Squarespace vs GoDaddy – similarities and differences in 2025
Our team of experts closely collaborates with experienced researchers to thoroughly evaluate website builders and their feature sets. Rigorous internal testing methods are deployed to provide empirical evidence and offer accurate, independent web builder rankings.
We make sure the methodologies of our in-house tests are transparent and accessible to all readers.
Learn more
Choosing the right website builder can feel overwhelming, especially with so many options available. If you're torn between GoDaddy and Squarespace, you're not alone. They both promise ease of use and good results, but which one is better?
To assist you in making an informed decision, our research team and I have meticulously tested and evaluated websites built with both Squarespace and GoDaddy.
In this article, I present a comprehensive comparison of these website builders, equipping you with the knowledge to choose the perfect solution for your specific needs.
Squarespace vs GoDaddy website builder: overview
| Squarespace | GoDaddy website builder | |
| ⭐ Rating: | ||
| 🥇 Overall rank: | #11 out of #32 | #19 out of #32 |
| 💵 Price: | From $16.00/month | From $9.99/month |
| 🪄 Ease of use: | Perfect for beginners | Very simple to use, a bit limiting |
| 🎨 Templates: | 180+ | 240+ |
| 🏢 Business features: | Solid in-house eCommerce and marketing | In-house features, suited for beginners |
| 👨💻 24/7 live support: | Yes | Yes |
| ✂️ Free domain (first year): | Yes | Yes |
| 🔒 Free SSL certificate: | Yes | Yes |
| 🔥 Coupons: | Cybernews Website Builder Coupons | Cybernews Website Builder Coupons |
| Who should choose Squarespace? | Who should choose GoDaddy? |
| Small businesses that need built-in marketing tools, seamless social media integration, and email campaigns. | Students who are looking for an affordable website builder with drag-and-drop functionality. |
| Bloggers who want beautiful, customizable templates and easy-to-use tools. Its built-in SEO features will also help boost visibility. | Beginner users looking for a straightforward website creation process with minimal technical knowledge |
| LIMITED OFFER: Save up to 36% OFF today! | LIMITED OFFER: Save 50% OFF today! |
Comparing Squarespace and GoDaddy pricing
Squarespace and GoDaddy both offer competitive features. However, one of them provides its services at a cheaper price. Here are the pricing details of both providers:
| Squarespace | GoDaddy | |
| Free plan | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Starting price | $16.00/month | $9.99/month |
| Most expensive plan | $139.00/month | $29.99/month |
Generally speaking, both Squarespace and GoDaddy are great options. GoDaddy is way cheaper and has a great selection of subscriptions and plans. Plus, it focuses on simplicity and cost-effectiveness and provides essential tools, including custom domains, SSL security, and social media integration. Meanwhile, Squarespace is a more expensive provider, according to its pricing review. However, it also provides more advanced features, particularly for eCommerce. It also offers robust customization options and great business tools. So, while GoDaddy wins the price comparison, Squarespace is not far behind – for the price difference, you get extra value.
Ease of use – testing both platforms
When choosing a website builder, ease of use is key, as these tools are designed to make building a website simple for everyone. Here's what you can expect from Squarespace and GoDaddy: Here's what you can expect from Squarespace and GoDaddy:
- Both builders focus heavily on ease of use – they’re extremely straightforward.
- Squarespace offers a variety of website building tools and also has a basic grid system that you need to follow when designing. The setup menu is beginner-friendly, intuitive, and easy to use.
- GoDaddy website builder offers less customization – it has a strict grid to follow. The setup process is simple with a few questions you need to answer and it has guides to point the user in the right direction.
In this section, I’ll go through the signing up, editing, and website building processes. I also explain how they work as well as illustrate how they actually look.
Using Squarespace
Setting up your website with Squarespace is super easy and simple – it leads you through the entire process step by step.
-
You choose your template first, and only then you sign up. To some users, this approach may be better than GoDaddy’s. That’s because instead of answering questions, you have to choose a template that suits your needs immediately.
- After that, you’re asked to name your site, and then you receive a quick tutorial explaining how the Squarespace editor works.
-
Moreover, Squarespace editor is really focused on simplicity. Tools regarding anything you might need are displayed on the left side of your screen. The editor highlights the possible editing options and lets you quickly add and remove digital content on the website.
-
You also have to follow a grid, and you can add sections and blocks to fill with content. In contrast, GoDaddy does not offer blocks like that, and by using their website builder, you’re left to your own devices. It is also possible to choose from several premade sections. These sections fit the template of your choice pleasantly, taking overall style, fonts, and colors into consideration. Because of that, Squarespace is also one of the best website builders for small businesses. It lets you get your website up and running fast.
- It’s possible to add additional elements to those premade sections because, sometimes they don’t have everything that you might need. This really lets your creative juices flow, and the customizations are almost endless.
In conclusion, design-wise, Squarespace is beautiful. You don’t have to think much when designing your website, and it comes out well put together. Additionally, if you are an artist or a photographer and want full customization power, Squarespace is perfect for you. It provides all tools to customize your website manually.
