Squarespace

Squarespace does not offer any free plans, but they do have a 14-day risk-free trial for you to test drive their website builder before committing to any paid plans. You won't be billed until you are ready to commit as no credit card information is collected at sign-up, all you need to provide is your email address. But note that while you can build your website on the free trial, you won't be able to publish it – you need to be on a paid plan before you can launch your website.

Squarespace offers 3 product lines: Cover Pages, Websites (Personal and Business), and Commerce (Basic and Advanced).

Squarespace's tagline is "Build it Beautiful" and it's not difficult to find beauty in their templates. Squarespace is an extremely design-oriented website builder and the visual experiences are undeniably rich. You won't find a large collection of mediocre templates with Squarespace, but rather you are sure to find a smaller group of highly-polished templates. It's a classic case of quality over quantity.

Squarespace's designs rely heavily on photography and you can make your template unique by swapping in your own photos. But do keep in mind that a template that looks stunning at the moment may not once you replace the stock photos with your own images – you might not have a similar photo or the existing color scheme doesn't complement your photo.

Also, the degree to which you can edit a Squarespace template depends largely on the one you've chosen. Some templates are highly flexible and allow you to modify the size, spacing and color of most elements. However, there are also templates that relatively locked down and editing them will require some custom CSS. So, when it comes to template customizability or flexibility, other website builders like Wix and Website.com are better.

All Squarespace templates are responsive – optimized for mobile devices. You can resize your browser and the content, including images and galleries, will also automatically resize to provide an optimized viewing experience regardless of the screen size.

Like other website builders, Squarespace provides a drag-and-drop editor, which means you can edit and customize your website elements simply by dragging and dropping.

However, because of the wide feature range, styling options as well as the minimalistic design for the interface, Squarespace's editor is not as intuitive or easy to use as other website builder such as Weebly or Website.com – users who are new to website building and/or Squarespace may find that a decent amount of trail and error is required until they are familiar with the editor.

Luckily, Squarespace provides a large collection of tutorials and videos that explain all the tools. You also have access to the community-sourced answer board for more answers, insights and tips.

For uses who have experience working with codes, Squarespace allows you to make edits to the CSS of your website design to further style your website.

Unlike Wix, Squarespace doesn't have an app store for third party widgets. But like Website.com, Squarespace has integrated some key web applications into the website builder. These applications include MailChimp, Dropbox, Google Drive, Pinterest and OpenTable, as well as major social sharing widgets (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc).

All features, widgets and apps are built-in. Everything is Squarespace developed and tested – that means you don't have to wonder if an app or extension is compatible and there is no troubleshooting or topics outside their Knowledge Base or customer support. Everything works.

If you are a creating a hospitality website (ie.restaurant or entertainment establishment), you are in for a treat as Squarespace has a few hospitality-specific widgets for you: Menu, Opentable, Bandsintown, as well as Foursquare.

For example, with the menu widget, you can easily add a pre-formatted, customizable menu layout to your web page. All you need to do is replace the menu content with your own items and prices.

Like Website.com and Weebly, website analytics is included with Squarespace's website builder. You can also use Google Analytics.

Like other website builders, Squarespace gives you all the basic tools and features for your blog, ie. commenting. But Squarespace takes it to a higher level by giving you advanced blogging capabilities: geolocation, tags, reblogging, drafts, Disqus integration, customizable URLs and more. You can even host your own podcast on Squarespace, complete with RSS fees and iTunes tagging.

Truly, Squarespace's blogging capabilities are second only to WordPress. Just like WordPress, you can post blogs to your Squarespace website even if you aren't near a computer – Squarespace has a blogging app for iPhones/iPads and Androids.

One important feature that makes Squarespace stands out is that they allow you to export your pages and blog from Squarespace into WordPress. Note that this function is currently only available for WordPress – the exported file will be in a WordPress format. So while you won't be able to export your blog into Tumblr or other blogging platforms, at least you have the option to export your blog and pages.

If you already have a blog on WordPress, Tumblr or Blogger, you can even import it into your Squarespace website. Squarespace supports imports from WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Shopify and Big Cartel.

This import and export feature comes in handy if you have a website on Wordpress and you want to make changes to your website without touching the template coding – you can simply import it into Squarespace, make the changes using the drag-and-drop editor and then export it back to your WordPress domain.

You will find loads of image handling features, including image zoom, set focal point, galleries, automatic image scaling, optional display effects (ie. mouse hover and image transitions).

You can add a gallery to any page. Galleries can appear as slideshows , carousels, grids or stacks and you get customization options with each of them.

For example, for the Grid gallery, you can customize the mouseover display, transition and the lightbox settings. You can also adjust the spacing between images. The customization options are not as extensive as those of say, Wix. But by limiting the degree of customization, Squarespace can keep the design attractive to ensure your website design stay attractive.

Squarespace has also integrated Aviary Image Editing into their website builder. Aviary is a popular image editor for mobile devices and it comes with basic controls for brightness, contrast and saturation as well as many filters for tweaking your images on the fly.

Squarespace doesn't offer any free stock library, but it sets you up with professional stock photography by Getty Images at $10 per image. Once you have purchased an image, you can use it anywhere on your website. But because licensed images are tied to the website, if you have multiple websites with Squarespace, you won't be able to use the same images across multiple websites – you will need to purchase the image again for that each website you want to use the image. Also, the Getty Images integration is not available on trial accounts, your account must be active and on a paid plan.

If you are interested in creating an online store, Squarespace offers an extensive set of eCommerce tools that allow you to build a beautiful online store. Some might agree that Squarespace's eCommerce tools are more comprehensive than other website builders: dedicated commerce metrics, inventory management, label printing (via Shipstation), integrated accounting (via Xero), abandoned checkout auto-recovery and real-time shipping integration. Squarespace Commerce supports both physical and digital products.

However, the only payment gateway supported is Stripe – you won't be able to use PayPal, which may be a deal-breaker for some people.

Stripe is an excellent payment processor but it is not as widely available as PayPal. For example, Stripe is available in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, etc, but it is still "beta" in France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and as "private beta" in Hong Kong and New Zealand.

If you want to use PayPal as your payment processor, there are widgets that you can use to link your Squarespace website to other platforms like Shopify. But that means you will have both a Squarespace account and a Shopify account – a bit redundant.

Alternatively, you can consider using another website builder, such as Website.com or Weebly.

Compared with other website builders such as Wix and Website.com, Squarespace's eCommerce plans are more expensive, at $26 and $70 per month. Given the lack of PayPal integration, it's not difficult for find a reason not to use a specialty eCommerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce.

While you can register a domain name from Squarespace, they do not offer any domain email accounts. Squarespace recommends using Google Apps to setup you domain emails. In fact, Wix also recommends using Gmail for email management. Website.com, on the other hand, lets you create up 5-100 domain email accounts right on your account dashboard.

Squarespace offers many of the standard SEO features as other website builders, such as site meta titles and descriptions. What makes Squarespace's SEO slightly better is the sitemap that is generated automatically for your website. All you need to do is submit the sitemap to Google through Google Webmaster Tools.

Squarespace also supports 301 redirects.

Squarespace is more expensive than competing website builders such as Wix, Jimdo and Website.com. Plans start at $5/month for a one-page website. $8/month gets you a website with up to 20 pages, and run all the way up to $70/month for a high-performance mobile-optimized eCommerce website.

Unlike Weebly or Wix, Squarespace does not offer any free plan options. But they do offer a 14-day risk-free trial so you can test their website builder. Your test website won't be live on the Internet until you pay for an account.

If you want your website to look professional, visually stunning, expensive, you should consider Squarespace.