Why Squarespace Websites Fall Short

Why Squarespace Websites Fall Short (Even Though They Look So Good)

There’s no denying it – Squarespace websites are pretty.

They’re clean, fluid and stylish straight out of the box. The modern layouts, smooth scrolling effects, and clever use of white space give the impression of a professionally designed site even when they’re built from templates.

As a web designer, I get it. I’ve admired these visual effects – especially the way images fade in, and how fonts glide and curve across pages, and how easy it is to make something look instantly polished.

But beneath all that visual appeal lies a reality most business owners don’t realise until much later: Squarespace’s beauty comes at the cost of performance and control.

And when a business needs more than a digital brochure – if it needs a fast, findable and flexible website that grows with your goals – you’ll quickly run into limitations.

So if a business owner comes with a request to me to build them a Squarespace site, I wouldn’t say yes. What I would do, is explain why that shouldn’t be their choice of website builder, and help them to understand that performance over visual trends will always be better.

Here are the three biggest issues I’ve experienced time and time again, when clients with existing Squarespace sites come to me for help.

1. Slow Page Speed

Squarespace sites are often slower to load than those built on WordPress or Wix. That’s because the platform uses a shared hosting environment. This means your site runs on the same server setup as thousands of others, with limited optimisation options.

You can’t add speed-enhancing plugins, compress images beyond their defaults, or fine-tune caching and CDN settings. It’s all locked behind the platform’s walls.

Even the most beautiful website loses its shine if visitors leave before it loads. Google research shows that users start dropping off after just three seconds on a site that loads slowly, and site speed directly affects your SEO ranking.

By contrast:

• WordPress lets you choose your own host, optimise images, and install performance plugins.

• Wix has improved dramatically, with automatic image compression and built-in caching.

Squarespace? It looks good, but moves slow.

2. Restricted Access to Technical Controls

Squarespace is built for simplicity. It’s why it’s been popular with “designers” who value visual over performance, or lack in website development awareness. This simplicity limits your ability to fine-tune important SEO and performance settings.

It also flags to us that your designer, may not have digital marketing skills.

If you want to adjust or customise technical settings like:

• Custom schema markup (This helps search engines understand what your content is (product, event, article, review) and display it attractively in results with rich snippets that boost click-through rates).

• The robots.txt file (This tells search engines which pages to crawl and which to skip. Managing this ensures only your best, customer-facing pages appear in search results).

• XML sitemaps (This acts as a road map to help Google find and index your pages faster especially new content and blog posts).

• Canonical tags (Prevents duplicate content issues by telling Google which version of a page is the “official” one).

These small but powerful tools make a big difference in how your site performs in search engines.

Squarespace automatically creates them for you – but doesn’t let you edit or refine them. That means your SEO strategy is stuck at the beginner level, no matter how strong your content is.

By contrast:

• WordPress gives you full control with plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math.

• Wix provides structured data options, meta tag editing, and sitemap controls right in the dashboard.

Squarespace’s “locked box” approach is great for beginners, but frustrating for anyone ready to grow.

3. Limited Technical SEO Capabilities

Squarespace offers a handful of SEO basics — like editing page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. That’s fine for getting started, but advanced SEO needs more.

Here’s how Squarespace compares with Wix and WordPress when it comes to SEO tools and flexibility:

Squarespace covers the essentials, but it doesn’t scale well when your marketing strategy becomes more data-driven. WordPress and Wix both provide the depth and adaptability needed for businesses that care about long-term SEO results.

Squarespace wins on style, but WordPress and Wix win on substance.

If you’re running a small creative business or a simple online portfolio, Squarespace can be a great start. But when you’re ready to grow — to rank higher, attract more customers, and build a site that performs as well as it looks — you’ll need a platform that gives you freedom, flexibility, and room to evolve.

Curious about the speed of your website? Run a check on your website via Google PageSpeed Insights. It will also give you a list of improvements to make across your site to help the users experience.

We’re updating several areas of our own site, and using this checking system to help keep us on top of our game too.

🌊 Ready to Build a Website That Performs Beautifully?

At Social Ocean, we create websites that are just as visually stunning as they are technically strong. Whether you’re ready to move on from Squarespace or want to optimise your existing site, we can help you design a platform that works harder for your business – fast, flexible, and built to be found online.

👉 Let’s chat about your next website. If you’re ready to move your website to a more powerful platform, our Design services might provide the solution.