Approval for Squarespace plunge

[kha0s]

I've been hearing very nice things about Squarespace for while now. It seemed the perfect solution for a bunch of corporate "about us" websites I've been commissioned to design. Not wanting to make a rash decision about it, decided to take a couple days to delve deeper into the matter. It soon became clear that all potential alternatives fall into one of the following two categories: "Content Management Systems" and "Website Creation Tools". Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla emerged as the leading players of the former, with Weebly and Jimdo assuming a similar role for the later. Unlike Squarespace, all the aforementioned contestants can be implemented for free. Because Squarespace overshadows the competition in all other datapoints, seemed wise to take the "it's free!" advantage with a grain of salt.

The most fierce competition clearly comes from Wordpress. Despite having bumped into a couple sporadic reports of users that are leaving Squarespace to go to Wordpress, the overwhelming majority seemed to be taking the reverse route. It doesn't take a master's degree on web trends to realize that Squarespace is gaining momentum by the day. The teasing rumors about Version 6 coming out soon and the speculation about an E-commerce "in-house" solution on the horizon make the whole thing even more bewitching.

Since we're talking about an all-in-one "hosting + design" solution, my budget comfortably covers the Advanced price plan. I've weighed the pros and cons very carefully and, to be totally honest, can't really envision being swayed away from Squarespace at this point. Suppose I'm just looking for some positive reinforcement before taking the plunge. Would love to hear your thoughts about it though. Don't be shy and give it to me straight if you believe my reasoning is flawed.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jtara]

Sounds like a shill for Squarespace.

Especially, considering you made exactly the same post, with the same grammar error ("I've been hearing very nice things about Squarespace for while now") in at least two other forums (AvsForum and forums.apple.com).

 

[kha0s]

Ouch! You've just succeed in hurting my feelings mate.

Must confess that first sentence did sound funny since the very beginning... Regarding the "shill" part, if you expand your search criteria beyond today's date, you'll see I'm a proud regular on all those forums. It's not the first time I've cross-checked the same question across all three and it certainly won't be the last.

Thanks for the grammar correction though.


Cheers!

 

[jlbraaten]

Hi khaOs,
I'll be frank that I am a bit of a Squarespace fan boy. In fact, I wrote the ecommerce post you referenced along with a ton of other blog posts on my experience with Squarespace.

Allow me to positively reinforce you. I've been with them for a year and a half and they've made my web publishing experience great. I'm a marketer, not a designer or a programmer, so Squarespace provides me the tools I need to quickly and easily build the things I need on the web.

And now for the icing on the cake: are you aware that Squarespace accepted $38.5 Million last summer from Accel Partners (i.e., VC firm that backed Facebook) and Index Ventures (VC firm that backed Skype)? Squarespace was profitable even before the investment (since day one, actually), so there is much speculation that Squarespace is about to make a huge play in the web publishing space with the support of two of the biggest names in tech VC.

Call me a shill. Call me an consumer advocate. Call me what you will. I'm simply a happy and outspoken customer