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A Squarespace alternative that’s actually as easy to use as it claims

Squarespace is fine for building templated websites. With Podia, you can create a beautiful home base for your online business and sell digital products like downloads, courses, coaching, and communities under one roof.

An easier way to build your website.

Frustrated by Squarespace’s confusing customization dashboards and rigid layouts? Podia’s website builder is clean, straightforward, and so easy to use that you can have your site ready in an afternoon.

Free forever plan.

Squarespace comes with a price tag, especially if you want to use ecommerce features. With Podia, your website is free forever. We’ll even throw in an online community, one digital download, and one coaching product so you can monetize from day one.

Icon of infinity symbol

Integrated features without hidden costs.

There’s no reason to rely on complicated (and pricey) third-party tools to grow your business. With Podia, email, affiliates, customer messaging, and memberships are all built in. No surprise upsells here.

Video demo

Podia in action

Wondering if Podia is a better website building platform for you? Go behind the scenes in this video walkthrough, where Ben will show you the ins and outs of Podia’s software and how it can help your business.

This table has Podia,Squarespace columns and 18 rows

Comparing Podia vs. Squarespace

Podia

Squarespace

Free plan

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Price

Podia isFree, or $39/month to $199/month

Squarespace is$19/month to $65/month, plus add-ons

Free migrations

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Website builder

Podia is yes

Squarespace is yes

Unlimited web pages

Podia is yes

Squarespace is yes

Online courses

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Digital downloads

Podia is yes

Squarespace is yes

Memberships

Podia is yes

Squarespace isPaid add-on

Communities

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Coaching

Podia is yes

Squarespace isPaid add-on

Webinars

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Email marketing

Podia is yes

Squarespace isPaid add-on

Built-in affiliate program

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Teammates

Podia is yes

Squarespace is yes

Embeddable buy buttons

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Customer messaging

Podia is yes

Squarespace is no

Chat support

Podia is yes

Squarespace isMonday - Friday

Creator friendliness score

Podia is90.91

Squarespace is75.32

Need help moving your products and customers to Podia?

Need help moving your products and customers to Podia?

Learn about migrations

The Creator Friendliness Index

Which platforms put creators first?

The Creator Friendliness Index uses 20 ranking factors to determine how friendly a company’s policies are for creators.

See how the top creator tools stack up

Why customers choose Podia over Squarespace

Here are some reasons creators choose Podia instead of Squarespace to power their small businesses.

Your website and products in perfect harmony

We designed Podia with your creator journey in mind. Start by making a website with our easy site builder and grow your online business by selling digital products from our all-in-one platform. From content hosting to product delivery, we make life easier for you and your customers.

An interface your customers will love

Don’t just dump files on your customers’ laps. Podia gives customers a simple and beautiful elearning experience with their own login, on-page delivery, and a course viewer to enjoy their content.

A support team that's here for you

The number one reason people cite for loving Podia? Our customer service. We’re always here to help with real people offering chat support 7 days a week.

Free migrations

Sit back, relax, and let us do the heavy lifting. We’ll move your digital products and contacts over to Podia. Our migration service makes switching to Podia easy and is completely free on all annual plans.

Robin Harford avatar

Podia is for Makers who get stuff done. Within 24 hours of discovering Podia, I transferred all my products over and haven’t looked back. Podia is the iPhone of online courses, memberships, and digital downloads. Simple, easy, and aesthetically beautiful, even a complete technophobe can use it. Thank you, Podia team!

— Robin Harford, plant-based forager, ethnobotanical researcher, and wild food educator.

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Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Podia vs. Squarespace: Which is right for me?

Great question! We obviously think we’re pretty great, but here’s an honest comparison:

Both Podia and Squarespace allow you to build a stylish website for your online business. You can also use both platforms to sell digital products and manage your email, but that’s about where the similarities end.

To help you decide between Podia vs. Squarespace, let’s dive into the details.

All prices and features are accurate at the time of writing, but they may change over time.

