Squarespace is a well-known and trustworthy website builder, but that doesn’t guarantee it’s the ideal option for you. So, for this piece, I decided to put the best of the rest to the test in order to determine which service you should trust with your money.
Squarespace is well-known for its simplicity of use and large collection of stunning designs. This drag-and-drop editor is ideal for novices or anybody looking to create a visually appealing website. And, as stated in our Squarespace review, working with Squarespace is a snap since everything you could possibly need is served out on a silver platter.
However, just though Squarespace offers many advantages does not imply it is without drawbacks. I can understand why folks could dislike Squarespace:
- It offers limited site editing options.
- Business tools lack much to be desired.
- SEO tools are not as developed as they may be.
There are so many alternative amazing website builders on the market that it makes no sense to accept Squarespace’s shortcomings if they irritate you so much. There are other Squarespace options available, each offering something somewhat different.
In this list, I’ve discovered 5 builders that can compete with Squarespace, each with a distinct focus, so you can determine which one is best for you.
You may read this article by clicking on the names of the builders in the list, or you can jump to the end and read my final opinions and suggestions.
Best Squarespace alternatives: Overview
- SITE123 – extremely easy to use Squarespace alternative
- Zyro – Squarespace alternative with experimental features and low prices
- Wix – Squarespace alternative with great business features
- GoDaddy Website Builder – incredible Squarespace alternative with advanced eCommerce tools
- Gator Website Builder – simple and cheap Squarespace alternative
1) SITE123 - As easy as ABC
SITE123, despite its obnoxious moniker, is a service focused on relaxing and simple website creation. Its key selling point as a Squarespace alternative is, obviously, its ease of use. It’s as simple as ABC and 123.
SITE123 is far easier to use than Squarespace. This website builder also offers some fairly good intuitive business capabilities, which are detailed in more detail here, making SITE123 a strong alternative for anybody seeking to design a website.
Using SITE123
While most website builders these days are concerned with customizability, themes, and eCommerce, SITE123 is concerned with the consumer. With such emphasis, there are tremendous benefits for some and significant disadvantages for others. Allow me to explain.
SITE123 does not employ templates in the same manner that other website builders do. There is a ‘templates’ tab in the editor, but it is more of a layout selection than anything else. That’s really quite a wonderful thing, because for folks new with website construction, seeing all the options a provider like Squarespace or Wix provides may be pretty daunting.
While most website builders these days are concerned with customizability, themes, and eCommerce, SITE123 is concerned with the consumer. With such emphasis, there are tremendous benefits for some and significant disadvantages for others. Allow me to explain.
SITE123 does not employ templates in the same manner that other website builders do. There is a ‘templates’ tab in the editor, but it is more of a layout selection than anything else. That’s really quite a wonderful thing, because for folks new with website construction, seeing all the options a provider like Squarespace or Wix provides may be pretty daunting.
For more experienced users, the emphasis on ease-of-use results in an overly simple experience. For example, if you wish to alter the typefaces in your headers (for your menu items, for example), you may do so using the ‘Font’ option. When you choose a typeface, the entire website changes. Not just the specified text or region, not just the page, but the whole website.
It changes the font weight and size automatically to meet your chosen layout, but other than that, you get what you get. This concept applies to numerous SITE123 choices, such as selecting a colour palette.
Pages are something that SITE123 excels at.
There are several choices for users to explore here, with numerous categories and intriguing page layouts. SITE123 does something interesting here with how they offer the page choices.
I had two choices: a single page or numerous pages. Keep all of your pages on one site if you are a tiny firm that only wants to get its name and information out there. You can quickly flip between several pages if you have a blog, a portfolio, a menu, and so on.
Isn’t it simple? It’s so basic that it just makes sense, and Squarespace should do the same.
SITE123 Pricing Review
- Free – the best option for testing the platform
- Basic ($12.80/month) – nice basic (LOL) business plan
- Advanced ($9.90/month) – For a more efficient business, multilingual websites and email capabilities are available.
- Professional ($14.40/month) – accepts credit cards and provides additional multilingual and email choices
- Gold ($17.40/month) – all eCommerce and marketing tools, as well as more storage
- Platinum ($37.50/month) – includes all of the features of the Gold plan, plus more than three times the storage capacity
SITE123 Pros & Cons
pros
- Extremely simple to use
- There are enough content blocks to build a good website.
cons
- Editing opportunities are limited.
