personnel only, and their platform employs firewalls to scan and filter incoming traffic, as well as DDoS Mitigation (Distributed Denial of Service), to detect and block large traffic spikes that would render websites inaccessible.

Squarespace also encourages users to employ strong and unique passwords for their accounts, and to activate two-factor authentication (2FA) offered for additional login security.

Along with these measures, they also make regular backups of their data, which is automated, to ensure that web content can be recovered in the event of data loss or security breach.

OS

They utilize the Linux Operating System for their servers.

Support

Squarespace customers can reach their support staff 24/7 via email support or Live Chat Monday to Friday 4 am to 8 pm EST time. Response time is very fast; in my testing (testing them out a few times), they would respond via email in under 30 minutes and responded almost immediately on Live Chat. You can expect fast response times, on email replied in under 30 minutes in my instance (tested them out a few times), and almost immediate responses on Live Chat. Every single support person I got to speak with, was polite and knowledgeable, which made me believe that their support service is above the norm set by most businesses.

And also, there is the Squarespace Help Center that is full of accessibility tutorials, guides, videos, webinars, and a community forum.

It is notable that there is no Phone support, which can be a letdown to a few.

Conclusion

Squarespace is a rich-featured website builder known for its good-looking designs. Their service helps get an online presence, handle a website, and have an online store up and running instantly. A perfect choice for anyone seeking good-looking, low-cost, and rich-featured website-building services.