Squarespace Reviews 

All of these reviews are true. I'm going through the same scenario. No customer service, just all AI link responses and my domain can't be transferred within a new square space site we built nor can I transfer it out. I had my domain with google and it got sold to square space and it's stuck in the cloud somewhere. I can't release it nor have access to it at all.

There is nothing worse than Support that does not respond. Been 4 days since I used their support form only got messages back that they are too busy to respond. I tried online chat, but the AI bot does not help it directs you to items that do not exist on their site. Asked for a person but got a message that I should email them again.

Maybe the worst customer service experience of my life. It's impossible to speak to anyone ever. It's only AI or email. The live chat is never available (Demand too high). There is no phone number to call so the consistently unavailable live text chat is the only way to speak with someone and you have to navigate AI that just wants to pass you off to read something (that didn't come close to addressing my issue) and not connect you. You can email them, and they never respond. I tried for 4 days straight for about an hour each day and was never able to live chat or hear back from anyone. Basically it seems like there is no customer service at all!

Update: They got back to me Sep. 6. That's 11 days after I initially tried to reach someone. Now that my claim is being responded to, it takes about 2 days to hear back. I had tried live chat a few more times during the almost two week wait, and it was never available (due to high demand.)

I received notifications about the failure of the automatic renewal of my domain. On the day it was supposed to renew/expire, I updated the credit card information for the payment in the morning.

However, the automatic payment wasn't processed, and my domain was simply deactivated. I searched everywhere for a "renew or pay now" option to make a manual payment, but THERE IS NO SIMPLE BUTTON to do so.

I tried getting help via chat, and they responded with, "we are experiencing high demand, please try sending an email." High demand? Hire more staff or train an AI to meet the minimum requirements of a platform the size of Squarespace.

The worst decision by Google was moving to Squarespace.

From the start I feel like they make it as difficult as possible to use other website templates, such as WIX; connect to other DNS servers; OPT OUT OF AI CRAWLERS STEALING intellectual property from my site; and generally build a cost effective website. They should be asking our permission to allow AI on our sites, not sneaking it in!
Would not recommend squarespace!

Update: No support available - not enough employees. Scared to populate my site, given the KNOWN bugs not being fixed to functionality and now no support at all for administrative issues like cname issues, etc. Sites not loading. No help at all. Just AI loops. Finally got someone on chat after 3 days of submitting tickets and was disconnected just when she was coming back with a solution for the simplest of issues. No follow up with email from them and impossible to get back to that ticket.

If you can 100% do with out support, consistency and integrity, sure, build here. However, why pay these guys. Start with Wordpress so you can migrate when needed. BIG LESSON!

Major bugs to the system that can change the look of your carefully designed page/brand or paralyze your business. No indication if or when it will be fixed. If you have hundreds of products that you put your time into listing. Don't do it here. As with most online support these days, if the reps do have any knowledge - they don't have the tools to help you. Your site is hostage as you can't move it elsewhere like with a wordpress site. I spent months looking at settings and code for two major issues - turns out they are known to them but are not "priority" because technically the site is still "functional". No trust - don't invest here unless it's an easy rebuild elsewhere.

Zero Customer Service.
They now use automated Generative AI Robots for customer service and have STOPPED 90% of their previously great Live Chat with humans. I was a devoted believer now I am extremely disappointed. In addition they have hiked my plan price up by $100 USA within 24 hours after an error occurred with my credit card security details. I feel gutted and RIPPED-OFF. I think this is disgusting.

It is interesting to read similar recent experiences match my gripe. I am reading others (below) now. Someone said all GOOGLE domains were transferred to Squarespace which would equate to millions. Therefore Squarespace can no longet cope with the increase in millions of customer enquiries which explains their current flash-banner message ‘There is No Live Chat Available Right Now’.

Buyer beware. Good luck 🤞

I'd like to think that SquareSpace worked before it pushed through updates to 7.1, but the site is so badly organized that it makes software from 1990 look insanely functional and well-designed.

