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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.