Is Squarespace The Right Fit For Your Business?

Image Soruce: Unsplash

If you’re looking to launch a website, we’re going to go through seven or eight key things to consider as you’re getting started, especially with Squarespace as a platform. 

The things you need to consider about getting right are domains, pricing, and what you’re looking to build. By no means will this be an exhaustive guide, but this is going to help you understand a few key things to getting started. At the end, we’ll show you all our favorite resources that will help you launch your first website on Squarespace with ease! 

Table of Contents in Detail Hide

Can You Start a Free Trial on Squarespace? 

The answer is yes: you could start a free trial and that trial will be for two weeks. Maybe at the end of the two weeks, they might email you to extend it by one week, but just know that you will get two weeks for sure! 

Most people will need more time than two weeks, so it’s better to just commit from the beginning and start paying for it, so you can get your site up and running. Ideally, you should give yourself a month to build the website. If it’s your first time doing it, you may be able to do it in two weeks. However, if you’ve never done something like this before, it is going to be demanding. You’ll have a lot of different questions, like these: 

• Should I have a homepage? 

• Should I have an about page? 

• What should be on the homepage? 

To start off, yes, you should have a homepage. When you go through it, there’s going to be certain things that you will have to really consider and get through. We’ll give you some resources that will help make that process smoother. 

Can Squarespace Host Your Domain? 

Yes, it can! If you have a domain with companies like GoDaddy or Google Domains, or any other tools, there’s two things you can do: 

You can connect your domain, or you could transfer your domain, and that’s where Squarespace will post it. With any website, you will pay for two separate things at minimum: domain hosting and website hosting. When you look at the pricing plans for Squarespace, that’s for your website hosting only, so you will still need to pay for your domain hosting.  

Typically, a domain is anywhere between 10 to 40 dollars, but sometimes they could go even further if you pay for a very unique or special domain.  

Can Squarespace Host Emails? 

Image Soruce: Unsplash

They do not host emails, but you can connect Google Workspace, which is Google’s email system for your domain through Workspace. Here’s an example: 

Let’s say your URL is Ilovecats.com, and you want to send an email to Alison at Ilovecats.com. You could do that through a Google Workspace or do it through our website on Squarespace. 

Basically, on your Squarespace site, they give you the opportunity to set up emails and it will be through a Google Workspace. If you’re trying to set up a lot of emails, that can get expensive fast. If you can afford it, great. But it could reach anywhere between $700-$800.  

As you get started, you will want to consider which email provider you should use. Zoho gives you a ton of emails for a ridiculously low price, but you won’t be able to connect that directly to Squarespace.  

Google Workspace is a great tool that many love to use. Having two to five emails set up in there is worthwhile, and you get the full span of google tools. Gmail, google calendar, drive—all of it. At the end of the day though, you can use any tool you want. 

Can Squarespace Be Free? 

Unfortunately, no, it can’t be. There is no way to get a free account, but you can get a student discount.  

Choosing the Right Plan on Squarespace 

Let’s say you're choosing a plan and you need to understand if this is something you could actually afford. Let’s take a look at the plans and a breakdown of what you need to consider: 

Let’s say you’re going to create a membership site. You need a website hosting plan and your membership hosting plan. Those are separate fees, too. If you want to set up email campaigns with automations, that’s a separate plan as well, and the same goes for scheduling and other unique features. Overall, if you have other major features with Squarespace, you will need to pay an additional fee. 

As far as payment plans go, there’s pay annual and pay monthly. Each of them comes with an option of a few different plans with different features.  

If you are selling items, the core thing to think about is a Commerce Plan. But if you’re not selling, you could stick to a Personal or Business plan. The biggest difference between Personal and Business plans is that you get the first year of email for free.  

Something that will affect your site between these plans is premium integration and blocks. If you’re using custom code and you’re trying to have a unique site, or if you want to add contender injections in anywhere, you need a Business Plan. 95% of clients are on the Business Plan. The Personal Plan is for a very minimal, easy, basic site, and it is $16. But consider that most likely you will pay the $23 monthly Business Plan.  

When you go into the Business Plan, you have some commerce features like donations, gift cards, and selling unlimited products, but there is a 3% transaction free. To skip the transaction fee, you will want to choose the Basic Commerce Plan. Their Advanced Commerce Plan has other features like abandoned cart, subscriptions, advanced shipping and discounts, and commerce APIs. Selling subscriptions and abandoned cart are going to be very valuable features, if you are doing eCommerce. If you want those valuable features, you will want to choose the advanced commerce plan at $49 a month.  

Most people who use Squarespace will use Business or Basic Commerce. Remember though that you will pay additional fees for any add-on features. Any SEO integrations you need will be built in with any site, so you will receive that with any plan you choose.  

The beautiful part of Squarespace plans is that you can start with what you need and grow over time. Start wherever you need. 

Can Squarespace Send Email Campaigns? 

Yes, they can. The email marketing tool is really powerful, and they’ll be adding new features soon to make it even better. The email tool lets you easily import blog posts or products with two clicks into your email campaigns. You can set-up automations that happen right away after someone purchases, and it doesn’t need to be complicated. You can get up and running quickly and easily in the backend of your site and send beautiful emails fast. 

How Quick Can You Launch with Squarespace? 

You could launch your site fairly quickly and it’s a really easy process. You’ll need to focus on these three steps: 

• Pay for the site 

• Connect the domain 

• Make it public 

When you get up and running, you’ll need to connect some Google tools to make sure that the Google search engine finds you immediately. They can start indexing your website, and they will know your website exists. 

You can get a site going quickly, and you can build it where it’s really robust in a fast way. In 2022, we’re lucky with what we can do in just a few clicks. If they are familiar with the process, some people can launch websites in less than three hours, but it’s also because they use tools like Squarespace that are fairly easy. Other tools may make the process harder, but Squarespace makes it easy to build a beautiful website. 

For even more information on how to get your site up and running, here’s those additional features we mentioned: 

Designer Starter Kit 

This is made for people who want to design websites for clients. But if you’re just designing one website, we still recommend it because there are plugins, tools, tips, and tricks that will be great for you to get your site up and running fast.  Check it out here.

YouTube Channel and SEO Services 

We have a ton of videos on our YouTube channel that will help you do a lot of different things, so don’t forget to check that out. At Launch Happy, we even have SEO services on our company that can help you grow and scale. If you want to explore SEO on your own, check out the SEO guides on our website! 

Plus, if you use the code ISKANDER when you check out, you can get a discount on the Squarespace site.  

Ready to get started with Squarespace? Choose your plan today!