Why We Choose—and Recommend—Squarespace

Several people have asked me over the years why I choose Squarespace as our website platform of choice. So why Squarespace?

True, there are plenty of website platforms available, and certainly I don’t believe one option is right for every business. But for many of the service providers, creatives, authors, musicians, nonprofits, and small businesses we’ve worked with over the years, Squarespace offers a great balance of professional design, useful functionality, and long-term manageability.

It’s the platform I chose for my own business. I’ve worked with Squarespace for almost a decade now. We build several custom sites a month on it and are rolling out our template shop next month. 

Here’s why I continue to choose—and confidently recommend—Squarespace.

It creates a polished, professional foundation

Your website is often one of the first places someone interacts with your business. Before they contact you, schedule a consultation, purchase a product, book you for an event, or listen to your music, they may visit your site to check you out and decide whether they trust you and want to move forward.

We believe Squarespace provides a strong visual foundation for building a polished and credible online presence. Its responsive layouts, site-wide styling options, and flexible page sections make it possible to create a cohesive website that works across desktop and mobile devices.

That doesn’t mean every Squarespace site has to look like a template. Thoughtful customization by design professional can shape the page layouts, navigation, colors, typography, calls to action, and overall experience around the needs of an individual business.

When I design a website for a client, I’m not only thinking about how it looks. I’m considering what questions visitors will have, what information they need first, what establishes credibility, and what action we ultimately want them to take.

It’s manageable after the site launches

A website shouldn’t become something a business owner is afraid to touch. It also shouldn’t require a developer every time someone needs to update a paragraph, replace a photo, publish a blog post, or add a new service (in my opinion). 

Squarespace’s visual drag-and-drop editor makes routine changes relatively approachable. Depending on the site, clients can manage blog posts, events, products, team members, images, announcements, and basic page content without needing to know how to code.

Some clients still prefer to hand off all their updates—and we are happy to offer ongoing website support when they do. 

But I believe clients should own a website that is accessible and understandable, not one that leaves them completely dependent on someone else. That’s why after we do a custom website build or re-design, we hand the website off to the client. Depending on the client’s experience and comfort level, we can do in person or zoom trainings on how to make basic changes, or provide tutorials on basic updates so that clients are comfortable moving forward. 

Essential tools are built into one platform

Squarespace brings many of the tools a small business may need into one ecosystem, which is really convenient instead of having lots of different subscriptions and platforms for your marketing tools. These can include blogging, contact forms, email signup forms, appointment scheduling, ecommerce, invoicing, events, analytics, domains, hosting, and basic email marketing.

Not every business needs all of these features, especially at launch. The advantage is having room to add functionality as the business grows, and having it all under one roof.

An author may begin with a site featuring a book, biography, and speaking information, then add a media kit, email list, or online store later. A musician may eventually add tour dates, merchandise, new releases, or an electronic press kit. A service provider might expand the site with scheduling, resources, FAQs, or additional service pages.

In many cases, Squarespace allows a website to evolve without requiring an entirely new platform or a complicated collection of disconnected tools.

It reduces unnecessary technical maintenance

Every website requires some ongoing care. Content should be reviewed, links need to be checked, and the site should continue evolving alongside the business.

However, Squarespace handles much of the technical infrastructure behind the scenes, including hosting, security, and platform updates. It doesn’t rely as heavily on a collection of separate themes and plugins, which means there are generally fewer moving parts for a business owner to maintain.

For many of my clients, that simplicity is a major benefit. It’s a reason I see many clients migrate to Squarespace from other platforms. They need a professional website that supports their work—not another complicated system to manage.

It can support a strong SEO/AEO strategy

A common misconception is that Squarespace is inherently bad for search engine optimization. In reality, it includes many of the foundational tools needed to build an SEO-friendly website, including custom page titles and meta descriptions, clean URLs, image alt text, heading structures, automatic sitemaps, mobile-responsive layouts, redirects, and blogging capabilities.

It’s also possible to add custom structured data and other strategic enhancements when appropriate.

However, no platform creates an SEO or AEO strategy on its own. Search visibility depends heavily on how the site is structured, the quality and usefulness of its content, its technical setup, and how clearly the business communicates what it offers and who it serves.

Squarespace provides the tools. The strategy behind how those tools are used is what makes the difference.

It offers more flexibility than many people realize

Squarespace is sometimes described as a platform where you select a template and replace the sample content. It can be used that way—but that only scratches the surface of what’s possible.

A professionally designed Squarespace site can include customized layouts, strategic navigation, mobile-specific adjustments, custom CSS, code blocks, integrations, comparison charts, directories, resource libraries, ecommerce features, and other elements tailored to the business.

The goal isn’t to customize something simply because we can. It’s to use customization where it strengthens the brand, improves the visitor’s experience, or helps the website function more effectively.

When Squarespace may not be the right fit

As much as we value the platform, we don’t recommend Squarespace for every project.

A different solution may be more appropriate for a large or operationally complex ecommerce business, a highly customized web application, an advanced learning platform, a complex database, or a project requiring specialized backend workflows.

My goal isn’t to sell every business a Squarespace website. It’s to recommend a platform that fits what the business needs today, where it may be headed, and how the owner realistically wants to manage it.

Why it remains our platform of choice

My background isn’t only in website design. Before Merida Creative became my full-time work, I spent years in publicity, publishing, marketing, and brand strategy. That experience shapes how I approach every website I build.

I think about how the business is positioned, whether the message is clear, what establishes trust, and how the website fits into a broader marketing strategy.

Squarespace gives me the flexibility to bring those pieces together without creating unnecessary complexity for the people who will use the site after it launches. It allows me to build websites that are polished, strategic, and customized while giving business owners a platform they can confidently use as they grow.

That balance is why Squarespace remains my platform of choice—and why I continue to recommend it to so many of my clients.

Not sure whether Squarespace is right for your business? Merida Creative can help you evaluate your current website and determine whether you need a redesign, a platform migration, or a new website built from the ground up. Click here to send us an inquiry to start the conversation.