Having a reliable website builder can take your business to newer heights. Imagine this: you have excellent products and services and know the best marketing techniques to capture your audiences' attention.
However, you're seeing a steep decline. It's not because of your products and services but the absolutely horrible website you have. Don't get me wrong. Without an appealing website, you will drive your customers away.
That being said, there are two excellent website builders in 2024 that can save you: Jimdo and Squarespace. While they look similar, Squarespace vs Jimdo is quite a topic of interest. In this article, I will discuss Jimdo vs Squarespace and help you choose the right one.
Jimdo vs Squarespace: Detailed comparison
Jimdo is a versatile platform that enables users to create various websites, including portfolios, e-commerce stores, business websites, landing pages, and personal projects. It has more than 25 million users.
Its defining feature is integrating an AI-powered tool that automates much of the website-building process, allowing users to launch sites quickly and efficiently without any coding knowledge. This makes Jimdo especially appealing for beginners or small businesses looking for a simple, streamlined way to get online.
Conversely, Squarespace excels at crafting visually stunning portfolios, digital storefronts, landing pages, and professional business sites. It comes with robust blogging and e-commerce capabilities and advanced design customization options, making it suitable for users of all skill levels.
Squarespace caters to both novices, offering intuitive tools requiring little to no programming knowledge and experienced developers who can use its extensive customization features to create complex, feature-rich websites.
1. Ease of use
When choosing a website builder, you must pay close attention to the ease of use. It’s one of the most important things you need to consider. I’ve seen many people make the same mistake again and again.
For starters, an easy to use website builder will benefit the beginner. I highly respect that, and both Jimdo and Squarespace lived up to my expectations.
Jimdo: User-friendly
Jimdo stands out as an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder. It features a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that gives users full control over the entire customization process.
This means you can see exactly how your website will look as you arrange images, edit text, or adjust slideshows, ensuring a smooth and effective design experience. The platform's simplicity makes it ideal for beginners, yet it is powerful enough to meet the needs of more advanced users.
Beyond its user-friendly interface, Jimdo also offers several hidden advanced features. Its enhanced editor, for example, allows you to apply sitewide changes to elements of the same type with a single click, eliminating the need to manually adjust each one individually. This can save considerable time when fine-tuning the design across your entire website.
For more granular control, Jimdo provides a “Style by Element” toggle that lets you modify individual components without affecting the overall site design. Additionally, the Visual Editor enhances the user experience by allowing seamless graphic content management.
Whether you need to align images, add captions, or edit alternative text, Jimdo makes it easy. Users can add or replace images and icons, resize and crop them, or turn them into clickable links supporting multiple image formats.
Jimdo also offers extensive text editing capabilities. In the Style Editor, you can add and format text blocks, adjust their positioning, and customize fonts, colors, and sizes. This level of flexibility makes Jimdo suitable for users of all skill levels.
Whether you’re a complete novice with no web design experience or an experienced developer looking to build a simple site quickly, the AI tool simplifies the process, guiding you from start to finish. This ensures that anyone can create a website efficiently, regardless of their technical background.
Jimdo AI Editor offers several simple questions regarding your business details, industry, website preferences, etc. to further design a website that will meet your needs and requirements with maximum details.
The website has ready-made content that can replace your business info. If you have any social network accounts, you can connect them to your website, which is under construction to let the system automatically integrate the content into your website. This solution makes the process of web creation super easy and effective!
Squarespace: Slightly complicated for beginners
Squarespace features a minimalistic design that enhances usability, though first-time users may find it somewhat challenging to navigate.
The dashboard can seem overwhelming, and new users might need time to familiarize themselves with the interface. Despite appearing more complex than platforms like Jimdo, beginners, and professionals can quickly adapt to Squarespace's intuitive and well-organized layout.
One of Squarespace’s key advantages is its integrated inline editing feature, which allows users to make changes directly on the page without switching between the website manager and preview mode.
Updates are displayed in real-time as you edit, simplifying the process and saving time. All edits are automatically saved, but users still have the option to preview and fine-tune their site before publishing.
The platform also offers a robust Style Editor, which is easy for everyone, from beginners to more advanced users. This tool allows the customization of website pages by adjusting sections, elements, and objects.
With the Style Editor, you can create various page types, including Cover Pages, Product Pages, Galleries, Blogs, Index Pages, and Event Pages, offering significant flexibility for different project needs.
Squarespace excels in customer support, providing help and support buttons on nearly every platform page. Users can access various support options, including a community-driven forum, one-on-one workshops, and email support.
