You’ve probably been hearing about Squarespace for years - and if nowhere else, I’m willing to bet it’s been on repeat in your podcast ads. And in those ads, I’m sure you’ve heard it’s easy.
And in some ways it is. That’s why it’s a great platform for small businesses, and that’s why it’s my platform of choice!
But there’s a big difference between the cost of a Squarespace subscription and the cost of a Squarespace website that actually works, especially in 2026. Let’s break it down honestly.
In this post:
What Squarespace actually costs on its own
Why professional design runs $3,000–$8,000+
How Squarespace compares to WordPress and AI-built sites
What affects the final price
Whether hiring a Squarespace website designer is worth it
Reading time: ~6 minutes
What does Squarespace cost on its own?
The platform itself runs about $19–$99/month depending on the plan. Most small businesses land somewhere in the middle (the Core or Plus plan), so you’re looking at roughly $200–$600/year.
That covers the platform cost. But it doesn’t account for design, copy, photos, or your time. To get started, you can choose from a template, premade color schemes, and font choices, which is genuinely helpful. The catch: everyone using Squarespace starts from the same options.
Which raises the obvious question: why do designers charge $3,000–$8,000+ on top of that?
What you’re actually paying a Squarespace designer for
Here’s the part most people don’t see.
When you hire a Squarespace designer, you’re paying for strategy. You know you need a site, but that doesn’t solve figuring out what pages you need, what order they go in, and what each one needs to actually accomplish.
You’re paying for carefully considered, custom design. That means you aren’t paying for someone to replace text and swap images. The price comes from a design that doesn’t look like a template you could have bought yourself.
And you’re paying for copywriting, which most designers skip entirely and shouldn’t. The visuals draw people in, but the words keep them there.
You’re also paying for the technical foundation that doesn’t show up on the page but absolutely shows up in your results:
Image compression so your site loads quickly
Image naming and alt text for SEO
Title tags, meta descriptions, and heading structure
Domain connection and mobile optimization
If that doesn’t mean anything to you — no problem. Feel free to keep it that way. When you work with a designer, it just gets done.
What Affects the Price
Squarespace website projects have a wide price range, and for good reason. A handful of factors affect the final number.
Number of pages: A 5-page site and a 10-page site are meaningfully different scopes. And not all pages are equal — a simple page with a short block of text and a few photos is very different from a sales page, which tends to be longer, needs to convert, and takes more time and setup.
Included content. Designers all do it differently. It depends on the designer whether they include copywriting or source imagery. Some require you to provide everything before they will begin.
Designers who write your copy charge more, and they should, because that’s the work that takes the most time and has the most impact. Sourcing images takes considerable time too.
And if you don’t have a brand identity yet - logo, colors, typography - that’s a separate project that needs to come first. Otherwise, your designer is building a site with nothing to pull from.Custom functionality. Booking systems, shops, and membership areas all add complexity to the scope and the price.
Experience level: A designer with a decade of small business clients and a clear process is going to charge more than someone who just learned Squarespace last year. Price shopping purely on budget usually means you end up paying twice.
Squarespace vs. WordPress vs. Vibe Coding
Squarespace isn’t your only option - far from it, especially these days when vibe coding is talked about like the weather.
Here’s my honest comparison.
WordPress is powerful, but it comes with a maintenance overhead most small business owners don’t want. Plugins break. Updates conflict. You end up either paying a developer on retainer or ignoring the back end until something goes wrong.
Vibe coding (AI-built sites) sounds like a dream: fast, cheap, sometimes free. What you often get is a site that was easy to start and hard to live with. Confusing to update. Visually inconsistent because you scrapped and restarted too many times. More of a draft than a finished product. It’s fun and can even be useful for organizing your thoughts - but knowing the pitfalls matters before you hit launch.
Squarespace was built for business owners, not developers. It has more advancements all the time, which means you can visually accomplish anything you can dream of. Setup can be overwhelming for a lot of people because of the strategy, creativity, and technical know-how involved - but maintenance? Couldn’t be easier. After launch, updating your hours, adding a service, swapping a photo - you can do all of that yourself without touching a line of code. That’s not a small thing. A site you can actually maintain is worth significantly more than one you can’t.
Your Site Should Grow With You
One of the most underrated parts of working with a Squarespace designer: you’re not just getting a launch-day website.
You’re getting a foundation you can build on.
As your business grows - new offerings, new markets, a portfolio that’s actually worth showing - your site needs to keep up. Squarespace makes that manageable.
And if you didn’t have time to build the site yourself the first time, you definitely don’t want website updates on your to-do list when you’re busier (and spending time in your zone of genius instead of deciding whether to center or left-justify text, or trying to remember when an H1 is important). A designer who knows your brand and your site means those changes don’t become their own project every time.
Is It Worth It?
The better question for most small business owners isn’t whether the investment is worth it. It’s: What is your current website costing you?
A website is how you present the best of what you offer. And there’s a natural parallel between how polished that presentation is and what you can credibly charge for your work. Businesses with a wow-worthy first impression can factor that into their pricing - because the site signals that what’s behind it is worth it.
In other words: present well → price confidently.
The opposite is also true. A DIY site that looks like a glorified web doc might get the job done at first. But it can subconsciously read as temporary, unpolished, and not quite worth the investment you’re asking for. The clients who land on your site, don’t see what they were hoping for, and leave - that’s the real cost. It just doesn’t show up on an invoice.
What’s Included When You Work With Good Day Design Co.
The Wow-Worthy Website includes custom design for 5 pages, collaborative copywriting, mobile-responsive build, full SEO foundation, stock image sourcing, 3 revision rounds, domain connection, and a handoff where you actually know how to use your own site.
Not sure if it fits what you’re looking for? Planning a larger site? Already have your copy ready to go? We can customize this package to meet your needs.
Investment starting at $5,600.
FAQs
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Most professional Squarespace website designers charge between $3,000 and $8,000+ depending on the scope — number of pages, whether copywriting is included, custom functionality, and experience level. At Good Day Design Co., Squarespace website projects start at $5,600 and include custom design, collaborative copywriting, and a full SEO foundation.
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If your time has value, DIY is rarely free. Building a custom Squarespace site from scratch typically takes 40–80 hours for a business owner — time that could be spent on client work. Beyond the time cost, a professional designer brings strategy, copywriting, and technical SEO setup that most DIY sites skip. The result is a site that both looks better and performs better in search.
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WordPress offers more customization but comes with ongoing maintenance: plugins break, updates conflict, and you often end up paying a developer on retainer to keep it running. Squarespace is designed for business owners — after launch, you can update content yourself without touching code. For most small businesses, the lower maintenance overhead makes Squarespace the smarter long-term choice.
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Yes — your brand (logo, colors, typography) needs to exist before your website is built. Without it, your designer has nothing to pull from and will be making visual decisions on the fly. If you don’t have a brand yet, a brand identity project should come first. Many designers, including Good Day Design Co., offer both as part of a combined process.
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Most professional Squarespace website projects take 4–8 weeks from kickoff to launch, depending on scope and how quickly you can provide feedback. The timeline includes strategy, design, copywriting, revisions, and technical setup. Rushing the process usually means skipping the steps that make the site actually work.