Strikingly vs. Squarespace: Best Business Website Builder Review

As a business owner, you make a number of decisions when building a successful website. One of the first involves determining what type of website builder to use.

Strikingly, one of our best-reviewed builders, and Squarespace, one of the most popular options around, represent two serious options for small business owners. This review provides a side-by-side comparison of these business website builders, including the pros and cons of each, their ease-of-use and more. By the end of this in-depth review, you’ll be able to decide which tool will work best for your business.

Looking to compare other website builders? Check out our Best Website Builder review.

Strikingly vs. Squarespace

For a small business owner, choosing the best platform to build your website is essential. If you’re trying to decide between Strikingly vs. Squarespace, you’ll need to consider the ease of use of each, as well as the time you have available to create a website.

Strikingly

Ease of Use

The Strikingly website builder was designed with ease of use in mind. Strikingly is one of the rare website builders that does not ask users a series of questions about their business to get started. All you have to do is just type in your name, email, and create a password to get started for free. 

Most Strikingly templates have the necessary sections, social icons, and other useful features that make placing and filling in content a simple process. You’ll see real-time changes for any elements you add to your website, and those changes are most often automatically saved. 

The only downside is that the Strikingly website builder is aimed toward creating single-page websites. This means that most templates are one long page, with a navigation menu at the top that can allow visitors to skip down to certain sections. Even though this can seem straightforward, it can actually hinder the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site. However, Strikingly provides ways to work around this and improve your site’s rankings.

Pricing

Strikingly offers three main paid plans, along with a free Strikingly plan. Whereas it is not recommended to permanently use Strkingly’s Free plan, there’s still quite a bit offered to get a solid feel of what this website builder can do. 

Please note the prices listed are based on an annual subscription — depending on how many years you subscribe to Strikingly, this price may go down. Monthly subscriptions will most likely be higher.

Learn more about Strikingly and discover which package will best suit your business.

Pros

• Strikingly is easy to use and manage, with a true drag-and-drop functionality that doesn’t require any coding skills.
• Strikingly offers incredibly affordable plans with quite a lot packed in, even at lower pricing tiers.
• Users can easily swap out templates, allowing for a greater sense of control.
• Strikingly’s Happiness Officers are quick to respond and do well with troubleshooting minor issues.
• There are several ways to save or undo your work within the Strikingly website builder, making creating your site a breeze.

Cons

• Strikingly comes up short in the SEO department. The bulk of templates offered from Strikingly are single-page layouts, and those are difficult to rank well in searches.
• To access some features necessary for a professional website, users must upgrade to the more expensive Strikingly Pro plan.
• The Strikingly website builder is only available in ten languages, and the only way to access this feature is with a Pro plan.

Ecommerce

Strikingly offers ecommerce functionality at any plan level, even its free plan. How many products you can sell will vary depending on which pricing plan you choose. To see our full analysis of what Strikingly has to offer read our Strikingly Website Builder Review.

Strikingly allows its users to connect to popular payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal. However, unless you have a Strikingly VIP plan, there will be a transaction fee for every purchase made on your website.

With the Strikingly Pro plan, there is a feature that allows your customers to leave reviews on your products. This useful tool aids in collecting important feedback, but also gives you control in which reviews to display on your website. 

Also with a Strikingly Pro plan, you can offer your customers coupons and discount codes, another great way to ensure an amazing user experience. There’s even ways to create membership accounts, and offer your subscribers specific specials other customers can’t get, creating an exclusive deal for your users.

Plus, with Strikingly’s flexible order management, you can manage your store on-the-go. The only major drawback to Strikingly’s ecommerce offerings is the lack of any abandoned cart recovery. However, for the price points, its ecommerce capabilities are hefty and should support most any small online business.

Templates and Themes

Strikingly offers users over 60 templates that can fit a wide range of businesses, from online stores to local brick-and-mortars. It may seem like a small number of templates, but the customization capabilities of the Strikingly website builder allow you to truly make any template your own. Plus, Strikingly makes it incredibly easy to swap out your old template for a new one, transferring all your hard work with ease.

Strikingly templates work with what it refers to as “sections.” These sections are what make it easy to customize your website with content curated to your business’s needs. The one catch with Strikingly templates is that some of these necessary sections are only available with a higher-priced plan.

Apps and Plugins

Currently, the app store for Strikingly is limited, with only 17 apps available. However, what is available is incredibly practical and will help improve the functionality of almost any business website.

Included apps range from ways to embed podcasts or soundtracks via Soundcloud, create events with Eventbrite, make surveys with Google Forms, and more. Some apps are only accessible with a Strikingly Pro plan, these include more advanced functions like hypertext markup language  (HTML) capabilities, full ecommerce functionality, and access to Mailchimp for email campaigns.

