Squarespace Reviews 

Squarespace is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It is so SLOW. The interface is terrible, its not good for beginners. I spent a whole hour trying to get one image to go away from the template. No customer service to speak with. I have finally given up because I couldnt wait five minutes everytime I needed a page to load. Im trying to transfer the domain to a better host, but I cant even do that because the page isnt loading to unlock it.

I built a website on GoDaddy last year and it was much easier. I have heard Wix is really good too.

Dont listen to the podcast hosts. This is terrible.

Terrible provider. I purchased domain through Squarespace, then started to build internet site using one of their templates. Template was nice, internet site turn out to be very nice, but... I wasn't able to use it! Squarespace were having some "technical issues" so I wasn't allowed to pair my domain with my site. I reached customer service, they opened the ticket for me and I was told the supervisor will pair my site with domain manually. I waited for 5 days, nothing. I contacted them again and then they say that they will not be able to help me for few more weeks! :D I start thinking to myself - is this some sort of scam? Why are you selling domains which can't be used and let the customers build the internet sites which also can't go live? I am so upset about all this, I waist my time and my money on them. I should rather go somewhere else. And instead of helping me or answering questions in human language, they would just reply with instructions... When you open it, those instructions are long articles, which gives you more and more instructions... OMG
It turn out I had to cancel my subscription and start somewhere else...

I have been with them for almost 2 years. There is no phone support that I know of. The chat was ok last year but it's getting harder and harder to get some help. You have to wait at least 15 to 20 mns to get somebody to help you. Unlike Google support, they don't guide you step by step (or very rarely) but rather send you links to articles you've already read that didn't help in the first place. Aside from the customer service, my template is obsolete. You'd think since I'm a paying customer like everybody else, I would get help to transfer to another template, but nope, you have to do everything yourself. I'm no expert so I'm too scared to screw up and hence have not changed templates. Aside from templates, their platform needs modernizing. A lot of basic things need coding. I mean, come on...

SS advertises an easy user experience which is far from the truth! Beware of switching templates. They claim that it is seamless but it's not at all. One year after moving my travel blog to a new template I continue to waste too much time and money (getting help). Currently, they have lost photos on 12 of my posts blaming it on me saying that I loaded them with "code" vs an image block. I did not. They unsuccessfully transferred them from the old template. Now I must find my photos for 12 posts and re-load. This episode is just one in a long string of time wasting, non-user friendly glitches on their part.
Customer Service is rarely helpful. Usually, they blame an issue on the client or send out long tedious instructions on how to fix something. The only way to access them is via chat or email - slow.
While the graphics look, good SS is a nightmare time sucker. In addition, the navigation for ur visitors is not logical. One must click a stack to get to the home page vs landing there when they click on ur URL.If I could do things over I would not have signed up with SS!

Very poor performance on template switching. Way too complicated and poorly signposted. Finding relevant information is painful, not easily accessible or transparent. I would have preferred to have known the pitfalls upfront in clear FAQ's. Information is also ambiguous.
Will source alternative providers next year

This company does not care about you.
- Squarespace uptime/responsiveness is not as advertised, and it's extremely slow during peak hours.
- Refund policy is extremely unacceptable; they prefer to take your money up front and if they don't provide their service as advertised, oh well, your loss. Also, if they decide to re-bill you early, you will not get your money back. I didn't even keep the site up and went with my own, custom-built Wordpress solution on AWS because Suckspace service was so slow. They re-billed me 5 days before the anniversary, without a heads-up, and refused to give me a refund when I saw the charge on my credit card statement. Now I'm stuck with 365 days of service that I didn't want and won't use. What a rip off!
- No phone number to talk to someone, and the email support simply refers you to their FAQ. Awful!

Go with Wix, Weebly, or any other vendor that actually cares about you and won't overcharge for a 'nice on the outside but slow as hell' template. Do.Not.Use. this shoddy, Wordpress-with-a-shopping-cart money suck. You'll lose your customers with their bloated interface, improperly content-distributed network, and lack of customer support.

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!

