So, what does a Squarespace site cost?
Anywhere from £450-£25,000($600-$34,000). Yes, a huge variation in price. Remember, a high-quality website isn’t just a website.
What affects pricing?
- Seo - Search engine optimisation can drive traffic to your site. It’s another cost to consider.
- Pages - A 4-page site will cost less than a 45-page site.
- Good design - Some agencies have better design skills.
- Selling products - Want to sell products? You’ll need to pay more.
- Swapping from another platform - Moving your site from, say, WordPress, you will need to allow extra budget for that.
- Copywriting - The words on the page are the most critical part of any website. To have them persuasive and selling more costs more.
- Additionally - Brand/logo, Funnels, PayPer Click setup, marketing, newsletter integration? Anything custom will cost more.
Looking for a cheap Squarespace designer?
You really want a Squarespace site, and let’s say you are on a very low budget of, say, $400 - $1000; what do you do?
You have three options -
1. You do it yourself - If you have a lot of time on your hands, then it is possible to build the site yourself. Squarespace is intuitive to learn and can be picked up quite quickly. Millions of small businesses have built their own sites with Squarespace. The problem is that it will probably look like many other websites, and you will need a lot of time to research how you do certain things. An experienced Squarespace designer brings a wealth of knowledge to the table and can do things in minutes that might take hours for you to do.
2. Hire a low-cost designer either with no previous experience of building a website or only built 1 or 2 sites. Ok, so you are not too keen on building your own site within Squarespace? Well, you can hunt on job boards such as Upwork and Fiver. You can pick up students and newbie web designers there, looking for their first few paying web design projects. The issue is experience and know-how; it could well take these guys as long as you to find out how to do something in Squarespace. They will have little to no knowledge of building an easy-to-use, successful website. If you are looking to just get a website up there with a little degree of quality and not get the best results out of it, then this route is an option.
3. The third option is to buy a Squarespace template and then modify it yourself. That way, you get something a lot less common than a standard Squarespace template, and the designer of that template will likely help you with edits.
Compare Apples to Apples
A website is just a website, right? Not really. A good website will attract high-quality leads from a specific target market. A skilled Squarespace designer will have developed a strategy with you to ensure your website's success. They have the experience of guiding many other businesses forward and getting a great return on investment. It’s one thing to have a website, and it’s one thing to have a website that is a lead-generating machine.
What about Wix, WordPress, Framer and Webflow?
There are other options apart from Squarespace; in fact, many different options are available. There are literally hundreds if not thousands, of platforms you can build on. Squarespace is one of the best for a small website of 10-20 pages, and you want customisation of all those pages. WordPress is by far the most popular platform, powering over 46% of the market; it’s absolutely massive! WordPress is a great CMS, but there is a steeper learning curve to it, and prices are around about the same as Squarespace for a quality site.
What does Media Surgery charge?
Our prices start at £3000. Given we have over 21 years of experience, that’s a fair price.
Do you have any specific advice for a fellow Squarespace designer when pricing?
When starting off, don’t price what other experienced Squarespace designers are charging. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and web design isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. You need to work at it and develop your pricing as you build experience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting jobs on Fiver and Upwork when you start out.
Once you have that experience, don’t charge too little. “Price is what you pay, and quality is what you get” is a famous saying, and it’s quite right. Think of how many hours you have put into learning and think how long the client would take to do that himself. You will find that the majority of businesses don’t want anything to do with maintaining or building their own sites. They will happily get someone like you to do a good job and save them time and hassle. You need to value your skills and experience and not charge too little.