2) Zyro – Far Ahead of Squarespace
When you first visit Zyro, you might believe you’ve landed on Squarespace’s homepage. There are several parallels between the two, most notably the templates provided – they’re stunning. However, nice themes do not always imply a competent website builder; there is more to unwrap here.
If you’re looking for a Squarespace alternative, Zyro should be at the top of your list. It lacks Wix’s functionality and applications, but in terms of pure creativity and beauty, Zyro is the place to be – you can learn more about Zyro’s oddities here.
Using Zyro
Zyro hasn’t been around for long, and it’s a relative newcomer to the website building market. Don’t let that put you off, though, because it contains capabilities that other website builders haven’t yet adopted. Two of them, in particular, are AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered – AI Writer and AI Heatmap.
But first, let’s take a look at the templates that were provided to me when I initially signed up.
AI Writer is an intriguing tool in which you select a topic, a category, and a paragraph type (typically ‘About’ or ‘Bio,’ and then let the AI do its thing. I selected a random set of alternatives – ‘Personal bio/History text for Electronic music’ – sat back for a few seconds, and then reviewed the possibilities offered.
The AI Writer gave me around six possibilities, one of which was my favourite: ‘My music is highly personal and seems like a dream to perform.’ I enjoy setting a mood to create a distinct ambience. I enjoy using space, music, and technology to keep my own world alive.’
Isn’t it cool? If you’re a musician building a website to showcase your music, you want the music to speak for itself, but having intriguing and engaging writing is crucial. When you’re not a writer, it may be difficult to come up with, so having an AI engine execute it for you is simply one less thing to worry about.
The AI Heatmap is Zyro’s other AI creation. I was completely taken away by this one.
It searches your website for the areas of the page that are most likely to draw a user’s attention and highlights them using a colour scale. This is a fantastic feature, especially if you sell on your website. You may determine which locations are likely to attract attention and position your most profitable goods there.
The website builder is a tad less remarkable. Don’t get me wrong: there are some really good features, such as a grid for dragging and dropping pieces into the proper location and a cool mobile editing option. But, as there is always a but, you are quite limited in terms of what you can put on the page – you have just 9 possibilities, which include text boxes, photos, and contact forms.
Zyro Pricing Review
Zyro is quite affordable, with monthly fees ranging from $2.69 to $. While this builder does not provide a free plan, the alternatives available make it a very reasonable option. Zyro is at the top of our list of the cheapest website builders for a reason.
- Website ($2.69/month) – With features like no storage and bandwidth constraints, it’s ideal for expanding organisations.
- Business ($3.59/mo) – provides basic eCommerce functionalities for a 1% commission cost
- Advanced Store ($/month) – offers more advanced eCommerce capabilities like as abandoned cart recovery, Amazon integration, and others.
Zyro Pros & Cons
pros
- Affordable Pricing
- Ease Of Use
- AI technologies for automatically creating your website
cons
- Limited Customization
3) Wix - Old School Website Builder
Wix has been around for a while and is regarded as one of the best website builders available. Not only does Wix provide two options for designing your website, but it also provides a free lifetime plan for individuals who just want to give it a go.
If you’re looking for a Squarespace alternative, you’ve come to the right place. As we said in our review, Wix is an excellent option for almost anybody seeking to construct a website – it has amazing business tools for online businesses as well as multiple editors for different sorts of customers.
Using Wix
One of the most common concerns I get from Squarespace users is a lack of alternatives. Sure, you can use it to create a beautiful website, but making it your own needs some technical skills that not everyone possesses.
Wix wraps up that anxiety and throws it away. It provides you with two options for building your website. These are the Wix ADI and the Classic Editor (Artificial Design Intelligence).
Each option provides a unique experience. The Classic Editor is Wix’s tried-and-true website construction style, with an abundance of templates, customization possibilities, and marketplace add-ons. It’s an excellent location to develop a website if you’re already familiar with certain parts of web design.
It provides hundreds, if not 400, templates in areas ranging from photography to construction, wedding cakes to architecture, and so forth.
Wix ADI, on the other hand, moves at a more leisurely rate. Instead than forcing you to pick a template and start modifying right away, Wix ADI asks a series of questions that help Wix construct a site that matches each user’s goals and needs – both in terms of friendly design and functionality.
After answering all of the requirements, I was given the option of uploading a logo that Wix could use to generate a colour palette for my website – a great touch, but only after this stage was I permitted to select your homepage design. ADI presents a selection of three solutions that it believes best represent the decisions made – it is then up to me to make the final decision!
I noted Squarespace’s paucity of options before, but this isn’t limited to their website builder. Any decent Squarespace alternative must provide something that Squarespace does not. In the case of Wix, that something is applications.
