Squarespace has great marketing. It is genuinely easy to use, it looks polished out of the box, and the monthly price feels manageable. So why would you pay more for a custom site?
Here is the honest answer: it depends on what your business needs and what your time is worth.
What Squarespace is good at
Squarespace is a solid choice in specific situations. If you want to control your own content, make changes yourself without needing to contact anyone, and you are happy to spend a few evenings learning the platform, it works.
It is also reasonable if you need a basic online presence fast and are genuinely comfortable with a template look. The templates are well-designed compared to most of the competition.
- You control content updates yourself
- No upfront build cost
- Good template options
- Built-in hosting and SSL
- E-commerce support included
- Designed specifically for your brand
- One-time cost, no ongoing platform fee
- Looks different from every other site
- Built for speed and SEO from the ground up
- You own everything outright
Where Squarespace falls short
The template problem is real. Squarespace has a finite number of templates, and they are used by millions of businesses. No matter how much you customise within the platform, there is a ceiling on how distinct your site can look. If your brand positioning depends on standing out visually, a template puts a hard limit on that.
The ongoing cost adds up. Squarespace plans run from around $23 to $65 USD per month depending on the tier. Over three years that is $828 to $2,340. A custom site at $465 USD upfront with $30/month hosting looks very different over that same window.
Platform lock-in is the other consideration. Your Squarespace site does not live anywhere except Squarespace. If you ever want to move, you are rebuilding from scratch.
A template limits what your site can say about your brand before anyone reads a word. First impressions are visual.
The time cost nobody accounts for
DIY sounds free. It is not. The hours you spend building your own Squarespace site are hours not spent on your actual business. For most small business owners, a few days of fumbling with a website builder is not a neutral cost.
And most DIY sites are never finished. They stay on the free plan or sit at 80% complete because life gets in the way. A site that is not live is doing nothing for you.
Who should use Squarespace
- You are genuinely comfortable building things yourself and have the time
- You need to update content constantly and want full direct control
- You are testing a business idea and not ready to invest in a full build
- You need e-commerce and are not ready for a custom shop solution
Who should get a custom site
- You want your site to look like your brand, not like a template
- Your time is better spent on your business than on a website builder
- You want the site built quickly by someone who does this every day
- You care about standing out from competitors who are all using the same platforms
- You want to own the files and not pay a platform fee every month
The actual cost comparison over three years
Run the numbers. Squarespace Business plan at $33 USD/month is $1,188 over three years. Add the time you spent building it, updating it, and fighting with it when something breaks.
A custom build at $465 USD upfront with $22/month hosting (30 AUD) is $465 + $792 = $1,257 over three years. And the site looks exactly like your business, was live within 48 hours, and you never had to touch a website builder.
The numbers are close. The experience and output are not.