For small businesses trying to launch or redesign their website, choosing the right platform can feel a bit like house hunting. You're trying to find something that doesn't just look nice from the outside, but also functions smoothly on the inside, meets your budget, scales with your growth, and doesn’t lock you into something you’ll regret later. As a web designer who's helped dozens of clients across different industries, I've come to recognize that the platform is rarely just a technical decision. It’s a strategic one—a choice that reflects where your business is today and where you want it to go tomorrow.
In this post, we’re going to dive deep into what it really means to build your website on Webflow versus Squarespace. These are both well-known platforms, but their philosophies, capabilities, and ideal use cases vary significantly. This comparison is specifically designed for small business owners who aren’t necessarily tech-savvy, but who want a powerful, beautiful website that supports their business goals—not just looks good in screenshots.
Before diving into the specifics, we need to lay the groundwork. Webflow and Squarespace both enable businesses to build websites without writing code—but that’s kind of where the similarities end. Webflow is more flexible, robust, and scalable, whereas Squarespace is more streamlined, beginner-friendly, and design-forward right out of the box.
Webflow is essentially a visual development tool. It combines the freedom of custom HTML/CSS with an interface that designers and marketers can use without writing code. This allows you to do much more in terms of layout, animation, interaction, and scalable CMS structures.
It’s great for businesses that:
Squarespace, on the other hand, offers a sleek, intuitive experience ideal for DIYers and those with limited technical needs. It shines when you want something elegant and quick to launch.
It’s often the right choice for:
Let’s go deeper into how these differences play out in real-world business scenarios.
This is one of the most common discussion points with clients: “How much can I change this design later?”
In Webflow, every pixel is yours to command. You're not just changing the color palette or font. You can literally reimagine the entire layout, animation, and structure without being boxed into someone else's wireframe ideas.
Think of it like building a custom home. You're not just moving furniture into a pre-built condo. You’re mapping out your own blueprints. For instance, I worked with a therapist client who wanted a homepage that mimicked the calm progression of a walk in the woods. On Squarespace, we couldn’t quite stitch together the animations and layered content that made that metaphor feel alive. On Webflow, we built it from scratch—with subtle scroll animations, image layering, and custom illustration reveals.
The client not only loved it, but got compliments from her clients who felt calmer just navigating the site. That’s powerful branding that goes beyond colors and fonts.
With Squarespace, you're restricted to modifying templates—albeit very good-looking ones. But if you want to move an element in a non-standard way, or build out a more interactive menu, you're going to hit walls pretty quickly.
I had a local event planner come to me after launching on Squarespace. She liked the simplicity but felt the site didn’t distinguish her brand from the next wedding planner. We realized her aesthetic couldn’t be achieved within the default grid system without heavily hacking code or moving platforms. Ultimately, she transitioned to Webflow where we were able to bring her vision to life in a more immersive way—complete with animated event timelines, testimonials with personality, and flexible CMS collections to showcase her growing portfolio.
This is where Squarespace often wins out for small business owners, especially those flying solo without a design team.
The dashboard is intentionally minimal. You can launch a site in a weekend with zero design knowledge. This “what you see is what you get” model works really well for people who just need a nice-looking website to get off the ground fast.
For example, one of my clients—an interior painter—used Squarespace to spin up a quick site with before-and-after galleries. It took him one weekend, and within the first month he booked four new jobs just from organic traffic. That worked perfectly for him at his current stage.
The catch? As his business grew and he wanted to add booking functionality, integrate reviews dynamically, and include custom-built project pages, he realized he’d hit the limits. That’s when we looked at Webflow.
Webflow is less intuitive for beginners. That’s just the truth. The interface mimics tools like Adobe Illustrator or Figma, so if you’re not familiar with flex grids, box models, or CMS structures, it can feel overwhelming.
But for businesses serious about long-term growth—or those who plan to work with a professional—Webflow repays that initial complexity in flexibility. You’re building on a more future-proof foundation. I've had businesses come to me mid-way through a Squarespace build because they realized they wanted more structure for content types: like career listings, case studies, or bookable productized services. With Webflow, their content could grow as they did—no rebuilds necessary.
This is where things really start to affect revenue. A beautiful website that doesn’t rank is like a billboard in the desert.
Webflow excels here. You can control everything from clean semantic HTML to custom meta titles and structured data. The hosting is fast, global, and built on Amazon Web Services infrastructure, which gives it excellent performance scores on tools like Google PageSpeed Insights.
