I was watching this interview with Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena the other day, and he mentions a few interesting things. The company has been around for 16 years, and the Internet landscape has changed a lot during that time.
So they have to adapt and evolve constantly. It’s certainly something we’ve witnessed by reviewing various updates of Squarespace over the years, and what makes them an exciting company to watch.
How big is Squarespace’s market share?
Squarespace’s market share is 3% among all websites on the internet, according to BuiltWith.com. From 2021 to 2022 they’ve grown their market share by 17%. Their biggest competitor Wix currently captures 3.4% of the market.
Here are further findings about Squarespace’s market share.
There are More than 2M Live Squarespace Websites
The statistics below, which come courtesy of BuildtWith.com, show that Squarespace is still playing catch up with Wix in terms of actual websites in use.
| Website Builder | Number of websites | % of website builder sites |
|---|---|---|
| Wix | 4,565,423 | 37% |
| Shopify | 1,868,930 | 19% |
| Squarespace | 2,596,715 | 14% |
| Weebly | 1,000,061 | 5% |
Their biggest competitor also has a larger slice of the website builder market, but it’s important to note that Wix offers free websites, while Squarespace doesn’t. I’m certain this explains the huge difference in websites used.
Here’s how it looks in actual pie chart form, and with added competitors.
So the first takeaway is that Wix is by far their biggest direct competitor. Shopify also has impressive numbers, but they specialize in ecommerce only. Meanwhile, Weebly, the third-biggest website builder is quite far behind in terms of popularity.
They Are the Most Popular Website Builder in Important Markets
While Squarespace isn’t globally the most popular website builder, it’s important to note that they are in a number of locations:
- #1 in the US
- #1 in Canada
- #1 in Hong Kong
- #1 in UK
- #1 in Australia
By comparison, they are:
- #3 in Spain
- #5 in France
- #5 in Germany
- #7 in Brazil
So you get the idea: the English speaking world loves Squarespace. I’m not sure if they are planning to target all these other markets, but this is what could probably make them top the list globally.
They Are Neck on Neck with Wix
According to W3techs, the market share numbers which take into account all CMSs (content management systems plus website builders) put Wix slightly ahead of Squarespace in 2021.
I should point out that the numbers here could be misleading, as the statistics vary depending on the dataset. For instance, if you add websites built with unknown solutions, the percentages drop drastically.
Still, this helps us see how popular they are compared with, says, WordPress, but also Joomla and Drupal, which I did not include as they are more geared towards enterprise websites.
And although Webflow is still a far shot away from Squarespace, they are growing rapidly. Starting with nothing in 2017, they tripled their market share since 2020 and recently overtook Weebly.
| Website Builder | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 (Jan 1) | 2022 (Jan 1) | 2022 (May 1) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 58.5% | 60.0% | 59.7% | 62.1% | 64.1% | 65.2% | 64.2% |
| Shopify | 1.3% | 1.8% | 2.6% | 3.4% | 5.2% | 6.6% | 6.5% |
| Wix | 0.6% | 0.9% | 1,8% | 2.3% | 2.4% | 2.9% | 3.4% |
| Squarespace | 1.1% | 1.5% | 2.6% | 2.7% | 2.3% | 2.7% | 3.0% |
| Webflow | – | – | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.4% | 0.7% | 0.8% |
| Weebly | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.7% | 0.6% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.6% |
| Jimdo | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
WordPress, which powers 43.2% of all websites in the world obviously takes the cake here, but it’s interesting to see that Shopify is growing at a rapid pace.
Which brings us to the next point about ecommerce.
Their Online Stores Are More Used than Other Website Builders’
Another area where Squarespace surprisingly beats Wix: the popularity of their Add to Cart feature, which de facto turns your site into an online store.
So interestingly, it’s the first website builder to crack the top 10 most used solutions. All the other popular tools above it are designed specifically for ecommerce. But it’s also surprising to see that they beat Wix here, seeing as Wix is more popular, and both let you build a store with their respective Business plans within the $18 – $25 a month price range.
Squarespace is a Multibillion-Dollar Company
They went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2021 with an initial valuation of $7.4B. That’s impressive as Squarespace was initially a bootstrapped company with the first external funding round in 2010. The number, while impressive, pales in comparison with Wix’s market cap of currently $13B or Shopify’s $145B (!).
They disclosed that 70% of Squarespace’s revenue came from the US in 2020. That year revenue grew by 24% to $621m having added 700k subscribers. In comparison, Wix’s revenue in 2020 was $989M (Source).
They Are Consolidating Their brand Through Acquisitions
Another sign that Squarespace is moving fast: their acquisitions of third-party solutions. In 2019, they bought two:
- Acuity Scheduling: now renamed Scheduling and available as an add-on to enable bookings on your Squarespace site
- Unfold: a “toolkit for storytellers”, which is yet to be included in the Squarespace platform, but allows people to craft sleek social media content via templates.
Once again, as a private company, none of the financials were made public. But the acquisitions were clearly explained by the CEO as “part of our pursuit to be the all-in-one platform for anyone who wants to stand out”.
And Yet, People Don’t Search For Them All That Much
You should take this last point with a pinch of salt, as it’s based on Ahrefs statistics for monthly searches. But it’s interesting to see that people type Squarespace into search engines a lot less than Wix, or even Shopify.
- Wix: 6.8M
- Shopify: 3.1M
- Squarespace: 1.4M
- Weebly: 946K
But who knows, maybe it’s because their marketing is so effective that people go directly to Squarespace.com?!
An Exciting Future for Squarespace
So it looks to me like the next few years will be a decisive turning point for Squarespace. There are a lot of questions left to answer, such as:
- How is their recent IPO going to affect their growth trajectory?
- Could they overtake Wix as the most popular website builder?
- And will new products arrive on the platform?
It will certainly be fascinating to update the statistics of this post in a few years.
In the meantime, don’t forget to check our posts about the market share of Shopify and Wix!
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