Squarespace: Simple, Polished, and a Great Starting Point
Squarespace shines at one thing: getting a good-looking website live quickly.
For solo founders, creatives, and small businesses just getting started, it’s hard to beat. Templates are polished, hosting is handled, and you don’t need to think much about structure or setup. You log in, swap content, publish, and move on with your life.
That simplicity is exactly why many businesses choose Squarespace first—and honestly, that’s a good thing.
But simplicity comes with tradeoffs.
As your business grows, you may start to feel boxed in:
- Design changes feel limited or repetitive
- SEO tweaks are surface-level
- Performance optimizations are largely out of your control
- Scaling content or layouts becomes awkward
Squarespace isn’t bad at these things—it’s just not built for flexibility at scale.
Webflow: More Control Without the Chaos
Webflow is often the platform businesses move to after Squarespace. Not because Squarespace failed—but because the business outgrew it.
Webflow gives you:
- Full design control without templates dictating layout
- A powerful CMS for structured, scalable content
- Cleaner code and better performance foundations
- SEO tools that go deeper than basic toggles
The big difference? Webflow is visual, but not restrictive. You’re not stuck inside a template—you’re designing a system that can evolve with your business.
And yes, Webflow has a learning curve. But when it’s built properly, most clients find it easier to live with long-term than Squarespace.
Design Flexibility: Templates vs True Custom
Squarespace templates look good, but they tend to look… familiar. That’s not a problem early on, but as competition increases, standing out matters.
Webflow lets you:
- Create fully custom layouts
- Design responsive experiences across devices
- Build subtle interactions that feel polished, not gimmicky
This is especially valuable for brands in competitive spaces like:
Your website stops looking like “a Squarespace site” and starts looking like your brand.
SEO: Control vs Convenience
Squarespace covers SEO basics just fine: titles, descriptions, clean URLs. For many small sites, that’s enough.
Webflow goes further.
You get:
- Granular control over meta data
- Custom schema markup
- Cleaner HTML structure
- Better internal linking through CMS collections
Webflow has also rolled out AI-powered tools that can auto-generate meta titles, descriptions, and schema. You don’t even need to know what schema is to benefit from it. (We love a platform that quietly makes you smarter.)
If SEO is a meaningful growth channel for your business, Webflow gives you room to grow without hitting a ceiling. This pairs especially well with a dedicated Webflow SEO strategy.
Performance & Speed
Squarespace handles hosting and optimization for you, which is great—but also limiting. You get what you get.
Webflow runs on a global CDN, generates clean code, and gives you more control over performance decisions.
And to be clear:
If your Webflow site is feeling slow, that’s usually a build issue, not a platform issue (and yes, that’s fixable).
We’re diving deeper into that in our upcoming post:
Why Is My Webflow Website Slow?
Editing & Day-to-Day Use
This is where Squarespace often wins initially. It’s very approachable. Anyone can log in and make quick edits. But Webflow’s Editor has come a long way. When set up correctly:
- Clients can safely update content
- Marketing teams don’t break layouts
- CMS-driven pages scale cleanly
Many businesses are surprised by how much they enjoy using Webflow once the site is structured properly—especially compared to wrestling with template limitations over time.
So… Which One Is Right for You?
Here’s the honest breakdown:
Squarespace is right if:
- You’re early-stage or solo
- You want something quick and simple
- Your site won’t change much over time
Webflow is right if:
- Your business is growing
- Your website is a core marketing asset
- You want better performance, SEO, and design flexibility
- You don’t want to rebuild again in two years
That’s why many Squarespace users eventually make the jump—and why we built a dedicated Squarespace to Webflow migration service.
The Bottom Line
Squarespace is a great place to start. Webflow is where many businesses go next.
If your website needs to do more than just exist—if it needs to perform, scale, and truly represent your brand—Webflow offers the flexibility and polish to grow with you.
And if you want that transition to feel smooth, intentional, and stress-free, that’s where we come in.
Thinking About Making the Move?
- Learn more about our Webflow Design & Development
- Explore our Webflow Migration services
- Or check out how we support sites long-term with Webflow Management
