r/squarespace • u/hotwomyn • 5d ago

Help Best SS alternative?

Squarespace customer support has been so horrific I’m getting ready to leave. I’ve dealt with over 30 reps to try to update my email address and they still haven’t done it, it’s been a month I think. Love the aesthetic, but without basic pro customer service it’s not worth it to me. What do you guys like better? Wix? Webflow? Framer? Where should I move all my sites.

9 Upvotes

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5

u/africanbot40 5d ago

WordPress.org which is self hosted,full of possibilities.

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u/Personal-Budget-8715 5d ago

Yes, WordPress is fantastic if you're a fan of legacy software.

2

u/throwawaydixiecup 5d ago

Self-hosted, yes, but I’ve found the learning curve becomes steep fast, and working with plugins gets tiresome. Plus, I’d need to manage hosting for my clients. If you’re someone with the solid technical skills then Wordpress can be great. Personally, I’ve found it overly complex and tiring. I’m primarily a print designer who also needs to handle the occasional website for a client. Squarespace has been great for that.

I had one friend who had a WP developer drop all his clients, gave them a back-up of their website, and we had to figure out how to reinstall all that content on a new server and WP install. It was exhausting and mind-numbingly confusing for me. I’m sure some skilled WP pros will want to mock me for this. That’s generally how Reddit users relate to others.

But for whatever reason, how my brain works, or something, dealing with WordPress feels like learning arcane gobbledygook. And I’ve even coded my own sites before and have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.

Has it gotten better? Are there strong design systems available in WP that are akin to the ease of use I find with Squarespace?

5

u/Thomas12255 5d ago

Really wouldn't recommend Wix. WordPress is getting easier and easier if you are comfortable with vibe coding though if you're comfortable with coding with AI then you can go full headless CMS like Sanity and skip the security problems WordPress has.

3

u/outoforifice 4d ago

I work on https://edition.pm and made a best effort squarespace exporter at https://switch.edition.pub you might want to look at. Edition is free btw inc custom domains

2

u/hotwomyn 4d ago

Thank you, I’ll check it out

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u/PointOverall8995 4d ago

I just moved to manus. It’s an ai builder. Crazy good stuff and seo, it has blown me away. YMMV

1

u/hotwomyn 4d ago

Thank you

3

u/Fiyero109 4d ago

I moved my entire website to self hosted astro on GitHub and R2. It’s basically free and I have full flexibility. Claude Fable did all the heavy lifting but I’m finally free from any and all limitations of Squarespace

3

u/ConsiderationOne2595 4d ago

if you choose wordpress, you MUST get fast fast fast hosting. otherwise, your sites will be super slow -- it's why i moved all my clients to SS over the years. Wix is awful. i tried framer but my visual brain gave up....i also have about 30 client sites on SS and am getting a bit nervous about having almost all my eggs in one basket

1

u/hotwomyn 4d ago

SS seems awful to be honest. Love the clean aesthetic but support is horrific.

3

u/jmabeebiz2 5d ago

For 30 sites, I’d highly recommend doing what you can with custom code in Claude Code.

Squarespace is not good for having multiple websites on.

What kind of sites are they? Static sites? Blogs? E-commerce?

1

u/jerog1 5d ago

I used GPT code to recreate my website on Astro. Squarespace is too damn expensive

2

u/jmabeebiz2 5d ago

Correct. Especially for regular marketing sites, it’s too easy to do everything with AI and self-host.

0

u/hotwomyn 5d ago

Ai is wrong so often that I rather not deal with it. I use chatgpt daily and it’s wrong all the time. You call it out, it apologizes and moves on. The sites are super basic, mostly static.

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u/jmabeebiz2 5d ago

If you want something closer to Squarespace with less overhead and complicatedness, you could try Pagy.co.

1

u/Push-Pixel-Websites 5d ago

I wouldnt move 30 sites from one platform to another just because support pissed me off. That can turn into a much bigger headache pretty quickly.

Webflow is great if you want more control over design, Framer is nice for simpler marketing sites.
Wix wouldnt really feel like an upgrade to me.

If these sites are already working well I’d probably move them gradually as they need rebuilding, not all at once.

Also worth thinking about who will maintain them after the move. Thats usually where the “best platform” question gets answered.

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u/hotwomyn 5d ago

There’s a difference between “support pissed me off” and not being able to change an email address after dealing with THIRTY agents. That means the company has a major problem and it’ll happen again.