Squarespace vs Elementor: What’s the Best Builder in 2024?

Squarespace vs Elementor: Final verdict

Squarespace and Elementor both offer powerful website building solutions, but they cater to different user needs and preferences.

• 
  Squarespace (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  is a user-friendly website builder and hosting platform that simplifies the process of creating professional websites. It offers a range of visually appealing templates, built-in marketing tools, and robust ecommerce features. Squarespace is ideal for users seeking an all-in-one solution with a hassle-free setup and strong customer support. However, it has some limitations in customization and advanced features compared to Elementor.
• 
  Elementor (Overall Grade: 7.4/10)
  
  is a flexible website builder plugin for WordPress, known for its drag-and-drop interface and extensive customization options. It provides a wide range of widgets and templates, making it suitable for both beginners and professional web designers. Elementor excels in design functionalities and templates, offering more creative control and advanced features. However, it may require a steeper learning curve and potential performance optimization for extensive widget use.

Which one is the best for ecommerce: Squarespace or Elementor?

Verdict

: Squarespace is ideal for those seeking an all-in-one, user-friendly ecommerce solution, while Elementor offers extensive customization for users familiar with WordPress and WooCommerce.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : Squarespace is a robust platform for ecommerce, offering an intuitive interface and essential built-in tools for secure payment processing, marketing, and SEO. It simplifies the process of setting up an online store, making it a great choice for users who prefer an all-in-one solution. However, when comparing Squarespace vs Elementor, Squarespace may lack the deep customization options that advanced users might seek.
• 
  Elementor
  
  : Elementor, integrated with WooCommerce, provides powerful ecommerce capabilities with extensive customization options. It is suitable for users who are comfortable with WordPress and want to leverage a wide range of widgets and templates. However, it may present a steeper learning curve and potential performance issues with extensive widget use.

Which one is the best for informational and business websites?

Verdict

: When it comes to creating informational and business websites, Elementor slightly edges out Squarespace due to its higher flexibility and customization options. However, both platforms are strong contenders, each with its unique strengths.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : Squarespace is a robust website builder that excels in providing a user-friendly experience with a variety of professional templates. It is particularly well-suited for users who want a hassle-free website creation process without delving into coding. Squarespace’s templates are visually appealing and cater to a wide range of industries, making it a solid choice for business websites. With a score of 8.4, Squarespace offers a comprehensive set of features that are ideal for creating polished and professional informational sites.
• 
  Elementor
  
  : Elementor, a popular WordPress plugin, offers unparalleled flexibility and customization through its visual drag-and-drop interface. It allows users to design every detail of their website, making it suitable for both beginners and professional web designers. Elementor’s extensive range of widgets and templates, along with its support for responsive design, ensures that websites look great on all devices. Scoring 8.9, Elementor stands out for its ability to integrate with various WordPress themes and plugins, providing a versatile and powerful platform for creating highly customized informational and business websites.

Squarespace vs Elementor: Detailed comparison

🏆

Winner: Elementor.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control, a wide array of design features, and a higher score in design functionalities and templates, Elementor is the preferred choice.

Squarespace boasts an impressive variety of website templates, offering over 120 pre-designed options to choose from. These templates cater to a wide range of needs and industries, from creative portfolios and sleek online stores to professional business websites and personal blogs.

Squarespace Themes

Compared to Squarespace, Elementor offers an extensive range of templates and designs, with over 100 responsive website kits covering various categories like business, creative, education, and more, directly available through Elementor’s platform. Additional sources like Envato Elements, Template Monster, and others provide a wider selection, including free and premium options, catering to diverse web design needs.

Elementor Themes

🏆 Winner: Elementor

. With a score of 8.8, Elementor edges out Squarespace (8.3) in terms of ease of use. Elementor’s user-friendly interface, drag-and-drop functionality, and wide range of pre-designed templates and widgets make it a flexible and intuitive platform for building websites. Squarespace, while also user-friendly and straightforward, has some limitations in customization and advanced features.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both Squarespace and Elementor provide extensive learning resources for their users. Squarespace offers a comprehensive Help Center, video tutorials, live webinars, an informative blog, and an active community forum. Elementor, on the other hand, provides a wide array of learning resources through its Elementor Academy, covering topics from basic usage to advanced design and business growth strategies.

Squarespace and Elementor both offer robust ecommerce capabilities, but they cater to different needs and preferences. Squarespace is a user-friendly solution that simplifies online store setup with an intuitive interface and customizable templates. It handles secure payment processing, flexible shipping options, and automated tax calculations, while also providing built-in marketing tools, SEO optimization, and detailed analytics.

