Best-in-class features and attractive templates make a website builder superb and outstanding.
The Squarespace visual website builder has the drag-and-drop feature, and it’s awesome. It can be thought of as the finest of website builders. It is instinctive, and it was designed thoughtfully. It is most recommended.
Squarespace is popular because it has beautiful templates, and the features are exceptional. It has the best blogging, scheduling, audio players, photo galleries, and podcasting.
The Editor
The Squarespace pages contain content bocks and sections.
Features are a fast way to design a page without doing it from scratch. They pile vertically on a page and they are containers that have been pre-designed.
Features are made up of building blocks which are called content blocks. These building blocks are buttons, texts, images, maps, and some other few.
It is advisable to note that Squarespace launches its features a bit late. Many other website builders launch their features early. To be the best, it doesn’t mean you have to launch yours first.
The features available on Squarespace are very many, and they’re all customizable, so additional content blocks may be added if you need to.
Backgrounds, colors, and padding are customizable in each feature. This is a good chance. In the former versions of Squarespace, the background can only be added at the top of the page.
Although among website builders, Squarespace is not the simplest to use, it is easy-to-use. The easiest to use is Weebly. Squarespace is the only website builder that never promised an easy-to-use homepage.
Squarespace should be regarded as intuitive, instead of “easy to use”. Everything about it has been thought through. Squarespace is the most exquisite website builder that you can find.
One of the reasons you know Squarespace has thought a lot of things through is the idea of Image cropping. If you would want to display thumbnails as a square in a picture gallery, you will have to crop the image.
The website builders you find today will only crop around the center. But Squarespace will not do that. Squarespace has a reliable focal point editor that adjusts the crop.
The block called Menu is another reason Squarespace should be termed “thoughtful”. This block is for restaurant menus. Web design faces a challenging format which is the restaurant menu. This is why the PDF menu is linked to by the restaurant menu.
The formatting problem was solved by Squarespace when they invented a simple mark-up language for users to create their restaurant menu. The menu is formatted automatically, and the fonts, colors, and borders can be customized.
To add to the features and content blocks, four collection page types exist, and they are store, blog, portfolio, and events.
There are three options to choose from when it comes to creating content:
- Section
- Collection
- Content block
You can create a picture gallery with a section, but you can’t do so with a content block. A blog is termed as a collection, and not as a section.
You must probably be wondering why Squarespace has options for content creation. It could be that they’re trying to lay a foundation. It seems likely that Squarespace may launch a high-class collection type in the years to come, and a custom collection or CMS functionality might come with it.
Squarespace 7.1
Squarespace officially introduced the 7.1 version to the world in early 2020. I can assure you that after using 7.1, 7.0 will start looking like it was developed in the Stone Age.
The biggest changes in the 7.1 version you should look out for are the huge template renovation and the addition of sections.
To add to the feature changes, Squarespace has also done a few changes to the interface. The interface has been made to look nice and simple. One fault with Squarespace is that it is too minimal. It would seem as though elements were always hidden, and the only way to find them was by minesweeping with your mouse.
For example, for you to preview a website using mobile, you would have to look for the button to push in order to carry out this function. In Squarespace 7.1, this button is no longer hidden, it is obvious.
Minimalism is something Squarespace has made so available. In styles, for example, the gear icon would have to be clicked to navigate through the font sizes. The gear icon seems unclear. It is tricky to understand it naturally; you’ll have to stumble upon that knowledge yourself.
I can guarantee that you would like the idea of Squarespace being too minimal because, on balance, Squarespace has a calm feel when compared to most website builders which are mostly so overwhelming.
Template
Stories are told by first impressions.
A subtle detail you’ll notice on the first page of Squarespace is that the website is raised beyond the user interface. This is uncommon.
Think back to most website builders that you’ve used in the past. You will notice that most of them put the user interface above the document; this doesn’t apply to Squarespace though. Squarespace puts the document above the user interface.
Squarespace has kept to its promise. It has the most awesome templates you can find. No website builder has modern, clean templates like Squarespace.
The templates have a good look, and they feel great. They have plenty of room to show off photos, they have enough white spaces and very bold typography. This is why Squarespace is mostly used by online stores and professional photographers.
Templates have changed in Squarespace 7.1. Previously, some templates had a particular feature and others didn’t. It is no longer like that. Now, templates have the same features and can be designed. The disadvantage of this version is that you cannot change templates when you have chosen one.
You have the option to customize the template throughout the editor. For instance, if you have decided to edit the header of the website, you just need to open it in the page editor and tap the header.
From this position, you can select different header layouts, styles, colors, and pin different elements like social icons. This also applies to sections. You can regulate the height, background, colors, and padding just with the page editor.
The content blocks have rarely styled the page. You need to open the design option in the sidebar to increase the font size. This can cause confusion mainly because the place to find a particular design option is not obvious. Sometimes, when you even find the design option, it is not clear what that option is used for.
