Squarespace vs WordPress | 5 Differences For You To Know

WordPress is an open source platform so you can customize your website however you want to - provided that you are a capable coder (or if you are working with a strong coder).

There are thousands of free plugins you can use to add more functions to your WordPress site. But not all plugins are well built and can expose you to security hazards, or can conflict with / break your website.

The free plugin developers may or may not help you when issues arise. Buying premium plugins will entitle you to support, but that does not guarantee that they will troubleshoot all issues for you as the conflict may be caused by other plugins (which is beyond the premium plugin developers' control).

There are really good WordPress plugins out there, but just be careful and test them thoroughly with your site before using them, or they may have negative implications on the performance of your website.

The learning curve of using WordPress is much steeper than learning how to use Squarespace.

WordPress is not a drag & drop website builder, so if you want to reformat your page layout (such as inserting a slideshow on the top right corner, or moving a piece of content to an exact spot) you will have to modify your template codes in order to do so (or hire a capable developer to help you do that).

Although WordPress is a very powerful platform, to be able to use it effectively, it's inevitable that you will need to modify some codes to achieve what you want.

If you are proficient with code, or working with a good coder, WordPress can definitely deliver a much more customized site than Squarespace.

WordPress has a massive forum that includes millions of posts where people are asking questions in search for answers.

A lot of questions are answered, and a lot of questions are also not answered. Also, just because questions are answered, does not mean that they are solved effectively, or at all. Getting questions responded to also might take days.

The challenge is due to the volume of questions being asked, and a lot of the questions have been discussed before. So if you post a question, it might be ignored as it has been asked in the past. So you may have to dig through volumes of forum postings to find some sort of answer to your question.

As mentioned above, no one really "owes" you an answer unless you pay for it. And given WordPress.org and a lot of its plugins are free to use, getting someone to respond can be difficult (unless you hire a good WordPress developer to help you).

WordPress is continually updating its platform to fix bugs and improve security. When there are updates, your WordPress dashboard will alert you, and you just have to click the update button to update your WordPress version.

That is the easy part. The challenging part is that when WordPress updates, your theme and plugins will also need to be updated.

While a lot of theme and plugin creators will also update to ensure they adopt WordPress' latest updates, a lot won't (especially for free themes & plugins). So this potentially exposes your website to user, performance or security issues.

So the ongoing maintenance work, especially if you don't have a person / team dedicated to managing your website, can be an additional burden to you.

With WordPress.org, you will have to find your own hosting services which can cost about $7 per month (being very general here, as the range really varies depending on the quality of the hosting services provider. Here is a special rate from Bluehost).

If you purchase a premium theme, this can cost you anywhere from $30 - $80 per theme (depending on how reputable the theme developer is).

While a lot of plugins are free, some of them are paid as well (ranging from $15 - $50 per plugin), depending on what you need and if you want support (as mentioned above).

You will also need to purchase your own domain name ($10 - $15 per year).

The initial investment can range from $139 to over $200, depending how many premium plugins you pick up.

If you hire a developer to help you build your site, make modifications or for troubleshooting, your cost will go up substantially on an ongoing basis, and can be a challenge to budget for.

Don't forget that the learning curve of using WordPress effectively is also fairly high. So you should factor in the cost of your own time as well (this is a "hidden cost").