Squarespace vs WordPress for a Small Business: Cost Over Five Years, Upkeep, and What You Can Take With You

Key takeaways

• Squarespace is one bill and no upkeep; WordPress is several bills and some upkeep. That trade decides most choices.
• Squarespace's plans are Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced. In the US they were $19, $29, $49 and $99 a month billed yearly in October 2026, according to a guide that read Squarespace's US pricing page. Older names such as Personal and Business, and the 3% fee, are out of date.
• Over five years, Squarespace Core comes to $1,740. A self-hosted WordPress site on cheap shared hosting can cost far less, or about the same once you pay for plugins.
• Leaving Squarespace is harder than joining it. Its help page says only layout pages, one blog and a few block types export. Store pages, portfolio pages, product blocks, video blocks and your styles do not.
• WordPress is the better fit when the site has to grow: a large blog, a custom store, bookings, memberships or anything a plugin can add.
• Squarespace is the better fit when nobody wants to maintain anything and the site is a handful of pages that change a few times a year.

The short answer

Choose Squarespace when you want a good-looking site of up to a dozen or so pages that you can edit yourself, with hosting, security and updates handled for you, and you are happy to stay on the platform for years. Choose WordPress (the free, self-hosted software from WordPress.org) if the site is a core part of how you win work, you expect to add features, publish a lot, or move hosts later, and someone, you or a developer, will look after updates.

A note on the author: this is Amariq, a studio that takes work on WordPress, Squarespace and several other platforms, with no fee or commission from either company. No twin test sites were made for this comparison, so remarks on how each one feels in daily use come from the makers' pages and published reviews.

What the top results get wrong

On 6 November 2026, Google (United States, English) ranked Squarespace's own comparison page first, then Reddit, All About Cookies, Breakdance, Mercury, Sara Nguyen, Tech.co and Tooltester. Google's AI answer at the top of the page gave Squarespace's starting price as "around $16/month (Personal)".

That plan name is gone. Tooltester's comparison, which we read in full, still describes ecommerce "with the Business plan at $23 / month" and "a 3% commission on all sales", with a "Basic Commerce plan ($39 / month)". Squarespace's current plans are Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced, and its own help page on selling lists a 2% commerce fee on Basic and none on the higher plans. The guides are right about the big picture: Squarespace is easier, WordPress is more flexible. They are wrong about the numbers, which is the part people use to decide.

The other thing none of them sets out item by item is what you can take with you if you leave. That's below.

The two platforms in one table

WordPress.com is a third option: the same software on Automattic's hosted service, with plans of its own. It sits between the two. Its plan prices are in our WordPress cost breakdown.

What each one costs

Squarespace

Squarespace shows prices by the visitor's country, and from our location its pricing page shows different figures to the ones US visitors see. So we take the US prices from Squarepaste's plan guide, which states it read Squarespace's US pricing page in October 2026, and which matches the US copy of the page we saw in Google on 27 October.

The yearly totals are our sums, the monthly price times 12. Every plan includes hosting and SSL, and yearly billing adds a free domain for the first year. The main step is from Basic to Core: Core removes the 2% fee on store sales, allows unlimited contributors and adds custom code.

WordPress

The software is free. You pay for hosting, a domain, and any premium theme or plugins you choose. From our own WordPress hosting cost comparison, read on 2 November 2026:

• Shared hosting: Hostinger Premium came to $251.40 over five years including its renewal price.
• Managed hosting: Kinsta's first plan was $350 a year, $1,750 over five years if the price holds.
• Plugins: the guide we cite in our WordPress cost post puts plugin licences for a full small business site at $200 to $400 a year. Many small sites get by with free ones.

Five years on each side

This is platform cost only: no design work, no domain after year one, no tax. It shows how the two compare once the extras are counted.

So "WordPress is cheaper" is true for a lean site and false for a site carrying a stack of paid plugins. The difference that matters more is the time: on WordPress, someone has to apply updates, check that the site still works afterwards, and keep backups. On Squarespace that is part of the plan. If you would pay a developer to do it, add that to the WordPress side. Typical figures are in our maintenance cost comparison.

