WordPress vs. Squarespace for a small business

WordPress vs. Squarespace at a glance

“WordPress” here means self-hosted WordPress from WordPress.org: free software you install on hosting you pay for. (WordPress.com is a separate hosted service with its own plans.) Squarespace is an all-in-one builder: software, hosting and support in one subscription.

Squarespace prices from squarespace.com/pricing, checked September 2026. Annual plans include one year of free domain registration. Hosting range reflects typical small-business hosting.

What does each one really cost over three years?

The sticker prices aren’t comparable, because Squarespace includes things WordPress leaves to you. Here is platform cost alone over three years, not counting design:

A professionally designed site costs the same order of money on either platform; see our Long Island website cost guide for build prices, and what a care plan should include.

What are the downsides of WordPress?

• Security is on you. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025. 91% were in plugins and only six were in WordPress core. An unpatched plugin is the usual way in.
• Updates can break things. Core, theme and plugin updates arrive constantly, and one conflicting update can take a page down.
• Plugin sprawl. Every feature added by plugin is another thing to update, another license to renew and another script slowing the page.
• Hosting quality varies. Cheap shared hosting is a common cause of slow WordPress sites.
• Page builders add weight. Heavy drag-and-drop builders make WordPress easier to edit but often slower to load.

What are the downsides of Squarespace?

• You rent, you don’t own. Stop paying and the site goes offline. You can’t move it to another host.
• Leaving is hard. Squarespace’s export produces a WordPress-format XML file covering basic pages, one blog, and text and image blocks. Store pages, product blocks, video blocks, style settings and custom CSS are not exported.
• Feature ceiling. If you need a booking flow, a CRM integration or a custom calculator that Squarespace doesn’t support, workarounds get awkward.
• Fees on sales. The Basic plan charges a 2% transaction fee on store sales, and digital products and memberships carry fees from 7% on Basic down to 0% on Advanced.
• Template sameness. Many Squarespace sites share the same layouts, which makes it harder to look different from the business down the road.

When is Squarespace the right call?

• You want to make your own edits and never think about hosting or updates.
• The site is a simple brochure: services, photos, hours, contact.
• Your budget is closer to a few hundred dollars a year than a few thousand.
• You sell a modest number of products and are fine with Squarespace’s checkout.

When is WordPress the right call?

• You need features Squarespace doesn’t have: custom forms, integrations, member areas, large content libraries.
• You publish a lot of content and want full control over SEO and structured data.
• Owning and being able to move the site matters to you.
• Someone, you or a professional, will keep it updated every month. If nobody will, choose Squarespace.

How to choose in four steps

1. List what the site must do. Pages, forms, booking, payments, integrations. Check each against Squarespace’s features before assuming you need WordPress.
2. Decide who edits it. Weekly edits by a non-technical owner favour Squarespace.
3. Decide who maintains it. WordPress without a named person doing monthly updates is a security risk, not a savings.
4. Price three years, not one. Add platform, hosting, plugins and upkeep, then compare totals.

What does East End Web build on?

We build on three platforms: fully custom code, WordPress, and Shopify for online stores. We pick per project, based on what the site has to do, who will edit it, and what it will cost to run. We don’t build on Squarespace or sell templates, and every build is designed around speed and mobile use first. If a DIY builder is genuinely the better fit for your budget, we’ll tell you. Switching platforms later is effectively a website redesign, so it pays to choose well the first time. See how we build websites.