The challenge with making your own website is making it look like you didn’t make it. And when I say you, I mean inexperienced. There are many easy drag and drop builders for you to use and end up managing quite well. But the problem is nobody is there to tell you what’s a good design and what isn’t, and you end up with a transparently amateur- looking site.
Squarespace eliminates that fear with award- winning templates that make you “look like an expert right from the start.” They have a long trusted history and is one of the best-known brands in the website building space. If you’re new to the business, they are an all-in-one platform for you to run your business and, well, it makes your business look extremely expensive. If you’re into that, keep reading.
Let’s begin with their designs. They have a huge selection of professional and downright beautiful design templates to choose from. It’s one of the best things about Squarespace. But you can also choose to upload your own design and swap out the photographs in their templates for yours. The typography, color schemes, and responsiveness all stay aligned to provide a professional touch.
This continues to the backend design; really living up to their tagline: Build It Beautiful. Going through the admin area feels fresh, new, and interesting. It’s like opening a new iPhone and marveling at it’s shiny exterior.
Aside from looking great, Squarespace also does great. All their features are built in which means everything is guaranteed to work. You don’t have to take the time to figure out which plugins or apps would work okay with it. Even website analytics are built into the platform. This gives you more time to focus on content, design, and promotion.
They also host the websites build with their software, so your site is compatible, optimized, and fast. Squarespace takes care of speed, website security, backups, and redundancy. The cost is included in the monthly price so even if they provide options for self- hosting, it really is a no-brainer.
One of the simplest but most ingenious things I’ve found on Squarespace: Image Cropping. Seriously, image cropping. Galleries need to crop images to present them in a perfect grid. Most builders will just crop your photos, but Squarespace lets you set a focal point on photos to crop around. It’s so simple, but it makes your gallery look so amazing.
Their monthly personal plan costs $16 per month or $12 per month if billed annually. That’s 20 pages, galleries, and blogs with unlimited bandwidth and storage, and 2 contributors. You also get a mobile-optimized website, a free custom domain with the annual purchase, fully integrate e-commerce, 3% sales transaction fee, and more. Their business plan costs $26 per month or $18 per month billed annually. Unlimited pages, everything in the personal plan, 2% sales transaction fee, professional email from Google, and a $100 Google AdWords Credit.