Using GoDaddy
GoDaddy offers an incredibly simple and quick "sign up and go" interface. And the process is definitely fast. All you have to do is press the Start for Free button, and you’re ready to go.
-
After signing up with either an email or a social media account, you’re presented with two steps: choosing a category from a preselected list and then naming your site.
-
It’s quick and simple, and all of the decisions that you make in the beginning can be changed later on when editing. After that, you’re thrown into your site’s editor. Only now you can choose your site’s template and try out the website’s editing options with the use of the menu on the right.
-
The menu also lets you add and edit sections, such as restaurant reservations and showing live streams from your social media platforms. That makes GoDaddy an excellent option for restaurants, event planners, or any business looking for an easy-to-use platform that doesn’t require complex customization.
- GoDaddy’s editor is made for beginners. It follows a simple grid pattern, and you won’t be able to move your items in every way that you might want. However, the grid pattern does look pretty good and gives your site a nice, sleek look. Besides, you can fully customize it.
All in all, it’s simple, a little constricting, and the limitations are great if you do not have any prior design experience – because they lead to a great-looking website. That’s why it's ideal for beginners who need to quickly create a website and promote their business. However, if you value design more, Squarespace should be your go-to.
GoDaddy vs Squarespace website builder templates
When comparing website builders like Squarespace and GoDaddy, one crucial factor to consider is the variety and functionality of their templates. Let's delve into the key differences between the two platforms in terms of their template offerings:
- GoDaddy website builder offers over 240+ templates that are versatile and allows using the same content with a different layout.
- Squarespace offers over 180+ templates, which are crafted specifically for different websites.
- Both website builders offer beautiful options; however, the level of functionality between them differs.
A good template is a great starting point for a user with no design experience. Let’s take a look at how these website builders compare:
The major difference between GoDaddy vs Squarespace is the way templates work. The templates on GoDaddy are pretty basic and nothing out of the ordinary. You have the opportunity to choose from over 240+ templates that mainly differ in the site’s layout. They will simply take your existing content and change how it looks and behaves.
I liked how easy it is to swap themes and see your content presented afresh. It's a simple way to edit the website's style and feel at the press of a button.
Moving on to Squarespace, there are over 180+ templates to choose from, and unlike GoDaddy, they’re very visually diverse. Instead of having different layouts, you'll be given massive example sites, different in their style, visuals, and even niches. Squarespace did their homework and made the user’s job easier by dividing the templates into topics to choose from. This way, you can find the best one for your business.
A standout point is that you can add templates into a My Favorites tab to find the ones that caught your attention before quickly. As for the templates themselves, they’re modern-looking and polished. These templates focus heavily on visuals, making your site extremely appealing to the eye.
GoDaddy and Squarespace both offer AI-powered features, and rank well among other best AI web builders. GoDaddy's artificial intelligence helps users create a website without any coding knowledge. It asks users a few questions about their business and then generates a website template that is tailored to their needs.
Squarespace also uses artificial intelligence, but it goes a step further by offering Design Intelligence features. These features allow users to customize their website templates with AI-generated suggestions for colors, fonts, and layouts.
All in all, I really enjoyed Squarespace’s templates because of their heavy focus on visuals and overall customization. The designs are modern and very pleasing to the eye. It’s virtually impossible to mess up the site’s look. GoDaddy’s templates are more like a guide, and you have to decide what would look nice and work with your content.
Features
In a nutshell – the key difference between both providers is the third-party support. Squarespace allows you to add third-party integrations, while GoDaddy doesn't. That's especially crucial when you need a feature that isn't included natively.
However, both Squarespace and GoDaddy still include many extensions natively. Since I tested both providers with the help of our research team, I review their eCommerce, SEO, and marketing tools in this section, so keep reading.
eCommerce
Squarespace lets you choose from various shipping options, including flat-rate, calculated, and free shipping. You can even set up shipping rules based on location or product weight. Also, GoDaddy automatically calculates taxes for your customers based on their location and lets you set up custom tax rules. Also, you can set up your website to offer various discounts to your customers.
Meanwhile, I found it easy to set up an eCommerce website with GoDaddy. Before setting it up, it asks you what features your website will need, and you get to choose them.
After that, you can also choose from a variety of shipping options, including flat-rate, calculated, and free shipping. GoDaddy also offers local delivery and in-person pickup. Additionally, it automatically calculates taxes based on your customers' location and lets you offer discounts, including percentage off and free shipping.
While the two providers are similar, Squarespace wins this eCommerce comparison. It’s one of the best eCommerce website builders, offers more discount options and better appointment scheduling.
Marketing
From a marketing perspective, Squarespace and GoDaddy are similar. However, I found GoDaddy to be more user-friendly because of its interface.
When you open Squarespaces marketing options, a bunch of options come up. Here, you can set up email campaigns and manage social media integrations to track social media analytics.
Additionally, since Squarespace is one of the best affiliate marketing web builders, there's an affiliate marketing program. It lets you earn commissions by referring customers to Squarespaces services.
