Squarespace and WordPress are two of the most popular website building platforms out there. So it’s only natural that artists looking to create a website ask themselves questions like, “Is Squarespace worth it for artists?” or “Is WordPress good for an artist website?” In this Squarespace vs. WordPress review, I’ll help you figure out the best website platform for your artistic needs. I’ll walk you through the pros and cons of both platforms, and then you can choose the best fit for your creative goals!
Squarespace
Larger art stores with advanced eCommerce and analytics; no transaction fees.
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WordPress
Great for artist portfolios with basic eCommerce features to sell your work.
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Nowadays, everyone who wants to gain visibility or build a career online needs a website. Artists included.
I guess you agree, otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this post. (>ᴗ<)
I also guess you’ve done some research and discovered that Squarespace and WordPress are two of the most popular platforms to build a website for your art.
In fact, they both are excellent options, and it can be difficult to figure out which one best fits your needs.
I have experience with both. I’ve built my artist website (the one you’re on right now) with WordPress—from scratch, all on my own. That’s why I can confidently say that I know the ins and outs of WP pretty well.
By the way, you can find lots of free WordPress tutorials on my site.
Beyond that, I have also solid experience with Squarespace. I’m familiar with its features and know how to create professional and visually appealing websites with that builder.
In this review of Squarespace vs. WordPress for artists, I’ll be sharing my perspective, experience, and opinion on both platforms.
I won’t say that one platform is better than the other or recommend one over the other. Instead, what I will do is give you all the information you need to decide which platform is right for your needs.
Why? Because quite simply, the right choice for you depends on your personal requirements, tech savviness, monetization streams, and your willingness to handle ongoing maintenance.
With that being out of the way, let’s get into it!
(Click on a point to fast forward to the respective section.)
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Squarespace vs WordPress for Artists: Quick Verdict
Squarespace – Best for creatives seeking a fast and easy way to build a website without much backend work. (Save 10% with code GIMME10)
WordPress.org – Best for building highly versatile and content-heavy websites that give you full control—but also full responsibility.
Squarespace Vs WordPress For Artists: Quick Overview
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Website Builder
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WordPress
Templates
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WordPress
Plugins
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eCommerce
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WordPress
Blogging
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SEO
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Responsiveness
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Security & Backups
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Ease of Use
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Pricing
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Squarespace Vs WordPress For Artists: Which Is Better?
First off, let’s establish the main difference between both platforms.
Squarespace is a full hosted website builder. That means you don’t need to worry about purchasing a domain, finding hosting, or installing any add-ons. Basically speaking, there’s nothing to download or set up. You create an account, and then you can start building your site right away.
WordPress, in comparison, is pretty much DIY. You can download the CMS for free, but you’ll need to handle the rest yourself. That includes registering a domain name, choosing a web host (like Bluehost, ScalaHosting, or Pressable), and adding plugins for more features and functionality.
Squarespace Vs WordPress Review For Artists
In this review, I’m evaluating Squarespace and WordPress across a number of different aspects that particularly matter to artists. These include the website builder, the visual appeal of the templates, plugins for functionality, e-commerce capabilities to sell your artwork, and more.
By the end of this review, you’ll be clued up on the pros and cons of both Squarespace and WordPress and be able to make an informed decision about which platform is the best fit for your creative needs.
That being said, let’s dive straight in!
Website Builder
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: THE WEBSITE BUILDER
Which Is A Good Website Builder For Artists?
Okay, let’s begin with what Squarespace and WordPress have in common. Both platforms come with a visual drag-and-drop editor that lets you place elements on the page, wherever you want them.
These are WYSIWYG editors (“What You See Is What You Get”), meaning you can see on your screen what your page will look like to visitors while you’re editing. That’s super convenient.
As opposed to WordPress, Squarespace has ‘only’ its native editor. You will have to deal with it—whether you like it or not. (>ᴗ<)
WordPress, on the other hand, has its pre-installed Block editor (also called the WordPress or Gutenberg editor). It functions in a similar way to Squarespace’s editor, but with WordPress you have options.
If you don’t like the Block Editor or want more advanced design features, you can choose from several popular page builder plugins such as Elementor, Divi, Brizy, or Spectra. Many WordPress users prefer these tools because they offer more flexibility and performance than the Gutenberg editor.
I myself use Elementor along with Essential Addons for Elementor and Ultimate Addons for Elementor to build my website.