As an aspiring musician of later years and only just coming to the self-recorded musician medium in recent times, it is time for me now to step forward with my efforts. To that end there are a few things which need putting into place if one is reaching forth for any potential audience, and a Presentable Website is surely just one thing to try and get sorted to do that I should think. As a musical DIY-er out of the UK I needed something which drew on past knowledge (mostly long forgotten now regards coding), which allowed me to use with a bit of what remains of any common sense and limited ability, something to be able to upload photos, text and stuff to best represent the coming together of all of these years of work and projects...

ENTER SQUARESPACE Web Design:

I researched in some Depth the usual candidates, and after watching several tutorials on Each, decided on this company. I can say that not for One Moment, have I had cause to regret that decision!

INTUITIVE or NOT?:
I'd say a big Yes to that, but it's based as I say on Some ability to know how to convert photos to JPEGS, upload existing text and just a Wee bit of coding to understand and be able to overwrite a supplied template where you need to. It took a few days obviously to get to grips with how They do things, but from then on it's become an Absolute Joy to work with, and with an outcome which actually makes me almost Burst with Pride now that it's pretty much my own work come the end. (not the original coding of course). I Had contacted a former website designer who taught me some years back, but he's no longer involved now which left me in a bit of panic as to how get one built, but he signposted me towards various online builders, with me coming out with 'Squarespace' for £130-ish for a years' subscription, which is just short of what I would have paid my contact. There are also many high quality Tutorials for the templates I looked at, and very expertly and simply explained, and used most of them to work alongside whatever it was I was doing at any particular time to better understand what to do and maybe even how I'd just accomplished something.

CHOICE OF LAYOUTS:
I'm an aspiring musician and writer, so my remit is obviously for presenting myself as that with soundbites, photos, where to buy merchandise and any number of extra pages to suit. There were around 4 layouts for musicians and Bands I think, and just to show what Can be accomplished by even a former dim light light myself, if you 'Google' 'Squarespace Event Horizon Template', you'll get what I started out working with, and if you care to compare, you can then Google my name at the bottom of this review and after a bit of light detective work, will be able to see the end result. It's pretty much the finished item now and something I'm Delighted to have done myself come the end, which Importantly, also affords me to be able to drop in edits, any new ideas or tweaks I might have and at the drop of a hat, which is not only Super Convenient, but quite remarkable I think.

It's taken probably 2 months amongst all the other stuff going on, and there are still a few things I'd like to override from the template particularly around the navigation bar, but daren't tamper with too much coding should I mess the whole thing up. I Am though assured that the areas I'm after personalizing further, Can be overridden by somebody who has the knowledge for injecting coding, as 'Squarespace' allow for coding drop-ins, but as I say one needs to be Super Cautious about tampering with that!

CUSTOMER CARE:
Out of the US/Canada to the UK has never been a problem, with my E-mails usually responded to within 48hrs at the latest for any query I've ever offered over these months, and as Custom Care goes, I've found these to be without fault, and Super Helpful, Prompt and Clearly Understanding of any issues or concerns I've raised which have allowed me thereafter to sort out the problem or any design issues.

VALUE FOR MONEY:
Absolutely when one considers what others charge for building a site for you generally, and the fact that each platform is seemingly Fully Tested before it gets to the user to work with, is a comfort itself, remembering from the past that my previous DIY build with untested 3rd party plug-ins would often scat it out, and left me scratching my head as to how to unravel the mess I'd gotten into.

As someone approaching 60 years of age who still finds all of the mechanics of recording and setting up all of this stuff a little daunting, I am eternally Thankful to 'SQUARESPACE' for offering me as a newbie, this opportunity to bring my music and other life works into the public domain, but to a standard and Quality to which I always Aspire. It's early days yet, but Long may it continue...

RECOMMENDATION TO DIY MUSICIANS, FRIENDS or those like myself with limited to zero coding abilities:
Absolutely, and I for one cannot praise them enough...

Sincerely Yours Mister Limpopo (for David Okangba, Penzance, Cornwall, England)

I am just going to echo what many others have written here. This is by far the most unintuitive platform I have ever used. Even to perform the simplest of tasks is a complete mind fu*k. Nothing should be this complicated. On top of that, the actual customization is none existent. The template you choose IS exactly how the site will be layed out. For example, You can't add in a full-width banner with some catchy text and a CTA in halfway down the page. What you see is what you get with these templates. Just avoid if you want to keep your sanity.