Meanwhile, with GoDaddy, you get all the same features. You can set up email campaigns, manage social media integrations on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and do affiliate marketing. However, I liked GoDaddy’s interface more. That’s because it uses a checklist style, which always reminds me of what I still have to set up for my website.
SEO features
When it comes to SEO features, both Squarespace and GoDaddy offer similar tools. However, GoDaddy has an advantage because of its ease of use.
On both platforms, you can easily edit meta titles, descriptions, and URL slugs. Also, they both will give you special keyword search tools. GoDaddy has a dedicated keyword research tool, and Squarespace offers a search keywords panel to show which terms are driving traffic to your site. Additionally, both platforms automatically generate sitemaps, which help search engines crawl your site more efficiently. They also integrate with Google Analytics to track your site's performance.
GoDaddy has the edge with its SEO section. It helps you manage site-wide SEO settings, which deal with site-wide matters.
Performance results
In this section, I analyze the performance results of both GoDaddy and Squarespace, highlighting their respective strengths based on website loading speed. A fast-loading website is crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction, as nobody likes waiting for extended periods for a website to load. Let's dive into the findings:
- In performance tests (overall speed, loading time, fullest extent load), GoDaddy surpasses Squarespace.
- Both Squarespace and GoDaddy offer satisfactory performance results.
For the last side-by-side comparison, we put both of the websites that we built through GTMetrix. If you’re unfamiliar with this platform, it measures the page’s or platform’s optimization and overall speed. Here are the results for GoDaddy:
| Overall performance: | 99% |
| Largest contentful paint: | 1.42s |
| Test server location: | Virginia, USA |
And here are the results for Squarespace:
| Overall performance: | 76% |
| Largest contentful paint: | 2.17s |
| Test server location: | Dulles, Virginia USA |
GoDaddy’s website builder is astonishingly fast. According to Cybernews GoDaddy review, its largest contentful paint loads in just 1.42 seconds. For Squarespace, it takes 2.17 seconds to load fully, which is still an excellent result.
You have to agree that both website builders are actually quite snappy. Both websites load fully in less than 3 seconds, so your visitors won’t have to sit around and get bored.
Squarespace vs GoDaddy – side-by-side comparison
| Category | Squarespace | GoDaddy |
| Price | ❌ | ✅ |
| Ease of use | ✅ | ❌ |
| Templates | ✅ | ❌ |
| Features | ✅ | ✅ |
| Performance | ❌ | ✅ |
Bottom line
When making a comparison between Squarespace and GoDaddy, it is imperative to consider individual preferences. Both platforms boast user-friendly interfaces and similar website editing capabilities.
Squarespace stands out for its well-roundedness, catering to a wide range of website types. According to Cybernews' hands-on-experience with Squarespace, it offers many beautiful website templates. However, it has limited editing options.. This is a double-edged sword as it limits customization, but ensures that the website always looks beautiful and runs smoothly. However, it is worth noting that their plans are more expensive, and comprehensive social media marketing requires additional expenditure.
On the other hand, GoDaddy offers straightforward layouts so users can make design choices themselves. While it may not match Squarespace's versatility and visual appeal, GoDaddy performs better by loading pages in less than half a second. Also, it has an InSight tool, which appeals to novices in the field, and its prices are more competitive than Squarespace's.
FAQ
Which is better, GoDaddy or Squarespace?
It depends on your needs – Squarespace is slightly more expensive; however, the design possibilities are almost endless with their beautifully-crafted templates. GoDaddy is cheaper than Squarespace and is better if you're on a budget.
Can I use Squarespace with GoDaddy?
Yes, it’s possible to use Squarespace with a GoDaddy domain if you already have one. You can either transfer your domain to Squarespace or connect it to your Squarespace account. If you transfer your domain, you will manage all of your domain settings and billing from your Squarespace account. If you only connect your domain, you will still need to manage some of your domain settings through GoDaddy.
Can I switch from GoDaddy to Squarespace?
Yes, you can switch from GoDaddy to Squarespace. You can transfer your domain to Squarespace, which lets you manage everything from there, or connect it to your Squarespace account, but you’ll still need to manage some settings through GoDaddy.
Comments
Thank you for doing so much to present a readable breakdown that even a novice like me can get the gist of. I feel better now about working with GoDaddy through a nonprofit I volunteer with, but as a strongly visual person of course I’d like the options of Squarespace. All in all, GoDaddy makes much more sense though and I don’t feel wistful anymore.
I'm really happy to hear that you enjoy your experience with GoDaddy. At the end of the day, both providers are very good at what they do. It all depends on your budget and your personal needs.
First of all, thank you for your kind words. Both builders are indeed very functional and easy to use. However, I should point out that both also include a free SSL. You might be thinking about GoDaddy's shared hosting solutions – those do not include a free SSL. GoDaddy's website builder plans, on the other hand, all come with a free automatically installed SSL certificate.
Hope this helps :)
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are markedmarked