Squarespace Pricing (2024) Which Plan is Right for Me?

If you’ve come to this page, you’re probably thinking about using Squarespace as your website builder. Before you make your decision, though, you might have a few questions about Squarespace pricing that you’re looking to get answered – namely:

• How much does Squarespace cost?
• Is Squarespace expensive compared to other website builders?
• Which Squarespace plan is right for me?
• What are the extra costs?
• How can I get the best deal with Squarespace?

Luckily, that’s exactly what we’ll be answering in this article! (And if you have any other questions, feel free to leave them in the comments at the bottom of the page.)

Compared to other website builders, Squarespace’s pricing structure is pretty straightforward (even after several recent price hikes, which we’ve also seen others in the industry do). But that doesn’t mean you can’t optimize your spending, as you will learn in this article!

First, let’s start by taking a look at what exactly the Squarespace pricing plans look like.

How much does Squarespace cost?

There are four pricing tiers. Depending on the kind of website you’re trying to build, we’d generally recommend the following plans:

• Personal if you have a portfolio, blog, resume, or personal website. It could also be suitable for some small business sites (as long as you’re not planning to sell online). It costs $16/month (paid yearly)
• Business if you have a professional or small business website, and plan to sell physical or digital products occasionally. It could also be suitable for businesses looking to sell services and appointments online (if you use it in conjunction with Squarespace Scheduling). This costs $23/month when paid annually.
• Basic Commerce if you’re planning on selling products online (but not subscriptions), don’t want to pay transaction fees, and don’t need advanced ecommerce functions. It costs $28/month when paid annually.
• Advanced Ecommerce if you’re planning to sell online and want to sell subscriptions, send abandoned cart emails, offer advanced shipping and discounts, and have access to APIs. It costs $52/month (paid yearly).

This pricing puts it on par with Wix, which offers a similarly wide range of features, and whose plans are almost identical to Squarespace’s. You can learn more about Wix’s pricing here, and compare Wix vs Squarespace’s features here.

While Squarespace’s pricing is higher than that of cheap website builders like Zyro, GoDaddy, and Webnode, these platforms have a much more limited feature range. For example, these builders won’t give you the extensive blogging and SEO tools that you get with Squarespace, so if these are important features for you, it’s worth paying the extra to have access to them.

Click to enlarge the image below, which gives you a brief overview of what’s included in each Squarespace plan (we’ll go into more detail a little later):

Squarespace’s pricing plans (click to enlarge)

Still not sure which plan to pick? Try out our Smart Finder below.

Smart Finder: What’s the best Squarespace plan for me?

Our intelligent Smart Finder algorithm will find the ideal Squarespace pricing plan for your website in 1 minute. But, of course, you can also find detailed pricing tables below:

Detailed Squarespace Costs

What are the extra costs?

Now that you know what’s included in Squarespace’s pricing plans, let’s take a look at what’s not included.

Domain name

While Squarespace’s plans include a free domain name in the first year, you may not get exactly the domain you’re looking for as Squarespace only offers available domains in its cheapest pricing tier.

What’s more, after the first year, Squarespace will charge you around $20/year when your domain gets auto-renewed. (You can get a better deal by disabling the auto-renewal and moving your domain to another provider – see tip #3 in our next section.)

Email accounts

When you sign up for the Business and Commerce plans, you’ll get one free email address on the Google Workspace Starter plan. But like the free domain name offer, this free period only applies to the first year. After that, you’ll be automatically renewed at around $6/month/user.

Again, switching off the auto-renewal and going with another provider is the more cost-effective option here.

Squarespace Scheduling

Squarespace offers its own appointment scheduling tool, Squarespace Scheduling (formerly Acuity). This is useful if you offer services, classes, or workshops, as it allows customers to book a timeslot directly through your site. You can also accept online payments through this service (without the need to be on a Commerce plan).

However, it comes at an additional cost. The Squarespace Scheduling plans are as follows:

• Emerging costs $16 per month when billed annually, including 1 calendar, calendar syncing, online payments, invoicing, and automated reminder emails.
• Growing costs $27 per month when billed annually, and a maximum of 6 calendars. In addition to all the above mentioned features, you also get customer SMS text reminders and the ability to offer packages, gift certificates, memberships, or subscriptions to your customers.
• Powerhouse costs $49 a month, and gives you up to 36 calendars. It also allows for multiple time zones, custom API and CSS access, and HIPAA (BAA) compliance for data protection (for U.S. based companies).

These prices feel pretty steep and hard to justify, especially when you consider that Wix includes its Wix Bookings tool for free on all Business plans. GoDaddy also includes online appointment booking in its plans. Or take a look at alternatives like Calendly, which are much cheaper.

However, Squarespace Scheduling offers the most comprehensive solution, thanks in large part to the fact it has the technology of the popular Acuity tool behind it. So, it may be worth the extra investment if online scheduling is an especially lucrative channel for you.

Member Areas and Courses

Another feature that makes Squarespace appealing to content creators is Member Areas and their new Courses platform. Through this, you can sell and deliver subscription-only content, videos, and classes to paying members.

It’s also possible to create communities through virtual events, shared event calendars, and workshops.