Wix has a large App Market where you can find third-party apps in a variety of handy categories to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. Do you want more in-depth analytics? There is a mobile app for it. Do you enjoy dropshipping? There’s also an app for it.
Squarespace has several app connectors, some of which are quite beautiful, but if you’re not interested in selling online, none of Squarespace’s products will be of any value to you, as they are all specialised to this market – Wix takes the ‘provide everything we can’ approach.
Wix Pricing Review
Wix is available for free or for $59.00 per month. Isn’t it quite a range? Wix has a total of seven premium plans, three of which are intended for eCommerce sites and the other five for normal websites.
Here’s how the plans differ:
- Free – mostly suited for testing.
- Combo ($16.00/month) – This is a wonderful choice for portfolios and personal websites.
- Unlimited ($22.00/month) – additional storage, powerful analytics, and SEO applications
- Pro ($27.00/month) – Additional features, such as a professional logo and an Event Calendar, have been added.
- VIP ($49.00/month) – priority customer service
- Business Basic ($27.00/month) – major aspects of eCommerce
- Business Unlimited ($32.00/month) – Subscription sales, dropshipping, and product reviews are further eCommerce capabilities.
- Business VIP ($59.00/month) – Features such as a loyalty programme, sales tax computation, and priority help have been included.
Wix Pros & Cons
pros
- Two outstanding website editors
- There are plenty excellent templates available.
cons
- For beginners, the classic editor is more difficult at first.
4) Gator Website Builder - Create Website in Seconds
Gator website builder is a relatively recent creation created and maintained by HostGator, a well-known company in web hosting. HostGator, like GoDaddy, saw an opportunity to use their web hosting knowledge to create its own website builder, which, like GoDaddy, had both advantages and disadvantages.
While compared to Squarespace, this website builder provides an exceptionally simple experience when creating your website (our Gator review goes more in-depth about its effortless building experience). This is significant given Squarespace’s reputation for simplicity. Gator is also far less expensive than Squarespace, giving it a viable alternative.
Using Gator website builder
Gator website builder, like Wix, takes a two-pronged approach, giving a basic ‘Express’ editing experience or a more traditional one. Naturally, I tried both, and my results were not what I expected.
Both versions enable you to select a theme and template, and both versions request you to enter your site’s name, details, and so on.
The distinction is found inside the editor. While the Standard editor is a traditional drag and drop website builder, the Express builder is even more basic than Wix’s ADI offering.
You may choose the theme and colour palette, as well as the fonts and layout. That’s all there is to it. It may appear to be limited, and it is, but for beginners or those wishing to just learn the ropes, it is ideal.
There are more options in the standard builder. Gator currently offers 15 different templates.
There are many more things you may add to your site inside the editor, making up for the absence of templates.
I counted more than 50, and I’m sure there are more being added all the time. In comparison to Zyro’s meagre 8, I feel spoilt for options. Everything is accessible, from buttons to HTML embeds, and even alternatives that are no longer supported, such as Flash (in case you want to build a website with outdated technology).
Gator has one disadvantage: there are no eCommerce alternatives. When a website builder is this inexpensive, I don’t expect anything more than the basics, but if you’re serious about eCommerce, Gator website builder isn’t a good Squarespace substitute.
Gator Website Builder Pricing review
Gator’s website builder costs between $3.46 and $8.30 a month, giving it an excellent value. It does not, however, provide a free plan or a free trial period. Nonetheless, its three price options look somewhat like this:
- Starter ($3.46/month) – provides essential eCommerce and business functionalities
- Premium ($5.39/month) – a good approach for small businesses, including reservations, appointments, and priority support
- eCommerce ($8.30/month) – provides comprehensive eCommerce tools for online selling
Gator Website Builder Pros & Cons
pros
- Very affordable
- Simple and functional business features
- Easy setup
cons
- Limited customization
5) GoDaddy - Simple & Fast
GoDaddy is a good option if you want an easy-to-use website builder. GoDaddy’s website builder is clearly geared towards the novice market, and it succeeds well. The editing choices aren’t especially broad or in-depth, but what is provided is of high quality.
GoDaddy has an outstanding business feature set, including the InSight tool, which I’ve never seen used before. If you’re interested, you can learn more about all of InSight’s features here. It is incredibly user-friendly and provides exceptional value for money in terms of eCommerce and business capabilities.
