by Squarespace, Inc.Website builders
A template-based website builder with selling, invoicing and memberships on every plan, from $19 a month billed yearly after a 14-day trial with no card.
A polished template site that can sell products, services, courses and memberships from the first plan, without adding a store or membership tool.
Squarespace starts every site from a designed template and a drag-and-drop editor, and every plan can sell products, services, invoices, courses and memberships through Squarespace Payments, Stripe or PayPal. Basic ($19 a month billed yearly) covers a custom domain with a free first year, forms, a blog, unlimited bandwidth and 2 contributors. Higher plans lower the fees on sales rather than unlock selling.
Against 3 other products we reviewed in Website builders: what you pay for with each, the five access facts, the plan limits we recorded and each review's bottom line. The note under the table says how each one was checked.
| Metric | Squarespace | WordPress.com | Webflow | Wix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Easy to adoptA polished template site that can sell products, services, courses and memberships from the first plan, without adding a store or membership tool. | Worth the priceA managed WordPress site with plugins and unlimited users for $4 a month billed yearly, with your posts and pages free to leave in WordPress’s own format. | Saves engineering timeDesign-level control, a CMS and managed hosting in one tool, so a marketing site ships without a developer and passes a security review. | Easy to adoptA drag-and-drop business site with multilingual, bookings, payments and a broad compliance file, on one platform that grows with the plan. |
| Overall score | 6.3 | 7.9Best | 7.6 | 7.2 |
| Free option | 14-day free trial | Free plan | Free plan | Free plan |
| Card to start | No card needed | No card needed | –Not measured | No card needed |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $19/site/mo | $4/site/mo | $15/site/mo | $17/site/mo |
| Pricing model | Tiered | Tiered | Tiered | Tiered |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing unit | Per site; fees on sales by plan | Per site; yearly, 2-year, 3-year or monthly terms | Per site (Site plan), plus seats on a Workspace plan for teams | Per site; prices vary by country |
| Free option | No free plan; 14-day trial, no card | Free plan on a WordPress.com address with ads; 14-day refund on annual plans | Free Starter plan on a webflow.io address; 14-day refund on new plans | Free plan on a wixsite.com address with Wix ads; 14-day money-back guarantee |
| Reference scenario (annual) | $19/mo on Basic | $4/mo on Personal | $25/mo on the Premium site plan | $17/mo on Light (US price) |
| Month-to-month price | $25 on Basic ($25 / $39 / $65 / $139) | $9 on Personal ($9 / $18 / $40 / $70) | $39 on Premium ($25 on Basic) | Monthly billing offered; price not shown on the plans page |
| Free custom domain | For 1 year on annual plans | For 1 year on annual and multi-year plans | Not included; connect a domain you own | Voucher for 1 year with a first yearly plan |
| Second editor | 2 contributors on Basic, unlimited from Core | Unlimited users on every plan | Content-editing seat $15/mo billed yearly; full seat $39 | 2 site collaborators on Light, 5 on Core |
| Multiple languages | Weglot integration: free for 1 language up to 2,000 words | Through a multilingual plugin on Personal and up | Localize add-on from $9/mo billed yearly | Wix Multilingual; 3,000 free auto-translation words |
| Online selling | Every plan; 2% store fee on Basic, 0% from Core | Payment buttons from Premium; WooCommerce store from Business | Ecommerce site plans from $29/mo billed yearly, 2% fee on Standard | From Core ($29/mo billed yearly) |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Not stated; PCI-DSS for built-in payments | Not stated on the pages we read | SOC 2 Type II; ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 and 42001 | SOC 2 Type 2; ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 and 27701; PCI DSS Level 1 |
| Refund window | 14 days on new annual plans; monthly plans not refunded | 14 days on annual plans, 7 days on monthly | 14 days on new Site and Workspace plans, monthly or annual | 14 days on new plans, yearly or monthly |
| Export | WordPress XML of layout pages and one blog; forms to CSV | Posts, pages and comments as XML; full site with a migration plugin | CMS to CSV; HTML/CSS code export on a paid Workspace plan (no CMS content) | CMS collections and contacts to CSV; blog posts and the site cannot be exported |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, Squarespace is the builder that sells from the first plan: products, services and memberships on Basic at $19 a month billed yearly, with fees that fall on higher plans. It states no SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and its export covers only part of a site. | From its public pages, WordPress.com is the lowest-cost route to a custom-domain site with a blog, at $4 a month billed yearly, with plugins, unlimited users and a portable export. Check the renewal price at checkout, and note that SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are not stated. | From its public pages, Webflow is the designer’s builder here: a full CMS, site search, own SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and a code export path. A blog starts on the $25 Premium plan, and extra editors are paid seats. | From its public pages, Wix is the most complete all-in-one builder here: multilingual, collaborators and a broad compliance file from Light at $17 a month in the US, with selling from Core. The trade-off is lock-in: the site and its blog cannot be exported. |
Evidence: Squarespace: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; WordPress.com: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Webflow: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Wix: facts checked 2026-10-16 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
Review from public pages
Written from Squarespace's public pages (pricing, security or privacy, and docs) as read on Oct 16, 2026. We did not sign up, and no hands-on run is published yet.
