A lot of people are using Squarespace to build a website because with it they don’t have to learn anything about CSS, HTML, or any type of web coding or programming language. Squarespace conveniently uses the drag and drop action to create websites that suit your taste. But however easy-to-use Squarespace is it isn’t as powerful as WordPress.
WordPress is a very flexible and customizable content management platform. With the thousands of plugins available for WordPress, you can practically do anything you want with your site. You can add a blog, a forum, an e-commerce site, and even more. The functionality of the WordPress platform is easily explored even by non-tech savvy users. Once you get the hang of configuring WordPress plugins and the rest of its features, everything becomes easier.
If you’re still undecided about moving your site from Squarespace to WordPress, here are the five reasons why a lot of people have already done so. These reasons might just convince you to make the switch yourself.
1. More choices for templates, designs, and plug-ins.
The choices you have with WordPress are practically endless. From templates to plug-ins, there are thousands of them in the repository and you can easily download them with one click. What’s more, a majority of them is free. So whatever brand you’re trying to create or look you’re trying to achieve for your site, you’ll find exactly what you need. You only have to sift through your plethora of options to get it.
2. You have full control of your website.
With self-hosted WordPress, you don’t have to worry about outages, speed, and security. You can’t really say that you’ll enjoy all of these with Squarespace because your content is hosted in Squarespace’s servers and you may have deal with the outages and downtime related to their site. And because Squarespace holds your content, in a way, as they can remove your site if they have to, like if it doesn’t comply with their policies. You may appear that you have control of your website with Squarespace but it doesn’t compare to a self-hosted WordPress site.
3. WordPress is relatively cheaper.
If you want to build and host your business website on Squarespace and do some blogging, you have to pay a monthly fee of $25. WordPress, on the other hand, is free. But even so, you will have to pay for your own hosting, which can go anywhere from $3 to $10 a month. The other things you may have to purchase are the templates and plug-ins, but then again there are free versions of most of the designs and applications that you need so you really don’t have to worry about that.
4. WordPress is easier to manage.
The content management system employed by WordPress lets you easily store, access, and re-use, your stored files and images. With Squarespace, you normally have to re-upload the images that you want to use, with the exception of gallery images. Grouping your content according to categories is also easier with WordPress. Organizing your content is a breeze with WordPress.
5. Better search engine optimization tools.
WordPress makes the complex and difficult job of optimizing your website for the search engines a fairly easy experience. For starters, you can add easily alt tags for all your images so search engines can easily identify what those images are. As for your content, there are many plug-ins that can help you in adding keywords throughout the text. You can also add snippets into your blog posts, which your viewers and the search engines can easily read.
WordPress and Squarespace have their own advantages and disadvantages and it’s really up to you to determine which of them would work for you best. When it comes to ease of use, Squarespace is clearly the winner because you don’t have to know anything about website building to get started. You just have to log-in, pick the design you want, add the buttons, and your website is ready.
If you decide to use WordPress, there’s a learning curve required. To be honest, you can’t use WordPress out of the box. You first have to learn how it works and where everything is. But once you become familiar with that, building your website becomes a lot less complex than it seems. And you’re opening yourself up to a wide range of possibilities, too.
Once you realize that using WordPress puts you at a better advantage than staying with Squarepsace, there’s a good article that teaches you how to do the switch. Switch from Squarespace to WordPress using this step-by-step guide that you can easily follow for a smoother and a more hassle-free experience. It may take you a while to get used to WordPress but it’s all going to be worth it once you got everything worked out.