How much does a Squarespace website cost to run in 2023?
As a web design agency that specialises in Squarespace, we understand the importance of budgeting and cost when it comes to building and running a website. In this blog post, we will break down the costs associated with running a Squarespace website in 2023, making sure that you know exactly what you should be paying once your new website is ready to launch.
As part of the Tenji Digital process, these prices are always outlined in our website proposal, way before any work starts, providing complete clarity to our customers.
The Build Cost
This is, unsurprisingly, the question I get asked the most. “How much does a website cost?”. Of course, it’s a very valid question, but the cost varies a huge amount based on requirements. For example, a one-page website would be much less expensive than an online store with 60 different products. Would images be supplied? Would copy be supplied? Is the domain name already purchased? Is professional email required? Any third-party integrations? These are just some of the questions asked as part of our discovery phase and will influence the cost.
A basic website, built by Tenji Digital, which consists of a Homepage, About, Services, and Contact, as an example, to go from discovery to launch will start from £700.
Mandatory Ongoing Costs
There are two mandatory ongoing costs required for a Squarespace website to get your business online. These expenses are for hosting and your domain name.
Hosting
Hosting is the most important expense for your website when it’s built and, for the privilege, it will be your most expensive ongoing cost for your website. You pay for hosting on Squarespace via a subscription. This subscription, beyond hosting your site, enables you to use features and tools that help maintain your website too.
Now’s a good time to mention that Tenji Digital is a Squarespace Circle Member. This enables us to pass on a 20% discount to our customers for the first year of any annual subscription. Squarespace has 4 subscription plans to choose from, with two targeted at businesses, whilst the remaining two are targeted at online stores (commerce). With all plans, we always suggest taking the annual subscription, if you’re in a position to do so because you can save up to 30% over the course of a year. The only time we’d ever advise anyone to take the monthly plan is if the website is only temporary, such as a landing page or an experimental project. The subscription plans available are:
Personal Plan:
Price: £16.00 per month | £144.00 per year (1st year £115.20 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Ideal for: Small businesses, personal blogs, portfolios, or basic informational websites.
Key features: Custom domain, SSL security, unlimited bandwidth.
Squarespace claims the Business Plan below to be their most popular. However, for the small to medium businesses we build websites for, the Personal Plan is often the best fit.
Business Plan:
Price: £24.00 per month | £204 per year (1st year £163.20 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Ideal for: Medium businesses, or any business that may sell some products where sales are not the primary business goal.
Key features: All features of the Personal Plan plus advanced website analytics, professional email accounts, promotional pop-ups, and basic e-commerce functionality.
Although there are specific commerce plans, this plan does allow commerce functionality. This can be extremely useful if selling products isn’t your main business objective. For example, this may include a spa selling gift cards, a sports team selling merchandise or a personal trainer selling an eBook. There’s a 3% fee on each product sale on this plan.
Basic Commerce Plan:
Price: £28.00 per month | £276.00 per year (1st year £220.80 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Ideal for: Businesses looking to sell products online as their primary objective.
Key features: All features of the Business Plan plus fully integrated e-commerce features, including the ability to sell unlimited products, accept donations, and offer customer accounts to track order history, for example.
Advanced Commerce Plan:
Price: £43.00 per month | £420.00 per year (1st year £336.00 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Ideal for: Growing businesses with more extensive e-commerce needs.
Key features: All features of the Basic Commerce Plan plus advanced e-commerce analytics, abandoned cart recovery, flexible discounts, and advanced shipping options.
Domain name
The other mandatory ongoing cost for your new Squarespace website is the domain name. This is what your customers will type in to access your website, also known as a URL, e.g.:- tenjidigital.co.uk. You have lots of options with domain names. You can go out and buy every extension in the world, .com, .co.uk, .org, .biz and even start buying domain names for misspellings of your business, such as tenjodigital.co.uk. If you’re planning to take this approach, we recommend using GoDaddy, but if you want to keep it simple with a single domain for a website on Squarespace, the simplest option is to buy your domain name directly through Squarespace. It may be cheaper to buy elsewhere, but connecting domain names from lesser-known providers can be quite fiddly if you’re not comfortable with changing DNS records. To give you some idea of the price, if we use our demo website, Blackstone & Greyson LLP as an example and we wanted the domain name, blackstonegreysonllp.co.uk, it would be £16.00 per year. Please note that the price may vary depending on the extension and the availability.
With your new website built, the Personal Plan decided upon and a Squarespace domain name purchased - the minimum we need to get your website up and running - we’re at an approximate cost of just under £900.00.
