Why I Choose Squarespace Instead Of WordPress For Blogging

Feb 25

Feb 25 Why I Choose Squarespace Instead Of WordPress For Blogging

When starting any blog, you will undoubtedly need to ask yourself what blogging platform you should use to get your ideas out there to the wider world. Think of it as finding the right canvas to express yourself. You have to make sure the canvas fits with your present and future goals for your blog.

While WordPress has had the mindshare when it comes to blogging for almost a decade now, they are also alot of alternatives out there recently such as Ghost, Tumblr, Medium and Silvrback. For my own blog here I've chosen to use Squarespace.

Sure you sacrifice the flexibility and potential customizability of a WordPress self hosted installation, but at least in my case that is more than compensated for by not have to worry about problems with hosting providers, plugin conflicts or security breaches that invariably come with hosting WordPress sites over several years which I have done. There's a bit of a price premium with choosing Sqaurespace for your blog compared to a bog standard host for WordPress, but I think you get what you pay for.

No one can deny either that the Squarespace themes while limited in number are very top notch in design and customizable just enough for the needs of most average users and bloggers. A similarly well designed theme for WordPress would likely be be more in the range of $40-$50.

Maybe not the best analogy, but one that works for me is in the PC v Mac debate (customizability vs reliability), as in the added flexibility of WordPress comes with much added complexity and potential for things to go wrong. In a bit of unrelated note, I'm planning my next computer to be a Mac for the first time (just getting tried of wrestling with Windows and willing now to take a bit of leap of faith with Apple, just as I did with making the move from WordPress to Squarespace). Another more technical analogy one could make is that self-hosted Wordpress is an example of a PaaS (Platform As A Service), while Sqaurespace is more along the lines of SaaS (Software as a Service).

Anyway back to the original debate, before choosing either CMS, you must have a clear vision for how your blog or website will be. What features and layout will it need upon launch and if you need scope for expansion of those features at a later date. While Squarespace can handle most of what you need in a web publishing tool (including e-commerce), if you have more demanding or esoteric requirements (such as starting a membership based site), then you will need to look into other options such as WordPress or even more advanced options such as Drupal.

If however your requirements can be handled by what Sqaurespace has to offer, then I really think's the best choice by eliminating the usual headaches of hosting a web site, and allowing you to get on with the business of content creation.

Here are some more online resources about this topic that you can make your own mind up about on this topic.