You've probably heard of Squarespace. You might even be thinking: why pay a web designer when I could just drag and drop my way to a website for $26 NZD a month?
It's a fair question. We get asked it a lot.
So here's our honest answer.
Squarespace is fine. Until it isn't.
We're not going to pretend Squarespace is terrible. It's a very solid product for what it does. If you need something online quickly and you're happy managing it yourself, it works.
But if your website is a serious part of how your business attracts and converts customers? The conversation changes. And that's where things get interesting.
The real cost of "cheap"
That $26/month headline is appealing. We totally get it. But chances are you'll need features that aren't included at that tier, and Squarespace knows it. Most businesses end up pushed to the $46–69/month plans pretty quickly.
Here's what's missing or limited at entry level:
Basic analytics only. No traffic source data, no conversion tracking, no sales insights. You're essentially flying blind.
Two users, maximum. The site owner plus one other. That's it.
No CSS editing. Want to match your brand exactly? You're stuck with their standard style editor. That severely limits what any designer can do.
No custom code. No JavaScript, no HTML injection. That cuts off a huge range of integrations.
You pay transaction fees. A 2% cut on every sale, on top of your payment processor fees.
Limited ecommerce tools. No abandoned cart recovery, no advanced shipping, restricted discount options.
Start adding third-party tools for bookings, forms, or CRM connections and the monthly cost climbs higher still.
More importantly, none of that monthly fee includes something critical: a person who actually knows your business.
When something breaks, when Google updates its algorithm, when you need to add a new service to your site — you're on your own. Trawling through help docs. Waiting on chat support.
Our website care plans start at $79/month. Yes, that's more than Squarespace's top tier. But the comparison isn't apples to apples. Our plans include fast, dedicated hosting, ongoing security monitoring, regular updates, and direct access to a developer who understands your brand and your goals. Most of our plans also include support time where you can leverage our expertise every month.
That's not a monthly fee. It's a retainer for a team member who specialises in making your website work harder for you. We also run annual reviews on every hosted site to spot opportunities for growth before you even think to ask.
You should own your website
This one doesn't get talked about enough.
When you build on Squarespace, you don't own your website. You're renting space on their platform, using their tools, under their terms. If they raise prices, remove a feature you rely on, or change direction in a way that doesn't suit your business, your options are limited. There's no meaningful way to export a Squarespace site and take it elsewhere. If you want to move, you're paying for a full rebuild.
With Statamic, you own everything. Your code, your content, your data. You can change hosting providers, scale up, or bring in any developer in the future to work on your site. You're never locked in, and that independence has real long-term value.
Your website should be fast. Really fast.
Here's something most business owners don't realise: Squarespace sites are often genuinely slow.
They load a significant amount of unnecessary code on every page, and Google notices. Core Web Vitals — the speed and responsiveness metrics Google uses to rank websites — are increasingly important, and Squarespace sites routinely struggle with them.
The sites we build on Statamic are lean by design. No bloat, no unnecessary scripts, no framework overhead slowing things down. The result is a site that loads faster, ranks better, and gives your visitors a genuinely better experience.
In a world where people abandon a page if it takes more than a few seconds to load, that speed translates directly into leads and revenue. It's not a nice-to-have.
An editing experience built around how you actually work
One of the things people love about Squarespace is how easy it is to start. And it is. But "easy to start" and "easy to use day-to-day" are very different things.
Squarespace's drag-and-drop editor sounds great in theory. Until you accidentally break your layout, misalign an element, or spend twenty minutes trying to get a block to sit where you want it. The flexibility that makes it easy to start is the same flexibility that makes it easy to make a mess.
The content management we build for you in Statamic works differently. Instead of handing you a blank canvas and hoping for the best, we create a structured editing experience tailored to your content, with a live preview so you see exactly what you're building as you build it. No publishing blind. No "I wonder what that'll look like." What you see is what your visitors get.
Each block in the page builder comes with style variations baked in. Dark background, light background, centred layout, split layout, those options are designed to match your brand before you ever touch them. You're choosing from options that work. No design instincts needed, we've done that part for you.
So here's what that means day-to-day: you have complete control over your content and real flexibility over how it looks, without the risk of accidentally breaking your layout or drifting off-brand. In practice, that's easier than Squarespace for the things you actually do every day;updating a blog post, adding a team member, changing a price. The design system doesn't get in your way. And you never feel like you're just filling in a form.
"Built-in SEO" isn't what you think it is
Squarespace markets its SEO tools as a major selling point. Here's what that actually means: they give you fields for meta titles and descriptions.
That's it. Every website platform on earth does that.
Real SEO lives in the technical foundations of your site: clean, semantic markup; fast load times; proper heading structures; schema data that helps search engines understand your content; optimised images; and a site architecture that makes it easy for Google to crawl and index your pages.
These are things we build into every site from the ground up. They're not checkboxes in a settings panel — they're decisions made by someone who understands how search engines actually work.
What about AI?
Squarespace has leaned into AI features recently, and it makes for good marketing. But look closely at what their AI actually does: it generates generic copy and stock-style imagery.
It's a feature checkbox. Not a genuine advantage.
We use AI extensively in our process — it helps us work faster, research more thoroughly, and deliver better results. But the AI is in professional hands, guided by experience and judgement. There's a meaningful difference between a button that auto-generates your homepage copy and a professional using AI as one tool among many to craft something that actually represents your business.
No ceiling on what's possible
Here's the thing. The most important difference shows up when your business grows.
Need a custom calculator on your site? A complex filtering system for your products? Integration with your CRM or booking software? A client portal? An interactive tool that sets you apart from your competitors?
With Squarespace, you'll hit "you can't do that" surprisingly quickly.
With Statamic, built on Laravel — one of the most popular and powerful web frameworks in the world — the answer is almost always "yes, and here's how." Your website evolves with your business instead of holding it back.
So who is Squarespace actually for?
We're not going to pretend everyone needs what we offer. If you're launching a side project, testing an idea, or you just need a simple online presence and you're happy managing it yourself, Squarespace might genuinely be the right call. No hard feelings.
But if your website is a serious part of how your business generates revenue — if you care about ranking well on Google, loading fast, looking professional, and having the flexibility to grow — then you deserve something built with more intention and backed by more support than a DIY platform can provide.
That's what we build.
Interested in seeing how a professionally built Statamic site compares to what you're running now? Get in touch for a free, no-obligation chat about your website and where it could take your business.
