8 Reasons to Use Squarespace for Your Small Business Website

It can be overwhelming as a business owner to decide which is the best website platform for small businesses. From Squarespace to ShowIt, Wix, Shopify, and more, you’re looking for a website builder that has it all and won’t break the bank. Thankfully, I’ve put the work in over the years (to save you some stress) and continually resort back to my first love: Squarespace.

With its endless customization options, responsive design, integrations, SEO (search engine optimization) features, and more, I firmly believe that Squarespace is the best website building platform for small businesses. Here are eight (8) reasons why you should use Squarespace for your business website.

What is Squarespace?

Before jumping into the benefits of Squarespace over ShowIt and other website platforms, you’re probably wondering what exactly Squarespace is. The Squarespace website builder is a DIY content management system (CMS) that allows you to create a website in minutes so your business can stand out and succeed online.

Squarespace is so much more than just a website platform. It’s a marketing platform, a design tool, a website hosting provider, a content machine, a scheduler, and e-commerce made easy for busy biz owners like you. When it comes down to it, Squarespace is an all-in-one hub for making your business shine online.

Squarespace Pricing

So, how much is Squarespace? With flexible Squarespace plans, you only pay for what you need. You can upgrade or downgrade your Squarespace plan as your business evolves which adds to the level of flexibility and ease of Squarespace.

Squarespace Pricing Plans

There are four (4) main Squarespace plans available: Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. If you’re just getting started with Squarespace, I highly recommend the Squarespace Business plan. Here’s a quick breakdown of Squarespace pricing…

• Squarespace Personal Plan: $14/month when you pay annually | $19/month When you pay monthly
• Squarespace Business Plan: $23/month when you pay Annually | $33/month when you pay monthly
• Squarespace Basic Commerce Plan: $27/month when you pay annually | $36/month when you pay monthly
• Squarespace Advanced Commerce Plan: $49/month when you pay annually | $65/month when you pay monthly

Why choose Squarespace for your business website?

Easy-to-Use Interface

Tech-savvy or not, Squarespace is hands down the most intuitive and easy-to-use platform for creating websites. They have an incredible resource library that breaks down every page and aspect of your website so you can understand its functionality, purpose, how to edit blocks & styling, and beyond. With the latest Squarespace 7.1, all of the design settings and elements (think fonts, colors, buttons) are more streamlined and combined into one space so you can easily adjust and set your global site settings with ease.

All-In-One Platform

One of my favorite things about Squarespace is that it is an all-in-one platform. From hosting to blogging on Squarespace, setting up e-commerce, email marketing, scheduling capabilities, website security, Squarespace Member Areas, billing — the list goes on — everything lives in Squarespace. There’s no stress about remembering your login information for multiple services or receiving numerous invoices; it is all in one place.

As mentioned above, Squarespace has a simple pricing structure with no hidden fees, which is key for any business owner. There are no additional costs for things like blogging or website security, which definitely gives Squarespace a leg-up on other DIY website platforms. With Squarespace, gone are the days of needing plug-ins – and the stress that comes along with them.

Squarespace also automatically does updates to their service behind the scenes. There’s no stress on your end and it doesn’t affect the user experience on your website. Squarespace is always looking for ways to enhance and improve the website builder platform which is something I truly value; they’re always striving to be at the top of their game.

Beautiful & Functional Design

Squarespace sets the bar high when it comes to beautiful and functional website design. With the latest Squarespace 7.1, all websites have the same functionality and capabilities. In the previous Squarespace 7.0 version, they had various template families that each had their own use-cases and capabilities.

If you’re not a design-focused person, Squarespace offers pre-designed sections to help make building your business website a breeze. You can opt for blank sections vs pre-designed ones to truly customize your site — which is how I design each and every client website.

If you’re really not into the whole aesthetics thing, Squarespace templates are a great alternative! You get all the perks of Squarespace and those of a strategically designed website without the custom price tag. If you’re in the market for a website template, be sure to stop by the TSMC Shop and explore the latest limited edition Squarespace templates.

Responsive Design

With the vast majority of traffic to websites coming from mobile, having an integrated responsive design is more important than ever. It is key that no matter what device your audience or clients are coming from that they have a seamless experience with your website. With Squarespace, you can view what your site will look like on desktop, tablet, and mobile. When I create websites for my clients, this allows me to preview the guest experience on all devices to ensure a seamless experience.

Ample Integrations

Another reason I love Squarespace is because of the endless amount of integrations they offer with your website. Easily integrate your social media accounts or any of the third-party integrations they offer like TaxJar, QuickBooks, and After Ship. You can also integrate your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts which makes my SEO-loving self happy. With ample integrations available, you’re able to continue running your business with confidence & clarity under one roof: Squarespace.

SEO & Analytics

One of the things I like most about Squarespace is the built-in SEO and analytics. With Squarespace SEO, you can easily customize all search engine descriptions (think page titles, meta descriptions, and alt text) on the back end of the site, seamlessly improving your search rankings. Squarespace also offers sitemaps, which help Google understand your website. It’s a big map that breaks down every page on your site and how each page functions, again, helping to improve your search ranking.

Squarespace offers analytics on the performance of your website right on the platform. Their reports are very easy to understand so there’s no intimidation factor on understanding what’s working, where your traffic is coming from, and the most visited pages. For a more robust dive into your site’s performance, you can easily integrate Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These are must-haves in my opinion and give you an even deeper dive into your website and business.

Related: How to connect your Squarespace website to google search console

Free SSL Certificates

Unlike other website platforms, Squarespace offers a free SSL Certificate with every paid plan. Not sure what an SSL Certificate is? If you’ve ever noticed the lock icon in the upper corner of a website near the URL, that means the website is safe and secure – SSL Certificate is verified!

Why is this important? Most browsers will mark websites without an SSL Certificate as a threat to users and encourage them not to proceed in visiting the site. An SSL Certificate ensures a safe and secure browsing experience. An SSL Certificate also helps with SEO, ensuring your website will sit higher in search results due to its validity.

With Squarespace, you can also enable HSTS Secure. This encrypts the connection and prevents potential attackers from impersonating or accessing your site.

Endless Customization (With and Without Code)

One of the main benefits of Squarespace is the endless customization options — both with CSS code and without code. If you aren’t tech-savvy or the thought of code scares you, no worries! You can still customize every single inch of your site from the layout to colors, fonts, navigation, and beyond.

If you’re looking to take your site to the next level, the Custom CSS panel allows you to edit specific blocks on a page, add functionality like a sticky header, adjust the position of blocks, add vertical lines in Squarespace, and more.

Each Squarespace website I design for clients includes custom development, so their website is built with ample custom code in a way that still allows them to easily update and manage their website. I even use CSS code for the Squarespace templates in the TSMC Shop!

So there you have it, 8 reasons why the Squarespace website platform is best for small businesses!