Overall, on terms of website builders, Squarespace and WordPress are pretty much on par. Both are functional, user-friendly, and relatively quick for beginners to learn.
Templates
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: TEMPLATES FOR VISUAL ART
Which Platform Has The Better Templates For Artists?
No matter what kind of website you want to build with Squarespace or WordPress, you’ll need a website template (WordPress calls them themes).
WordPress comes with three default themes right out of the box. Those themes are developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress itself.
However, these starter themes aren’t particularly well-suited for visual art. Since WordPress was originally designed as a content publishing platform, its default themes are more tailored to blogs or other content sites.
The advantage of WordPress, though, is its vast repository of themes. At the time of writing this article, there are over 11,000 themes available and you can find a design for virtually every industry. For many artists, this sheer volume is overwhelming.
I personally use the OceanWP theme for my site. Other good WordPress themes I can recommend are:
As opposed to WordPress, Squarespace offers a handful of website templates. At the time of writing, there are around 200 templates available in its official library.
The big advantage is that all official Squarespace templates are free. There are no additional fees, no premium tiers, and no locked features. But you can also purchase third-party templates from marketplaces like Etsy or Creative Fabrica.
Although Squarespace offers far fewer templates than WordPress, the ones available are carefully curated, professionally designed with aesthetics in mind, and optimized for specific use cases such as e-commerce, blogging, or portfolio sites.
There’s a dedicated category for Art & Design, where artists can find a template that suits their taste and needs. Some Squarespace templates I can recommend for art sites are:
Plugins
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: PLUGINS & EXTENSIONS
Which Platform Offers More Functionality For Artists?
There’s an almost unlimited number of WordPress plugins to add virtually any type of functionality to your site. At the time of writing, the official WordPress repository contains 50k+ plugins. Plus, there are thousands more available from third-party marketplaces and developer websites.
The downside of having so many options is that it can be overwhelming to find the right plugin for your needs. Some plugins may conflict with one another, or with certain themes. Additionally, it’s not uncommon for free plugins to be abandoned by their developers, meaning it’s up to you to find replacements. ´\_(ツ)_/`
Here are some of the must-have plugins for WordPress that are proven to work:
- Page builder (Elementor, Divi, Brizy, Spectra)
- Newsletter plugin (AWeber, ConvertKit, MailerLite)
- SEO (RankMath, YoastSEO)
- E-commerce (WooCommerce)
- Contact form (Constant Contact)
- Social sharing (Monarch)
Unlike WordPress, Squarespace already includes most of the functionality you’ll need. It doesn’t use the same type of plugins as WordPress; instead, it has extensions. There are only around 40 extensions, but you can be sure that each one is carefully vetted and approved by Squarespace, so you can trust their quality.
Beyond that, Squarespace ensures that the extensions stay updated alongside platform changes. This means there’s a much lower risk of broken features or compatibility issues than with WordPress.
Because most of the functionality is there out of the box, there are only a few extensions that you might want to install on Squarespace, e.g.:
Summing up, Squarespace keeps things simple. You won’t get lost in thousands of plugins like with WordPress. That definitely makes it easier for beginners to pick the right tools. However, this also means that you don’t get the same level of flexibility or performance as with WordPress plugins.
It’s a double-edged sword that requires you to choose between convenience and flexibility. Do you prefer ease of use or more control in your hands?
eCommerce
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: ECOMMERCE FUNCTIONALITY
Is Squarespace Or WordPress Better To Sell Art Online?
After Squarespace’s May 2025 update, you can now start selling on any of its four plans. However, there are limitations on functionality.
The Personal plan ($16 per month, billed annually) allows you to sell only a limited number of products and does not include order and inventory management, shipping tools, or integration with payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, or Apple Pay.
If you need more e-commerce features, you’ll have to upgrade to the Business plan at $23 per month, which charges a 3% transaction fee on each online store sale. You can avoid this fee by choosing one of the Commerce plans.
In general, Squarespace’s Business and Commerce plans unlock a wide range of sales features, including the possibility to sell physical and digital products, downloads, courses, and memberships, as well as automatically send invoices, abandoned cart recovery emails, and so on.
To sell your art online with WordPress, you need to install a plugin like WooCommerce that’ll transform your site into a full-featured e-commerce platform.
Like WordPress itself, WooCommerce is free to download and install. Once you’ve installed the plugin, it guides you step by step through setting up your store. You simply follow the prompts, and then you can start adding products and services to your online shop.
