WordPress or Squarespace? How we choose, and when we tell clients to use the cheaper one

TwoFifths Design, a website design and development studio in Edinburgh, builds on both WordPress and Squarespace 7.1. We have been a Squarespace Circle partner since 2018, and we still tell clients to use WordPress when the job calls for it. This is how that decision actually gets made, with two of our own projects as worked examples, and what each platform costs to run once the invoice is paid.

The question that actually decides it

Most platform comparisons are feature tables. They are not much use, because almost every feature exists on both platforms if you are willing to pay for it. The question that decides it is about people rather than software.

Who is going to change this website in eighteen months, and what will they need to change?

If the answer is a communications officer adding a news post, swapping a photograph and editing a page of copy, that is Squarespace. If the answer is a system that has to ingest data, relate records to each other and stay correct as it grows, that is WordPress.

The mistake we see most often is an organisation buying a content management system to solve a data problem, or commissioning a bespoke build to solve a publishing problem. Both are expensive, in different directions.

When the answer is WordPress

We designed and built the Preventable Deaths Tracker for Dr Georgia Richards. Coroners' Prevention of Future Deaths reports existed only as scattered PDFs. There was no central database, no way to filter by area, role or year, and no clear view of who had replied within the legal window.

That is not a website problem. It is a data problem wearing a website.

The work meant mapping a data model for reports and responses, normalising people, places and organisations, automating collection from source pages and storing the results in a relational schema. Lists and cards had to scale to thousands of entries. Users needed to save filters, re-run them and export datasets.

No template does that. The moment a project needs its own database schema, the platform question has already answered itself.

When the answer is Squarespace

This is where it gets less obvious, because people assume anything custom means WordPress.

Binn Group is Scotland's leading recycling and resource management company, family run, with more than 25 years of expertise and over 170 employees. We built their skip hire booking journey on Squarespace 7.1, including postcode matching that always returns a usable result, and an explanation of skip sizes for people hiring one for the first time. That is genuinely custom work, and it sits on a template platform quite happily.

The reason it was the right call is the last thing we shipped, not the first. The widget went out with a written editing guide, so the Binn team can update sizes, pricing and coverage themselves without coming back to us for routine changes.

Fluid Engine has closed a lot of the gap that used to exist in 7.1. Before scoping anything custom, it is worth checking what Squarespace now does natively, because that list gets longer every quarter.

What each one costs in year two and year three

Build cost is the number everyone asks about. Running cost is the number that decides whether a client is still happy three years later, and it rarely appears in a proposal.

With Squarespace you get one subscription. Hosting, SSL, security patching and platform updates are included, and there is nothing to maintain. The cost is predictable and easy to budget for. The trade is that you live within what the platform allows.

With WordPress, hosting is separate, and cheap hosting is the most expensive decision in web design. Plugin licences renew annually. Core, theme and plugin updates need somebody responsible for applying them, and a site that has missed six months of security patches is not a website, it is a liability. Budget for that person, whether that is us on a retainer or someone in-house.

Neither is right or wrong. But an organisation with no technical staff choosing WordPress because it is more flexible is buying flexibility it will never use, and a maintenance obligation it cannot meet.

When we tell clients to spend less

Being certified in a platform creates an obvious incentive to recommend it. We work against that.

We have talked organisations out of custom builds they had already budgeted for, because what they actually needed was a clearer sitemap and better written pages. We have recommended the cheaper platform to clients who arrived asking for the expensive one. Occasionally we have said the existing site is fine and the money would do more good elsewhere.

This is not generosity. A client who spends the right amount on the right thing comes back, and brings other people with them. A client who overspends on the wrong thing tells a different story to the same people.

Sitemap first, cost second

There is one more reason we do not answer the platform question on a first call. We agree the sitemap before anyone talks about money.

A quote given before the structure is known is a guess, and guesses get revised upwards. Once the sitemap is signed off, the platform choice usually makes itself, because you can see how many templates you need, how many one-off pages, and how much of it is really data rather than pages. Then the cost is fixed. £65 per hour ex VAT, invoiced on completion, 30 day terms, no deposit.

Not sure which one your project needs? Send us the rough shape of it and we will tell you honestly, including if the answer is neither.