Squarespace Vs. Bluehost: Which One is Best For You?

9 min readJan 28, 2022

There are two platforms we recommend highly, which are Squarespace and Bluehost . While both can assist you in building a website, however, they’re very different. In the above guide we will discuss Squarespace Vs Bluehost.

Squarespace is a complete web design tool. It charges a (higher) monthly fee; however, you can create and publish a unique website within the platform. It’s a quicker, more user-friendly way to bring your site to existence.
Bluehost is a hosting service provider company. It is the base for creating a website on another platform, most commonly WordPress. It’s the best choice for those who are comfortable working with WordPress or are willing to invest the effort to learn.

Bluehost actually has its own site builder tool called the Bluehost Builder, but this is a basic tool. Most people use Bluehost as a hosting service but then create their websites using a more robust platform such as WordPress.

Squarespace Vs. Bluehost: What are the distinct?

As we have discussed on this, Squarespace (site builder) offers an all-inclusive solution to getting your website online. Bluehost (hosting service) provides the base for your website’s creation.. Which platform is best for you?

Source: https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/web-hosting/comparisons/bluehost-vs-squarespace/

Squarespace Vs. Bluehost: Pros and Cons

Pros and Cons of Squarespace

Bluehost Pros and Cons

Pricing and Value for Money

Bluehost is more in terms of value for money than Squarespace. One of the things you pay for in Squarespace is the ease of having everything on one site, While Bluehost is a less bare basic’ choice.

For just $12 per month, you can create and publish websites using one of Squarespace’s templates. It’s that are stored on their servers. Squarespace also offers a no-cost domain when you sign up for the annual plan in advance.
With $2.95 monthly, Bluehost offers you space on its servers as well as the necessary tools — such as storage and bandwidth — which means you will get plenty of visits. This annual package comes with the domain name.

Here’s a quick overview of the way their prices for the introductory period line up:

The two Bluehost and Squarespace both offer excellent value, each in its way.

Between the two, Bluehost is the least expensive option to put a website online and comes with impressive features at a low cost for an introductory fee. We’ve mentioned before that we do not recommend Bluehost Builder as a way to design your site.

However, If you choose to create a website using WordPress instead, you’ll be able to save small additional fees to create an online presence. WordPress is entirely free; however, there are some extras that are not free:

WordPress theme from \$0 to \$100(on-off payment) (on-off payment).
WordPress plugins are free. You can pay at least $10 per month for each.

Squarespace provides a unique type of value. It is not just that storage and bandwidth are unlimited with every plan (ideal for sites with a lot of media); however, it gives you a quicker and more simple method to set up a site with the templates that Squarespace has created.

A WordPress website will take more time to build and update shortly, which is why Squarespace certainly offers benefits in the form of time savings and total ease of use.

Ease of Use

Squarespace is more straightforward to use than Bluehost. Bluehost is a reliable and straightforward hosting service; however, Squarespace is the more straightforward site-building method.

It’s a challenge to compare Bluehost and Squarespace concerning the ease of use because they provide something distinct.

In terms of hosting providers, it’s not as user-friendly as Bluehost.The dashboard is easy to navigate so the help and support options are extremely effective. The possibility exists to download WordPress straight from the Bluehost dashboard in just one click

It’s not the easiest for users to navigate website builders in Squarespace. Users had reported that it took them a bit more time to learn to use Squarespace when it came to the user tests than with other builders of websites such as Wix and Weebly.

If you are searching for the easiest method to create a website, Squarespace wins hands down. It is not the easiest to use website builder on the market.

However, it makes the process of creating and designing a site easier due to its inherent nature. Below, you can see how simple it is to use one of the templates available from Squarespace:

With a website, the site builder is straightforward to make changes to the design of your website. It’s as simple as shifting elements around and putting new ones too. If you create your website on a platform like WordPress, it’s slightly different.

Making changes to the design that you see will require some workarounds in code or adding plugins. It doesn’t have to be complex. However, it will always be more time-consuming and complicated than using a site builder.

Website Design

It’s an even tie. Squarespace offers the most professional ready-to-use designs; however, Bluehost (combined with WordPress) provides the best design flexibility.

When it comes to creating websites using Bluehost, we’ll assume that you’re leaving Bluehost’s built-in builder and opting for the WordPress alternative.

There are more than 3900 themes listed in the WordPress theme directory, as well as numerous more themes are available through third-party sites like ThemeForest (which boasts more than 50k) and many more boutique choices. You’ll definitely have plenty of options!

If your website is located in an extremely niche market, it is more likely to get a close match to the appearance and feel your website needs using the Bluehost and the WordPress combination.

And if you have a particular site look/structure/features in mind, it’s easier to bring this to life with WordPress. You may require additional web development assistance at the time; however, there’s a way to achieve it.

Squarespace is, contrary to what you might think it offers a well-curated selection of themes that look amazing. In fact, they’re the best website builder we’ve tried, and that allows you to add various elements easily.

