Squarespace dominated the online website-building market for quite a while. Now, more platforms, such as Webflow, are offering competitive features and functionality, challenging Squarespace and other platforms.

One of the biggest complaints Squarespace users had was its limited customizability. Webflow aims to solve that problem but at a cost.

Today, we take a closer look at these two giant platforms to see which is best. Both Webflow and Squarespace come with unique features that set them apart from each other.

Which website builder should you use to build your website? Is Webflow better than Squarespace? Which platform offers the best benefits at the right price? Let’s find out.

What is Webflow?

Webflow is a powerful website builder that allows users to easily design and build custom websites using its easy-to-use “visual website builder”. Webflow is much more flexible and customizable than most other website builder platforms.

Webflow offers features more appealing to designers where you get to create your own custom website design from scratch without coding. In fact, Webflow even has a Figma plugin that lets you convert your static designs into functional web pages.

The platform also has templates and a page builder for quickly setting up basic websites and landing pages as well, allowing users without design experience to easily make their own websites.

Best Features

Let’s look at some of the main features of Webflow.

Make Websites from Scratch

Webflow’s Designer tool is the highlight of the platform. Unlike page builders, this Designer tool allows you to create your own website design from scratch using a blank canvas.

It allows you to code a website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript using a visual designer, without writing any code. You can simply drag and drop elements onto the canvas to build and customize even the tiniest detail of each web page.

Webflow’s Interactions tool also helps you to add animations and interactions to your designs, without having to write code.

The Designer tool is most suitable for web designers and developers for quickly transforming their static designs and sketches into functional websites with zero coding.

Use Templates to Build Websites

For users who are not familiar with making websites from scratch, Webflow offers a page builder that can be used in combination with templates.

This tool works the same as most other page builder platforms by allowing you to choose a pre-made website template and customize it to your preference. And it offers a much more simplified way to make a website for people without web design experience.

Built-In CMS

The built-in Content Management System (CMS) makes things much easier to manage all of your website’s content in one place. Since it’s integrated into the Webflow’s Designer, you can even edit and customize CMS content visually.

For advanced users, Webflow’s headless CMS APIs will offer more ways to build complex websites by connecting it with third-party platforms.

More Than 1,500 Templates

Webflow has a massive library of over 1,500 pre-built website templates that are available in many different categories. There are templates for every type of website from portfolios to agency websites, landing pages, one-page websites, and more.

eCommerce and Localization Support

The platform includes a complete eCommerce platform for building online stores and selling products. It supports selling both digital and physical products.

With Webflow’s Localization support, you can also distribute your website in different languages to target audiences around the world.

Figma to Webflow Plugin

Webflow offers a very useful plugin for web designers who use Figma. This plugin allows you to fully transform your static website designs into web pages with just a few clicks. It not only helps save you time but also empowers designers with a code-free website-building system.

Pricing Plans

Webflow has a slightly complex pricing system. Each pricing plan has limits to how many pages and CMS items you can have on your website. As well as limitations on bandwidth and form submissions.

The $14 per month plan allows you to make a website of up to 150 pages but it doesn’t let you host any content on the CMS and only offers 10GB of bandwidth. To access the CMS, you can switch to the $23 per month plan.

The $39 per month plan lets you host up to 300 pages and lets you host up to 10,000 CMS records with 100GB bandwidth.

There is also a free plan with very limited features.

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders available, which is used by 2.1% of all websites on the web. The platform is a popular choice among all sorts of businesses and professionals for its ease of use and affordable pricing plans.

Squarespace comes with a very easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder, which you can use to customize its templates and build basic websites for everything from restaurants to barber shops, photography portfolios, and more.

Using Squarespace is simple as it allows you to build a complete website in just a few steps. And that’s what makes this platform most appealing to a wide range of audiences.

Best Features

These are some of the benefits you get with Squarespace.

Beginner-Friendly Website Builder

When using Squarespace, you must choose a template to build your website. Unlike Webflow, you can’t make a website from scratch. However, that makes the process much easier for beginners.

After choosing a template for your website, you can fully customize it using the drag-and-drop editor. It’s very straightforward and lets you make any type of website without having web design or coding knowledge.

Build Websites Using AI

Squarespace also introduced AI-powered features to the platform. Dubbed Design Intelligence, this AI system allows users to setup a website with the help of AI, making the process easier than ever before.

The AI system, however, does not build complete websites. You still have to add some human touch to customize the layout, color themes, and other elements of the website. You can also use this AI to write your website copy, blog posts, emails, and more.

Squarespace Fluid Engine

Squarespace recently introduced a new system for building more customizable websites. They call it the Fluid Engine and it offers a platform similar to Webflow’s Designer to allow you to edit and customize every element of the website design. It’s available on Squarespace 7.1.

Hundreds of Pre-Built Templates

Squarespace templates library offers hundreds of different website layouts in several different categories. You can use them to build all kinds of websites.

However, most of the templates available have basic layouts and some even have slightly outdated designs.

eCommerce and Marketing Tools

You can use Squarespace to setup a basic online store to sell your services, subscriptions, and even digital products. While it’s not the best platform for hosting large-scale online stores, Squarespace offers enough features to setup a small business website with a shop on the side.

Additionally, you will also have email marketing and SEO tools for optimizing your promo campaigns and generating traffic to your website.

Pricing Plans

Squarespace pricing plans start at $16 per month, which includes a free custom domain name and the ability to accept payments.

The $23 per month plan includes access to the eCommerce tools for setting up an online store. The $28 per month and $53 per month plans extend these features for building more advanced websites with merchandising, subscriptions, and other functions.

Webflow vs Squarespace: Which is Best?

The biggest difference between Webflow and Squarespace is ease of use. Squarespace offers a much more streamlined process for easily and quickly building websites without any design or coding experience.

Webflow, on the other hand, takes it a step further by giving you a visual designer to craft websites from scratch and truly customize each element on the web pages to your liking.

Simply put, Squarespace is most suitable for users looking to setup a basic website for their business without effort. Webflow is most suitable for advanced users and designers who wish to create custom website layouts of their own.

If you’re a freelance designer or marketer, go with Webflow. If you’re a small business or a professional looking for a place to host your portfolio, use Squarespace.