Wordpress vs Squarespace for small Business – Which is the right fit for you

One of the first questions which would arise in the minds of any businessman, after he kick starts his new venture would be, ‘How do I build a good website’? This is quite a common question these days as website continues to be one of the preferred and successful platforms for business expansion / promotion by Startups as well as established companies. While quite a few interesting options may come up for companies after soul searching and discussions, two of the familiar names which most of the organizations may finalize, is either WordPress or Squarespace.

This is quite understandable because both, WordPress and Squarespace have been quite successful in meeting customer’s expectations of helping develop a quick and responsive website. However both of them pose of stiff competition for each other itself!! Hence WordPress vs Squarespace, is not a very easy topic to either discuss or decide upon.

Parameters that may help in your decision

Building a website requires at least three main factors to be looked into and studied. You’re Target Audience, your budget and the time required to build the website. Let’s take a closer look at each parameter and try to find out a solution for WordPress vs Squarespace – Which is best for you.

Ambition of your website or target audience

Before thinking of a website, it is very important to focus on which type of audience; your website is supposed to target. Hence, before even taking a decision on WordPress vs Squarespace, you need to first be clear on what you want to achieve with your website. Having said that, WordPress and Squarespace, both approach this task, in their own different ways

WordPress allows you to build any type of website, primarily because it supports multiple themes and the fact that third party applications or plug-ins, can be used in abundance, depending upon the parameters, needed to be focused on improving the performance of your website.

Budget

The all-important budget factor as always plays a huge role again while deciding on WordPress vs Squarespace. Though WordPress is an open source product and is up for grabs for free, when you actually look at enhancing the performance of your website and using some high quality plugins, it’s sure to scale up your budget, by a certain percentage

Squarespace on the other hand works out a little bit more economical with an all-inclusive package that has a domain hosting facility and a decent performance guarantee. In other words, Squarespace is a complete package and less expensive as compared to WordPress (Not initially, but as your project goes on and you look at building a smart website.

Time required in building your website

The last but not the least and which has an equal significance as the above two parameters is the time line required to build a website. Wordpress involves more of an in depth study into your website’s final goal and thus needs a professional approach while building it. On the other hand, Squarespace gives you whatever you desire, to meet your expectations, but is not the most flexible option, for building a strong and responsive website.

In addition to the above parameters, another possible area where Squarespace slightly scores over Wordpress is Site maintenance. The maintenance and upgrades are handled by the company, which also includes hosting. Wordpress on the other hand, requires more of a user intervention, to handle maintenance and upgrades at regular levels.

WordPress vs Squarespace – The Best then is?

In a nutshell, the best way to choose would be based on the complexity and budget of your website. When you look at a more artistic website with lot of features and more secured and response, Wordpress would be your choice, bearing in mind that you have to be ready to shell that extra amount. On the other hand, Squarespace can be used when you are not looking at anything lavish and just want to keep it simple.

Wordpress Development might require you to hire the services of an experienced WordPress developer who has a fair bit of knowledge about the development tools associated with it while with a limited knowledge about Squarespace, you as a user can attempt building a website, yourself!

It still is a difficult task to choose between WordPress vs Squarespace and the best deciders would be the end user and the concerned developers themselves. Here’s how we can summarize them for you.

• For large and complex websites, WordPress is a better option than Squarespace.
• When you are looking at a minimum budget for your website, then Squarespace holds the upper hand.
• Technically speaking, Squarespace is much easier to set up than WordPress
• Site Maintenance rests with the software providers when using Squarespace, which is not the case in WordPress.
• With WordPress, you can build any type of websites, with more features and themes available while this prospect is limited in the case of Squarespace
• WordPress offers you more independent and individual control on the content of your website, while with Squarespace, you will have to adhere to certain described user policies.
• There’s also support to consider – with Squarespace, you can make use of a support desk. With WordPress, you’ll only get this if you’ve got an arrangement with a developer or agency to provide it.

Food for Thought for Developers and End users as you remain the best judge to decide on WordPress vs Squarespace.