You aren’t as flexible in terms of customization as you do with WordPress; however, most website kinds are covered, which means you won’t be able to tell unless you’re creating an unusual sight.

Features

It’s an even tie! Squarespace has excellent built-in features, but there’s a ceiling that’s glass. Bluehost can incorporate almost anything; however, you’re beginning with the blank canvas.

Resources

When we examine the fundamental services Squarespace and Bluehost provide, there’s not any way to distinguish them:

Ecommerce

Squarespace offers everything you require to begin selling right immediately. It’s just a matter of making sure you’re using the business plan ($18 each month) or greater.

You’ll pay 3% transaction costs with this plan, but there’s none for either of the two plans for ecommerce that are specifically designed for you: Basic Commerce ($26 per month) or Advanced Commerce ($40 per month).

Squarespace’s eCommerce section is simple to set up, and you can begin selling fast. It’s appropriate for physical and digital items. You’ll need to join the Advanced Commerce plan to sell subscriptions.

We suggest Squarespace for those who want an extensive selection of items and not a comprehensive inventory (although there’s no restriction on the number of products you can purchase).

Bluehost is an excellent combination with WooCommerce to offer ecommerce. WooCommerce is a robust, well-known, free WordPress Ecommerce plugin, which is ideal for a large inventory.

The additional costs could quickly accumulate, however. Here are a few other costs you may need to cover with WooCommerce:

The WooCommerce bookings cost $249 / year.
WooCommerce Pre-Orders: $129 for the year.
WooCommerce for subscription: $199 for a year.
Shipping tracking: $49 for the year.
PayPal Pro: $30 per month

We also suggest upgrading to one of Bluehost’s VPS plans if you’d like to begin accepting payments because VPS hosting offers more security. Bluehost’s VPS hosting plans start with $18.99 monthly.

Marketing and Extras

Squarespace has a variety of marketing options integrated into the platform. They include:

Make banners and pop-ups.
Get the most benefit from SEO to boost your website’s visibility.
Create email marketing campaigns.
Create the content for Instagram stories.
Easy-to-interpret analytics.
It is possible to add blogs to your site with just a few clicks.

There’s more. Alongside being a tool built into the system, There’s a brand new library of third-party extensions to connect with. It is beneficial to things like accounting or shipping support.

If Squarespace cannot provide the functionality that you require through an internal feature or outside integration, then things become more complicated.

You can create custom code blocks to Squarespace; however, it moves things to a more technical level than you may expect — in addition, it’s the case that the Squarespace team isn’t able to assist if you’re unable to achieve these blocks to function.

Bluehost provides all of this and more in their WordPress plugin directory. There are more than 58,500 plugins in the manual, but they aren’t developed by Bluehost or even WordPress; instead, developers create them.

It’s because there’s no equivalent degree of quality control that’s available for the Squarespace functions, and there’s a price associated with sure of these.

It’s also difficult to sort through the various options for every option, and it certainly requires some time. Still, you can be confident that there will be an option for everything you’re looking for, regardless of whether it’s specific to a particular industry or niche.

Performance and Security

Bluehost offers better performance and security. It isn’t to say that Squarespace isn’t good at what it does or unsecured — certainly not. However, Bluehost is designed to stand up to higher stress.

Bluehost and Squarespace appear to be matched relatively even when compared side to side in these crucial areas. However, the differences are likely to become apparent under extreme traffic stress.

Bluehost provides servers with dedicated hosting that goes up to \$119.99 each month. They are specifically designed to handle massive amounts of traffic simultaneously.

Squarespace offers an enterprise-level solution for the most popular websites (Squarespace Select) and boasts its personal (busy) website can function well on Squarespace servers.

But it’s not exactly a suitable choice for the range of hosting options and plans that Bluehost provides so that you’re not over-paying or under-resourced.

Help and Support

Squarespace provides more support in comparison to Bluehost. Bluehost’s support is excellent. However, they’re limited in what they can assist you with when building your site. Squarespace, however, on the other hand, can help you with everything from technical problems to design issues.

Here’s a brief summary of how the structure of assistance and support is for every platform:

Bluehost offers the most helpful assistance and support out of any hosting service we’ve tried. Support is quick, courteous and efficient, and far exceeded our expectations for what a good service appears like.

There’s a limit to what Bluehost can assist with. Hosting issues or site downtime issues? Sure. Assistance with customizing themes as well as managing plugins? It’s not so easy.

It isn’t within the support capabilities of Bluehost. Since WordPress does not have its support team, it mainly depends on forums populated by other WordPress users. The good thing is that many WordPress users have to share a caring’ mentality within the WordPress community.

On its side, Squarespace can provide a team of support available to assist you in each stage of the site creation (and managing) process. They’re not always available 24 hours a day or by phone, but they’re able to assist with a broader array of issues.

The only thing they aren’t able to help you with is troubleshooting custom code blocks you’ve added to their site. However, it’s not the case that you’ll need to add them.

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