This website evaluates and compares the CMS/hosting platforms WordPress and Sqaurespace for the use-case of selling art-related goods, such as prints, zines, or art objects.

Charlie Chayyim Shaw
Information Technologies
Spring 2023
Prof. Rachel Daniell

Why Squarespace vs. WordPress?

-specific developer-oriented plans which allow custom coding, including of their pre-built templates

meaning...

-home, about, and other specific pages can be custom coded

&

-pre-built 'store' and 'item' pages can be enhanced with custom coding, such as html or css

- handles pricing of taxes, shipping, and printing of shipment orders (generally)

-provides secure checkout: Squarespace uses Shopify, WordPress uses WooCommerce

-backend inventory, items, and customer management

Other benefits include...

Two main differences are...

Features

Price

-Sqaurespace clarifies that, "Adding code to your site is an advanced modification that falls outside the scope of Squarepsace support"

-WordPress advertises 24/7 customer support





-Squarespace does not allow server-side code, including SQL, Ruby on Rails, etc.

- WordPress with commerce and custom coding has the price of $45/$70 per month (monthly vs. yearly payment plan)

-Squarespace with commerce and custom coding has the price of $27/$41 per month BUT this does not include in-cart tax/shipping estimates or Squarespace's commerce APIs





-with these features Squarespace is $69/$86 per month

With these differences in mind I recommend the use of WordPress, as optimal in term of both price and features, compared to Sqaurespace for selling art-related goods.

-important for artists/art organizations where, instead of hiring a web developer, often either an existing staff member with the most experience will be given responsibility or a contractor will be hired to design the initial site, with existing staff members being put in charge of maintenance/updates.

-these commerce APIs are likely to compensate for the lack of SQL and database languages in Squarespace, unlike WordPress
-creates an issue of longevity & obsolescence, as the primary inventory and customer records are within Squarespace's database format