Swiftrics
vs.
Squarespace
Beautiful websites
shouldn't be slow ones.
Squarespace makes it easy to get online, but its heavy pages and rising subscription prices leave small businesses looking for more. Swiftrics delivers speed and simplicity, without the trade-offs.
Try Swiftrics free for 14 daysActually fast
In our September 2026 test, Squarespace's template demos loaded about 1.1 MB of JavaScript. Swiftrics pages load about 6 KB.
Domain included
On monthly billing, Squarespace doesn't include a domain. Every Swiftrics plan does.
Built-in SEO
Meta titles and descriptions on every page, plus sitemaps and structured data, with nothing to install.
Side by side
Feature
Squarespace
Swiftrics
Domain included
First year only, on annual billing
Every plan
JavaScript per page (our test)
About 1.1 MB
About 6 KB
Starter price
$25/mo (Basic, billed monthly)
$19/mo, domain included
Template flexibility
Locked to template structure
Block-based, freely composable
Switching platforms
Export is limited (no full site export)
Download your whole published site anytime
SSL certificate
Included
Included
Competitor pricing checked September 2026.
What Squarespace really costs
The entry price sounds reasonable, until you add up what's missing.
Squarespace: typical year
- Basic plan (billed monthly) $300
- Domain registration (not included) $20
- Annual billing required for lowest rate 12-mo lock-in
- Total $320/yr
- In our September 2026 test, Squarespace's template demos took a median 10.9 seconds to show their main content on a simulated phone; Swiftrics took about 0.9 when we re-tested on September 30.
Swiftrics: typical year
- Swiftrics Starter (domain + hosting + CMS) $228
- AWS CloudFront CDN Included
- Full SEO toolkit Included
- Total $228/yr
- Nearly 30% less than Squarespace Basic, both billed monthly.
Common questions about switching
Yes. Swiftrics uses the same clean block-based editor approach as the best modern CMSes. Your site reflects your brand, not a template built for a thousand different businesses.
Yes. You can transfer your domain to Swiftrics or point it to your Swiftrics site by updating the DNS records. The process typically takes under an hour for DNS propagation.
Squarespace exports in WordPress's WXR format, and Swiftrics imports it directly. Pages and posts come across, and we write the redirects from your old URLs for you.
Significantly. Squarespace renders pages dynamically on every request. Swiftrics serves pages via AWS CloudFront, a global CDN with edge nodes close to your visitors. Most customers see Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) drop below 1 second.
Switching platforms always carries some short-term uncertainty. Your old links keep working. The import writes the redirects for you. Swiftrics serves pre-built files from a CDN. Page speed is one of Google's ranking signals, and what you gain depends on what your old site was doing.
If e-commerce is your primary use case, Squarespace's Commerce plans may still be the right fit. We'll tell you that honestly. Swiftrics is built for content-forward business websites: service businesses, local shops, professional services, and multi-location brands.