To manage your email domains--easy to manage with Strikingly.com--you have to use Google Workspace, but, if you need to alter a password or username, Google Workspace redirects your request to SquareSpace, since its the vendor of your domain name. Back in SquareSpace, its guidelines advise you to make these changes within SquareSpace, rather than Google Workspace--except that its redirects take you to the Google Workspace Admin panel, which then tells you that only your reseller, SquareSpace, can address the issue. The SquareSpace bot and their user videos reflect earlier versions of SquareSpace, rather than the current version. Impossible to get hold of even a Chat Bot that's minimally useful, let alone even a whisper of a link to a human. I'm terrified to shift my domain because, even with a reasonably responsive but highly limited web platform like Strikingly.com, I kept hearing from customer service that transfers of my domain name could take several weeks... only to discover that I had to call, get a human on the phone, and ask them to verify that no one at Strikingly.com had actually released the domain name after I entered all the requisite changes to the DNS. That process thus took two bloody months. In contrast, SquareSpace seems to have no humans employed there, although I'd like to imagine that AI would've delivered a much better UX than what the company offers users.

No human beings, just AI bots. Awful/Zero customer support.

AI robots are more helpful than Squarespace agents. So disappointed in their support and I wish I would’ve known how bad they were before I spent 2 weeks building my site

The functionality is very unintuitive. It's hard to get into all the ways the learning curve is going to punch you in the face because the system is too esoteric to explain, but rest assured you will be doing lots of clicking back and forth to different interfaces to change various parts of your page where you can fix this part of the content but not that. This quickly becomes very frustrating when you're trying to make the little micro tweaks that inevitably are most of the process because you end up having to click back through multiple screens every single time you want to change anything. I'd suggest they just scrap their interface and start over.

Once you do figure out how to use the interface however (though don't take a week or a month off, you'll forget and have to learn it all over again) is where your troubles really begin. You're quickly going to run smack into all the limitations that are baked into the Squarespace pie. It all starts with the templates.

Here's the way pre-set templates (are supposed to) work:

Every template should be able to do everything. As in, every template should be built from the ground up via functionality that all templates share. That way users can start at 70% or 80% or 90% of the way there, then drop in whatever functionality they want to change or copy from other templates so they can get to the solution they need. Check out Microsoft Word templates for example - everything in there is built off the common toolset that is Microsoft Word, so if you start with a template that is almost but not quite there you can modify it as needed to create the final product you want. Replace bullet points with lists. Change formatting. Change spacing. Etc.

Squarespace does it exactly the opposite. Each template is its own private island, and functionality is not shared between them. Some templates you might like the way the navigation bar is formatted, but you don't like way it organizes social media links. Too bad - that template only offers the option to organize it that way and you cannot change it. On another template you might like the splash page, and want to bring it into another template that has some other options that are cool but a splash you're just not as big on. Too bad - that second template only allows the pre-programmed splash page layout, which you can't modify and will have to live with.

In end what this reduces you to choosing is the best worst fit, since there will inevitably be features you will like in a template and others you don't. You take the one that has the fewest things you don't like about it and spend most of your development time trying to minimize them. More than a little unsatisfying.

On to formatting. Formatting is a mess. Basically you end up using "spacers", which are building blocks you insert around the screen to delineate different areas for text and pictures (though you'll find about 50% of the time you can't insert spacers where they need to go - in particular the interface has a ton of trouble inserting vertical spacers). The problem is that spacers only reduce down to a certain size, so you either end up with giant awkward blocks of empty space or text and images that are all crammed together.

That brings us to fonts. Ai yai yai. Without getting too deep into it because I couldn't really say where to begin, rather than reinventing the wheel as they are trying to do now they need to simply copy the functionality that Word/Excel/email/every other program in the world uses and do font modification that way. There's a system out there that works. Every other text-enabled program in the world uses it. Just copy it.

Code injection: often doesn't work because there are quirks of each template built into the background that you can't work around. For example, my page has a giant black horizontal bar through the middle of it that I can't remove no matter what because it's an artifact of some other functionality I took out. I even had a friend who designs web pages professionally dig into the code but she still couldn't remove it because it's hard-wired in. Just an example of the kinds of weirdness you're going to find in designing your page.

Speed: eh. It's not very good, but that's a common Squarespace complaint so I won't get into it. All I will say is pity the splash that is a movie.

Customer service: the one above-average positive. The online help team responds quickly and the chat service is good. Very helpful and with a great attitude. The limitation they face is that 50% of the time they're going to end up telling you you can't do the thing you want to do (usually because of the templates), or express bemusement at some weird artifact of the system that has popped up on your page. I assume they run across these multiple times every day.

They do have a great attitude about it though!