A full breakdown of Squarespace pricing
How much does it actually cost to have a website? It’s a simple question that doesn’t always have a simple answer, so it’s one I’m often breaking down for my clients. There are website costs outside of what you pay a designer that you will be responsible for either annually or monthly. But instead of just pointing you to the Squarespace website (although there are links included below!) I wanted to sum it all up in a way that hopefully makes it easier to understand.
In this post I’ll cover; the basic costs, the additional options, how it all adds up AND savings opportunities when working with me!
Please Note: All prices below are in USD, and are the monthly prices when you pay in a lump sum annually. They increase if you choose to pay monthly.
Let’s start with the basics
1) Domain Name - $20+ / year
There are TONS of options for purchasing your domain hosting, some popular options you may have heard of are GoDaddy, NameCheap or BlueHost. But if you’re starting from scratch and don’t have a domain yet, I recommend purchasing through Squarepace for the simplicity of having everything under one account. Generally, a .com or .ca domain is around $20 a year through Squarespace, and the ones that are specific like .co or .media go up to $30-$70 per year.
If you have your domain purchased on another hosting platform you can either transfer it or connect it to Squarespace through DNS settings. I would help you figure out the best option for you here - don’t worry!
Click Here to see if you domain name is available and what it would cost on Squarespace.
2) Squarespace Plan - $16 - $49 / month
On top of your domain, you’ll also need to pay for a Squarespace subscription to actually publish your site. Every website design platform, like Wix, Showit or Shopify, has a monthly cost. Looking through these plans can be confusing, so I’m here to help you figure out which plan would be right for you.
Personal Plan | $16 / month - this is a great starting point if you need very basic functionality, like displaying information, photos, a contact form, or even a blog. But if you want to start customizing with outside integrations, have pop-ups or promo banners, or design with some additional coding (I usually add custom code to make websites more customized), then you’ll need to look at the business plan!
Business Plan | $23 / month - this is the most popular plan, satisfying the needs of most service-based businesses! You can even utilize the e-commerce feature in this plan, but there is an extra 3% transaction fee from Squarespace, separate from the payment processor’s fee.
Basic Commerce Plan | $27 / month - no more Squarespace transaction fee, and many more e-commerce capabilities, this is the lowest plan that a product-based business would want to use. With this plan you get point of sale features, product reviews, and can connect products on Instragram. But the main things that you don’t get in this plan are abandoned cart emails, the option to sell subscriptions or have advanced, custom-calculated shipping.
Advanced Commerce Plan | $49 / month - if your main priority is your online store, then this plan is more than worth it! Get access to all of the e-commerce features that Squarespace has to offer, and still pay less than Shopify’s comparable plan.
Click here to see the full Squarespace pricing breakdown
Here is a quick look at some of the competitors you may be looking into:
Showit - slightly more expensive, very flexible drag and drop designs, no e-commerce, scheduling or blogging built in (you need to connect those services separately to a Showit website)
Shopify - more expensive, but ideal for an e-commerce focused brand that might need specific features that Squarespace doesn’t have (like more ways to accept payment and shipping automations), Shopify is still the industry leader in this area.
Wix - slightly cheaper, has recently become a more design-friendly option following Squarespace’s lead, but not my personal preference.
3) Professional Email with G Suite - $6 / month per email address
This is a perk about Squarespace that I LOVE - it makes setting up your professional email account super easy. You can create an email using your custom domain (eg. hello@yourbusiness.com) through the settings panel in your Squarespace account! It uses the Gmail interface, so if you currently have a Gmail account everything will look and function exactly the same. And you can even get the first account free for the first year with the Squarespace business plan.
Now let’s go over some additional options in Squarespace
4) Email Marketing - $5 - $48 / month
If you want to keep everything under one account, you can even use Squarespace for your email marketing. You can collect email addresses and create email campaigns using automations and lists. This option also allows you to carry your website branding through all of your emails, which is a huge time saver and helps keep your brand consistent. There are many competitors out there, so below is a quick look at how the most common ones I’ve used compare:
Flodesk - $35 / month (one flat rate fee, no tiers) Click here to get 50% off your first year!
Mailchimp - Has a free basic option - $23.49 / month for standard plan (or $413.19 / month for premium)
Click here to see the full Squarespace Email Marketing breakdown
5) Scheduling - $14 - $45 / month
I’ve personally used this feature before and loved it. Squarespace acquired the scheduling software company called Acuity, and it is now built into the platform to easily manage scheduling and appointments. This is an awesome integration for service providers and well worth the money to keep your business running in an automated way! Other scheduling software that you may want to compare are:
Calendly - Has a free basic option - $12 / seat / month for professional plan
Your CRM platform (like Dubsado or Honeybook) - sometimes clients use a software for contracts, invoices etc. that also has booking capabilities, and prefer that over using Squarespace
Click here to see the full Squarespace Scheduling breakdown
6) Member Areas - $9 - $35 / month
This allows you to create membership models where subscribers can pay for access to specific content on your site, like online courses and classes, videos, paid newsletters, communities and more. Previously, you would have either had to create a password protected page and manually collect payments, or you would have used an additional external membership software to accomplish something like this. Comparable membership or online course software includes:
Kajabi - $119 / month +
Teachable - Has a free option, basic plan is $29 / month and business plan goes up to $249 / month
Thinkific - Has a free option, but most popular plan is $149 / month
Click here to see the full Squarespace Member Areas breakdown
So how does that add up?
The lowest price you’ll pay per year is $212 USD - $20 for the domain and $192 for the Personal Squarespace plan.
A pretty common price point ends up around $368 USD per year - $20 for the domain, $276 for the Business Squarespace plan, and $72 for a professional email address.
With basic E-Commerce, the domain and email address, you’d come in around $416 per year.
Or if you add Scheduling with the Business Plan, domain and email, you’d be around $464 per year.
And what savings opportunities are there?
Lowest tier domain names are free for the first year after you purchase your Squarespace plan
Your first email address is free for the first year after you purchase your Squarespace Business plan or higher
As a Squarespace Circle member, I can get the following discounts for my clients:
20% off your Squarespace plan for the first year
20% off your Email Marketing plan for the first year
20% off your Scheduling plan for the first year
20% off your Member Areas plan for the first year
Madie Lerue
Designer & Founder of Lerue Creative
