Squarespace vs Zoho Sites: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Squarespace and Zoho Sites offer compelling features for different user needs, making the choice between them dependent on specific requirements.

• 
  Squarespace (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  excels with its design functionalities, ease of use, and comprehensive marketing tools. It’s particularly suited for users looking for visually appealing templates, a user-friendly interface, and robust ecommerce features. Squarespace’s emphasis on security and its extensive learning resources make it a strong contender for users prioritizing aesthetics, security, and support.
• 
  Zoho Sites (Overall Grade: 7.6/10)
  
  stands out for its hosting quality, website speed optimization, and customer support. With its integration into the Zoho ecosystem, it offers a seamless experience for users already utilizing Zoho products. Zoho Sites is a good fit for those looking for efficient hosting, speed, and extensive customer support within a comprehensive business suite.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Squarespace offers a more polished and comprehensive ecommerce solution, making it better suited for businesses looking to create a professional online store with ease.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : With a score of 8.2, Squarespace shines in ecommerce thanks to its intuitive interface, secure payment processing, and built-in marketing tools. It’s designed for those who want a beautiful, functional online store without the hassle.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : Scoring 7.4, Zoho Sites is a strong contender with its integration with Zoho Commerce, offering solid ecommerce functionality. It’s a good choice for users already invested in the Zoho ecosystem, looking for a seamless integration with other Zoho services.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Squarespace edges out Zoho Sites for informational and business websites, thanks to its superior design capabilities and ease of use, making it ideal for creating visually appealing and professional websites.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : Known for its stunning templates and intuitive design interface, Squarespace is the go-to for businesses and individuals looking to create beautiful, information-rich websites. Its user-friendly platform, coupled with extensive learning resources, makes website creation accessible to everyone, regardless of technical skill level.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : While Zoho Sites offers a robust platform with a variety of templates and excellent hosting quality, it falls slightly behind Squarespace in design and ease of use. However, it remains a strong contender, especially for users who prioritize website speed, customer support, and integration capabilities.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Squarespace.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers a balance between ease of use and customization, Squarespace 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, Zoho Sites offers a diverse collection of over 150 templates, thoughtfully categorized into industries like Restaurants, Architecture, Health, and more. Each template provides a pre-designed layout with responsive design for various screen sizes. Customization options include visual elements such as colors, fonts, and images, as well as the ability to modify layouts and content using the visual editor.

Zoho Sites Themes

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. With a score of 8.3, Squarespace is known for its user-friendly interface and straightforward navigation, making it a top choice for those seeking a hassle-free website creation experience. Zoho Sites, scoring 7.0, offers a clean interface and logical workflows, but it may present a steeper learning curve for users requiring advanced features and seamless data integration.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. Both platforms offer a wide range of learning resources, but Squarespace stands out with its comprehensive Help Center, clear video tutorials, live webinars, and an active community forum. Zoho Sites also provides a detailed beginner’s guide, comprehensive user guides, and video tutorials, but Squarespace’s resources are more varied and accessible.

Squarespace and Zoho Sites both offer ecommerce capabilities, but their approaches differ. Squarespace provides a user-friendly ecommerce solution with built-in features, while Zoho Sites integrates with Zoho Commerce for ecommerce functionality.

Squarespace ecommerce features:

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

Zoho Sites ecommerce features:

• Product and Inventory management
• Order management
• Payment Processing
• Marketing and Promotions
• SEO and Analytics
• Security

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. Offering unique layout elements such as product sliders and featured collections, these templates enhance visual interest and engagement.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites offers a range of ecommerce website templates and themes designed to cater to various industries and business needs. These templates are customizable, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to their brand and product offerings. Zoho Commerce, in particular, provides beautiful and highly customizable ecommerce store themes, aiming to enhance the online shopping experience.

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. Advanced options include custom code injection and third-party app integrations. Limitations include fixed core page structure and the need for technical expertise. Free templates have fewer customization options than premium ones.

Zoho offers extensive product page customization options, allowing users to tailor the display of their products. This includes features like image galleries, sliders, and video integration, enabling businesses to present their products in a visually appealing manner. Additionally, Zoho facilitates the configuration of product variants like size and color options, as well as efficient inventory management directly from the product pages.

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. Security measures include PCI compliance and fraud prevention. Additional features include payment links, support for subscriptions, and the ability to accept international payments in various currencies.

Zoho Sites, in conjunction with Zoho Commerce, offers robust payment processing capabilities and supports integration with multiple payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Square, facilitating secure online transactions. While direct POS system integration and commission management might require leveraging additional Zoho tools or custom solutions, the Zoho ecosystem provides a comprehensive suite for businesses to manage both online and in-store sales efficiently. This integration ensures flexibility and security for businesses aiming to provide a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels.

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Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace, with a score of 8.3, offers a user-friendly editor that 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.