On the other hand, Elementor offers robust ecommerce capabilities through its seamless integration with WooCommerce, providing customizable product pages, a variety of ecommerce-specific widgets, and responsive design templates. However, users may face a learning curve and potential performance issues with extensive widget use.

Squarespace ecommerce features:

• Intuitive interface
• Secure payment processing
• Built-in marketing tools
• SEO optimization
• Website analytics

Elementor ecommerce features:

• WooCommerce Integration
• Customizable Product Pages
• Ecommerce Widgets
• Product Categories and Filters
• Shopping Cart Customization

Ecommerce themes & templates

Squarespace provides a diverse selection of around 50 ecommerce templates, catering to various industries like fashion, beauty, home goods, and technology. These templates range from clean and minimalist to bold and colorful, accommodating different brand aesthetics and product types.

Elementor, on the other hand, offers a diverse range of ecommerce-specific templates suitable for various online stores, from free options for budget-conscious users to premium templates with advanced customization features. These templates are designed to be mobile-responsive and SEO-friendly, ensuring optimal performance across devices and search engines.

Product page customization

Squarespace offers options for layout, design, and interactive elements on product pages. Choose templates, customize colors, fonts, and content. Enhance engagement with features like customizable buttons, wishlists, comparisons, reviews, and related products.

Elementor offers extensive customization options for WooCommerce product pages, including custom layouts, WooCommerce widgets for various product elements, and options for styling product galleries and ‘Add to Cart’ buttons. It allows for the display and customization of product variants, although the number of variants is technically limited by WooCommerce, not Elementor.

Payment processing

Squarespace provides flexible payment processing for online stores with integrated gateways like Stripe and PayPal. External gateways can be set up for specific needs. Transaction fees may apply depending on the plan and payment method.

Elementor supports several payment gateways, notably through plugins and integrations, with Stripe and PayPal being prominent options for simple and widespread use. These gateways charge their own transaction fees, typically around 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, but Elementor itself does not impose additional fees for transactions.

🏆

Winner: Elementor

. Elementor, with a score of 8.5, offers a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to customize layouts, add content, and style websites visually in real-time. It provides a wide array of widgets and templates, allowing users to design complex elements such as sliders, forms, and animated headlines. Additionally, Elementor provides responsive design options, ensuring websites look great on all devices, alongside advanced features like custom CSS, role-based access control, and integration with a variety of marketing tools.

Squarespace’s editor, scoring 8.3, allows easy drag-and-drop website creation without coding. With visually appealing templates and customization options, it caters to beginners and pros alike.

The real-time editing experience ensures instant previews. Prioritizing content, it’s mobile-responsive and offers functional features like forms, social media integration, and online stores. Squarespace seamlessly integrates with tools for extended capabilities.

Mobile editor/app

🏆

Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace offers a mobile app that allows users to manage their website on the go. The app includes features for content editing, website analytics, online store management, and social media scheduling. However, it’s worth noting that for complex tasks such as advanced design customization or creating new page layouts, users will need to access the desktop editor, as the app doesn’t offer the full range of functionalities available on desktop.

On the other hand, Elementor does not have a dedicated mobile editor. This means that users cannot manage or edit their websites from a mobile device, which can be a significant disadvantage for those who need to make quick changes or updates on the go. Therefore, Squarespace is the clear winner in this category due to its mobile editing capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Squarespace wins

. Squarespace scores 7.4, offering a 14-day free trial and the possibility to test most of the premium features. Elementor, scoring 5.6, offers a free version for self-hosted WordPress.org but lacks a trial version. However, it does provide a 30-day money-back guarantee and the possibility to test all premium features during the refundable period.

Squarespace and Elementor have similar price scores, but their offerings differ significantly.

Squarespace provides a more comprehensive package, including hosting, and offers discounts for annual subscriptions. Elementor, on the other hand, is a WordPress plugin and its plans are billed annually.

Winner: Elementor

. Elementor edges out Squarespace with its Google Cloud powered hosting, offering daily auto backups and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Squarespace, while offering a similar uptime guarantee, falls short with less specific information about its data centers and backup services.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

Both Squarespace and Elementor have similar website speed optimization scores, but Squarespace edges out Elementor due to its transparency in Core Web Vitals improvements and more specific load times and PageSpeed score ranges.

Squarespace’s approach to website speed optimization includes responsive design, image optimization, use of a content delivery network (CDN), code minification, and lazy loading of images. These strategies help to improve load times and PageSpeed scores, which range from 0.7s to 9.1s (average 2.9s) and 20/100 to 93/100 (average 62.7/100) respectively. Squarespace also places emphasis on improving Core Web Vitals, specifically LCP, FID, and CLS.

