How Much Does a Squarespace Website Really Cost?
If you're considering building a new website for your business, one of the first things you’re probably wondering is: how much does a Squarespace website cost?
The slightly frustrating answer is that it depends.
You can build a Squarespace website yourself for little more than the cost of the platform subscription. You can buy a template and customise it. Or you can invest in a professionally designed Squarespace website built around your brand, audience and business goals.
Those options can have very different price tags, but they also give you very different results.
In this guide, I’ll break down the real cost of a Squarespace website, including the platform fees, domain costs, templates, additional tools and the cost of hiring a professional Squarespace web designer.
How much does Squarespace itself cost?
The first cost to consider is the Squarespace subscription.
Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform, which means your website hosting and the core tools needed to build and run your site are included in your subscription.
For new websites, Squarespace offers several plan levels, including Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced. The right plan depends on what you need your website to do.
For example, a relatively simple service-based business website will have different requirements from an online shop, membership platform or business selling digital products.
One reason I often recommend Squarespace for consultants, coaches and other service-based businesses is that you don’t usually need to piece together lots of separate services just to keep the website running.
Your hosting is included, security and platform updates are handled for you, and you can manage your content through one system.
If you pay annually, Squarespace also currently includes one year of free domain registration for eligible new domains.
What other costs should you budget for?
The Squarespace subscription is only one part of the total website cost.
Depending on your business and how you plan to use your website, you may also need to budget for:
a custom domain after any introductory free period ends
professional web design
copywriting
brand photography
a premium template, if you choose to use one
email marketing software
scheduling or booking software
specialist integrations or custom functionality
ongoing design or content support
Not every business needs all of these.
A consultant who needs a strong five-page website to communicate their expertise and generate enquiries will have very different requirements from a business selling hundreds of products online.
Before asking, “How much does a website cost?”, it’s often more useful to ask:
What does my website actually need to help my business do?
That question will have a much bigger impact on the final cost.
The cost of building a Squarespace website yourself
The cheapest option is to build your Squarespace website yourself.
In this case, your main financial costs are likely to be your Squarespace subscription, domain and any additional tools or templates you choose to buy.
This can be a sensible option if you’re at the very beginning of your business, have more time than budget and need a simple online presence.
But the financial cost isn’t the only cost.
There’s also your time.
Building a good website involves more than choosing a template, adding your logo and filling in the text boxes.
You need to think about:
website structure and navigation
page hierarchy
user journeys
calls to action
mobile design
accessibility
search engine optimisation
messaging
conversion
visual consistency
performance
Squarespace makes it easier to build a website without coding knowledge. That doesn’t necessarily make it easy to build a website that communicates your value, builds trust and turns the right visitors into enquiries.
If you’re spending weeks trying to work out why your layout feels wrong, rewriting the same homepage headline 15 times or adding sections because you’re not sure what else to do, the DIY route can become expensive in a different way.
How much does a professional Squarespace website cost?
The cost of hiring a professional Squarespace web designer varies enormously.
You might find designers offering simple template customisation for hundreds of pounds, while an experienced independent designer or studio creating a strategic, custom website can charge several thousand pounds or more.
The difference usually comes down to the scope of the project and what is actually included.
A low-cost website package might involve adding your existing copy and images to a lightly customised template.
A more strategic website design project might include:
discovery and research
website strategy
sitemap and content planning
user journey planning
custom page design
responsive mobile design
accessibility considerations
SEO foundations
calls to action and conversion strategy
custom graphics or visual elements
Squarespace development
testing and launch support
This is why comparing website prices based only on the number of pages can be misleading.
Two five-page websites can involve completely different levels of strategy, design and customisation.
My own website design service is focused on creating websites that help businesses and organisations communicate their value, build trust and make it easier for the right people to take action.
What are you really paying a web designer for?
When you hire a web designer, you’re not just paying someone to make a website look nice.
At least, you shouldn’t be.
A good web designer should be thinking about what happens when someone lands on your website for the first time.
Can they quickly understand what you do?