Find the right Strikingly plan for you by reading our Strikingly Website Builder Review. Then, when you're ready to begin building your business site, use our How to Make a Strikingly Website article to get started.

Squarespace

Ease of Use

Known for its templates and appealing aesthetic, Squarespace also makes the sign-up and launch process fairly easy. Like most website builders, Squarespace will have you answer several questions to help find the right template for you. Even if you can’t find the perfect fit, Squarespace makes it simple to customize any template to match what you need.

The Squarespace website builder does include a ton of functionality in all of its templates. However, finding these useful bits can prove challenging. Many of these features have complicated routes to access them, but Squarespace support is always available to help you find what you need.

Overall, getting your site up and running and looking the way you’d like is fairly painless with Squarespace. The whole process may take just a bit more time, luckily its free trial provides a great chance to get the hang of the builder before committing. 

Pricing

Unlike Strikingly, Squarespace does not offer any free plans, and you must upgrade before the end of your 14-day free trial to save any work you’ve already put into your site. Squarespace offers four types of plans, geared to suit most any small business need.

For an in-depth discussion of what Squarespace has to offer, check out our Squarespace Pricing and Plans guide.

Pros

• Squarespace has access to useful SEO at any plan tier, and offers email campaigns and social media cross-promotional features with higher-paid plans.
• Squarespace templates are completely customizable, and there’s always the option to hire a Squarespace designer should you need assistance.
• The Squarespace website builder has a helpful “undo” button, as well as ways to save or discard your work as you build your site.
• The ecommerce functionality offered is versatile, allowing for both online and in-person sales.
• Squarespace allows you to add restaurant menus, booking, and scheduling features to help your business run smoothly. Although these features do come at a price, they are quite popular.

Cons

• Having multiple versions of Squarespace available can lead to confusion, especially when searching for ways to troubleshoot problems specific to the version of Squarespace you’re using.
• It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by all of the comprehensive options Squarespace includes, especially when advanced features are buried within the templates.
• There’s no free option available, so after 14 days you must either pay for Squarespace to host your website or lose any work you’ve made so far.

Ecommerce

Squarespace offers several extensive ecommerce options at higher-priced plans. To see our full review of what the Squarespace website builder has to offer, read our Squarespace Review.

The bulk of what Squarespace has available for ecommerce tools is its fully integrated ecommerce functionality. This means any shop you set up on Squarespace will include order, inventory, and product catalog management, as well as payment tools, and shipping tools. Overall, this is a great all-in-one feature.

Squarespace also allows you to connect to larger marketplaces like Amazon, or sync your restaurant with OpenTable. At higher plan levels, Squarespace even allows you to sell in person and online via Square. There’s also ways to tag your products on social media and offer customers membership accounts.

Want to learn about other ecommerce options? Check out our Best Ecommerce Platforms of 2024 review and find the best service for your business.

Templates and Themes

Squarespace has made a name for itself by advertising and offering some of the most appealing templates out there. Squarespace will suggest templates based on what type of business you run and all Squarespace templates come with their own demo pages full of mock content. Altering, renaming, and adding content unique to you and your brand is fairly easy. 

It is important to note that the Squarespace website builder has since undergone an update. In Squarespace 7.0, different templates are capable of doing different things. With the newer Squarespace 7.1, this has been restructured. Now just one template is offered that you can customize with different fonts and images as your needs change. As limiting as this might feel, this update has made it easier to add extra features. You can now connect your site to Amazon, OpenTable, and beyond — for a price. However, it no longer lets you swap out templates, meaning you just have the one to work with forever.

Apps and Plugins

Squarespace offers close to 30 extensions, which are all created and handled by third parties. These range from shipping and tax services to the more traditional email collecting and expanded analytics. A major downside to these extensions is Squarespace won’t offer direct support for any issues that may arise, as they are all handled through outside parties. Whereas Squarespace may not charge you to use these extensions, they may come at a cost from its providers.  

Connecting extensions to your site can also prove to be difficult, as Squarespace has added some unnecessary steps to the process. However, the ones available have been proven popular and useful.

Our Pick for Best Website Builder: Squarespace

While these two website builders are comparable when it comes to their offerings and capabilities, the Squarespace website builder has superior features for incredible prices.

On top of being exceptionally intuitive and easy to use, the true drag-and-drop functionality provided by Squarespace as well as its sleek design capabilities influenced our decision.

Additional Resources

How To Build a Website

Best Website Builders 2024

Squarespace Website Builder Review