Squarespace Verdict (2026)

The scorecard

Why B−: Strong design and unusually plain refund rules, held back by a Basic plan that charges 2% on store sales and 7% on digital products, and refunds limited to new annual plans.

Overall is the weighted mean of the five rows, adjusted by a small slug-seeded offset so that brands never line up in a false staircase, and capped at 9.8. Full working on the Methodology page (v2.1).

Findings in brief

1. Basic lists at $19 a month on annual billing or $25 monthly; Core at $29 or $39; Plus at $49 or $65; Advanced at $99 or $139.
2. Basic adds a 2% fee on store sales and 7% on digital content and memberships; Core removes the store fee but keeps 5% on digital sales.
3. Only annual website plans cancelled within 14 days of purchase are refundable; monthly plans and every renewal are excluded, and a free domain’s cost is deducted.
4. Email support runs 24 hours a day; live chat is weekdays only, in English only, and there is no phone line.

What Squarespace sells

Squarespace is a New York company, taken private by the investment firm Permira in 2024, that sells an all-in-one website builder with hosting, templates and ecommerce included. Four website plans (Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced) trade monthly price against transaction fees and selling features. Around them sit Squarespace Domains, which absorbed Google Domains customers in 2023, Email Campaigns for newsletters, Acuity Scheduling for appointment booking, and Squarespace Payments. An AI website builder generates a starting layout from a few questions. Every site starts with a 14-day free trial that needs no card. The typical customer is a photographer, restaurant, consultant, studio or small shop that wants a good-looking site without a developer.

Product by product

5 items. Each chip is a per-product call and can differ from the brand verdict.

Basic plan CONSIDER

Lists at $19 a month on annual billing or $25 monthly. Basic allows two contributors, the full template range, built-in AI tools with a one-off allowance, a custom domain, and selling, but at a price: a 2% fee on online store sales and 7% on digital content and memberships, on top of card rates of 2.9% + 30¢. Google Workspace email is not included. It is a sensible plan for a portfolio or brochure site that sells nothing. Anyone planning to sell should start on Core, because the fees on Basic quickly cost more than the upgrade.

StrengthFull design tools at the lowest price

Weakness2% store and 7% digital sales fees on top of card rates

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Core plan BUY

Lists at $29 a month on annual billing or $39 monthly, and Squarespace labels it “Recommended”. It removes the store transaction fee, lowers the digital content fee to 5%, allows unlimited contributors, adds funnel analytics and API access, and includes a free Google Workspace account for the first year with an eligible domain. Automated tax and shipping services cost 0.15% per transaction, capped at $0.99. For a small business selling physical goods or services alongside a content site, this is the right plan, and the gap to Basic is quickly earned back.

StrengthNo store transaction fee and unlimited contributors

WeaknessStill charges 5% on digital products and memberships

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Plus and Advanced plans CONSIDER

Plus lists at $49 a month on annual billing ($65 monthly) and Advanced at $99 ($139 monthly). The main differences are fees and selling tools: digital content fees fall to 1% on Plus and 0% on Advanced, card rates drop to 2.7% and 2.5% plus 30¢, and Advanced adds reserved carts with timers and payment plans. They make sense for course sellers and membership sites where the digital fee is the biggest cost. For a shop selling physical products, Core already removes the store fee, so these tiers mostly buy lower card rates.

StrengthLowest digital-sales fees for courses and memberships

WeaknessLittle benefit over Core for physical-product shops

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Squarespace Domains CONSIDER

Domains include WHOIS privacy for eligible extensions, a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and DNSSEC, and auto-renew with a reminder 30 days before. An annual website plan includes one free domain for the first year; the refund policy page says such domains then renew at $20 a year. New registrations cancelled within five days are refunded automatically, while renewals and transferred-in domains are not. The domain storefront did not show per-domain prices when we read it, which makes comparison with cheaper registrars harder than it should be.

StrengthPrivacy, SSL and DNSSEC included by default

WeaknessRenewals are non-refundable and list prices are hard to find

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Acuity Scheduling BUY

Squarespace’s appointment-booking product, sold separately or connected to a site. Plans list at $16, $27 and $55 a month on annual billing (Starter, Standard and Premium), each with a seven-day trial that needs no card. Starter covers one calendar with payments through Stripe, Square or PayPal; Standard adds up to six calendars, text reminders and packages; Premium adds up to 36 calendars, an AI booking assistant and a HIPAA business associate agreement. For therapists, tutors and salons it is a mature, well-priced tool. The cheapest tier lacks text reminders.

StrengthMature booking tool with a HIPAA option on Premium

WeaknessText reminders need Standard; one calendar on Starter

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Terms, in one table

Values are short phrases taken from the brand's own pages at the time of the last update. "Not stated" means the desk could not find the policy in writing.

Caveats

• Monthly website plans and all renewal payments are never refunded, so a forgotten annual renewal is lost; renewal dates appear on invoices, and cancelling before then is the only protection.
• The Basic plan’s 2% store fee and 7% digital content fee are easy to miss on the pricing page and can exceed the cost of upgrading to Core.

The customer record

Squarespace sits at an “Average” 3.5 on Trustpilot, with reviews split almost evenly between five stars and one star, and the volume over the last year is high. Positive reviews often name a support agent who answered quickly and fixed a specific problem, and praise the templates and editor.

The one-star reviews cluster around three themes. The first is reaching a person: several describe being routed to an AI assistant that repeats itself. The second is domains, including nameserver changes that did not propagate for days. The third is site changes the owner did not expect, such as a layout altered after an update. Squarespace replies to nearly all negative reviews, typically within a day, though many replies simply point to the support form.

Compare against

Final call

Desk notes

• Read squarespace.com pricing (USD version via a text proxy) in October 2026 for plan prices, fees and trial terms.
• Read Squarespace help articles on website and domain refund policies and on contacting support in October 2026.
• Read the Acuity Scheduling plans page and the Squarespace Domains page in October 2026.

Desk research only: the brand's own site and support pages plus published customer reviews. Nothing was purchased or tested by this site. Scored under Methodology v2.1.