How much does it cost to build a Squarespace website?
Squarespace is an amazing, intuitive website design platform - but whether you’re thinking of diy-ing your business website, or looking for a web designer to help you, you may be wondering how much it will cost to build?
As with many ‘how much does it cost’ questions, there are some nuances and different elements to be considered when figuring out how much a website design might end up costing you.
So, as someone who has been designing Squarespace websites for over 8+ years with over 150 clients, I thought this blog post may be helpful if you’re wondering about the costs involved with this platform.
Table of Contents
Why use Squarespace as your website design platform?
There are lots of different website building platforms on the market - from WordPress and Showitt, to Wix and Webflow - but Squarespace* is my favourite to work with for a number of reasons.
Simple, intuitive user interface
To a non-technical person, Squarespace has the cleanest and easiest user interface of all the options by far! My clients are typically self-professed ‘technophobes’ and love how simple Squarespace is to manage in the back-end.
Excellent mobile responsive design
Squarespace’s mobile experience is also superior to other website builders because of its flexibility of design, and if you’re using a pre-designed template, these are all designed with mobile top of mind - unlike a lot of templates for other platforms.
Fully managed with support
Squarespace is a ‘fully managed’ website platform, which means you never have to deal with things like software updates, plugins or security vulnerabilities, or worrying that changing one thing will break something else. All the security, updates & backups are built-in, and they have 24/7 support on hand to help.
These are just a couple of the key reasons, but I explain more of the benefits of Squarespace over on my ‘Why Squarespace?’ page, plus an in-depth comparison between Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress too!
How much does Squarespace cost?
Squarespace charges a fee for using its platform and for hosting your website, all rolled into one. As it is a ‘fully managed’ platform, this does cost a little more than a ‘self-hosted’ platform - like WordPress, but you get all the benefits I mentioned above because of it!
You can view a full breakdown of Squarespace’s pricing here* for the different plans they have, which depends on what functionality you need on your website.
While they do have a ‘Personal’ plan which is cheapest, I would recommend for most businesses that you will need the Business plan or higher, because this plan allows you to add custom code to your site (which you may want to do, and a designer almost certainly will need to do!).
As of September 2023, the Business plan costs either £24 per month or £204 per year (save 29% if you pay annually), and includes most features you would need for a normal website.
If you have an online shop, you CAN set up ecommerce with the Business plan, but I’d recommend opting for the Commerce Basic (£23-£28 per month depending on if you pay monthly/annually) or Advanced plans (£35-£43 per month depending on if you pay monthly/annually) instead.
These plans don’t take a transaction fee on any sales (whereas the Business plan takes 3%), and they offer more ecommerce-specific features, like product reviews etc. Again, you can see a full breakdown of what’s included on their Pricing page.*
By working with a Squarespace Circle Member as your website designer (like myself!), you can also get 20% off all annual plans for your first year too!
Other costs you’ll need when building a website
Website domain
When you have a website, you’ll also need to purchase a domain name (ie. yourbusinessname.com) to connect to the site so that people can find it!
You can actually buy your domain via Squarespace*, and these cost around $20 - $70USD per year as an additional cost to your hosting fee (mentioned above).
However these can be limited, and I personally prefer to purchase my domains elsewhere from a security standpoint as well as it spreads the risk if anything were to happen to my website or Squarespace account.
I like & recommend Godaddy because it’s easy to get set up and connects seamlessly with Squarespace. Domains from Godaddy typically cost around £10-£20 per year, but it really depends what domain name you choose!
Some shorter, more catchy domain names can cost upwards of £2000 a year!! But you can find out instantly by typing in what you want on these websites.
Professional email address
When you buy a domain for your website, it’s recommended that you set up an email address with this domain as well so that you appear more professional as a business (eg. hello@yourdomain.com vs bizname@hotmail.com just has a different ring to it!).
You can purchase a webmail inbox or Outlook subscription when you buy a domain through somewhere like Godaddy, but my personal recommendation would be a Google Workspace account instead! This is the easiest to use and best value option on the market in my opinion.
You can get 1 year Google Workspace subscription FREE when you sign up to a Squarespace Business plan* or higher! But typically it costs ~£6 a month.
Cookie / privacy management tool
Most businesses need some kind of cookie consent management and privacy policy on their website in order to be legally compliant with GDPR and privacy laws.
Your needs for this will totally depend on your business, and I’m not able to provide legal advice, however my best recommendation would be to get set up with a tool like CookieYes* which can generate all of this for you! Their plans range from free to £32 per month, but it depends on the size of your website.
For most businesses, the Basic plan at £8 per month is all that’s needed!
ICO registration / DATA PROTECTION FEE (UK businesses)
A lot of businesses don’t realise this, but if you’re based in the UK, and your website collects data in some form - whether that’s through tracking cookies, or through your contact form or ecommerce, you need to pay an annual ‘data protection fee’ to the Information Commissioners Office.
The cost of this will depend on your business, but for most it will be around £40 a year.
