Thoughts on Squarespace

The other day I received an e-mail from a friend of mine asking my thoughts on Squarespace.  I also have been searching Squarespace on Twitter to see if there are any updates regarding their iPhone application that should be released any day now.  In the twitter search I found that there are a lot of people asking what people think of the platform, so I figured I would take some time and share my thoughts.

Before I begin, some of you may already know that before switching to Squarespace my blog was hosted through Media Temple and built with WordPress.  There are a several good things about WordPress:  It’s free, it can be self-hosted, and there are thousands of free plugins and themes available for the less savvy bloggers out there.

Now onto Squarespace, at first glance I was a little turned off by the fact that I couldn’t host it on my own server and it’s not free so it’s an extra fee on top of my current hosting costs.  After all, we are in a recession.  So I signed up for the trial and played around with the templates a bit, but I wasn’t sure on how to implement my own designs instead of using their pre-made templates.  I submitted a ticket to their support and within the hour I received a reply and assistance that guided me through the process.  This is something that really impressed me mainly because I hate waiting.  When I submit a ticket or send an e-mail, I want an immediate answer and that is not always the case.  I have hosted with other companies that sometimes take 24 to 48 hours to respond and with open source content mangement systems it sometimes involves googling and researching until you find the answer.

Beyond fanatical support, the Squarespace system works well for all types of users.  If you’re a blogger and you just want a site to do basic customizing, branding, and posting your articles it works perfect for that.  It’s also great if you’re a web designer or developer that wants to take it a step farther and completely customize your site and use some of the built in features like the photo gallery to build a portfolio displaying your work.  Another great feature is their web analytics, although it’s not Google Analytics but it’s already built in.  You don’t have to put extra snippets of code into your HTML or login to another website to check your stats – it’s all in one place.

Overall, I am glad I switched.  I am spending less time updating versions of WordPress and troubleshooting plugins and more time working on client projects and actually posting content here.

5 Responses to “Thoughts on Squarespace”

1. J.A. Bernard

   October 19, 2009

   I like the updates you’ve made to your site, very clean and eye-catching.

   Reply

2. Sean

   February 26, 2010

   Hey good post Landon, I really like the changes.

   Reply

   • Steven Mehan

     February 26, 2010

     You have to update it…

     Reply

3. Landon Miller

   March 20, 2010

   Thanks for the kind words guys.

   Reply

4. Krystyn

   March 26, 2010

   Hey, thanks for the post!

   Reply