Webflow and Squarespace are both website building tools with the same goal “Building a no-code websites”, but they have different approaches, each for their respective audience.
In this comparison, we’ll breakdown both platforms, compare their high’s and low’s to make sure you’ll be able to decide which one is best for you.
First things first, let’s see the brief overview of these tools and what they are known for.
Webflow
Webflow is a visual, no-code website builder with a hosting platform, a CMS, ecommerce, and more. It’s an all in one package made for individuals and organizations that are looking to design, build, and launch their website.
What makes Webflow different from its competitors like WordPress and Squarespace is:
- The only platform that provides an end-to-end solution to design and build a fully functional website
- A wide variety of pricing plans to choose from, each suitable for every customer need
- Their hosting solution can guarantee websites’ safety, security, and stability keeping it functional and making it easy to scale
- Webflow writes a super clean code that is easy to export and use elsewhere
- It is created with website responsiveness in mind, making it easy to implement on different devices
Every tool and website builder has downsides, and so does Webflow, let’s check some of them:
- Big learning curve. Webflow is a very powerful tool but one of its main downsides is the amount of time required to learn it properly. It’s great once you get a hand on it, but it takes some time to learn it.
- Insufficiently developed support. Many people dislike long wait time for support, especially because there is no live chat or phone support. Luckily Webflow community forum and Webflow University has a rich source of information and friendly community that is always ready to help.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a visual website builder that makes the whole website-building process easy and accessible to everyone.
Squarespace stands out mostly for a few main things:
- It is super easy to use and build websites with almost no technical knowledge, which makes it ahead of their competitors
- Squarespace uses a lot of templates, it’s actually all about that which makes it fast and easy to build
- It’s a great value for money that pays off very quickly
Squarespace have some downsides as well, let’s take a look at them:
- It limits you on what you can edit and design in Squarespace since everything is based on a template
- It doesn’t have autosave or history revision, making it very easy to lose all your unsaved work if something unexpected happens
- There are some limits related to website’s functionality and SEO
Webflow vs. Squarespace — Pricing
In short, the main difference between these two tools is that Webflow offers a free plan, allowing you to design and develop until you decide to publish your website, with some limitations to CMS, code export and more. Squarespace doesn’t have any free options at all.
Webflow Pricing
Webflow offers many pricing plans, where the basic one starts at $16 per month and the CMS version at $23 a month. Ecommerce plans are different and have different pricing options that vary from $29 to $74 a month.
Besides site plans, Webflow offers workspace plans that allow you unlimited design and development options, team management, and more.
Their pricing plans can be tricky until you get a hand on it, but we at Broworks explained everything in detail about Webflow pricing plans, make sure to check it out if you want to learn more about that.
Squarespace Pricing
Squarespace’s cheapest plan starts at $16 a month if paid annually, and the most popular one is $23 per month, so it’s pretty much like the Webflow’s one. Ecommerce plans are $49 per month if you’re looking to unlock that functionality as well.
On bigger projects, Squarespace is more affordable than Webflow simply because for Webflow you might need to purchase additional hosting options if you want to have more members that will be included in the project.
But if you’re looking at a bigger picture, Webflow has a wider range of pricing plan selections, making it more accessible and easier to find your best choice.
Webflow vs. Squarespace — Easy to use
Simply said, Webflow is highly customizable compared to Squarespace. Which, of course, makes it way more difficult to use and learn.
Squarespace is way more straight-forward on that matter, making it super easy to learn and beginners friendly, with a cost of customizability.
Webflow — Easy to use
Let’s take a look at the Webflow’s high’s and low’s on this matter:
- Learning curve. Everyone’s keep judging Webflow for its learning curve, but it is really needed in order to have all the customization options. It requires a basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Design customization. It has extensive customization options, layouts, animations, and interactions. It is a great tool to have for more professional or business oriented websites.
- Custom code. Webflow is allowing you to add and modify your website’s code, giving it more options, breaching all design and development limits.
- Website hosting. Webflow has a wide range of different hosting options, which are great and fits everyone’s needs, but they are not all-in-one solutions like Squarespace ones.
Squarespace — Easy to use
Let’s take a look at how Squarespace fits on this matter:
- Beginner-friendly. Squarespace is well-known for its easy to use interface, with drag n’ drop elements, allowing all users to build a website without basic coding knowledge.
- Website templates. It has a wide range of pre-made templates, where creating a website can take minutes.
- Hosting options. Their all-in-one hosting options simplify everything even more for their users, making it the number one website building tool for website building speed.
- Website customization. Squarespace does provide a lot of flexibility when it comes to customization, but it’s not as versatile as Webflow, especially when it comes to animations and interactions.
Webflow vs. Squarespace — Templates
Both platforms provide templates to speed up the website building process, but Squarespace has a lot more to offer with the amount of available templates on the market.
Webflow — Templates
Webflow has over 2000 website templates on the market, where some of them are built by them but many are community built.
You can search them easily for category, tags, language, style, and more. Almost all of them are paid and they are not cheap at all, ranging from $30 to over $130 per template.
