How much does it cost to have a blog on Squarespace?
You can make money with a Squarespace blog — but there are expenses involved, too.
Squarespace is one of the more expensive website builders out there, but it packs a punch.
If you’re planning on building a blog as part of a business — with a view of generating income — or as part of your freelance writing portfolio, I do think the cost of Squarespace is easy to justify.
Within a year you can easily make back the cost of Squarespace through affiliate marketing or ads.
So, here is how much it costs to get started on Squarespace.
Can you blog for free on Squarespace?
You can’t maintain a blog on Squarespace for free, but you can get started with a 14 day free trial.
After the trial period, it costs from $16 a month to run a Squarespace blog.
How much a Squarespace blog costs
For my travel blog, I pay for the Business plan on Squarespace. I pay $23 a month, or $276 a year.
This allows me to have more freedom in terms of customising my website with CSS.
It also gives me a professional Gmail account, free for the first year. I needed this email address to start my email list, as you can’t send out emails from a personal email address.
While you can start off on the personal plan — and I used this plan for nearly a year — I do recommend the Business plan if you want to treat travel blogging as a business.
You can always build up to upgrading though, if you would prefer to start with the Personal plan and gain some traction first.
I also pay $20 a year for my domain.
The cost of Squarespace vs WordPress for blogging
While WordPress as a platform is free, you need to pay for domains, hosting, themes, and plugins. Depending on your needs and preferences, you could run a blog on Wordpress for as little as $50 a year, but you’re more likely looking at between $200-$300 a year.
A premium theme like Kadence, for example, costs $149 a year. (I have never used this theme, I just see it recommended all the time by travel bloggers). Although the sky is the limit with themes, the average cost seems to be between $150 and $300 a year.
You also have to pay for hosting with WordPress — the cost of Squarespace already includes this, so you don’t need to think about this cost, and you also don’t need to shop around and explore hosting providers as well as themes.
Is having a blog on Squarespace worth the cost?
For me, Squarespace is well worth the cost. I like having everything in one place, without having to worry about exploring hosting and website building separately.
I also make enough money from my Squarespace site to easily cover the website fees.
If you found this helpful, you might also like to take a peek at my other tips on blogging on Squarespace:
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