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Squarespace or a web designer? What small business owners say on Reddit
Use Squarespace if you need to be online this month, your budget is under about £800, and the site is a credible shopfront rather than the thing that brings the work in. It is a good product and there is no shame in it.
Pay someone when the site has a job with a number attached, when you need it to be found in search, or when you have already burned two weekends fighting a template.
This page is the Reddit side of the question. The full comparison, including what a builder costs once your own hours are counted, is in the article Wix, Squarespace or a web designer?
Why people add “reddit” to this search
Because every web designer’s answer to this is predictable, and so is every builder’s marketing. You want to know whether the people who tried it regretted it.
We sell hand-coded builds. We still tell people to use Squarespace fairly regularly, because a £1,495 site that a business does not need yet is a worse outcome than a £17 a month one that does the job.
What the threads actually say
Quotes below are from public discussions, kept short and linked to the original so you can read the full context rather than take our summary for it.
Squarespace does have limitations and it’s possible your ambition exceeded its capabilities.
Otherwise it’s either too expensive or not trustworthy.
As a small business owner, time is VALUABLE
What we would tell you, with the numbers
The real cost of a builder is your time. The subscription is not the expense. Two weekends of your own labour is, and people routinely forget to count it.
Templates are fine until you need something specific. The moment you want a layout the template does not do, you are either paying someone to fight it or accepting a compromise on the page that matters most.
Search is where the gap actually shows. Builders can rank perfectly well. What they make hard is fine control over structure, speed and markup, which is exactly what competitive search work needs.
You are renting the platform. Leaving means rebuilding. That is fine if you know it going in and a nasty surprise if you do not.
Ours start at £995, you own everything outright on final payment, and the price is fixed in writing before work starts.
The short version
Squarespace is the right answer more often than people selling builds admit. It stops being the right answer the moment the site has a target attached to it.
The longer write-up, with the full working: Wix, Squarespace or a web designer? What we build, and what it costs, is on the bespoke web design page.
Almost every price on this site is published and fixed in writing before work starts. We are Werehouse Holdings Ltd, company number 16802511, and you can check that.