The main feature with Webflow templates is that they are highly customizable, which means they don’t restrict you with initial design that much. By using Webflow’s design editor, provides even more options to customize templates to your needs, add more animation, interactions, and much more.
You should pay attention to the fact that this requires an extensive knowledge of Webflow and coding skills.
Squarespace — Templates
According to Squarespace, they have a little over 160 templates on their market, but the great part is they have many free of charge.
Even better option is that you can browse, preview, and even experiment with them without paying upfront. This is a great choice for those with limited budgets and a great starting point for someone who just wants to get started and put their presence online.
Like Webflow, Squarespace offers different filtering options when searching for templates.
It is important to keep in mind that Squarespace templates are versatile, but not as customizable as Webflow templates. You may run into some constraints in terms of design and development because of this.
Webflow vs. Squarespace — Performance
This is hard to compare since they both provide great performance results.
Webflow might be taken as a winner here since Webflow made dynamic content creation and publishing very easy, making it fast to deploy relevant content and edit on the go. Not to mention that visual CMS lets you structure databases, create template pages, and integrate content across your website.
This is all technically possible in Squarespace as well if you work on it from a development side by adding a custom code.
Webflow vs. Squarespace — Animations and interactions
Webflow has a wide variety of options for animations and interactions, especially with 3D animations that can be done in Spline and easily connected with Webflow, not to mention that Rive can provide that extra edge for even more complex animations that can be also integrated with Webflow. Squarespace is on the other hand quite limited with that.
Webflow — Animations and interactions
- Learning curve. It is simple to use but you might need some basic knowledge of how animation works to understand easing and some basic animation processes.
- Lottie integration. Webflow supports Lottie animations, which means that vector-based animation can be added in Webflow and controlled on scroll, click or hover.
- Interaction library. Users can save custom interactions and animations and reuse them across different projects.
- No-code. There is no need for a custom code to create custom animations, but you can use code as well if you want to work with very complex stuff.
- Triggers and effects. There are many triggers that you can use in your projects, such as click, hover, scroll, and page load, and effects like parallax, rotate, reveal, and more.
Squarespace — Animations and interactions
- Simplicity. Squarespace animations and interactions are easy to implement with a user-friendly interface for beginners.
- Predefined effects. Platform has a lot of pre-created animations for images, text, and page sections which can be implemented with simple clicks and adjustments.
- Limited customization. Their animations and interactions are simple to use and implement but they provide fewer options and less flexibility then Webflow.
- No timeline editor. Squarespace doesn’t have a timeline editor for more advanced animations like Webflow does.
Webflow vs. Squarespace — SEO
Both Webflow and Squarespace have great SEO features but they are different in terms of control and customization.
Webflow — SEO
- Title tags and meta descriptions. If a Webflow developer creates a field, they can cross-reference it in your title tag and description so that they are automatically added.
- Automatic sitemap generation. This is a simple switch so that Webflow can auto generate your sitemap. What makes it even better is that when you remove a piece of content, the sitemap will be automatically updated.
- 301 redirect. It’s super easy to redirect your old, non-existent pages to unwanted pages with a user-friendly interface in Webflow page settings.
- Custom schema markup. Schema markup is added directly into a field for a custom code and from there you can reference different fields in schema and automate it.
- Image compression. Webflow has the ability to convert all JPEG and PNG images to WebP format which saves even more space and makes websites way faster, performing better on search engines.
Squarespace — SEO
- Custom title tags and meta descriptions. You can customize title tags and meta descriptions for every page on your website, just like in Webflow.
- Custom image alt text. Add alt text to your images to help search engines understand what they are and to make them more accessible to people with visual impairments, but again Webflow has this feature too.
- Internal linking. Squarespace makes it easy to create internal links between your different pages.
Squarespace also has a wide range of SEO tools, especially for ecommerce which gives it a slight advantage over Webflow SEO if you want to build an online shop.
Here are some of the best features of Squarespace SEO:
Webflow vs. Squarespace — AI Capabilities
Webflow — AI
Currently Webflow haven’t implemented any AI capabilities, but they recently acquired Intellimize in order to unlock AI-driven website optimization in 2024.
Squarespace — AI
On the other hand, there are a lot of external apps with AI capabilities that you can use inside your Webflow project. One of them is Jasper, which helps you write a copy.
Squarespace has started to introduce AI steadily. The internal tool called Squarespace AI can help you generate copy for your website. I tested this and received the expected results: the copy was bland and uninteresting. If you don’t have high expectations from the copy, you can use this, but a real copywriter who understands your potential readers should do a much better job.
Conclusion
Our platform of choice is Webflow, obviously, however it might not be for everyone. If you’re just starting and need a simple website to be built fast, Squarespace might be just right for you. However, if you’re looking to build a more complex website with many pages, a good content management system and great animations and interactions, Webflow might be an option to consider.
If you decide to work with Webflow and need help from a team of experts, feel free to reach us at Broworks.
Originally published at https://www.broworks.net.
