Squarespace

Opmerkingen: I genuinely love this tool for creating websites. It is easy to use, cost efficient, and turns out a great end product. I have used it to make websites for photographers, restaurants, and sales businesses alike. It is so versatile and every site visitor thinks it's professionally done.

Pluspunten: This software is easy to use, intuitive, and when you can't figure something out Support is right there for you. They have tons of how to videos and instructions that make everything pretty easy to figure out.

Minpunten: I dislike the spacer feature - it gets pretty annoying to use those instead of being able to snap an object to a grid and align that way. It works much like Microsoft Word in the sense that if you try to resize or adjust something, sometimes everything on the page moves.

Opmerkingen: I have a beautiful, functional website to direct clients to. It has a blog, a shop where they can purchase items and much more. The site allows me to capture visitor information, make sales and create first interactions with me and my services. It allows me to have a "home base" from which I launch all of my projects and ideas. I have had Squarespace for several years now and never plan to change--it's really that good! I have experimented with other providers but never found anything so well crafted and easy to use.

Pluspunten: Squarespace allows you to select a plan that fits your needs. You can choose plans with unlimited pages, commerce options and much more. I love that it's made to be user friendly and there is no coding required (you can code as an advanced option but it's really not at all needed since they offer you everything). You can add all kinds of features to webpages, like forms, surveys, images and much more just by adding elements they call "blocks". This makes it very easy to customize the website to look, feel and operate just like you would like. If you previously couldn't realize your website dreams due to a lack of technical know-how, you can use Squarespace to design like a pro.

Minpunten: Sometimes it can be slightly unintuitive as to where to find something, so it takes me a few extra minutes to find out where I can tweak a specific setting. Customer support is excellent and fast to respond but only by email or chat, not by phone. You do have to upgrade to a higher plan for some features, like abandoned cart recovery at checkout, for example; however, for the value they offer, I think all the upgrades are worth the cost.

Opmerkingen: I was first introduced to Squarespace when I hired someone to design the website for my business, and he showed me how to make changes myself. From there I started to play with it and ended up creating simple websites for several clients, many of whom were then able to take over their own upkeep and maintenance. And in the three years I've been working with Squarespace sites, the features and support have only improved. I also love that they're very attuned to what's trending in graphic design, so their templates never look dated.

Pluspunten: The aesthetic. Squarespace's design templates are fresh, current, and appealing to begin with, which provides a lot of options for customization.

Minpunten: It's not the most intuitive interface ever, but that said, they provide outstanding how-to articles and videos and infinitely patient customer support, so it's not hard to figure out how to do what you want to do, even if you have no coding experience.

Opmerkingen: Overall, I hated using SquareSpace and I was so disappointed because I switched away from WordPress + Divi to give SquareSpace a whirl based on SquareSpace's amazing marketing. What a let down. I will never use SquareSpace again. My client wanted both of his sites designed in SquareSpace because he was also duped by the ads. I made one site and it took forever because I was constantly googling how to do something with code to get the site how we wanted it. If you use SquareSpace be prepared to be frustrated or to hire a developer. Basic functionality is missing and you can't copy anything you've done to use elsewhere. I wanted to duplicate the first site and modify it for the second. You can't do that. I had to make both sites from scratch. Support was absolutely terrible. Zero help compared to the awesome Divi support staff that has made my designing life so great for so many years (I'm not an affiliate, just a fan). Oh! And SquareSpace is expensive! You have to pay for each and every site. With WordPress, you pay for hosting somewhere, like Siteground, and you can add as many sites to that account as you like no charge. Squarespace has pretty templates that you can't modify pretty much at all, and it's expensive with terrible support. Do not choose SquareSpace as your CMS unless you are a developer. Awful.

Pluspunten: SquareSpace has beautiful templates. They are truly gorgeous. SquareSpace also has an easy-to-use sidebar of options that puts everything that you can do on the left side. The interface is as clean as the templates. Hosting of your site is done through Squarespace. That's it when it comes to pros. There are a ton of Cons to using SquareSpace.

Minpunten: As a WordPress user (who has also designed with Wix), SquareSpace falls short almost everywhere. You can't import your brand font—essential. You have to use code or a back-door solution with AdobeFonts. If you want 5 items in a row, no can do. You get 4 or 6. You can't drag the amount of padding around items and sections. You must use spacer blocks (time consuming and such a bad way to do things). There's no media storage! If you upload your photo it isn't stored anywhere for easy selection later. You must upload the same image multiple times whenever you need it—frustrating. Changes can't be made on individual copy styles. Squarespace sets up its CMS as a global system so if you want to change the way your font looks in just one place, you need to insert code (markdown block). You should be able to select it and change the size or colour. But no. It's CRAZY! So time-consuming. Missing basic word-processing functionality. Squarespace has no plugin options. You can't duplicate a page of your site and you can't duplicate your site! Everything is done from scratch! In WordPress, you download a .JSON file and upload it somewhere else and you're flying. Not with SquareSpace. You can't make your overlays look different per section. Everything applies globally. You can't add borders to images. The biggest CON? There's no undo! No revision history. If you delete something accidentally, it's gone forever. Support is terrible. Every answer is "you can't do that" or "try to find code.

Opmerkingen: I first started using Squarespace under another Photographer, whom I was managing their studio and day to day "to-do's". I took over her website maintenance and blog, to which was surprisingly easy to navigate. I loved how I was able to read analytics and see what content was working and what was not. The sleek layouts made a few easy clicks look like I spent 4 years in web design. So it was really a no brainer when I decided to start my own business; I knew I would be showing my work to the world through Squarespace. There is just something about the designs of these Squarespace websites that look stunningly polished and exceptionally functional.

Pluspunten: As a former user of Wordpress, I found Squarespace to be a breath of fresh air. I've be using it since 2014 and have never looked back. It actually made designing my website and grabbing analytics fun! When navigating the software, it felt like I had been here before. It was so easy to find the tools and customize the fonts and sizing to my preferences. Adding pictures in where I need them is easy and the layouts they offer display my work in such a beautiful fashion that even I'm blown away. All in all, I love this software because it offers so many different themes and customizations without being confusing. It's actually fun and I love that a blog is included with my site. It's like a whole other site to customize and tweak to your taste. I was never a blogger before but now I don't have a choice, Squarespace makes it too easy to make excuses now.

Minpunten: There are very few things that come to mind when talking about disliking this software. I do wish there was a larger library of fonts readily available for each area of customization, across all themes.