Just before the demise of Blab, I got together with my colleague Jon Leland of Combridges to talk about the relative usability of WordPress and Squarespace. Many years ago, we co-authored an article called “I thought WordPress was supposed to be easy!” I referenced that article in my post “Have We Been Misleading People about WordPress?” That post inspired my WordCamp Sacramento 2015 presentation and my WordCamp LAX 2016 presentation. So you can see that the usability and client-friendliness of WordPress have been on my mind for a while.
They’ve also been on Jon’s mind, and he now provides Squarespace website setup and consulting for his entry-level clients, the ones who just need simple websites and don’t want to deal with maintaining a WordPress site. As he says on his website:
We recommend Squarespace websites for small businesses for many reasons including ease of use, elegant templates, always mobile-friendly, fewer technical headaches/easier to maintain, availability of tech support and more.
As much as I love WordPress, I would tend to agree. Though services like Wix and Squarespace have distinct drawbacks–one of them being difficulty in exporting your content–they also provide easier onboarding and a more familiar editing interface (one where you can drag and drop things). If you’re just getting started and want a simple but attractive website, get in touch with Jon.
Of course, if data portability, ownership, and the freedom to build absolutely any functionality into your site matter, then you’re going to want to stick with WordPress.
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