For a blog you plan to grow, the answer to Squarespace vs WordPress is WordPress. Squarespace is the polished, everything included choice for a small business site that has to look good this week and will stay small. Once a blog needs more writers, its own integrations or a way out, WordPress costs less and lets you do more.
A disclosure first: jkdevstudio has built and sold WordPress themes since 2019, so we have a side in this. To keep it fair, we stuck to what you can check yourself: the Squarespace pricing page, its help center and developer docs, all read in November 2026.
- Squarespace Basic
- $19 a month billed yearly, $25 month to month
- Cheapest plan with custom code
- Core, $29 a month billed yearly
- WordPress software
- Free, open source
- Share of all websites
- WordPress 39.4%, Wix 4.2%, Squarespace 2.4%
US list prices from the Squarespace pricing page; shares from W3Techs, November 2026.
Squarespace vs WordPress: what are you comparing?
Squarespace is a hosted website builder: one subscription buys the templates, the editor, the hosting, the SSL certificate and the support. WordPress is free software that you install on a host you choose, and it handles posts, pages, users and media in its core. Themes decide how a WordPress site looks; plugins add whatever else it has to do.
Squarespace has its own version of plugins, called Extensions, which its pricing page describes as third party tools, the equivalent of plugins, add-ons or apps. WordPress has a directory of over 78,000 free plugins on top of everything sold elsewhere. So the question is how much of your site you want someone else to decide for you.
What Squarespace really is: a little of everything
The main problem with Squarespace, as we see it, is that it tries to be a little of everything. It wants to carry every kind of small business at once: a shop, a blog, a portfolio, bookings, courses, a newsletter. It does each of them, but none of them fully. Take any single job on its own and there is a better tool for it:
- For an online store, WooCommerce or Shopify, which in our view beat it at practically everything.
- For a pure blog, WordPress or Ghost.
- For a newsletter, Substack.
The same goes for almost every other job. Squarespace is a generalist, and a generalist is the right pick when you need many jobs done adequately in one place.
Where Squarespace wins
Squarespace wins on three things: stylish templates, an easy start, and a business built around the small US company. The designs are among the best looking you can get without hiring a designer, and they look finished on the first day.
The easy start holds up too. Everything you would otherwise set up yourself, the server and the certificates among them, comes with the plan. Every plan includes a free SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth and 24/7 support. All of that has limits, but in our view 99% of people never run into them.
The focus on American micro-business shows in the numbers. In its last annual report as a public company, Squarespace took 71.7% of its 2023 revenue from customers in the United States. In October 2024 Permira took it private in a deal worth about $7.2 billion. For a cafe, a studio, a consultant or a local shop that needs a good looking site with a booking form and no one to look after a server, it is close to the ideal tool.
How much does Squarespace cost compared with WordPress?
Squarespace Basic costs $19 a month billed yearly, or $25 paid month to month. A blog with custom code or more than two writers needs Core at $29 a month billed yearly. Above that sit Plus at $49 and Advanced at $99, both billed yearly. These are US prices; Squarespace shows different prices in some other countries.
Those numbers went up this year. In July 2026 Squarespace raised its annual prices by up to 26%, and existing customers meet the new price at renewal. Selling also costs extra on the cheaper plans: Basic takes a 2% fee on store sales, and paid content and memberships carry a 7% fee on Basic, 5% on Core and 1% on Plus.
WordPress itself costs nothing: the software is free under the GPL, and users, posts and plugins add nothing to a license bill. You pay for hosting and a domain, plus a premium theme if you want one. For a hosted comparison, the WordPress.com Personal plan is listed at $4 a month billed yearly and already includes plugins.
| Squarespace Core | WordPress | |
|---|---|---|
| Plan per year | $348 | $48 on WordPress.com |
| Writers | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Custom code | Yes | Yes |
| Paid content fee | 5% | Plugin or provider |
| AI credits | 20 a month | Any AI tool |
| Price after renewal | Set by Squarespace | Your choice of host |
Is Squarespace good for blogging?
Yes, for a personal or small business blog Squarespace is good enough. Its blog editor schedules posts, sorts them by tags and categories, takes comments per post, and gives each post its own excerpt, featured image and SEO settings. There is no limit on posts per blog page, though a site tops out at 1,000 pages, and a Crawlers setting blocks known AI crawlers with one checkbox.
The limits show up on the plan you are most likely to start with. Basic allows two contributors, has no code injection, so no site-wide tracking pixel or chat script, and gives 10 AI credits once, against 20 a month on Core. WordPress has none of these switches: roles, users, scripts and editors are yours to set, on any host.
What you can take with you when you leave Squarespace
When you leave Squarespace you take a WordPress file with one blog and your basic pages, and you leave the design behind. The export help page, updated in October 2026, lists what goes and what stays:
- Exported: layout pages, one blog page with its posts and up to 1,000 comments per post, text and image blocks, gallery pages.