Intuitive website builder

If you’re in the market for a new website builder, you’ve probably heard of Squarespace. It’s one of the most popular site builders around, and it comes with a wide selection of done-for-you templates.

But while Squarespace’s code-free editor may be easier than building an entire site from scratch, it’s not as straightforward as it seems.

Templates can be a blessing and a curse. They give you a solid starting point and they look nice, but if you want to deviate from the blocks provided, things can get tricky.

To make Squarespace easier for everyday users, a lot of customizations simply aren’t available. And the ones that are can be difficult to find since there are editing options on individual elements, pages, and a separate design dashboard.

Another thing to remember is that Squarespace only allows you to upload 30 minutes of video to your website. You must pay extra for a membership plan to get more video storage.

At Podia, we’re taking a different approach.

Our easier-than-drag-and-drop website builder includes a set of content blocks with dozens of styling options. You can change up the look of your site in just a few clicks, and all our blocks play nicely together so you can add and remove anything you want.

Here’s an example of two ways you can style the same content on your Podia website. Making these changes only took a few clicks in the sidebar “Design” editor.

SQUARESPACE VS: 1

SQUARESPACE VS: 2

Your Podia website can have unlimited pages, and you can use Podia to build as many standalone sales pages and landing pages as you want. Podia also gives you unlimited video hosting on all paid plans.

“Podia makes website building so fun. I feel like I could set up a site in an afternoon, and it would look great. And if there’s something to be said for how pretty it is. It’s the best-looking one by far.” – Joseph D’Amico, online classical piano instructor and founder of Flex Lessons

Selling physical products vs. digital products

If you’re using your website for ecommerce, the decision between Podia vs. Squarespace largely depends on what kinds of products you want to sell.

Podia is a better choice if you’re selling online courses, communities, webinars, coaching, and digital downloads. Your customers can access all of their purchases and content from one sleek dashboard.

SQUARESPACE VS: 3

Create unlimited products on all paid plans, bundle products together, offer upsells, and create different payment plans to accommodate your customers.

Course creation is a breeze with our intuitive course builder, meaning you won’t need to use a separate learning management system or plugin. You can also create a brand community to connect with your followers.

On the flipside, Squarespace is a good fit for selling physical products because there are integrations for shipping, inventory management, and point of sale. It’s possible to sell digital products on Squarespace, but there are notable limitations.

Files can only be up to 300 MB, and you can only sell one file per product. You can work around this by zipping files together, but you still can’t exceed 300 MB. You can’t offer variations for digital products, nor can you sell digital items as subscriptions.

If you want to create a membership site, you’ll have to pay an additional fee each month. All membership plans come with transaction fees and limit the number of membership areas you can create.

Bottom line: Go with Podia if you want to sell digital goods and build your community. Go with Squarespace if you want to sell physical items.

Built-in marketing tools

Both Squarespace and Podia provide tools to help you market your brand. As a business owner, it’s nice to have everything you need in one place.

With Podia, you can build your email list, create email newsletters, and drip content to subscribers over time. You can even set up email marketing campaigns and sales funnels so you don’t have to pay for a separate email service provider.

SQUARESPACE VS: 4

Podia also includes live chat messaging on all plans, even the free one. You can easily communicate with visitors to answer questions and give your website a personal touch.

SQUARESPACE VS: 5

Finally, you can set up your own affiliate program for your courses and products on the Shaker plan and up.

Squarespace also has an email marketing tool with email design templates. Squarespace email comes at an additional cost, and all plans have limits on the number of emails you can send each month. You’ll need to be on the Core plan or higher to build marketing automations.

Squarespace email pricing (add-on):

Starter: $7/month

  • 3 campaigns per month
  • 500 emails per month

Core: $14/month

  • 5 campaigns per month
  • 5,000 emails per month
  • Automations

Pro: $34/month

  • 20 campaigns per month
  • 50,000 emails per month

Max: $68/month

  • Unlimited campaigns
  • 250,000 emails per month

In addition to email, Squarespace has built-in SEO features to help your website and ecommerce products appear in the search results. There are also tools for ensuring your in-person business shows up in local search results.