To use it, you need to sign up for the separate Digital Product Add-On, which is only available for Business and Commerce plans:

• Starter costs $9/month when paid annually, allowing unlimited membership areas and courses while charging a 7% online transaction fee. You’ll get 10 hours of video storage (on top of your Squarespace website allowance) and you can offer discounts and promotions
• Core costs $34/month when paid annually. Transaction fees are lowered to 3% and you get 50 hours of video storage
• Professional costs $119/month when paid annually, and reduces your transaction fees to 0%. This package includes unlimited video storage.

Again, Wix offers a more cost-effective alternative here because their membership features are technically free. However, it’s a less elegant solution than Squarespace’s and is closely tied to the Wix Bookings app, which may make it a less flexible option for building membership sites.

Squarespace Email Marketing

Squarespace also offers its own email marketing platform, called Email Campaigns. While its automations are on the simplistic side (you can learn more in our Squarespace Email Marketing review), it does offer tight integration between the website and your mailing lists – with some seriously sleek email templates to boot.

Once again, you’ll need to purchase an add-on package for this service. Prices are as follows:

While the Starter and Core plans are affordable if you’re only sending a few emails a month, the higher-tier plans are somewhat pricey considering you don’t get advanced automation features. If this is something you need, check out our top recommendations for email automation software. Providers like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse offer much better features for a lower price, and can also be integrated with a Squarespace site.

4 Tips to get the best deal with Squarespace

Here are our best tips to save some serious money on your Squarespace website:

1. Sign up for a yearly plan

If you are planning to keep your website long-term you should definitely go for a yearly contract. The savings can be pretty significant. For example, the Business plan will cost you $276 instead of $396 (per year). That’s a saving of 30%!

Keep in mind that you can get your money back within the first 14 days after your first payment for the Squarespace website build.

And of course, your bookkeeping will be lighter too with a yearly plan: One receipt instead of twelve. Makes my life simpler!

2. Get 10% off using our voucher code

This is an obvious one: use coupon code TOOLTESTER10 and save 10%. It works both with monthly and yearly plans. Here’s a guide on how to redeem it.

3. Register your domain name elsewhere

Squarespace charges $20 per year for a .com domain name whereas Namecheap offers it at just under $8 for the first year (including free WhoisGuard for enhanced privacy). Do you want to fully optimize your spending? Take advantage of the free first year of a yearly Squarespace subscription and then move the domain name over to Namecheap in the second year.

Keep in mind, of course, that having everything under the Squarespace roof also makes things easier for you to manage.

4. Get email accounts elsewhere

Squarespace has a partnership with Google Workspace. It’s a fantastic suite of tools – I’m using it too. Costs can, however, add up if you require more than just one email account (which is $6 per account/month). That’s where Namecheap and their Private Email Hosting come in handy. There you can have an email account already for less than $10 per year!

Another alternative is Zoho Workplace. It’s a similar package to Google Workspace but free for up to five users.

How can I pay for my Squarespace website?

Squarespace only accepts credit and debit cards: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, or Diner’s Club. No Paypal unfortunately. You can pay in one of four currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, and AUD.

Summary of Squarespace’s Pricing:

Here’s our brief recap. Prices are shown for the annual billing option.

1. Personal: $16/month. Great for personal projects and blogs.
2. Business: $23/month. Adds marketing features and code access.
3. Basic Commerce: $28/month. The right plan for small online stores.
4. Advanced Commerce: $52/month. For serious ecommerce businesses.

Conclusion

The four Squarespace pricing plans are geared to very specific target groups.

Personal lets you use a custom domain name, which is already included for the first year if you opt for an annual subscription. There aren’t any storage or bandwidth limitations. The most important features missing are: ecommerce, premium building blocks and access to the source code. If you are just looking to create a basic website or blog, Personal will be just fine as you can upgrade whenever you want. Good to know: the entry plan already includes all SEO features.

In Business you have access to additional marketing features (pop-up messages, announcement bar, and more premium blocks). You can also sell your products (or even services) with the ecommerce system, but Squarespace adds a transaction fee of 3% for Paypal and credit card payments. With the Business plan you’ll also be able to add unlimited contributors to your website and also customize the CSS and JavaScript. It’s great if you want to use the premium integrations and blocks, sell a few items online or have access to your website’s code. Ideal for small business websites.

The Online Store plans are best for ecommerce businesses. Unlike the Business plan, you won’t get charged a Squarespace transaction fee. Most importantly, you can use them for physical and digital goods. In Basic Commerce both voucher management, inventory tracking and POS (Point of Sale) support is included. Furthermore you can integrate Xero for accounting and offer your customers to check out on your own domain (incl. SSL).

The Advanced Commerce plan lets you sell subscription-based products and has features like Abandoned Cart Recovery. Perfect for small to medium-sized web stores. Find our detailed review of Squarespace Online Stores here.

For websites without ecommerce you can always start with the “Personal” plan and upgrade down the road. They won’t double-charge you. Squarespace is not the cheapest provider out there, but once you’ve been in touch with their customer support you will appreciate the quality of service.

> The Squarespace’s 14-day free trial

Tip: Save 10% on your first subscription term for any plan (monthly or yearly) using discount code TOOLTESTER10. Here’s a guide on how to redeem it.

If you have any questions about Squarespace’s pricing, please leave a comment!