One SEO client of mine—a custom cabinet maker in Nashville—saw a 40% uptick in organic leads within three months of switching from Squarespace to a custom-built Webflow site. Why? Because we were able to structure his services properly as CMS items, optimize his site schema for each sub-service SEO keyword, and improve Core Web Vitals.
Squarespace does offer the ability to edit basic SEO features like meta titles, URLs, and image alt tags. But it limits your access to more technical optimizations like schema markup and page speed enhancements. Your control over how content loads or deferred scripts is close to zero.
For hobby blogs and simple sites, this usually isn’t an issue. But for service-based businesses in competitive local markets—think dentists, realtors, or contractors—those small SEO tweaks often make the difference.
Here’s where we start seeing real divergence in strategy. If your site is a digital brochure, Squarespace works beautifully. If it’s your digital headquarters, you’re going to want more robust CMS functionality than Squarespace can offer.
Webflow’s CMS lets you build collections of repeatable content—case studies, team members, job postings, testimonials—that are easy to scale and modify. If your business grows and shifts, your site architecture can shift with it.
One of my most rewarding builds was for a multi-state law practice. They needed to showcase different legal services by both location and case type. With Webflow, we built collections for practice areas, attorneys, FAQs, blog content, and reviews—all filtered dynamically. Within weeks, not only did traffic double from better on-site SEO, but the attorneys reported clients were coming in “pre-sold” because they felt educated by the content.
You do get something resembling a CMS—blog posts, image galleries, products—but it isn’t nearly as scalable. If you want to create a complex navigational structure, sing specific datasets, or build filtered resource archives, it becomes clunky fast.
A wedding photographer I worked with on Squarespace wanted to organize galleries by venue, couple, and season—but still keep a simple navigation experience. Accomplishing this on Squarespace required custom coding and workarounds. Ultimately, we moved to Webflow to support both the user experience and her growing content needs.
As your business matures, your website stops being just a website. It becomes connected to your CRM, email marketing, booking tools, billing system, and more.
Webflow integrates cleanly with tools like Zapier, Airtable, HubSpot, Stripe, MemberStack, and Jetboost. You can trigger automations based on form submissions, update CMS items through third-party APIs, and even enable user logins and gated content.
I helped a boutique SaaS brand launch a gated client resource hub in Webflow that updated directly from Airtable. It connected their support workflow to their sales funnel—with zero bloat, and full ownership over user experience. That would’ve been impossible in Squarespace.
Squarespace does have integrations with Stripe, Acuity, Mailchimp, and a few others. But if you’re trying to create something tailored—say, custom event filtering or conditional page layouts—you’ll run into friction fast.
I once worked with a local yoga studio that wanted recurring client profiles, dynamic class schedules, and teacher bios. These are all solvable problems—but not in Squarespace without duct-taping a suite of third-party tools.
The dollar question. Both platforms operate on a SaaS subscription model, but the structures are different.
Squarespace charges a monthly or yearly fee that includes hosting, security, and templates. Most packages range between $16 to $49/month, and you can usually launch for less than $500 if you're DIYing everything. It's an attractive model for low-commitment businesses or those testing an idea.
Webflow’s pricing is more granular. You pay separately for your workspace (where you design) and hosting (where it lives). Combined, this often runs between $20 to $50/month—but advanced CMS sites, multi-editor workflows, or gated content features can bump that up quickly.
However, the long-term ROI can be exceptional. Sites that use Webflow right often spend less on plugins, developers, and later rebuilds—because it scales better. It avoids the “we need to redesign again in a year” syndrome that a lot of Squarespace sites hit as the business evolves.
Choosing between Webflow and Squarespace is less about which platform is better, and more about which one is better for you—your business, your goals, your timeline, your growth prospects, and how you like to work.
If you’re launching something fast, have limited design needs, and don’t expect the site to evolve much, Squarespace will serve you well. It’s comforting, clean, and more than enough for many small players looking for a polished start.
But if you’re building a brand you plan to grow—and need that brand to be differentiated, optimized, and future-ready—Webflow is where you want to be. Yes, it’s a little more work upfront. But just like building your own custom workshop instead of leasing a prefab office, the long-term payoff in control and flexibility is priceless.
Remember, your website is more than a page. It’s a projection of how your business thinks. Make sure it’s thinking two moves ahead.
Copyright © Zach Sean Web Design