Using GoDaddy website builder
These solutions certainly exist, but they are further down the road. Overall, the setup process is fast and sweet, with some guidelines and tutorials But you’re basically left to your own devices to do whatever you want.
With GoDaddy, there is no drag-and-drop functionality; everything is already built into the site. External features include store sites and live messaging buttons.
The process of creating a website is really straightforward, with options for fonts, colours, and themes all accessible from a single menu on the right. Consider GoDaddy to be a more refined version of SITE123 – they’re extremely comparable, but not in the same way that Squarespace and Zyro are.
The marketing possibilities provided by GoDaddy will make it an excellent Squarespace replacement, not the website builder itself.
It provides a plethora of third-party extensions, ranging from basic things like connecting your site to a Facebook or Twitter page to less-used services that may be crucial in a certain industry, such as Yelp or Nextdoor.
Connecting to sites like Yelp and Nextdoor turns out to be a fantastic idea. It’s a quick and easy method to tell the world, ‘Hey, my company is here, here is what we do, and did we mention our fantastic website?’
Furthermore, GoDaddy provides more than just third-party connections; it also offers a slew of built-in capabilities to help you improve your website.
Starting a business is never simple, and developing a brand-new internet presence is much more difficult. GoDaddy built InSight with the intention of assisting users with this significant milestone. The principle is straightforward: select your objective and check the boxes to attain it. This is where GoDaddy outperforms Squarespace – it’s included into the builder and is truly fantastic for eCommerce newbies.
Connecting to Google’s ‘My Business,’ updating your theme, posting your site, generating a Facebook post through the Social tab, and so on are all quite straightforward tasks.
Your InSight score will be shown next to the goals you’ve chosen. It is scored based on three factors: presence, reputation, and engagement.
In essence, InSight is a site where you can check how you performed in terms of page impressions, comments, sign-ups, and so on. However, unlike other analytics tools, it will utilise that data to generate tailored suggestions for your next moves. I believe it is obvious that this technology might be beneficial to many bidding company owners.
However, there is one major caveat to consider: server performance. GoDaddy has been in the website hosting business for a long time and is thus one of the quickest and most dependable providers available. So, if website performance is critical to you, GoDaddy will not disappoint.
GoDaddy Website BuilderPricing Review
GoDaddy’s monthly fees range from $9.99 to $16.99. There is no free plan in the GoDaddy website builder, however there is a 30-day free trial.
- Basic ($9.99/month) – ideal for personal websites
- Standard ($9.99/month) – excellent for small enterprises, including SEO tools and marketing capabilities.
- Premium ($14.99/month) – sends up to 25,000 emails each month and posts on social media.
- Ecommerce ($14.99/month) – includes all of the aforementioned services as well as unlimited eCommerce tools.
GoDaddy Website Builder Pros & Cons
pros
- Easy to use
- Excellent marketing tools
cons
- Limited site customization
Squarespace Alternatives Conclusion
The greatest Squarespace alternative is the one that best meets your requirements. This list should cover you whether you require a different pricing, a different experience, or a different performance. Let us now refresh your memories.
- SITE123 – a very simple building experience with amazing costs
- Wix – fantastic connectors and apps.
- Zyro – dirt-cheap function Object() { [native code] } with experimental features that may improve sales.
- GoDaddy website builder – excellent speed and an easy-to-use interface
- Gator – the simplest website builder of the lot.
While Squarespace is a fantastic website builder, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any others that are better. All of the possibilities shown thus far demonstrate that you may surely locate a builder who is better specialised to your demands.
Squarespace Alternatives FAQ
What is preferable to Squarespace?
There are other website builders comparable to Squarespace that provide more functionality for a lower price. It all depends on your requirements; if you want more connectors and apps, Wix is the way to go. However, Gator, SITE123, and GoDaddy offer a very straightforward construction experience. Zyro has experimental new features and designs.
Is there a free Squarespace alternative?
Wix and SITE123 are two Squarespace rivals that offer free plans. While the free plans are largely for testing, they are both excellent choices if you need to create a website for a school assignment. I wouldn’t suggest free plan websites for major projects because they contain builder advertisements.
Why is Squarespace a terrible choice?
Squarespace offers a few drawbacks, like restricted flexibility, the ability to make deeper changes solely through HTML and CSS, fees that aren’t precisely the most economical, and business features that leave a lot to be desired.
Can I migrate my Squarespace website?
It is feasible to migrate your Squarespace website. Gallery and blog pages, as well as text information, will be exported, and picture blocks will display on your new website immediately. You must manually export your style modifications, custom CSS, audio, video, and product blocks.