We read Squarespace's pricing page with its full feature comparison and FAQ, the security page, the brand and logo guidelines, and help center articles on choosing a plan, legacy and platform plans, the website refund policy, exporting content, form storage, page passwords, search, contributor roles, single sign-on, the GDPR and the Made with Squarespace footer on Oct 16, 2026; we did not start a trial or publish a site for this review. The pricing page showed prices in Korean won from our location, so we read the US prices from the Internet Archive copy of Oct 13, 2026.
The pricing page is straightforward: four plans with yearly and monthly prices and a long feature table that shows which fees fall as you move up. Selling is on every plan; what changes is the fee on each sale, the number of contributors, custom code and video storage.
One line does not add up: the page says paying annually saves up to 36%, but the listed prices work out to 24% to 29% off monthly. Single sign-on is described for Premium and Enterprise plans, which are not on the current pricing page.
Basic can sell unlimited products, services, courses and memberships and send invoices, with a 2% store fee and a 7% content fee.
vs WordPress.com: Wix starts payments and memberships on Core ($29), and WordPress.com’s store tools start on Business ($25).
Basic includes 2 contributors with permission roles such as website manager and store manager; Core removes the limit.
vs Framer: Webflow and Framer bill extra editors as seats.
Every site starts with a 14-day free trial and no credit card, and new annual plans can be refunded within 14 days.
The plan table lists no caps on bandwidth or storage on any plan; video storage grows from 30 minutes on Basic.
The security page covers SSL, 2FA, a 24/7 security operations center and PCI-DSS for built-in payment integrations, but names no SOC 2 report or ISO 27001 certificate.
The export is a WordPress XML file with layout pages, one blog and basic blocks; store pages, products, other page types, drafts and styles do not export, and trial sites cannot export.
Workaround: Form submissions download as CSV.
Multilingual sites use the Weglot integration (free for one language up to 2,000 words, then Weglot’s plans) or separate pages built by hand.
The refund policy covers annual plans cancelled within 14 days; monthly plans and renewals are not refunded.
Squarespace bills per site. For our scenario, one business site with a blog on Basic costs $19 a month billed yearly ($228 a year), or $25 month to month, before tax, with a free domain for the first year on annual terms. Fees on sales are the main variable: Basic charges a 2% online store fee and 7% on digital content and memberships, Core ($29) 0% and 5%, Plus ($49) 0% and 1%, Advanced ($99) none, on top of card rates from 2.9% + $0.30 on Squarespace Payments. Custom code, Mailchimp and Zapier start on Core. Discounts apply only to the first payment. Monthly plans are not refunded.
The Import & export panel creates a WordPress XML file with layout pages, one blog with its posts and comments, and text and image blocks; other page types, products, more than one blog, drafts and styles do not export, and trial sites cannot export. Form submissions download as CSV. Deleted pages and blog posts can be restored. Squarespace is an ICANN-accredited registrar, so a domain bought there is transferred out separately.
From its public pages, Squarespace is the builder that sells from the first plan: products, services and memberships on Basic at $19 a month billed yearly, with fees that fall on higher plans. It states no SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and its export covers only part of a site.
| Limit | As recorded |
|---|---|
| Billing unit | Per site; fees on sales by plan |
| Free option | No free plan; 14-day trial, no card |
| Reference scenario (annual) | $19/mo on Basic |
| Month-to-month price | $25 on Basic ($25 / $39 / $65 / $139) |
| Free custom domain | For 1 year on annual plans |
| Second editor | 2 contributors on Basic, unlimited from Core |
| Multiple languages | Weglot integration: free for 1 language up to 2,000 words |
| Online selling | Every plan; 2% store fee on Basic, 0% from Core |
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 | Not stated; PCI-DSS for built-in payments |
| Refund window | 14 days on new annual plans; monthly plans not refunded |
| Export | WordPress XML of layout pages and one blog; forms to CSV |
Read from the vendor's public pages on Oct 16, 2026. No hands-on run is published yet. How we check
We have not published a sign-up run for Squarespace yet. The access facts above were read from its sign-up and pricing pages on Oct 16, 2026.
We have not published API calls for Squarespace yet.
Squarespace lists 4 plans. The cheapest paid plan, Basic (billed yearly), costs $19/site/mo.
Prices as listed, USD, excluding tax; observed 2026-10-16.
Source: squarespace.com pricing page. Prices change; the observed date above is when our agent read them.
We read the pricing, trust, legal and help center pages of three website builders on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. What a small business site with a blog costs, where selling, editors and exports sit, and who should pick which.