Squarespace does not have integrated affiliate marketing, and there’s no built-in customer chat tool.

Pricing

Podia has a simple pricing structure. There are three paid plans and a generous free plan that includes a full website, an online community, one digital download, and one coaching product.

Podia pricing:

  • Free
  • Mover: $39/month
  • Shaker: $89/month
  • Earthquaker: $199/month

Squarespace’s pricing structure is more complicated because of upsells and add-ons. There’s no free plan, but they offer a 14-day free trial so you can try the Squarespace website builder before paying.

Squarespace’s ecommerce features are available on the Business plan and above. If you’d like to use some of Squarespace’s advanced offerings like email marketing, memberships, or appointment scheduling, you’ll need to pay extra monthly fees.

Here’s a look at the Squarespace pricing plans:

Squarespace website pricing:

You must have one of these plans before adding memberships, email, and scheduling.

  • Personal: $19/month (No ecommerce features)
  • Business: $33/month (3% transaction fee)
  • Basic Commerce: $36/month
  • Advanced Commerce: $65/month

Squarespace membership area pricing (add-on):

  • Starter: $10/month (+7% transaction fee)
  • Core: $20/month (+4% transaction fee)
  • Pro: $40/month (+1% transaction fee)

Squarespace email pricing (add-on):

  • Starter: $7/month
  • Core: $14/month
  • Pro: $34/month
  • Max: $68/month

Squarespace scheduling pricing (add-on):

  • Emerging: $15/month
  • Growing: $25/month
  • Powerhouse: $50/month

Here’s how this could play out by the numbers:

You’re an aspiring entrepreneur, and you’re ready to share your ideas with the world. You set up your website, and over the next year, you grow your email list and send occasional broadcasts.

If you used Squarespace and paid month to month, your first year in business would cost $312.

  • $19/month x 12 months = $228 for the Personal website plan
  • $7/month x 12 months = $84 for the Starter email plan

If you used Podia, your total cost after one year would be $0.

Podia websites are free forever, and you can send up to 250 broadcast emails per month on the free plan.

SQUARESPACE VS: 6

Now let’s say you’re ready to launch some products. In the next year, you write an informational ebook and create a paid membership community for your followers.

If you used Squarespace and paid month to month, your second year in business would cost $600.

  • $33/month x 12 months = $396 for the Business website plan (required for ecommerce)
  • $7/month x 12 months = $84 for the Starter email plan
  • $10/month x 12 months = $120 for the Starter memberships plan

Plus, you’d pay a 3% transaction fee on digital product sales and a 7% transaction fee on membership sales.

But with Podia, you’d still pay $0. Your only cost would be an 8% transaction fee on digital product sales and membership subscriptions.

As we mentioned above, Podia’s free plan includes a website, a community, one digital download, and one coaching program.

Even if you had upgraded to Podia’s Mover plan for $39/month, you’d only pay $468 for the year.

That’s significantly less than Squarespace, and there are no transaction fees on Podia’s paid plans.

With all that extra money in your pocket, there’s no telling what you could create.

So let’s get started.

Make your free Podia website now, or join our weekly live demo to see the platform in action.

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Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

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FAQS

Quick answers

Don’t see your answer? Reach out to us, we’d love to help!

  • Absolutely! You can check out our Podia demo site, which we’ve built to show you what the Podia experience will look like for both you and your customers.

    There are also dozens of creator example sites on our Examples page, so you can see what other creators just like you have built using Podia.

  • Yes! We offer free (and hassle-free) migrations on any annual plan. Get started here.

  • Podia is completely free to try for 14 days, no credit card required and no strings attached. If you’re not head-over-heels in love with it at the end of your trial, you don’t pay a dime!

  • Absolutely! You can see how Podia stacks up to many of our competitors right here.

    We also have some head-to-head comparisons of other leading platforms in case you’re choosing between those, including:

  • We’d love to. Podia’s customer support is here for you, seven days a week. Just reach out to us on chat and a real, friendly person will be delighted to help you out.