Full tutorial to help you set up WooCommerce: → Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress – WooCommerce For Artists
List of ecommerce-ready WordPress themes for artists: → 12 Best WordPress Themes For Selling Art
By comparison, the learning curve for Squarespace Commerce is much lower. Setting up a store and adding products is quicker and more straightforward than with WooCommerce.
The trade-off, however, is that Squarespace customization is somewhat limited compared to WooCommerce. You’re primarily confined to the features and integrations provided by Squarespace.
WooCommerce allows you to tailor your store’s functionality and design to meet your specific needs and preferences. In the end, it’s again a choice between convenience and flexibility.
Blogging
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: BLOGGING FEATURES
Which Platform Is Better For Art Bloggers?
WordPress started out as a blogging platform, and it’s still one of the most powerful content publishing platforms out there. So, if you’re serious about building a large art blog to attract an audience and sell your work, WordPress is the way to go.
The platform lets you create multiple blog templates, schedule hundreds of posts, and integrate countless blog-specific plugins and tools. Because WordPress is open source, you’ll have full control over how your blog looks and you will even get access to custom themes, child themes, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—if you want to get more into the code.
Squarespace’s blogging tools are comparatively simpler and more beginner-friendly, though not as robust as WordPress. Nevertheless, Squarespace still has enough blogging features, such as scheduled posts, multiple authors, and content organization with tags.
However, you can’t define different content types (like portfolio items, reviews, etc.) with its own schema markup and metadata, as you can with WordPress.
All in all, blogging on Squarespace is straightforward and easy to use. If you want to keep your blog relatively simple, Squarespace will do a good job for you without much hassle.
But if you want your blog to grow and use custom features (plugins, integrations, advanced SEO, custom post types, etc.), WordPress is usually the better choice.
SEO
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Which Platform Is Better To Rank Your Art Website In Search Results?
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), the main difference between Squarespace vs. WordPress is that Squarespace’s SEO features are built-in, while WordPress requires a plugin like RankMath or YoastSEO.
These plugins allow you to fully optimize your WP site down to the smallest detail, from headings, descriptions, image alt text to post and page permalinks.
They also help you organize content more effectively through categories, tags, and custom post types, and automatically generate sitemaps for search engine indexing.
With Squarespace, on the other hand, you can’t fine-tune technical SEO settings to the same degree. Much of the optimization is handled automatically, which saves you time and effort but also limits you to some extent.
That said, WordPress is best if you want full control over SEO, advanced features, and scale your site for effective organic growth. Squarespace offers a simple setup and good basic SEO where you don’t need to worry about plugins or technical details.
Responsiveness
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: MOBILE RESPONSIVENESS
Where Does Your Artist Website Look Better On Mobile Devices?
With WordPress, your site usually looks good on both desktop and mobile devices out of the box. If anything, there are very few things to tweak to make the design fully mobile-friendly.
Squarespace sites used to be responsive by default, too. But with the introduction of their new Fluid Engine editor, that’s changed. Now, you have to manually edit your site’s mobile layout to ensure everything displays properly.
Apart from that, Squarespace doesn’t let you hide elements on mobile, such as large images that may not look good on smaller screens or that disrupt the text flow. This is something you can easily do in WordPress, either with the native Gutenberg editor or with most page builders, such as Elementor, Divi, Spectra, or Brizy.
Security & Backups
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: SECURITY & BACKUPS
Is Your Artist Website Secure With Squarespace And WordPress?
Since Squarespace is an all-in-one platform, the entire side of technical maintenance is handled for you. The platform makes sure that your site stays safe with firewalls and hacker protection, and it runs regular backups to prevent your data from getting lost.
With WordPress, you are largely responsible for maintaining your website yourself. This typically includes installing and updating WordPress itself, as well as themes and plugins.
That said, you also have to make sure that themes, plugins and other third-party integrations work with each other smoothly. Because WordPress is open source and anyone can develop for it, there can sometimes be conflicts between the different elements.
With Squarespace, you can trust that everything works smoothly out of the box because all extensions have been thoroughly tested and approved.
Additionally, you should also make sure to regularly backup your WordPress site, just to be sure that you have a restore point in case something goes wrong.
If you have a good hosting provider, they will also do daily backups, regular malware scans, and optimize your database and images for fast loading. Hosting providers like Bluehost, ScalaHosting, and Pressable offer these services as part of their plans.
Ease of Use
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: USER-FRIENDLINESS
Which Is Easier To Use For Artists?