What you can take with you if you leave Squarespace

This is the section to read before you pick. Squarespace's export help page, last updated 10 October 2026, says you can export some content as an .xml file in WordPress format, and that "some content doesn't export".

Three more details from the same page. You can't export from a trial site. The export can't be imported into another Squarespace site. And if you import into a self-hosted WordPress site, your images may not move: WordPress can keep linking to them on Squarespace, and those links stop working once you cancel. Squarespace suggests importing into WordPress.com, which copies the images, or downloading and re-uploading them yourself.

In practice, leaving Squarespace means rebuilding the design and the store, and moving the words and pictures. WordPress is the opposite: a full backup of the files and database is a complete copy you can take to any host. If you think there's a real chance you will outgrow your first platform, that difference is worth more than a year's plan fees. Studios that handle such moves are compared in our migration agency roundup.

Where each one is stronger

Squarespace is stronger for

• Design out of the box. Its templates are known for looking polished with little effort, which is the common verdict in every review we read.
• No upkeep. Hosting, SSL, updates and security are its job.
• One place for support. When something breaks, there's one company to ask.
• Simple selling. A small shop, bookings through its scheduling product and member areas are available without plugins, at a price.

WordPress is stronger for

• Growth. Almost any feature exists as a plugin or can be built.
• Blogging at scale. Categories, custom fields and editorial workflows are what it was made for.
• Ownership. You can move host, change designer or rebuild the theme without losing your content.
• Custom design. A designer can build exactly what the brand needs rather than adapt a template.
• Cost control for a lean site, as the table shows.

Where each one is weaker

Squarespace is weaker when you need a feature it doesn't offer, a large or complex store, or a way out. WordPress is weaker when nobody owns the upkeep: plugins conflict, updates are skipped, and a neglected site becomes a security risk. Our WordPress security checks show what that looks like.

Which one should you pick?

Keep Squarespace if you're on it, it does what you need and nobody is asking for features it lacks. Moving for the sake of it costs time and can cost rankings if the URLs change.

If you're also weighing Wix, our Wix vs WordPress and Wix vs Squarespace comparisons cover those pairs, and all three side by side adds the exit test. Our pick of website builders for small firms widens the field.

How Amariq can help

We build on both, and on Webflow and Framer, so we can recommend the one that fits rather than the one we sell. If you're moving from Squarespace to WordPress, we rebuild the pages that don't export, move the images properly and keep every old address working with redirects. Quotes follow the scope rather than hours, and payment runs 40% to start, 30% when you approve the design and 30% before launch. Once the last payment clears, you own the design, the copy and the code, and the accounts for domain, hosting and analytics are registered to you. More on our web design service page.

Frequently asked questions

Is Squarespace or WordPress better for a small business?

Squarespace for a simple site that needs no upkeep. WordPress for a site that must grow, publish often or sell in custom ways, as long as updates have an owner.

Is Squarespace cheaper than WordPress?

Not for a lean WordPress site. Five years of Squarespace Core is $1,740 at US prices, against about $251 for cheap WordPress hosting. With paid plugins and managed hosting, WordPress can cost more.

Is WordPress better for SEO than Squarespace?

Both can rank. Squarespace ships the basics; WordPress adds finer control through plugins. What you publish, and who links to it, outweighs the choice of platform.

Can I move my Squarespace site to WordPress?

Partly. Squarespace exports layout pages, one blog and basic blocks in WordPress format. Store, portfolio and other page types, product and video blocks, and your styles have to be rebuilt.

What does Squarespace cost per month?

In the US, $19, $29, $49 or $99 a month billed yearly, or $25 to $139 month to month, as of October 2026. Prices differ by country, so check the pricing page where you are.

Can I run WordPress without a developer?

No, plenty of owners run a simple WordPress site alone. Paid help, from a freelancer or a care plan, earns its keep once the site brings in income: updates, backups and plugin conflicts are the usual jobs.

Is Squarespace good for ecommerce?

For a small catalogue, yes. On Core and above there's no Squarespace fee on sales, only card processing. Larger or more complex stores usually move to Shopify or WooCommerce.