Can they tell whether your service is right for them?
Does the website give them a reason to trust you?
Can they find the information they need?
Is the text comfortable to read?
Does the design work across different screen sizes?
Is it obvious what they should do next?
These decisions affect how people experience your business online.
My approach to brand and web design services brings together strategy, visual design, messaging and accessibility, because a website needs all of those things to work together.
A beautiful website with confusing messaging won’t solve a positioning problem.
Strong copy inside a frustrating user experience will still lose people.
And a website that looks impressive but creates unnecessary barriers for visitors isn’t doing its job properly.
Is Squarespace good for a service-based business?
For many service-based businesses, yes.
I particularly like Squarespace for consultants, coaches, creative businesses and other service providers who need a professional marketing website without wanting to manage the technical maintenance that can come with other platforms.
It can work well for businesses that need to:
explain their services
publish useful content
showcase case studies
collect enquiries
grow an email list
take bookings
sell selected products or digital offers
It also gives business owners more control after launch.
You shouldn’t need to contact a developer every time you want to update a sentence, publish an article or add a new testimonial.
That said, Squarespace isn’t automatically the right platform for every business. Complex platforms, highly customised web applications or very large ecommerce operations may need something different.
The platform should fit the business, rather than the business being forced to fit the platform.
Can a Squarespace website look custom?
Absolutely.
One of the biggest misconceptions about Squarespace is that every website built on it has to look like a template.
It doesn’t.
A good designer can use typography, layout, spacing, art direction, custom graphics, image treatments and selective custom code to create a distinctive website that feels like a natural extension of the brand.
The platform is the tool. The outcome depends on how it’s used.
You can see examples of how I approach different brands and digital projects in my case studies.
For example, my work for Devular involved creating a brand and website designed to communicate expertise and impact for a company working with major names in media and technology. The result needed to feel distinctive and high-end while still communicating a complex offer clearly.
Is a professionally designed Squarespace website worth it?
It depends on the stage of your business.
If you’ve just started, haven’t validated your offer and don’t yet know who you’re trying to reach, investing thousands in a website might not be the best first move.
But if your business is established and your current website no longer reflects the quality of your work, the calculation changes.
A professionally designed website can help you:
communicate your value more effectively
make a stronger first impression
build trust with potential clients, partners or funders
attract better-fit enquiries
explain complex services more clearly
make your business look as established as it actually is
create a better experience for the people you want to reach
A website is rarely just an online brochure.
For many service businesses, it’s one of the first places potential clients go when they’re deciding whether to trust you, contact you or invest in your services.
The cheapest website is not always the most cost-effective website.
If a cheaper website leaves potential clients confused, doesn’t reflect the quality of your work or needs replacing a year later, it may cost more in the long run.
How can you keep your Squarespace website costs under control?
The best way to control the cost of a website project is to be clear about what you actually need.
You don’t necessarily need 20 pages, complicated animations or every possible integration from day one.
Start with the role your website needs to play in your business.
For a service-based business, that might mean creating a focused website that:
clearly explains what you do
speaks to the right audience
shows evidence of your expertise
answers common questions
guides visitors towards an enquiry
You can always add more content and functionality as the business grows.
It’s usually better to invest in a smaller, thoughtful website than a large one filled with pages nobody needs.
So, how much does a Squarespace website really cost?
The real cost depends on how you choose to build it.
At one end of the scale, you can build the website yourself and pay mainly for the platform, domain and your own time.
At the other, you can invest several thousand pounds in a professionally designed website with strategy, custom design, accessibility considerations and launch support.
Neither route is automatically right or wrong.
The important thing is choosing the level of investment that makes sense for where your business is now and where you want it to go next.
If your current website is holding your business back, or you’re planning a new one and want to make sure the strategy and design are right from the beginning, take a look at my website design sales page or my one pager offer.
I’m a brand and web designer specialising in strategic, accessible websites for service-based businesses and purpose-led organisations. You can also learn more about my approach or get in touch to discuss your project.