These days, anyone can create a basic website due to the relative ease of use of website builders like Squarespace, Weebly and Wix.
However, if you want a website that stands out from the competition, working with web designers like those at Digitaliser may be your best bet and WordPress will probably be their website builder of choice.
Either way, on your journey to build your website, you will probably come across these four website builders. We are here to help you understand their differences and choose the one that best suits you.
There are two versions of WordPress: an easy-to-use website builder similar to Squarespace and a comprehensive open-source website builder that needs to be installed on a server in order to be used. Let’s focus on the open-source option that you can find at wordpress.org.
The open-source version of WordPress allows users a design flexibility that is not matched by any of its competitors. This is its key advantage and makes it ideal when working with web designers than can make the best of this website builder.
Anyone can contribute to WordPress, meaning there are always new templates and plug-ins being added by other people. For example, a huge benefit of WordPress is its YoastSEO plug-in. Its role is to help your website appear higher on search-engine-results pages and it is renowned as the best of its kind. WordPress also has a great and scalable ecommerce plug-in called WooCommerce.
There are two main disadvantages to WordPress: it is relatively difficult to set up and manage, and its pricing is not as straightforward as Squarespace’s.
While it is difficult to set up and manage, adding content to an existing WordPress website is very easy, especially blog posts.
WordPress is a free website builder. The only costs you’ll have regarding your WordPress website are your server hosting and your domain registration. In addition to those, you can go for paid templates and plug-ins but those are completely optional.
However, realistically speaking, you’ll probably be working with a web designer who is a WordPress expert and will set up and manage your website for you. So, you’ll pay their fees instead, which vary a lot.
Squarespace is without a doubt one of the easiest website builders to use. When only compared with similar options, like Weebly and Wix, Squarespace is the website builder we recommend and that is why we are focusing on it.
Squarespace only lets you choose from their approved plug-ins and templates. While this certainly limits you in terms of functionality and design flexibility, you know everything you include in your website is of the highest quality. For example, all their website templates are optimised for mobile devices.
Another huge benefit of Squarespace is that it has a very straightforward pricing system.
Finally, while Squarespace has ecommerce functionalities, they are not as good as WordPress’s and of dedicated ecommerce platforms. If you want to create an ecommerce website, read our article about ecommerce platforms.
| WordPress | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Pros | - Very flexible in terms of design, with many free and paid templates - Impressive functionalities, including great plug-ins for SEO and ecommerce | - Easy-to-use - Only approved and high-quality templates and plug-ins - Straightforward pricing |
| Cons | - Difficult-to-manage - Complicated pricing | - Not very flexible in terms of design - Limited ecommerce functionalities |
| Best for | People who want to work with a web designer to create an outstanding website | People who want to create their own website but are not tech-savvy |
The open-source version of WordPress is the best website builder to create a fully-optimised and unique website that stands out from the competition. However, more often than not, unless you are tech-savvy, you’ll need to work with a web designer to make the best of WordPress’s functionalities.
Squarespace and similar website builders are very intuitive and easy-to-use. Therefore, Squarespace is the best website builder for those who are not tech-savvy but still want to make their own website.
Please contact us to find out what choice would be best for your business.