Squarespace is amazing, the unique custom templates, the friendly support and the way you can almost create professional looking websites with minimal work. My favourite template is swift!

've spent about 9 hours trying to create a teeny, squarespace website, just for content at this point. And it's EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. HERE'S WHY: 1. The photo editor frequently (like 1/2 the time) just stops working. 2. You can't change the size of the content box without coding 3. Even though the button reads, "edit photo", sometimes you can't. It just doesn't work for the page or the template, I'm not sure which. 4. The screen frequently just freezes 5. There is no easy navigation back from the help pages to the project you're working on. 6. Making changes...well sometime they just don't take 7. You frequently get a page not found when you DO navigate back. 8. ANY changes beyond the template ARE difficult. Even minor tweeks to position of photos, cropping, or heading are difficult. 9. Finally, any attempt to contact SquareSpace is met with at least 5-6 barriers -- 4 attempts to block you with content that doesn't address your issue, chat that doesn't respond, an email you have to receive before they will work on it, a confirming email that you have to send back before they will respond, then a clarifying email from them that makes no sense, promising they'll work on it...you can tell they haven't really read your question. Still, 2 days later, no help. I'm not sure why SQUARESPACE gets any more than 1 star. I think it's because no on reviewing it actually HAS to create a site. It's done for the review, for fun and can follow along with whatever the template requires. Once you actually have to make a usable site for your contact, it's crazy difficult

I'm a professional photographer who is not particularly web saavy.

I fell for the Squarespace advertising hype and paid for a year of service using a slick looking template, and found it very difficult to adapt it to my purposes.

Customer support is close to non-existent (web only), and has been the most impersonal customer experience I've ever had.

Bottom line is I would not recommend Squarespace if you're not particularly web saavy.

I’ve struggled for two years to find an easy substitute for iWeb and finally, here you are! Nice design, intuitive tools, and out-of-this-world customer service! Learning curve was short and fast. Only a few minor things I would have liked to change (add background color to text blocks, add sidebar to any template, etc.) but I'm not interested in coding. I like the fact that I don't have to resize every image before importing but would like to see an admin portfolio so I can pull from a batch of my own images without having to re-upload if I use one image on multiple pages.
All in all, I am thrilled at how easy it was for me to build a site and customize the chosen template to fit my needs. The fact that the site goes immediately (!!!) live without any sort of FTP is amazing to me! Even quick rewrites and photo edits are up immediately, no extra steps required! I highly recommend SS to anyone who cares about ease of use but is not willing to compromise on elegance!

I have use many different website builders from weebly to WIX and finally settled on Godaddy. Decided to switch to Squarespace when I was looking for a Parallax scrolling template (everything on one page).

The good...
really nice templates, great customer service and relatively easy to get going...

The Bad..
Squarespace claims to offer freedom, but actually you are locked in a little box you cant get out of unless you know CSS. It misses some really simple web creation tools but I think its to keep the design elements clean...
you cant change fonts or colours for more than 3 settings.
No navigation menu enhancements
no button enhancements
no justification of paragraphs
image manipulation is just screamingly painful.. (no lightbox to save your adjust images so you need to start all over again if you want to use the same image).
add text to an image and get it wrong.. you guessed it... you need to re do the image then add the text ...and you cannot just amend the text you need to delete the whole image and start again.
things just disappear then re-appear...

the list goes on it gets very frustrating. As I write I have just contacted support as my site went live but the live site does not have the parallax menu on it (important when you have chosen a parallax template!) but under admin it does... it also cuts my logo off at the bottom on live but not on admin...

This is a one template so it may not be the same for others... but I think the site looks nicer than my Godaddy one but could not really recommend squarespace as a finished article...

I was hooked on Squarespace the moment I started playing around with my free trial- largely because of the amazing design, but also because of the awesome support team. I've been a big Wordpress user for the last few years but I was pretty much instantly converted!

The template designs are sleek and beautiful and just right for anyone who wants to quickly create a site that looks 'current'. You'll find templates that remind you of many of your favourite companies or bloggers, or even stores, sites- not as easy feat! There are no clunky designs here- everything is super customisable- and it's SO easy! The idea that you can take Squarespace and create a site in 10 minutes that looks contemporary (design-wise), clean, and engaging- isn't a myth. With a little knowledge of how the blocks and features work (watch the video tutorials; they cover everything) you could literally create a site in under half an hour. Maybe an hour? It's pretty revolutionary stuff!