Optional Ongoing Costs
Let’s explore some of the other costs that can be associated with running a Squarespace website. The honest answer is that the list is endless when considering additional services such as advanced SEO, content creation, copywriting, graphic design, user testing, additional design services, etc. For this section though, we’ll zone in on the key, native integrations which Squarespace offers. Let’s jump in:
Mailing campaigns
Introducing email campaign capability into Squarespace was a huge move. We had many clients in the early years who bemoaned collecting email addresses on a Squarespace site and having to direct them to the likes of Mailchimp or export them out to a CSV file. With any Squarespace Plan, we covered above, you can build up a mailing list, for free, from your website and store the details within Squarespace. You can carry on doing this at no cost until you’re ready to send your first email campaign. There are four plans available with the option to pay monthly, or save by paying annually:
Campaign Starter:
Price: £6.00 per month | £48.00 per year (1st year £38.40 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Key features: 3 campaigns per month limit. 500 email limit per month.
Campaigns Core:
Price: £11.00 per month | £96.00 per year (1st year £76.80 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Key features: 5 campaigns per month limit. 5,000 email limit per month. Access to automated campaigns. No Squarespace branding.
Campaigns Pro:
Price: £27.00 per month | £228.00 per year (1st year £182.40 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Key features: 20 campaigns per month limit. 50,000 email limit per month. Access to automated campaigns. No Squarespace branding.
Campaigns Max:
Price: £53.00 per month | £456.00 per year (1st year £364.80 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Key features: Unlimited campaigns per month limit. 250,000 email limit per month. Access to automated campaigns. No Squarespace branding.
Scheduling
Next up is our personal favourite - Acuity Scheduling. Acuity Scheduling was an independent business that was acquired by Squarespace in 2019. This feature enables online booking for your Squarespace website. If you’re a new business that takes appointment bookings and doesn’t already have an existing booking platform that you love, you have to consider Acuity Scheduling. It will connect with your main calendar (multiple, if required), provide email notifications and reminders to your customers, you can manage bookings over multiple sites for multiple staff members and it looks great embedded into your website. The best part about Acuity Scheduling though, is that you have the option to take payment on your Squarespace website, ahead of your appointment. There are 3 plans to choose from:
Emerging Plan:
Price: £12.00 per month | £144.00 per year (1st year £105.60 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Key features: 1 calendar (staff, location or resource), external calendar synchronisation, payments, automatic reminder emails, timezone conversion for clients
Growing Plan:
Price: £22.00 per month | £264.00 per year (1st year £192.00 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Key features: Same as Emerging Plan, but up to 6 calendars. Plus, optional customer SMS/Text reminders, memberships, subscriptions, gift vouchers or packaged offerings
Powerhouse Plan:
Price: £40.00 per month | £480.00 per year (1st year £355.20 with Tenji Digital Circle discount)
Key features: Same as Growing Plan, but up to 36 calendars. Plus, the removal of Squarespace branding and the option for custom branding using CSS.
Membership Areas
Onto the final of the in-house Squarespace offerings. We turn our attention to the Members Area. This is one of the most versatile features. I’ve seen this used for training courses, confidential document storage, member-specific/VIP content, staff-only content, pay-walled content, etc. Essentially, it’s an area that can be populated with any type of Squarespace page and requires an account with login details to access. Access can be provided to your customer for free, on a subscription basis or for a one-off fixed amount. There are 3 plans to consider here:
Starter:
Price: £8.00 per month | £96 per year
Key features: 1 member area. 7% transaction fee. 5 hours of video storage. Unlimited members. No Squarespace branding. Offer discounts and promotions.
Core:
Price: £16.00 per month | £192.00 per year
Key features: Same as Starter, but up to 3 member areas. 4% transaction fee. 20 hours of video storage.
Pro:
Price: £32.00 per month | £384.00 per year
Key features: Same as Core, but up to 10 member areas. 1% transaction fee. 50 hours of video storage.
To clarify, you can have multiple pages within ONE member area.
Something else to consider
We also offer the TenjiConnect Subscription Plan. This is a Squarespace-centric aftercare subscription offered to all Tenji Digital. For a small monthly fee, you can enjoy small website changes, image replacements, blog post uploads at no extra cost, loyalty discounts on larger updates and future projects, website analytics, two audits per year, a free newsletter and more. You can find more information at the bottom of this page. This service is open to anyone with a Squarespace website whether it was built by you, someone else, or Tenji Digital in the past. The cost of the subscription depends on requirements, so get in touch to get a quote.
Summary
The ongoing costs of your website come down to your requirements and the needs of your business and, ultimately, your customers. Many of these Squarespace features include free trials, so you can try them before you buy.
To bring it all together, for a basic website, with just the essentials, you’ll only be looking at £160 per year to keep your website online. At the other extreme, if you had everything on the most expensive plan and a very large online store sending mailing campaigns, online booking and a busy members area, you would be looking at just over £1,750 per year. One way I like to look at this is that a website will be the cheapest “employee” you ever invest in, one who is willing to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
If you want to know any more information or want to add any of these features to your website, you’re welcome to send us a message via our contact form.
