Squarespace or a custom website?
A builder is the right answer more often than agencies admit. Here is where the line actually is.
Use a website builder if you need a presence quickly, your content is simple, and nobody internally will maintain anything complicated. Commission a custom site when the website has to do a specific job that a template fights you on, or when organic search is a serious channel for you.
We build custom sites for a living and we will still tell a one-person business with four pages of content to use Squarespace. Paying several thousand euro for something a template does well is not a good trade, and we would rather say so than take the project.
How they compare
| Squarespace / Wix | Custom build | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | €0 to a few hundred, plus your time | €900 to €15,000 depending on scope |
| Monthly cost | Roughly €20 to €50 | Hosting from about €10, care optional |
| Speed to launch | Days | Three to eight weeks typically |
| Technical SEO ceiling | Fine for local, limited beyond it | No ceiling you will hit |
| Page speed | Template-bound, often middling | Controlled, can be excellent |
| Design distinctiveness | Recognisably a template | Yours |
| Who can edit it | Anyone | Anyone, if it was built properly |
| If you leave | You lose the site | You own the site, the code and the data |
The verdict
Choose the builder if you have a handful of pages, no complex functionality, a tight budget, and you need it live this month.
Choose a custom build if search is a real channel, you need booking, e-commerce or an integration, you have more than about ten pages, or the site has to look like nobody else's.
The honest middle: plenty of businesses should start on a builder and move when the site starts costing them money by being limited. That is a good problem and a sensible sequence.
Common questions
Is Squarespace bad for SEO?
No. It is perfectly capable of ranking for local searches in a town. The limits appear when you need a large content architecture, fine control over technical SEO, or genuinely fast pages in a competitive category.
Can you move a Squarespace site to a custom build later?
Yes, and plenty of our projects are exactly that. Content transfers, and the redirects matter more than anything else so the rankings you have built move with you.
Would you turn down a project?
Regularly. If a template does the job, saying so costs us a project and saves you a few thousand euro, which is the correct trade and usually the start of a longer relationship.
Not sure which you need?
Tell us the situation. If the answer is that you do not need us, we will say so.
- A reply within one working day
- Fixed price, agreed in writing
- No obligation, and no hard sell