On the other hand, Elementor’s strategies for website speed optimization include lazy loading, code minification, caching, and use of a CDN. However, Elementor does not provide specific information on load times, PageSpeed scores, or Core Web Vitals improvements, stating that these vary depending on optimization and website complexity. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to accurately assess Elementor’s performance in terms of website speed optimization.

🏆 Winner: Elementor.

Elementor, with a score of 7.6, offers a wide range of both free and premium add-ons that extend the functionality of the base version, providing advanced widgets, modules, and complete theme building capabilities for deep customization.

Squarespace, scoring 6.8, lacks an official app store but supports integrations and extensions through custom code injection and third-party tools. While Squarespace offers seamless functionality with over 20 official partner integrations, Elementor’s flexibility and versatility give it the edge in this category.

Squarespace Applications

Elementor Applications

🏆

Overall Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace stands out for its more advanced and integrated marketing tools, especially in analytics and ad campaign management. Elementor, while offering a range of marketing features, relies more on integrations with other plugins and services.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. Comparing Squarespace vs Elementor, Squarespace takes the lead in this category with its comprehensive support options. Squarespace offers live chat, email, a community forum, and a help center. Live chat and phone support are available on weekdays from 6 AM to 6 PM PST, while email support is available 24/7. The community forum and help center provide 24/7 access, ensuring users can find help at any time. Additionally, Squarespace offers enterprise-level support with a dedicated account manager and priority support.

Elementor, on the other hand, provides 24/7 support through ticketing and live chat, ensuring users can get assistance whenever needed. However, it lacks the extensive support options and enterprise-level support that Squarespace offers. Despite this, Elementor’s 24/7 availability is a significant advantage for users who need immediate help at any time.

🏆

Winner: Elementor

. Elementor edges out Squarespace with a slightly higher security score of 9.1 compared to Squarespace’s 8.8. Elementor leverages Google Cloud’s infrastructure for high security, including end-to-end encryption. It also employs both active and passive security measures, including 24/7 monitoring, regular updates, backups, and specialized security protocols to protect against common threats. Elementor’s commitment to security is further emphasized by its ISO 27001 certification and a proactive Bug Bounty program.

Although it may not offer the same level of specialized ecommerce security features as Elementor, Squarespace also prioritizes data privacy and security through secure server storage, encryption, strict access controls, and compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. It also prioritizes website security through built-in features, including secure hosting, SSL certificates, vulnerability scanning, malware and spam filters, two-factor authentication, data encryption, and compliance with security regulations like PCI-DSS and GDPR.

🏆 Winner: Elementor

. Elementor, with a score of 7.4, edges out Squarespace with its integrated AI builder and the ability to generate text, custom codes, and images directly within the editor. It also offers a suite of AI-driven features for eCommerce websites and the ability to integrate third-party AI powered WordPress plugins or widgets.

Squarespace, scoring 7.5, offers various AI-powered features to assist with website creation and provides valuable assistance in eCommerce by offering AI-powered copywriting, SEO optimization, and personalized email marketing campaigns. However, it lacks a fully automated AI builder.

🏆 Winner: Elementor

. Both Squarespace and Elementor offer different levels of user management, but Elementor’s flexibility and integration with WordPress roles and permissions give it an edge.

• Squarespace’s user management varies by plan. The Personal Plan allows one owner, Business and Commerce Plans permit 2 collaborators with different access levels, and the Enterprise Plan offers unlimited users, each with customizable access privileges.
• Elementor’s user management is based on the roles and permissions set within WordPress. Administrators have full access to edit any part of the site, including Elementor settings, while Editors can manage posts and pages made with Elementor. Authors and Contributors have limited capabilities. Elementor Pro offers a Role Manager feature, enabling further customization of what different roles can do within Elementor.

Squarespace User Roles and Access Levels:

Elementor User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

Squarespace vs Elementor: User Feedback

Squarespace is well-liked for its easy-to-use interface and versatile tools, making it ideal for those who aren’t tech-savvy. It offers various features like website creation, SEO, online selling, and more, catering to different users. Customers appreciate its good customer support and visually appealing templates, creating a professional online presence. However, some users find issues with domain transfer/setup, limited customization options, and consider the pricing slightly higher. There are also occasional concerns about customer service and technical limitations like template rigidity and missing features.

Elementor is widely appreciated for its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, enabling rapid creation of professional and responsive websites without coding skills. It offers a vast range of templates and compatibility with WordPress, making it a go-to for diverse users. Despite its benefits, concerns arise regarding website loading times, subscription costs, and occasional compatibility issues. Feedback on customer support and legacy plan management is mixed, with some users experiencing dissatisfaction. Overall, Elementor is valued for its efficiency in web development, although some aspects, particularly support services, could be improved.

Squarespace vs Elementor: FAQ