Squarespace vs hiring a web designer

The short answer: Squarespace costs $192–$1,188 a year and you build the site yourself. A designer costs more per hour and nothing per evening — somebody else does the building. If you have the time and quite like the work, Squarespace is genuinely good software and you should use it. If your hours are worth more inside your actual business, the DIY saving is smaller than it looks. We are Freedom35 Web Design: we build a custom site free, you see it finished before paying, and it runs from $180 a year.

What Squarespace costs in 2026

Squarespace moved US customers to a four-tier structure in late 2025. These are the annual-billing prices — paying month to month costs roughly 30% more, which is the same trick every monthly plan runs.

Prices as published for the US in September 2026. Squarespace includes a free custom domain for the first year on an annual plan — note first year; it renews at normal registrar prices after that. Existing customers may still be on the older Personal / Business / Commerce plans.

The part the price comparison misses

A Squarespace plan is not a website. It is the software you use to make one. The cost that never appears on the pricing page is the evenings: choosing a template, fighting the layout on mobile, writing every word, cropping every photo, discovering that the thing you wanted needs a plugin, and doing it all again in eight months when it looks dated.

People who have done it put a first build somewhere between 20 and 40 hours, and that matches what we see. Put your own hourly rate against that number before deciding what you saved. At 30 hours, a $276 plan that you build yourself is not competing with a $600 plan somebody else builds — it is competing with $276 plus 30 hours of your life.

That cuts both ways, and here is the honest version: if you enjoy it, that is not a cost at all. Plenty of owners like having their hands on their own site. If that is you, stop reading and go use Squarespace — it is good software and you will be happy.

Where Squarespace genuinely wins

• You want to edit it yourself, constantly. Squarespace is built for exactly that. Our model — you email changes and we make them — is worse for someone who wants to move a paragraph at 11pm.
• You need it live this week. A template can be up in a day. Our build takes about seven days and starts when your slot does.
• You are selling products online. Squarespace's store is mature and cheap for what it is. We quote catalogues and carts separately, and for a straightforward shop we are often the wrong answer.
• You want month-to-month with no commitment. Our plans are annual and prepaid, with a 12-month minimum. Squarespace will take your money monthly and let you stop.
• The design is the point and you have taste. Their templates are genuinely well made. A confident owner with an eye gets a good-looking site out of them.

Where a designer wins

• The work happens without you. The difference between a site that exists and a site that has been "nearly finished" for a year is usually not skill, it is time.
• It is built around your business, not a template's idea of one. Templates are shaped by what the template already does. If your business needs bookings, family accounts, class registers or payments, a template bends and a build is designed.
• Speed and structure are decided by someone who does this for a living. A page that loads slowly on a phone costs you visitors whether or not you can see why.
• You are not the support desk. When something breaks on a DIY site, the person fixing it is you.

Is Squarespace good for a small business website?

Yes — for a brochure. A few pages, some photographs, an about page, a contact form. Squarespace does that well and has for years.

It gets thinner the moment your business has a process. Classes with terms and registers. Customer accounts. Taking a payment that has to reconcile against something. Those are the jobs where the template starts costing you workarounds, and where the second and third plugin subscription quietly appears on the bill.

Who owns what

Squarespace is better on this than most builders, and we will say so: your domain is genuinely yours and can be transferred out. What does not leave is the site. There is a content export, but a Squarespace site is not a thing that runs anywhere else — stop paying and the pages go away. That is normal for a builder, it is worth knowing before you build five years of work on top of it, and it is the same question we ask about who holds your domain.

The verdict

Where we are the wrong choice

The same list we publish on the Wix comparison, because it does not change with the competitor:

• You want to edit the site yourself. Buy Squarespace.
• You need an online store. A catalogue and a cart is a different job and we quote it separately.
• You need it live today. We cannot do today.
• A 12-month commitment does not fit. Then it does not fit, and a monthly builder is the honest answer.

How ours works instead

We build the site first, free, and you look at it finished before any money or domain moves — the whole thing is set out on how it works. If you like it, it runs from $180 a year and you own the domain. If you don't, you owe nothing and we have lost about seven days. That arrangement only works if the site is good, which is rather the point, and it is explained without varnish on the catch.