Squarespace and WordPress: brothers in arms?

It’s not often that organizations look beyond WordPress when trying to address the need for some simple web publishing and/or blogging service. There's a kind of a haze around WordPress that sometimes obscures alternatives. Certainly this is good for WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. But is it actually good for you?

Now, for the n-th time, I will skip the topic of “Is WordPress a CMS?” On that, we’ve debated plenty. What I do want to talk about though is WordPress alternatives. And specifically, about a company called Squarespace that has been in existence for as long as WP, but without as much marketing noise.

There are many similarities between WordPress and Squarespace:

    • Both have extensive history in the web publishing software business -- Squarespace started only a year after WP
    • Both might be a good fit for very simple content management scenarios
    • Both offer free and commercial options
    • Both provide some templates out of the box for specific industry customers (ecommerce, restaurants, etc.)
    • {Insert your opinion here}

But where these two products differ is design approach. Call it aesthetics, or call it niche marketing. Squarespace launched and finessed its product with designers in mind, and it shows quite vividly that they’re still aiming to appeal to design gurus. Whereas with WP, you get a set of templates to choose from with varying degrees of “Oh, it’s hurting my eyes!” Unless, of course, you want to pay someone to create a template from scratch.

The Squarespace vs. WordPress choice is just one of the many topics we discuss with our subscribers during advisory calls. If you’d like to talk more about this (or other) CMS product comparisons, you can contact us.


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Gil, Partner, Cancentric Solutions Inc.
iStudio Canada Inc.

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