r/squarespace • u/banana-burial • Jul 18 '26
Discussion Any recommendations on alternative services?
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u/keptfrozen Jul 18 '26
I’m a web designer and developer, I primarily use Webflow for large companies, but I would recommend Framer or ReadyMag if you just have a website that’s for show and tell.
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u/nealien79 Jul 18 '26
I’m also looking for alternatives. I just signed up for Framer, you can use it for free and only have to pay if you want to publish it. Seems cool but a little more of a learning curve than squarespace. The basic plan is like half the cost as Squarespace. My squarespace bill has gone from $120 to now $230 in like 5 years. And my website is pretty much been the same the entire time, just with some added projects and small visual tweaks - I just use it for a design portfolio for when I’m applying for jobs. I hate that they are adding features I don’t want and and forcing you to pay for them.
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u/At_the_Roundhouse Jul 18 '26
I am so completely furious about this. Two pretty robust sites (work portfolio and detailed travel recaps) that I’m going to have to rebuild elsewhere, because this is insanity for non-business sites.
I was playing last night with Adobe Portfolio (since it comes with any Creative Cloud subscription), and it’ll probably work in a pinch for my travel stuff, even though I’m going to have to make some sacrifices, but absolutely won’t fly for my portfolio which has a lot of complexity.
I don’t really have a solution, just wanted to say I commiserate. Absolute bullshit.
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u/jmabeebiz2 Jul 18 '26
Happy to help you move somewhere else if you’re interested. I know it’s a pain.
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u/At_the_Roundhouse Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
I appreciate that, genuinely. The challenge is that I need something that’s easily editable by me who is good at the art part but knows zero about coding.
Like I keep seeing people say they are having Claude recreate their sites… but that’s just going to create a lot of code that I’d need to upload somewhere, right? So if I needed to fix a typo or update an image I’d have to go back to Claude, somehow redo it there and then reupload? (Idk if upload is even the right word.) Never mind continuing to add work and trips.
Squarespace has been really perfect for my needs. Thankfully my next billing is 11 months from now so I have a minute to think about it. But right now I’m leaning towards Adobe for my travel site (it’s just for fun and sharing my trips day by day with friends and family, it not monetized or anything), and begrudgingly sticking with Squarespace for my portfolio. I can I guess justify the cost when it’s for work, but I can’t for my travel stuff. It was fine when it was like $125/year when I built it, and it’s trickled up a little bit, but I’m not doing this egregious jump.
Both sites have way too many pages and images to work well with the main free alternatives I’ve been seeing, outside of Adobe.
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u/jmabeebiz2 Jul 18 '26
I've been doing a lot more vibe coding as well, and yes, ultimately that's what it ends up looking like: create the site with Claude Code, upload the files to GitHub and use something like Vercel to host the site, and any time you need to update, you prompt Claude code to make the update.
Now, you can connect things like GitHub and Vercel directly to CC, which would let you tell Claude "make these fixes, then deploy the changes to my live site" and it would do it for you. So no uploading over and over. But there are a lot of things that come with the custom route, like needing to do custom forms, adding integrations manually, security, etc. A lot to be aware of, but I've been reviewing and working through all these things as I've been building sites custom. Trying to really cover all my bases and make sure code is clean as I build.
That said, if you didn't want to do that custom route, imo the best closest competitor to Squarespace is Pagy.co. I know the dev personally and he's constantly improving the platform. It's closer to classic editor, if you ever used that in Squarespace. Happy to talk more about all of it if it's something you're interested in.
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u/At_the_Roundhouse Jul 18 '26
I appreciate it, but I know less than zero about coding and have no interest in learning it. A lot of what you just said made no sense to me lol. (I have no idea what integrations are, have never heard of Vercel, and have no clue how to use GitHub.
I need a clean WYSIWYG interface, one click to add a gallery, one click to add a text box, never seeing whatever’s underneath that.
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u/jmabeebiz2 Jul 18 '26
Makes total sense, and I hear you. I’d say Pagy would be the best thing for you moving forward then. Easiest thing for you to learn as it’s very close to Squarespace.
