Should You Build Your Small Business Website with Squarespace or Hire Blue Ox?
Squarespace has made it easier to build a professional-looking website yourself. Choose a starting design, customize your pages, add your content, connect your domain, and you can get a business website online without hiring a web developer.
But being able to build your own website and wanting to build your own website are two different things.
When you compare Squarespace vs. hiring a web designer, the biggest difference isn’t simply how nice the website can look. It’s who is responsible for planning the site, writing the content, building the pages, handling SEO, and making sure everything supports your business.
Squarespace gives you the tools to do that work yourself. Blue Ox gives you a team to help do the work for you.
We’ll lead with a conversation – nothing starts until you’re 100% ready.
Blue Ox vs. Squarespace at a Glance
 | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Website Approach | Professionally planned and built website | Do-it-yourself website platform |
| Design | Custom design created for your business | You customize a starting design using Squarespace tools |
| Website Structure | Our team helps plan the structure | You determine pages, navigation, and layout |
| Content | Professional copywriting and content help available | You write and organize your content |
| SEO | Keyword research and essential SEO setup handled by our team | SEO tools and recommendations for you to use |
| Development | Custom WordPress development | Built within the Squarespace platform |
| Hosting | Blue Ox hosting available but optional | Included within Squarespace |
| Website Updates | Make updates yourself or ask our team | Primarily managed by you |
| Support | Local team familiar with your website | Support for using the Squarespace platform |
| Ongoing Marketing | SEO, content, paid ads, email, social media, and marketing support available | Marketing tools available for you to use |
| Website Portability | WordPress website can be hosted elsewhere | Some content can be exported, but the full site does not transfer |
| Best Fit | Businesses that want professional website and marketing support | DIY website owners |
Squarespace Is a Website Builder. Blue Ox Is a Website Team.
Squarespace is designed to make DIY website building accessible. Business owners can start with a professionally designed template or use Squarespace’s website-building tools to create a site, customize the content and design, add business features, use built-in SEO tools, and publish it themselves.
That’s useful if you want to be your own web designer. Blue Ox is built for businesses that would rather not.
Our team helps with website planning, custom website design, WordPress development, content, keyword research, SEO setup, website analytics, testing, training, and launch.
You still know your business better than anyone. We need your input. But you don’t need to learn web design to get a professional website.
We’ll lead with a conversation – nothing starts until you’re 100% ready.
A Website Builder Doesn’t Help Make the Decisions for You
One of the appealing things about Squarespace is that it gives you a polished starting point. That’s also where it’s easy to underestimate how many decisions still need to be made.
You still have to decide:
- What belongs on the homepage?
- Which services need their own pages?
- What should your navigation include?
- What should you say about your company?
- Which photos should you use?
- Where should the contact buttons go?
- What keywords should you target?
- What makes someone choose you instead of a competitor?
- What should the website look like on a phone?
- What should you improve after the website launches?
Those decisions have a lot more impact on your website than choosing a template or adjusting fonts and colors. Blue Ox works through them with you.
We start by learning about your business, customers, goals, content, and website needs. Our designers create a custom direction, you review the design before the full website is developed, and you have additional opportunities to review the working site before launch.
That’s the difference between using website-building tools and working with people who build websites every day.
Squarespace SEO Tools vs. Professional SEO Help
Squarespace has real SEO capabilities. The platform includes built-in search-friendly features and provides an SEO checklist with guidance for optimizing content and connecting tools such as Google Search Console. Squarespace also notes that its customer support can’t provide individualized SEO strategy because every business’s marketing needs are different.
The question is whether you want to be the person responsible for figuring out that strategy. An SEO checklist can help identify settings and best practices, but it can’t fully replace the thinking behind deciding what a page should target in the first place.
Blue Ox includes essential SEO and analytics setup with our website packages, including keyword research, page optimization, sitemap submission, and analytics and search-tool connections. Ongoing SEO services are available when you want to keep building visibility after launch.
Professional Website Design Is More Than Making It Look Nice
Squarespace is known for design, and for good reason. Its professionally designed starting points can make it easier for someone without design experience to put together an attractive website.
But a professional website should do more than look good. Good design helps visitors understand what they’re looking at. It establishes hierarchy. Makes important information easier to find. Directs attention toward calls to action. Creates consistency. Builds trust. And keeps the website usable across different screen sizes.
With Blue Ox, our designers create a custom website around your brand, content, audience, and goals. You’ll review and approve the design direction before we develop the entire website.
Strong Websites Need Strong Content
This is where many DIY website projects stall. You can choose a beautiful design and still be stuck grasping for what words need to go on the page.
Writing website content is harder than it looks. You have to decide what customers care about, how much detail they need, how to explain services clearly, where keywords fit naturally, what objections need to be addressed, and what should persuade someone to contact you.
Blue Ox can help write the website content for you. Our writers create and refine website copy with both your customers and search engines in mind. If you already have content, we can help polish and organize it instead.
No staring at an empty text box required.
What’s Your Time Worth?
The financial cost is only one part of the Squarespace vs. web designer decision. There’s also the cost of your time.
Building your own site can mean spending hours:
- Learning the platform
- Planning pages
- Adjusting layouts
- Resizing images
- Writing copy
- Researching keywords
- Configuring SEO
- Checking mobile layouts
- Connecting forms
- Setting up analytics
- Testing links
- Troubleshooting problems
- Making ongoing updates
Some business owners genuinely enjoy that process, or even have some experience already. But if every hour you spend working on your website is an hour you’re not serving customers, managing employees, making sales, or running the business, DIY doesn’t necessarily mean free.
Hiring Blue Ox means you’re paying professionals to handle work that would otherwise land on your list.
Squarespace Pricing vs. Hiring a Web Designer
There’s no question that a DIY website builder can provide a lower-cost way to get started than hiring a team to design and develop a custom website. That’s part of the appeal.
Squarespace bundles website-building tools and hosting into its platform, with different plans and additional business features available depending on what the site needs.
Blue Ox website pricing includes professional services. You’re not only paying for software or server space. You’re investing in people who help plan, design, develop, test, optimize, and launch the site.
Our website packages include custom website design, mobile-friendly development, a contact form, essential SEO and analytics setup, pre-launch testing, training, and full ownership of the website.
When Squarespace Makes Sense
Squarespace may be a practical choice when:
- Your budget is limited.
- You need a relatively simple website.
- You like the look of Squarespace designs and enjoy customizing them.
- You have time to build and maintain the site.
- Search and lead generation aren’t major priorities yet.
- You’re comfortable handling your own content and design decisions.
- You’re looking for an all-in-one DIY platform.
For a startup, side business, personal project, or very simple website, that may be exactly what you need.
And if the business grows beyond it later, that’s okay too.
When Hiring Blue Ox Makes More Sense
A professional web designer is probably worth the investment when:
- Your website is important to generating leads or sales.
- Customers use your website to decide whether they trust your company.
- Search engine visibility matters.
- Your services need more explanation than a few lines of text.
- You want professional content and design.
- You don’t have time to build or manage a website yourself.
- You want help deciding what the website should include.
- You expect to add services, locations, features, or integrations over time.
- You want ongoing SEO or digital marketing support.
- You want a person you can call when something needs to change.
- You’d rather spend your time running your business.
That’s the type of business we built Blue Ox to serve.
We’ll lead with a conversation – nothing starts until you’re 100% ready.
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