Webflow Vs Squarespace
Webflow and Squarespace are the most popular no-code website builders that allow you to design attractive websites without any coding knowledge. When comparing Webflow vs. Squarespace, here is what you need to know considering your unique needs, budget, and preferred features.
Squarespace vs. Webflow: Key Differences
Webflow is an advanced no-code web development platform or website builder that allows you to have design freedom with no code. Comes with drag-and-drop features within the context of HTML and CSS. It also gives you the option to start from a blank canvas. Because of that you can create whatever design you have in mind, or use a template. Webflow offers plans to a wide array of people, individuals, freelancers, web designers, companies, and agencies.
Squarespace is another no-code web development platform that helps you to create websites quickly for your blog, portfolio, business, or email marketing tool. Squarespace is template-based, with limited customizability. However, you can also do a little coding if you want a custom website.
The key differences between Webflow and Squarespace are that Webflow lets you have creative freedom when it comes to designing a website with its intuitive visual design and minimal dashboard UI. Squarespace on the other side, it's a template-based approach that makes it easy for anyone to have and manage their website.
Webflow
- Free plan: Yes
- Best for: Freelancers, Web designers, Startups, or Big-scale businesses.
- Pros: Design freedom, Great content management system
- Cons: No 24/7 support, Expensive for individuals, Limited bandwidth
Squarespace
- Free plan: 14 days trial
- Best for: Individuals, Artists, photographers, or anyone who needs a simple professional website
- Pros: Free templates, 27/ support, Unlimited bandwidth
- Cons: Limited design, Not for big-scale businesses, Simple content management system
Comparison
| Webflow | Squarespace | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $0 to 49/month | $14 to $65/month | |
| Design freedom | Create whatever design you have in mind, or use a template. | Template-based, with limited customizability. | |
| Animation & Interaction | Build completely custom interactions and animations without coding. | Comes with the template’s interactions and animations or needs to hire a developer to create custom experiences. |
|
| User-friendliness | On-page content editing, a minimal dashboard UI, and intuitive visual design tools founded on web standards. |
Squarespace emphasizes user-friendliness. That makes it easier for most people, but frustrating for creatives who want something unique. |
|
| Templates | Webflow offers over 100 beautiful templates, including quite a few free options and you can customize every detail without coding |
Clean, minimal, and adaptable to many uses, a bit inflexible unless you know how to code. |
|
| CMS & blogging | Visual CMS to create a beautifully structured database, and quickly create templated pages for your blog and other content |
Offers solid blogging, event publishing, and email marketing tools. | |
| Dynamic product and content integration | Ability to integrate products right into your blog posts, case studies, and whatever you publish. |
Ability to embed products into blog posts, events, and more to make your content drive sales. |
|
| SEO | Auto-generated sitemaps, out-of-the-box mobile-friendliness, dynamic meta title and description generation, simple 301 redirects and canonical URLs, easy HTML5 semantic tagging |
Ability to customize basic SEO markups like page titles and descriptions | |
| Marketing integrations | Built-in integrations for email, social media, and analytics, but lacks the built-in email marketing tools |
Have impressive email and lifecycle marketing tools that make it easy to attract new customers and re-engage old ones. |
|
| Customizable checkout | Ability to design fully customizable checkout experiences. | Built-in checkout page design, need to hire a developer to customize | |
| Store management tools | Both platforms offer an intuitive interface for updating your site’s content. | Both platforms offer an intuitive interface for updating your site’s content. | |
| Order management | Both platforms make it easy for site owners to manage operations. | Both platforms make it easy for site owners to manage operations. | |
| Payment options | Both platforms manage payments via Stripe and PayPal | Both platforms manage payments via Stripe and PayPal, however Squarespace’s Square support may give it a slight edge. |
Pricing and Plans
Webflow
Webflow has 2 different types of plans: Site and Workspaces. Everyone is provided with a starter workspace that is free. The paid Workspace plans are designed for freelancers, agencies, and in-house teams. Starting from $24 per month you can unlock features designed specifically for collaborating with clients and scaling your business.
Site Plans:
| Starter Plan | Basic Plan | CMS(Most Popular) | Business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for learning Webflow | Best for individual | Best for web designers, freelancers, or any content-driven site | Best for business agencies |
| Free | $18/month | $29/month | $49/month |
| Webflow domain | Custom domain | Custom domain | Custom domain |
| 50 CMS items in the database | Doesn't support CMS | 2000 CMS items in the database | 10000 CMS items in the database |
| 50-form submission limit | 500/month form submission limit | 1000/month form submission limit | 2500/month form submission limit |
| 1 GB CDN bandwidth | 50 GB CDN bandwidth | 200 GB CDN bandwidth | 400 GB CDN bandwidth |
| 3 Guest editors | 10 Guest editors |
Squarespace
Squarespace doesn't offer any free plan instead they offer two-week free trials. If you want to continue after the trial is over you have to pick one of their four paid plans.
It starts with the Personal plan for $23/month and comes with a free custom domain, SSL security, unlimited bandwidth 30 minutes of video storage, and templates. The most popular plan is the Business plan for $33/month which you can get the required features to start a small business website.
Templates
The main differences are Webflow's templates are highly customizable and you can only have little adjustment with Squarespace's templates but they are all free.
When it comes to design, Squarespace's templates are minimal and clean whereas Webflows's are modern and colorful furthermore you can purchase some fancy templates from Webflow's designer.
SEO Tools
Webflow and Squarespace are similar when it comes to SEO. Both basic SEO tools such as dynamic meta title and description generation however Webflow has the slight edge for it offers auto-generated sitemaps, simple 301 redirects, and canonical URLs, easy HTML5 semantic tagging. Squarespace sites are famously known to not rank as highly in Google search result pages.
Final Words
Overall, Webflow and Squarespace let you have and manage websites without any code. They are both able to deliver what we expect when having a website. From what I can see Webflow is focusing more on freelancers, web designers, or someone wanted to build a startup or SaaS business.
If you want to have total control over your website's design, Webflow is the best option. If you just want to have a website, blog, or CV as an artist, or photographer, Squarespace is a more suitable choice.