Is Squarespace increasing its prices? What we know, and the best alternatives

What Is Happening With Squarespace Pricing?

According to various reports in July 2026, and discussions within the Squarespace community forum, the changes currently affect websites billed in US dollars.

The reported increases differ depending on whether customers pay annually or month to month.

Annual Subscriptions

Squarespace advertises annual plans using a monthly equivalent, but customers pay for the full 12 months upfront.

Monthly Subscriptions

Customers who choose monthly billing pay the following amount each month:

Annual Core and Plus subscribers face the largest percentage increases. Customers paying month to month will also see increases on those two plans, but by smaller percentages.

These reported changes currently relate to subscriptions billed in US dollars.

Squarespace hasn’t published a detailed public announcement explaining the changes. Customers appear to be finding out through renewal emails instead, which probably hasn’t helped the reaction. A 26% rise is difficult to brush off as a minor adjustment, particularly if you manage several websites.

There is also frustration from customers who feel they’re being asked to pay more for new features, particularly AI tools, that they may not use. Again, that’s part of the discussion around the increase rather than an official explanation from Squarespace.

It’s also worth checking which plan you’re actually on. Squarespace now uses Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced for its current website plans, but older sites may still be on legacy packages. Your billing currency, renewal date, billing cycle and any previous discount can all affect the figure you see.

Should You Leave Squarespace?

Not automatically.

A frustrating price increase doesn’t necessarily make a full website migration worthwhile. If your site works well, brings in business and takes very little effort to maintain, paying a little more may still be cheaper than rebuilding it somewhere else.

Before moving, we’d check three things:

1. Can you downgrade? You may be paying for features you no longer use. Compare your current plan against Squarespace’s latest plan features before doing anything drastic.
2. What is your real annual cost? Include your website plan, domain, email, scheduling, email marketing and any other subscriptions. A cheaper headline price elsewhere can become much less impressive once the extras are added.
3. What will migration cost? Your own time counts. So does rebuilding the design, moving products, checking forms, protecting search rankings and fixing whatever decides to break at 4:55 on a Friday afternoon.

If you run a print-on-demand store and still want to move, changing platform isn’t only a design decision. Your new store also needs to connect to your fulfilment supplier, otherwise you’ll be trading a higher subscription price for a pile of manual order processing.

The four alternatives below all connect with Inkthreadable, allowing orders to continue flowing through to us for fulfilment. Big Cartel works a little differently from the others, which we’ll explain below.

Squarespace Alternatives at a Glance

1. Wix: The Closest Like-for-Like Alternative

If you like the convenience of Squarespace but not the new price, Wix is the most obvious place to look first. It combines drag-and-drop design with hosting, ecommerce, bookings, blogging and other business tools in one platform.

It also gives you more freedom over page layouts than Squarespace. That can be useful, although it gives you more opportunities to make a mess too. Freedom is lovely right up until every page has a slightly different button.

Wix connects to Inkthreadable through our app, allowing us to handle the printing, packaging and delivery of orders placed through your store. The integration includes a free 30-day trial and then costs $10 per month through your Wix account, so remember to include that when comparing the overall price. Our Wix integration guide walks you through installing the app and syncing or exporting your products.

Best for: Smaller print-on-demand brands that want a familiar all-in-one builder with more design freedom than Squarespace.

2. WordPress and WooCommerce: Best for Control and Flexibility

WordPress is the opposite of an enclosed website builder. The software is open source, you can choose your own host and there are thousands of themes and plugins available. WooCommerce develops WordPress into a fully customisable online store.

This gives you much more control over your website, your data and where the site is hosted. If one hosting company raises its prices, you can move to another without rebuilding the whole thing from scratch.

That flexibility comes with responsibility, though. Somebody needs to manage updates, backups, security and plugin compatibility. Managed WordPress hosting can take care of a lot of this, but that needs to be included in your cost comparison.

Inkthreadable connects directly with WooCommerce to pass customer orders into your Inkthreadable account for fulfilment. Once the stores are linked, you can create and export new products, connect products you already sell and configure your shipping rates. Our WooCommerce connection guide takes you through the setup step by step.

Best for: Print-on-demand businesses that value ownership and flexibility, particularly those with access to technical support.

3. Shopify: Best for Ecommerce

If selling products is the main purpose of your website, Shopify is usually a stronger option than trying to make a general website builder behave like a dedicated ecommerce platform.

Shopify’s entry-level annual plan currently starts at £19 per month in the UK. It includes the core tools needed to run a store, with more advanced plans adding lower card rates, more staff accounts and additional international selling features.

The platform is built around products, orders, customers, stock and checkout. That makes day-to-day store management straigh­tforward, and its app ecosystem covers almost every integration you could reasonably need.

The slight catch is that it also contains plenty of integrations you didn’t know you needed until they started charging £12 a month each.

Inkthreadable has integrated with Shopify since 2013 and remains our most popular ecommerce integration. Our free Shopify app passes orders through for production and shipping, with no need to hold stock or process fulfilment manually. Follow our Shopify integration guide to install the app, add your billing details and create new products or link products you already sell.

Best for: Print-on-demand businesses that need a dependable ecommerce setup and plenty of room to grow.

4. Big Cartel: Best for Small Creative Shops

Big Cartel is aimed at artists, makers and independent sellers. Its free Gold plan supports up to five physical products, while paid plans currently support up to 50 or 500 products. Big Cartel doesn’t charge its own transaction fee, although payment processor fees still apply.

It’s refreshingly simple and can work brilliantly for a small product range. That simplicity becomes a limitation if you need detailed reporting, complex product options, advanced marketing or a large catalogue.

Inkthreadable’s Big Cartel integration works differently from our other ecommerce connections. You can’t export products directly from Inkthreadable to Big Cartel. Instead, you create the listing in Big Cartel, then link it to an Inkthreadable product when its first order appears in your account. Our guide explains how the Big Cartel integration works, followed by separate instructions for installing the integration and setting up your shipping rates.

Best for: Creators with a focused product range who want something simpler than Shopify.

A Quick Warning Before You Migrate

You can’t normally lift a Squarespace website out and drop it into another builder exactly as it is. Squarespace can export certain content to an XML file, mainly for WordPress, but its own guidance confirms that not everything will export. Layouts, styling and platform-specific features generally need to be rebuilt, and images may need extra attention.

The aim is to change platform, not disappear from Google for three months because half your old pages now lead to a 404.

Final Thoughts

The reported Squarespace price increases are real for some USD-billed customers, but that doesn’t yet mean every UK customer will see the same change. Check your own renewal information before making a decision.

Squarespace may still be worth the money if it gives you everything you need and saves you time. Convenience has value. Equally, if you’re already working around platform limitations or paying for features you don’t use, a higher renewal price is a perfectly reasonable prompt to look elsewhere.

There isn’t one alternative that beats Squarespace at everything. Wix is the closest all-round replacement. WordPress and WooCommerce offer the most control. Shopify is the strongest choice for a growing ecommerce business, while Big Cartel strips ecommerce back to the basics for smaller stores.

All four connect with Inkthreadable, so the final decision comes down to the type of store you’re building, how much control you want and how far you expect the business to grow. Whichever route you choose, our store setup guides cover connecting the integration, creating products, setting shipping rates and adding branded extras. If you get stuck, our support team is here to help.

The right choice isn’t simply the platform with the lowest monthly number. It’s the one that does what your business needs without making you pay in money, time or unnecessary faff.

---