Squarespace vs WordPress

By the ContractorUK Editorial Team · Fact-checked 8 November 2026

First, which WordPress?

"WordPress" means two different things, and mixing them up leads to poor decisions.

WordPress.org is the home of the WordPress software. It's open source, licensed under the GPL, and costs nothing to download. You install it on hosting you choose and pay for, and from then on running it is your responsibility.

WordPress.com is a commercial service owned by Automattic. It runs WordPress for you on its own hosting, with plans that go from free to Enterprise.

Squarespace is much closer to WordPress.com than to self-hosted WordPress. One company provides the software, the hosting and the support, and you pay a monthly or annual plan.

Three ways to get a site, compared

			self-hosted
Who hosts it	Squarespace	WordPress.com	A host you choose
Entry price	Basic: £16 monthly; £12 a month on an annual plan	Personal: £8 a month, or £3 a month paid yearly	Software free; you pay for hosting and a domain
Free option	14-day trial	Free plan on a wordpress.com address, with ads	The software itself
Plugins	Squarespace's own blocks and integrations	Over 60,000 from its marketplace, on paid plans	Over 78,000 free in the official directory
Software updates	Squarespace runs the software	Handled for you	You or your host
Help	Squarespace's support team	Its own support team, on paid plans	Community forums and your host

Squarespace: squarespace.com/pricing, with listed prices excluding VAT according to its help centre. WordPress.com prices from wordpress.com/pricing, shown excluding taxes. WordPress.org details from wordpress.org and from WordPress.com's own guide to the difference between the two. All checked on 8 November 2026.

What Squarespace does well

The appeal of Squarespace is that there's nothing to look after. You don't pick a host, apply updates or vet plugins from strangers. On its current version, 7.1, every site has an identical feature set and the same design controls, so whichever template you start from, you can restyle it later instead of starting again.

Payments are built in from the cheapest plan, with card fees starting at 2.0% + 25p, and annual plans come with a year's domain registration. If you want a good-looking site and one company to deal with, that simplicity is worth paying for. Our Squarespace pricing guide goes through every plan.

What WordPress does well

WordPress's strength is freedom. The software will run on any host that meets its requirements, which WordPress.org lists as PHP 8.3 or later, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11 or later, and HTTPS support. If you fall out with your host, you move.

The official directories list more than 78,000 free plugins and thousands of free themes, so whatever your site needs to do, there's a good chance someone has already built it. Because so many developers work with WordPress, help is easy to find and no single supplier has you over a barrel. Our guide to WordPress websites explains the ways to set one up.

The upkeep nobody mentions

Self-hosted WordPress hands you the keys and the chores. WordPress.com's own comparison says that on a self-hosted site, security depends on your host and hosting package, and you handle much of the maintenance yourself. In practice that means keeping WordPress, your theme and every plugin up to date, taking backups and fixing whatever an update breaks. There's no dedicated support line either, just the community forums and your host.

WordPress.com takes most of that away; it says updates, backups and SSL are handled automatically. Plugins are available from the Personal plan up, while real-time backups and developer access over SFTP and SSH come with Business, at £32 a month or £20 a month paid yearly.

Squarespace sits at the no-maintenance end: you never update anything yourself. If you're weighing up the time a self-hosted site takes, our guide to website maintenance sets out what's involved.

Moving between them

Squarespace's export tool produces a WordPress-format .xml file, which makes WordPress the natural place to go if you leave. What comes across is limited to layout pages, a single blog (posts, plus up to 1,000 comments on each) and basic text and image content. Commerce pages, most other page types, your design settings and any custom CSS are left out, so those need rebuilding.

On the WordPress side, WordPress.com's guide says both its hosted plans and self-hosted WordPress let you keep ownership of your content and move it if you choose.

If you want WordPress without running it

There's a middle route between running WordPress yourself and building on a WordPress.com plan. ContractorUK Websites builds a WordPress site for UK businesses from a few lines about what you do, with hosting, https and the Companies House footer included, and you edit it by asking in plain English. Your first build is free for 7 days, then £49 a month including VAT. We've compared it with WordPress.com in ContractorUK vs WordPress.com.

Which to choose

Choose Squarespace if you want one company to handle everything, you value design over flexibility, and you won't need much beyond pages, a blog and simple selling.

Choose WordPress.com if you want WordPress's plugins and themes without managing a server. Choose self-hosted WordPress if you, or someone you pay, are comfortable running software and want full control over where the site lives.

And if building anything sounds like a chore, that's the gap a done-for-you service fills.

Squarespace and WordPress are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to compare products. This page isn't endorsed by Squarespace, Automattic or the WordPress Foundation.