There have been major improvements in the fonts and colors in Squarespace 7.1. The improvement is that it offers defaults that are simple to use with a chance to customize these defaults.
In the previous version, you would have to change all elements individually in order to change the fonts. This was difficult, and it most times leads to the creation of a website with different fonts, and this is not good for performance.
Squarespace 7.1 has cleared this up. You can now select the base font size. This is simple and stress-free. It is even a solution for those who do not like to modify the detail of the individual font. Fantastic granular designs and customized fonts have also been provided for users who want to go deep into designs.
The same thing applies to Squarespace in the aspect of colors. A simple interface is available for scrolling between color palette and theme. This is for people who don’t want to do too much design. But there is room for anyone who wants to go deeper into the customization of palette and themes.
Features
Everything has been well thought out in Squarespace; there is no feature that is only half good, and they try as much as possible to beat the standards of their competitors.
They have excellent blogging. They are the only website builder that can be matched with WordPress. There are a lot of features to talk about in Squarespace, and they are comments, moderation, customizable URLs, drafts, markdowns, RSS, etc.
The form builder is fantastic. It contains Google Docs and MailChimp attachments, up to 19 distinct field options, custom post-submit, and lightbox mode. The Lightbox mode is a medium to develop a button that loads in a lightbox form.
If you would want to manage the website on your mobile phone, there is room for that. Squarespace has 3 mobile available apps, which are: e-commerce which is used to manage online stores, Analytics which is for analyzing, and Squarespace allows you to correct the text, include images, and manage your blog. The website cannot be created with these mobile apps; they can only be managed.
Syndication of podcasts is possible with a website builder, but it is only with Squarespace. If you want to syndicate, you would have to submit your podcast to Apple podcast and Spotify because it is important.
A lot of other website builders claim that they can also host podcasts, but what they actually mean is to keep your podcast in an audio player. They can’t let you syndicate.
The title of the best donation system among every website builder is held by Squarespace. Other website builders only make a non-attractive PayPal button available or they would advise that you make those donations through their online stores, which never works well.
Squarespace avoids that. They have provided a complete donation system that addresses the custom email receipt, custom checkouts, and suggested contributions.
Extra Tools
In previous years, Squarespace has developed tools that are well-known online. Acuity Scheduling was acquired by them in 2019 to add scheduling to websites. It is fully available, and there are automatic client reminders.
This enables clients to create, cancel, and reschedule meetings. It also contains online payments and intake forms. An additional fee of $15 is what it is worth.
You can also create email marketing campaigns with Squarespace. You can do many things with this tool, such as send automated emails, welcome new email subscribers, email blasts, or even reward customers who incur a lot of cash. The email designs are nice and easy.
Unfold is one of Squarespace’s recent acquired tools; this tool lets you create beautiful stories on Instagram.
E-commerce
The best e-commerce among website builders is obviously Squarespace. When it comes to e-commerce website builders, Squarespace is one of the best options. It came 3rd amongst the best e-commerce website builders for customer satisfaction. The 1st position went to Shopify because it is designed purely for e-commerce.
The best reason to use Squarespace over Shopify is that the Shopify’s page editor is quite messy.
Top 15 eCommerce Tools to Start and Grow Your Online Business
SEO
Quick advice, all website builders are almost the same when it comes to SEO. Some technical features that you need in a website builder are most supported by all website builders.
The major difference between Squarespace and other website builders is that Squarespace does ask you to rubbish SEO upgrades that do nothing. There is a list of features available on Squarespace that are necessary for SEO:
- AMP support;
- Meta titles and descriptions;
- Custom URLs;
- Mobile-friendly;
- SSL;
- Sitemap;
- Alt tags.
Pricing
Squarespace has provided payment plans. Two of those plans are general website building, and the other two are for e-commerce. In addition to this, Squarespace is very transparent with its pricing. You can buy and cancel with your credit card without any stress.
Integration
A noticeable characteristic of Squarespace is that it strives hard to provide you with the best options. You’ll also notice this in its integrations. Squarespace has placed quality over quantity in the aspect of integrations.
Squarespace has a wide variety of integrations. The nice bit about this is that the integrations work perfectly and run smoothly on Squarespace. Let me mention some of the integrations Squarespace has provided:
You can integrate 3rd-party integrations with Code Block or Code Injection even if it doesn’t officially support 3rd-party integrations.
Domains and Email
Squarespace has made a custom domain name available on annual subscriptions for a whole year. Later on, you’ll have to pay 20$.
Because of the price, Squarespace falls on the expensive side, and you could always find cheap domains on other platforms like Namecheap and direct them to your Squarespace website.
Conclusion
From this review, you would see that Squarespace is one of the best website builders that you can find out there. It is highly recommended.
The website builder has successfully allowed the combination of awesome themes, best-in-class features, and a smart and stress-free website builder. They have also given you honest and transparent pricing that you probably won’t find anywhere else for this much quality.
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