Zoho Sites’ editor, scoring 7.5, enables both businesses and individuals to create professional, responsive websites without coding skills, through its drag-and-drop interface. Integrated within the Zoho ecosystem, it offers customizable templates, SEO tools, social media integration, and ecommerce features, along with connectivity to other Zoho applications for enhanced functionality. Designed for users of all sizes, from freelancers to large organizations, Zoho Sites simplifies the process of creating and managing a secure and engaging online presence.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Squarespace

. Both Squarespace and Zoho Sites offer mobile editing capabilities, but they cater to different needs and skill levels. Squarespace provides a mobile app that allows users to manage their website, including editing content, viewing analytics, managing an online store, and scheduling social media posts. However, it does not offer the full range of functionalities available on the desktop version.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites does not have a dedicated mobile app for website editing. Users can only edit visual aspects of the mobile version of their website, but cannot change the content through the mobile interface. Given this, Squarespace has a higher mobile editor score than Zoho Sites due to its more comprehensive mobile editing capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Zoho Sites Wins

. Zoho Sites scores 8.8, outperforming Squarespace’s 7.4. Zoho Sites offers a free version and a 15-day free trial, during which all features of each plan can be tested. They also provide a generous refund policy, with a 30-day window for monthly subscriptions and a 45-day window for annual subscriptions. Squarespace, on the other hand, offers a 14-day free trial and allows testing of most premium features, except for custom code, premium integrations, and removal of Squarespace branding. Their refund policy offers a full refund within 14 days.

Zoho Sites has a slightly higher price score than Squarespace, and offers a wider range of discounts. However, both platforms offer a variety of plans to suit different needs and budgets.

🏆

Winner: Zoho Sites

Both Squarespace and Zoho Sites offer reliable hosting services with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, Zoho Sites edges out with its efficient hosting focused on speed and scalability, and a larger number of global data centers. This makes it a slightly better choice for users with varying needs and those seeking faster website loading times.

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

Both Squarespace and Zoho Sites prioritize website performance and page speed, but Zoho Sites has a slight edge in terms of website speed optimization.

Zoho Sites focuses on regular testing and implementing updates, optimized code and libraries, and cache balancing to optimize website speed. It has an average load time of 2-5 seconds and an average PageSpeed score of 70-80/100. Zoho Sites also emphasizes the implementation of various performance optimization techniques to improve Core Web Vitals.

On the other hand, Squarespace uses strategies such as responsive design, image optimization, CDN, code minification, and lazy loading of images to optimize website speed. It has a wider range of load times from 0.7s to 9.1s, with an average of 2.9s, and a PageSpeed score range of 20/100 to 93/100, with an average of 62.7/100. Squarespace also focuses on improving LCP, FID, and CLS for Core Web Vitals.

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites.

Zoho Sites scores 7.3, slightly ahead of Squarespace’s 6.8. Zoho Sites offers a diverse range of plugins and extensions, and integrates many extensions into their paid plans, providing users with access to more features as they upgrade. Squarespace, on the other hand, lacks an official app store but supports integrations and extensions through custom code injection and third-party tools. While both platforms offer a variety of integrations, Zoho Sites’ approach allows for a more versatile and customized website building experience.

Squarespace Applications

Zoho Sites Applications

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Overall Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace edges out Zoho Sites with a slightly higher score, offering a more comprehensive suite of marketing tools. Both platforms offer SEO tools, email marketing, blogging, social media integration, analytics and reporting, and ads and promotions. However, Squarespace’s features are more robust and user-friendly.

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

. Zoho Sites takes the lead in this category with a customer support score of 8.3. They offer 24/7 customer support through various channels including live chat, email, and phone. Their comprehensive knowledge base and community forum are also valuable resources for users to find answers to common questions and interact with other users.

Squarespace, on the other hand, provides a variety of customer support options, including live chat, email, a community forum, and a comprehensive help center. However, their live chat and phone support operate only on weekdays from 6 AM to 6 PM PST, while email support is available 24/7. Despite these offerings, Squarespace falls slightly behind Zoho Sites with a customer support score of 7.8.

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Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace’s security measures are slightly more comprehensive than Zoho Sites. Squarespace prioritizes data privacy and security through secure server storage, encryption, strict access controls, and compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. It also has vulnerability scanning and malware detection. For website security, Squarespace uses secure hosting, SSL certificates, vulnerability scanning, malware and spam filters, two-factor authentication, data encryption, and complies with security regulations like PCI-DSS and GDPR.

Zoho Sites also prioritizes security, offering secure private data storage and protection through advanced encryption and access controls. For website security, Zoho Sites uses SSL encryption to protect data transmission and offers two-factor authentication for added security. It also regularly updates its software to address any potential vulnerabilities. However, Squarespace’s slightly higher security score and more comprehensive measures give it the edge in this category.

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both Squarespace and Zoho Sites have a score of 7.5 for AI capabilities. Squarespace uses AI to enhance the ecommerce experience and content creation, while Zoho Sites leverages AI for personalized product recommendations and content generation.

Squarespace’s AI capabilities streamline the website building process and provide valuable assistance, especially in ecommerce and content creation.

Zoho Sites, on the other hand, uses AI to deliver unique product recommendations and automate workflows, enhancing productivity and customer service.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. Both Squarespace and Zoho Sites offer different user management capabilities depending on the chosen plan.

• Squarespace allows one owner for the Personal Plan, 2 collaborators for Business and Commerce Plans, and unlimited users for the Enterprise Plan. Each user can have customizable access privileges, from full administrators to restricted contributors.
• Zoho Sites allows only the owner to edit for the Free Plan, while Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans offer access for up to 10, 25, and 50 users respectively. Zoho Sites provides four access levels: Admin, Contributor, and Author.

Squarespace User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

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.

Zoho Sites receives mixed reviews, with users praising its user-friendly interface, extensive template library, and seamless integration with other Zoho products, which simplifies website development and management for small businesses. However, some users express dissatisfaction with its limited design flexibility and the inability to create custom features. Overall, Zoho Sites addresses the need for cost-effective website solutions, particularly for those without coding knowledge, offering a one-stop-shop for building and managing websites with varying degrees of customization and integration with other business tools.

FAQ