As much as Squarespace has tremendously grown in popularity and the final products made from it are beautiful, it has its fair share of limitations. These limitations include:
You can’t customize the templates.
Squarespace has plenty of templates ready for publication; hence, you can easily build your site. Unfortunately, these templates aren’t customizable. This means that you can only use them as they are.
While this might be fine for some users (especially those getting started with website building), it might be a problem for the experienced ones and those looking to give their websites a unique feel.
The fact that you can’t customize the templates gives Squarespace a disadvantage over other website builders, such as WordPress, that have more advanced development features.
As much as some advanced builders feel that the limited customizability is a disadvantage as it limits their control over the look and feel of their websites, other users feel that this limitation is great as it makes the platform simple and easy to use.
Limited general features
Besides Squarespace’s limitations on the customizations you can make on your templates, it’s also limited on features—it doesn’t have many features. For example, the platform is highly limited in SEO features, eCommerce features, email marketing tools, and many others.
One key feature it lacks is the ability to add a calendar to a form block. While you can easily add the calendar on WordPress and other website builders, you have difficulty doing so on Squarespace.
And for you to do it, you have to use third-party tools such as JotForm and Wufoo. If you want to block some dates on the calendar, you need to contact the respective third parties to find out whether you can and how to do it.
As you can guess, this is too complicated, and it’s something that Squarespace should make easy for anyone to do.
It doesn’t have many plugins and extensions to play around with
Since Squarespace lacks many features, you might have the impression that it has plenty of plugins and extensions that you can use to add the necessary functionalities, but this isn’t the case. Compared to other website builders such as WordPress, Squarespace is highly limited.
While this might be fine for those looking for simple designs, it might be a massive disadvantage to those looking to build highly custom and unique websites.
Page Limitations
Squarespace has a number of page and content limitations. They include:
- You can only add 60 album tracks to the “Album page.”
- Only 200 products on each of the product pages
- You have a 100-page limit for the “Index pages.”
- You can add a maximum of 250 images or videos to the gallery and project pages.
- While you don’t have a limit on the folders, it’s recommended that you add a maximum of 10. You should always create a dummy URL, as Squarespace doesn’t allow you to have an empty link.
- You can have only 60 blocks on a page.
- You can have a maximum of 1000 pages on your website, but Squarespace recommends you have no more than 400 pages to prevent the pages from slowing down.
You can’t get immediate support.
It’s normal to come across challenges as you are building your site. Yes, you can Google the problem you are having and find help online, but sometimes you can’t find the answers to your questions.
If you are in a hurry to get help, you can’t find it with Squarespace as it doesn’t have phone support. Sure, there is an efficient chat mechanism, but it’s not as fast as if you got hold of the support team on the phone.
You can’t back up your website.
People make mistakes all the time. Even experienced website builders make mistakes and want to revert to the previous website versions.
With other builders, you simply need to go to the backup files and find the version you are interested in, but this is impossible with Squarespace. To back up your site with Squarespace, you need third-party tools that sometimes require you to pay.
Squarespace is expensive
Squarespace has four plans that start from $16/month and are limited to a single website. If you go with the lower tier plans, you are limited on the pages and products that you can have.
While the fees might not be much when you have only a single website, the costs can quickly add up when you have multiple websites.
The plans have different features, and to ensure that you don’t waste your money, you should try the plans before making the decision. Thankfully, Squarespace has a 14-day free trial that helps you try out the different plans and settle on the one that works the best for you.
Is it all doom and groom for Squarespace?
As much as Squarespace has its limitations, it doesn’t mean it’s an all-around lousy platform. In fact, it has many good sides. For example, it’s extremely easy to use, so even if you have never built a website, you can perfectly do it using Squarespace.
Squarespace also has plenty of templates that you can use to give your website a professional look within a short time.
If you are a non-technical user, such as a small business owner, looking for an easy-to-use website builder, Squarespace will give you all the features you want.
Squarespace is also an excellent tool if you are a designer who values aesthetics over advanced development features.
As mentioned above, Squarespace doesn’t give you complete control of the templates, so you can’t customize them as well as you would want to. The platform is also limited in SEO capabilities.
This means that if you want a platform that gives you as much control as possible and makes it easy to market and rank on search engines, Squarespace might not be for you.
Thankfully, there are plenty of Squarespace alternatives you can go with. You only need to compare the options in the market and choose the one that has the features you are after.
