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Squarespace

Portrait of Lukas Horvath, co-founder of Roelu Studio
Lukas HorvathCo-founder

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a hosted website builder that pairs polished design templates with built-in publishing, e-commerce, and scheduling tools. It is popular with photographers, restaurants, small studios, and creators who want a clean, design-forward presence without engaging a separate designer or developer. Squarespace sites are built by customizing one of the platform's templates within a guided editor, with hosting, SSL, and basic SEO settings included in every subscription plan.

Why it matters

Squarespace's strength is taste. The templates are well-designed, the typography is curated, and a non-designer can ship something that looks coherent. For a creator portfolio, a small studio, or a five-product e-commerce store, it is a strong choice. The trade-off is constraint. You are working within Squarespace's design choices. Custom layouts beyond the template grid get awkward. Performance is decent but not exceptional. SEO controls are limited compared to a custom build. And the moment your brand needs a sharper identity than what Squarespace's templates allow, you start fighting the platform. For a scale-up, it is a stopgap, not a destination.

How it works

You pick a template, then customize it in the Squarespace editor — colors, fonts, sections, images, copy. Sections are pre-built blocks like hero, feature, testimonial, gallery, and they snap together vertically on each page. Squarespace handles hosting, SSL, and updates automatically. Commerce features — product pages, checkout, inventory — are built into the higher-tier plans. For scheduling, Acuity integrates natively with the platform. Domain registration is available directly or you can connect an external domain via DNS records. The platform is intentionally guided: you cannot break the design, but you also cannot push it far past where the template starts.

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