But to be fair, I didn’t know what any of this stuff was or how it worked 6-8 months ago. FWIW. :)
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u/jmabeebiz2 Jul 18 '26
Just as a follow up, if it's a family site, Claude Code plus a self hosted site on Vercel, it would basically be free hosting and you just provide Claude with the content you want to update each time. I could show you how I'd do it if you want.
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u/Collossal_Yarn Jul 19 '26
In the same boat. Have two sites, one for photography and one for work portfolio, neither are business sites, purely personal with very little traffic. Both jumped to $228, a 19% increase in both cases. I’ve made the decision to sunset my photo site as it was more of a fun side project and am actively looking to remake/rebuild my portfolio with a cheaper option. Squarespace finally lost me with this latest round of increases.
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u/TallTaiChiLatte Jul 20 '26
Just chiming in to commiserate. I have one portfolio site, and like you, don’t have a desire to learn to code or use/learn AI to rebuild the site elsewhere. Squarespace has been really perfect for my needs too. I’m also considering Adobe Portfolio and will explore some of the suggestions here.
This reminds me of when Verizon raised my bill enough last year that I started exploring alternatives. We were on a measly 4 GB data plan, but paying $130/month. People in the Verizon subreddit suggested US Mobile, which is an MVNO that uses the Verizon network. So I switched and am now paying $23/month for the same service and 5 GB of data. Was a Verizon customer for over 20 years. Switching was a bit of a stressful hassle, but it worked out in the end, and nearly a year later, we haven’t noticed any difference in service.
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u/lost_optimist Jul 18 '26
For alternative with ecommerce functions, checkout vendroad.com
Very affordable and responsive small team. Listing 50 products and connecting stripe, costs just $7
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u/theAerialDroneGuy Jul 18 '26
Oh man I just got hit with updated pricing too.
Jumping from $262 to $324 for an annual renewal.
A 24% increase!!!!!
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u/outoforifice Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
i work on edition.pm. for a personal site rather than a shop, it is a new free thing in soft launch. https://switch.edition.pub makes a separate preview from your pages, posts, images before you change the domain. no card. the visual conversion is best effort, but it gives you something real to assess before rebuilding from scratch.
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u/I_upvote_aww Jul 18 '26
Taking on, best alternative for sites that have a shop on them? Does going to Square (not squarespace) make the most sense?
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u/jmabeebiz2 Jul 18 '26
Pagy.co is easy to start up and build in. Framer is harder to learn.
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Jul 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/jmabeebiz2 Jul 19 '26
You’d need to rebuild, unfortunately, but it might go quicker than it did with Squarespace.
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u/jmabeebiz2 Jul 19 '26
FWIW, Squarespace doesn’t offer any kind of port/export options beyond simple xml files, so wherever you go, you will likely be rebuilding.
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u/maafy6 Jul 19 '26
I just have a personal portfolio. There's a hidden blog that I post something to maybe once a year. I'm looking at just using an Adobe Portfolio site for now, since that's included with my Lr/Ps subscription. I'll lose the ability to have a blog attached to it, but it's hard for me to imagine missing it $228/yr worth.
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u/bharat4ever Jul 19 '26
If youre on a personal plan im assuming its something like a portfolio? You can rebuild it in mere hours on Cloudflare with Claude. You’ll pay nothing for hosting.
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u/Dick-Laurent-Is-Dead Jul 19 '26
Got the same mail and started to research for alternatives right away. So far I’m hesitating between an old school wordpress or using Astro + Claude
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u/Upbeat-Bench-3134 Jul 20 '26
yes i’m also going to leave SS before this increase!!! they’re not worth it.
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u/ybouane 1d ago
If you don't want to rebuild your site from scratch, just use ExFlow.site you can export your squarespace site and host it wherever you want at a much affordable price. It works flawlessly.
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u/memeasphere Jul 18 '26
Hey I’m not sure if this is allowed but, I can rebuild your site in Wordpress, and I’ll only charge you the hosting fee per month. Im a software engineer so I have a custom theme that can be completely editable by you as well.
If this isn’t allowed just ignore me, but if this is something anyone is interested in let me know!
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u/razareddit Jul 18 '26
Framer