Squarespace is one of the easiest website builders out there. The learning curve is minimal: once you’re onboarded, you can jump straight into designing your site by simply clicking “Edit” from the dashboard.
The interface is fast, intuitive, and requires zero backend work. You can manage everything from one central place: domain, hosting, templates, design, extensions, SEO, marketing, e-commerce, email campaigns, and so on. If you ever get stuck, Squarespace’s support team is there to help.
By comparison, WordPress has a much steeper learning curve. You have far more control and flexibility than with Squarespace, but that also makes things more complex.
You’ll need to handle everything yourself: hosting, installation, configuration, updates for plugins and themes, SEO, and so on. Some plugins come with their own learning curve, and if something goes wrong, you’ll have to handle the troubleshooting yourself.
There’s no central point you can contact for support. Your hosting provider can help with hosting issues, but you have reach out to the developers of individual themes or plugins, meaning getting help with WordPress can be quite tedious.
Pricing
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SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: THE COSTS
Where Do You Get The Better Value For Your Money?
The main difference is that WordPress doesn’t offer an all-in-one pricing structure like Squarespace. While WordPress itself is free, you’ll need to pay separately for hosting and a domain name to get your site online. Plus, for themes and plugins if you choose premium versions.
Squarespace, on the other hand, includes everything (hosting, domain, templates, security, and support) within a single subscription.
WordPress hosting plans tend to start out much cheaper than Squarespace, with prices as low as $1.99 per month on Bluehost (for a 36-month term). However, you need to keep in mind that once that initial term is over, the renewal price might be twice or sometimes 3 times the initial price.
More WordPress hosting options: → Best Web Hosting For Artists With WordPress Sites In 2025
That said, WordPress hosting can cost roughly the same as Squarespace once the initial hosting term has ended.
For comparison, Squarespace plans start at $16 per month for the Personal plan and $23 per month for the Business plan when billed annually.
If you want a simple portfolio site, the Personal plan provides all the functionality you need. To start selling your work effectively, it’s better to upgrade to one of the higher plans.
Overall Rating
SQUARESPACE VS WORDPRESS REVIEW: THE VERDICT
What is the overall best website platform for artists?
Both Squarespace and WordPress are excellent platforms for artists, but they cater to different types of creators and goals.
If you want an all-in-one, hassle-free solution, Squarespace is your best bet. It’s ideal for artists who value simplicity, visual design, and ease of use.
You’ll get everything included in a single subscription—from hosting to a domain name to templates and security. Everything is built in and maintained for you. You can create a beautiful online portfolio or even start selling art within minutes, without touching a single line of code.
Choose Squarespace if you want:
- A quick, code-free setup
- Aesthetic, ready-to-use templates for artists
- Built-in tools for SEO, e-commerce, and email campaigns
- Minimal maintenance and reliable security
If you prefer creative freedom and full control, WordPress is the stronger long-term option. It’s made for artists who want to grow their online presence, enjoy advanced features, and fully customize every aspect of their site.
With its vast plugin and theme ecosystem, WordPress can evolve as your artistic career grows—but it does require more setup, maintenance, and tech know-how.
Choose WordPress if you want:
- Full control over every detail of your website
- Access to thousands of plugins and themes
- Advanced SEO and blogging tools
- The ability to scale your site as your brand expands
Squarespace vs WordPress for Artists: Key Takeaways
1. Ease of Use — Squarespace is easier to use than WordPress. WordPress offers nearly limitless customization.
2. The Editor — Both Squarespace and WordPress have drag-and-drop editors that are easy to use and beginner-friendly.
3. Setup — Setting up a Squarespace website is easier and faster, but WordPress gives you full ownership and control.
4. Flexibility — WordPress is definitely more flexible than Squarespace, but Squarespace takes much of the backend work off your hands.
5. Plugins — WordPress’s biggest strength is its huge number of available plugins. Squarespace only has around 40+, but they’re all tested and vetted.
6. Templates — Squarespace is known for its beautiful themes for visual creatives. WordPress has a massive marketplace for themes, which can make it harder to find the right one.
7. Ecommerce — Both Squarespace and WordPress cover the basics of ecommerce, but WordPress allows for much more store customization.
8. Pricing — Squarespace’s subscription plans are more expensive than basic WordPress hosting, but they include everything. WordPress, on the other hand, may come with additional costs for your domain, themes, plugins, etc.
9. SEO — Squarespace and WordPress both cover the basics of SEO, but if you really want to get serious, WordPress is the better choice.