Squarespace is fun and easy to use/design/build- and even when you're confused, you can get instant assistance from the amazing team- who are by far the friendliest support team I have come across. Trying to get help online can be very frustrating at times, even with large teams, because responses are slow and often not that friendly. This is *not* the case at all with Squarespace- and it makes such a difference to how confident you feel using their platform; I've received personalised and friendly help within 15/20 minutes of seeking it- even though I live in a totally different time zone (I'm in the Middle East). So impressive!

I would definitely recommend Squarespace to anyone who wants to create a beautiful and functionally diverse website, whether they've had a lot of experience designing sites or none at all- it's a great new platform and I only wish I'd discovered it sooner :)

They had a rough start with the launch of SS6, laced with numerous bugs that were never fixed for months on end, but what's worse is the constant 'tweaking' their template developers engage in, often blowing up anything custom you've invested in designing for your site.

Month and month, I've continued to question each new update. But even simple features that Tumblr and Cargo have long provided - endless scrolling and proper aspect ratio sizing of tall images - still are no where to be seen.

Because it's shiny on the outside, one expects more shiny on the inside. Unfortunately, aside from their (still buggy) blogging tools, I don't see why SS6 is really better than any other website building tool out there - many of which are much cheaper and reliable than this QC-less platform.

I'm an artist and calligrapher with a small free-lance design business. I had a web site with another "template-based" host for a few years, and only inertia and the difficulties I feared I might encounter in searching for a different host kept me with them that long. Their service and features never measured up to their hype. I finally realized I had to make a move when my site was down more than it was up. A friend recommended Squarespace. Setting up my site was so easy and intuitive, and the design templates were so clean, customizable and attractive, that I only needed one day of the free trial to commit to Squarespace. The customer support was friendly and extremely responsive during my set up (and I only needed them briefly because the interface works so well) and I have had no problems of any kind in the 9 months since I signed up. Now, hearing of the dedication and loyalty and amazing efforts the company employees (and the CEO) made to keep SS on line during and after hurricane Sandy, I am even happier to be a SS customer.

I've never created a website before but Squarespace made it super easy. You can customize as much or as little as you want to. I just dragged and dropped my images in my favorite template and it looks so good, I didn't have to make any other changes!

I would first like to say that I love the concept of Squarespace, and think the control panel, analytics and pricing are all fantastic. However, the execution is a bit off target, and the example sites for each template are misleading. It is impossible to get your site to look like the example sites without modifying the CSS, with the sidebars in particular being a problem.

Examples include: ugly bullet points in the tag index, poor spacing on section headers, bad font sizing and spacing on taglines and site descriptions, clipped images in sidebar, I could go on.

Support have been very friendly and responsive, but can suggest no better solutions than applying custom CSS, which is of course "not supported".

Unusable for us in its current form, but would definitely be back if these issues were resolved.

I signed up for Squarespace 6 thinking I'd save some time relative to building my own site from scratch, which I have the ability to do. Unfortunately, I have run into one road block after another. I have submitted a number of tickets asking why something could not be done or would not work and invariably get a "sorry that is not currently possible" or "we'll forward that to our design team". Examples of what I want to do are not unreasonable:
1) SS cannot show a gallery of pictures with captions under the photos. To get captions you must individually upload images, which means the gallery options like a slideshow or slider or grid are not available, and it's also way more clicks and work.
2) Post a small image (e.g. a pdf icon) without SS cropping it or distorting it so badly it's not readable
3) SS will not allow a downloadable document to be larger than 20MB, e.g. a PDF file for users to download.
4) Once I was told a different template would meet my needs better, then when a feature there didn't work they said they were in the process of deprecating that template!

This is just a few items I've run into in the last two days. I've also found the javascript UI to be very balky at times, and making changes to the website requires lots of clicks. As far as I can tell, there's no way to do bulk uploads of content, e.g markup that I've edited on my desktop for example.

I'm going to ask for my money back and start building a website myself. It's more work to get something up at all, but at least I will end up with something I'm proud of instead of having everything being a frustrating constraint dictated by template designers who want to put everyone into a very small box.