Additional costs to consider for extra tools & features
ECOMMERCE TRANSACTION & PAYMENT PROCESSING FEES
If you are selling via an online store, using Squarespace’s* ecommerce features, you may need to pay a 3% transaction fee on all sales if you are using the Business plan. This is taken automatically, and can be avoided if you upgrade to one of the Commerce plans.
The other thing to consider - which will apply no matter where you are selling online - is payment processor fees. Stripe and Paypal are examples of payment processors, and you connect these to Squarespace in order to take payments on your site. These will take a small fee & % of every sale you make, but are an unavoidable expense for selling online anywhere.
Stripe takes a lower fee which is why I usually suggest just connecting Stripe and avoiding PayPal!
EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE
If you want your website visitors to be able to sign up to an email list so you can send email newsletters, you’ll need to use some kind of email marketing software, and this is an additional cost to your website.
Squarespace has its own Email Marketing tool* built-in, which is a great option if you have an ecommerce store and want this to be easily linked. It costs between £4 - £38 per month depending on how many subscribers you have and how many emails you send.
However, my personal recommendation - if you’re not primarily an ecommerce business - would be to use Flodesk. This email marketing software is super intuitive and easy to use, has lots of features that Squarespace’s tool doesn’t have, and also has a fixed price, so it costs the same no matter how many email subscribers you have.
I have lots more information about why I love Flodesk here, and you can get 50% off your first year if you sign up with my link below - making it just $19 per month no matter how many subscribers you have.
https://flodesk.com/c/00G2QH *
Read my full side-by-side comparison of Flodesk vs Squarespace Email Campaigns here.
COURSE OR MEMBERSHIP SOFTWARE
If you are wanting to host an online course or membership community, you will need an additional tool/feature to do this as it doesn’t come included in Squarespace’s base hosting fee.
Squarespace has its own Courses & Membership features* at an additional cost - between £7 - £95 a month depending on what you need.
However I’d personally recommend Teachable*, which is a dedicated course hosting platform with more features than Squarespace’s current tool. They have a free plan, or cost between $39usd - $119usd per month.
Read more about why Teachable is my favourite course hosting tool here!
+ DO YOU NEED other professional services?
When designing a website, it’s important to consider all aspects of what might go into this.
For example, do you have your branding ready to translate fonts & colours onto the website? Do you have a logo ready to add to the header of the website? You might consider working with a brand designer to help you.
Or perhaps you need the help of a copywriter with writing the text on your website, or a photographer for some professional photography.
If your goal is to get your website ranked on Google, you may want to speak to an SEO specialist to help you with your content strategy and to make recommendations for the structure of your website. Most good website designers will do the basic ‘on-site’ SEO set up for you, but SEO encompasses much more than just that!
How much do Squarespace website designers charge?
Squarespace is a great website platform for DIY-ers because it is very intuitive to use, and there are some pre-designed templates* that can help you get started.
However, unless you’re experienced with website design, a DIY Squarespace website can end up looking amateurish and ‘template-like’, or you may simply not have the technical confidence or desire to design your own website.
In which case, working with a Squarespace website designer (like myself) is a great choice to make sure your online presence is professional, and optimised for your business goals!
Asking ‘how much Squarespace website designers charge’ is kind of like asking ‘how long is a piece of string’, because the price you’re quoted for a website design will largely depend on the below variables:
WEBSITE SCOPE
By this I mean the size, scale, and functionality needed for your website project and therefore how long it takes, including:
Number of web pages (obviously a website with 25 pages will take a lot longer than a site with 4 pages)
The design / layout & content needed for each page (a page with one paragraph and one image won’t take as long as a page with multiple sections)
Whether the site includes ecommerce set up (ecommerce requires extra steps to set up, and if you need 50 products adding, this will take more time)
Other additional features (such as a blog, email marketing software connection, appointment booking system etc)
Custom design code (Squarespace offers lots of design functionality, but sometimes custom code is required to achieve a certain look, and this will take a designer longer)
These are just some of the things a website designer will need to ask you about in order to create an accurate quote for what you need.
SQUARESPACE WEBSITE DESIGNER’S EXPERIENCE
As with working with any service provider or contractor, you will usually pay more for more experience and better quality.
A beginner Squarespace website designer will have less experience and so you can typically expect their prices will be lower than an experienced Squarespace designer with many years and clients under their belt, because they’ll be more used to working with the platform and understanding the needs of their clients.
So yes, you could find a beginner Squarespace designer who charges only £500 for a simple 4/5 page website without any fancy features, AND you can find Squarespace designers who charge £5000+ for a similar size website.
I’ve been designing Squarespace websites for 8+ years and have worked with over 150 clients, and my ‘starter package’ for a 5 page website is currently £2,500, and I have a higher package which includes basic ecommerce set up starting at £3,300. BUT I typically end up creating custom quotes for my clients, because every website is different. These prices are just a handy jumping off point!
Work with a 8+ year Squarespace expert on your website design!
View my custom Squarespace design services and pricing, and get in touch for a quote.
* Indicates an affiliate link where I get a small commission if you pay for this tool. I only recommend products & tools that I personally use and love, though!