- Not exported: store, portfolio, index and event pages, any second blog, audio, video and product blocks, drafts, your template and style settings, custom CSS.
- Images can stay linked to Squarespace and break once you cancel, unless you import them properly or download them by hand.
- Trial sites cannot export at all.
WordPress lets you take the whole site. It has a full export tool in the dashboard, and the files and database move to any host you like, design included.
What about Wix?
Wix locks you in harder than Squarespace. Its help center says plainly that a Wix site must run on Wix servers, and that blog posts cannot be exported to other platforms; that one is still a feature request. Wix runs 4.2% of all websites, almost twice the share of Squarespace, and the comparison with WordPress follows the same line: it wins on an easy start and loses on what you own.
Is Squarespace a real competitor to WordPress?
Absolutely not, in our view. For all the problems WordPress has, its openness and how easily it scales put it in a different league, and the AI era has widened the gap. WordPress 6.9 added the Abilities API to core. In February 2026 the project introduced its MCP Adapter, which lets AI assistants such as Claude, Cursor and VS Code discover and run what a site can do. It is a more or less working MCP, still early, and Full Site Editing is alive and keeps improving.
Squarespace has an MCP server too. It covers domains and commerce, meaning contacts, products and read-only orders. Blog posts and pages are not part of it.
The design argument is weaker than it was
This next thought is not entirely proper. Open a Squarespace template you like and ask Claude, on a $20 a month Pro plan, to build you one just like it on WordPress. Remember that templates are copyrighted work, so do not clone one. Nobody stops you from taking a little inspiration, though. You end up with the same modern design on top of a free CMS.
Your own integrations, in a few lines
Custom integrations are cheaper on WordPress too. Say you want to connect a local CRM, or a service only you and two friends use. On WordPress you describe it to your AI assistant and get a couple of lines of code or a small plugin. On a closed platform you wait for a vendor integration, or buy a bigger plan and its pack of features, AI credits included.
This is not designing space rockets. It is a website that shows the information you need, and the simplest tool does the job without locking you inside a closed platform.
Verdict: WordPress, for a blog you plan to grow and own; Squarespace, for a small business site that has to look good this week.
- WordPress Pick it if you publish often, want several writers, your own integrations and a full export
- Squarespace Pick it if you run a micro-business and want design, hosting and support in one bill
- Substack Pick it if the newsletter is the product and the website is an afterthought
The middle path: a WordPress theme that looks the part
Most of the design gap between Squarespace and WordPress is the theme. A default theme will not look like a Squarespace template, but a theme designed for publishing can, with the WordPress backend and its running costs behind it.
Disclosure again: jkdevstudio sells WordPress themes, so this is where we have a stake. For a blog or magazine, Verba is our example: a one-time purchase that works in the Site Editor and the block editor, with demo content you import in one click. The rest of the theme catalog covers news, portfolio and personal blogs.
How to move from Squarespace to WordPress
Moving from Squarespace to WordPress is quick for the words and slow for the design. The order that loses the least:
- In Squarespace, open Import and export, choose WordPress and download the XML file of your primary blog.
- On WordPress, run Tools, Import with the WordPress Importer and tick the option to download attachments.
- Check every image: any that still points to Squarespace has to be uploaded again before you cancel.
- Rebuild store, portfolio and event pages by hand, since the export leaves them out.
- Pick a theme and recreate the design; nothing of the template comes across.
- Set 301 redirects from the old Squarespace URLs to the new ones, then move the domain.
Questions people ask
Is Squarespace better than WordPress?
Squarespace is better for a small business that wants a polished site, hosting and support in one bill with nothing to maintain. WordPress is better for a blog that will grow: it costs less, has no plan gates, connects to anything and exports completely.
What is the downside of Squarespace?
Cost and lock-in. Plans rose by up to 26% in July 2026, and Basic charges a 2% store fee and allows two contributors. The export carries one blog and basic pages but not the design, the store or custom CSS.
Is Squarespace worth it?
It is worth it for a micro-business that values design and zero maintenance over control, and will stay within one blog and 1,000 pages. For a writer who wants to own the site and grow it, the yearly bill buys less than WordPress gives for free.
Is WordPress or Squarespace better for SEO?
Both handle the basics: editable URLs, per-post titles and descriptions, and SSL. WordPress goes further because you control the theme, the markup and the plugins, while Squarespace keeps those decisions inside the platform.
What to do next
Write down what the site has to do three years from now. Count the people who will publish, the services it has to talk to, and whether you will ever want to leave. If the answer is one person, a booking form and no wish to touch a server, Squarespace will serve you well. If the list keeps growing, start on WordPress, pick a theme that already looks the way you want, and keep the yearly difference.