The platform also offers 24/7 live chat support, making it one of the most reliable in the industry. Additionally, there are extensive tutorial resources, including videos and how-to articles, a comprehensive Help Center, webinars, and a well-organized FAQ section. Users can also rely on the round-the-clock ticketing system for additional support, ensuring that help is always available.
2. eCommerce
This is another essential part of my Jimdo vs Squarespace review blog. A website builder must have excellent eCommerce capabilities. Moreover, the eCommerce features will benefit both beginners and professionals.
That said, I really like Jimdo and Squarespace's eCommerce capabilities. Let’s discuss this in detail so that you don’t get confused.
Jimdo: Reliable eCommerce capabilities
Jimdo stands out for its eCommerce capabilities, making it an excellent choice for e-retailers looking to build and manage their own online store.
The platform offers a range of features to support online sales, including multiple payment options, customizable tax, and shipping settings, as well as the ability to set personalized messages such as custom salutations and email confirmations for completed checkouts.
The store dashboard provides users with a menu of essential eCommerce tools. Here, they can manage current orders, view archived orders, and utilize inventory management tools. The platform also allows for the adjustment of terms and conditions, return policy settings, and custom checkout forms.
Managing your product catalog is simple—users can easily upload new items, add images, write descriptions, and input special parameters to create a visually appealing storefront. This comprehensive feature set ensures that Jimdo is user-friendly and powerful enough to meet the demands of growing eCommerce businesses.
Squarespace: Built for online stores
Squarespace offers a robust eCommerce platform that supports the sale of both digital and physical products. It includes flexible product variants, coupon creation, post-checkout code injection (for tracking customer activity via marketing pixels), and mailing list integration, making it an excellent fit for small to medium-sized online stores.
However, larger eCommerce projects may require more advanced tools and greater flexibility, which could be a limitation for large businesses.
With Squarespace, you can easily create and manage product catalogs, assigning specific parameters and characteristics to each item. The platform allows for adding images and videos, price settings, and product descriptions, ensuring your storefront is functional and visually appealing.
One of Squarespace’s standout features is its dedicated section of eCommerce templates designed for various industries. These templates allow users to create a customized online store that fits their brand and niche, offering a professional look with minimal effort.
3. Blogging
Next comes the blogging features. I’ve seen many people thinking that their website looks super attractive without a blog page. Now, there’s one misconception. A blogging page won’t make your website look better.
So, what does it do? It brings organic traffic and visitors to your site. A well-written, SEO-optimized blog will undoubtedly improve your site's visibility. You can achieve better SERP rankings.
Jimdo: Simple blogging features
Jimdo offers standard blogging features that are simple to use. The blog functionality is built into your project by default, and you just need to activate it to start adding blog posts. Managing your blog is straightforward, with the blogging tool divided into blog posts and previews.
When creating a post, you can easily add a title, summary, and image, which will then appear in the Blog Preview section. Once you've reviewed the post details, you can quickly save and publish it, making the process fast and hassle-free.
Jimdo’s blogging options include features like comment sections, post status settings (draft or public), scheduling by date and time, and tagging for better organization.
You can enhance your posts by adding various elements such as images, downloadable files, videos, and even store items, making it a flexible tool for sharing content and promoting products.
Squarespace: Blogging isn't a strong point
Squarespace offers multiple blog-related features. These include scheduled posts, Google Author Rank (built into member profiles), geo-tagging, multiple author support, and more. The website builder has a separate section of blog templates to match various niches.
Having picked the one, you may proceed to customization for your project. You can add/edit new and existing publications, enable the commenting feature, adjust blog configurations, etc.
Such impressive functionality allows for starting personal and business blogs from scratch without deep coding knowledge. By the way, if you have already run a blog launched with another platform like WordPress, Tumblr, Posterous, Blogger, etc., Squarespace allows you to transfer it to its servers with only a few clicks.
4. Third-party integrations
Without third-party integrations, it’s impossible to grow your website. You may think that the in-built features are more than enough. But you’re far from the truth.
The websites you see online run on hundreds of third-party integrations. Yes, you read that right. So, you must ensure you have a dedicated library from which you can install those integrations.
Jimdo: Limited intgrations
Jimdo offers limited integration options compared to other website builders, and it lacks an app store for adding extensions to your project. However, the platform does allow the integration of several third-party services to enhance your website's functionality.
Some of these include Eventbrite for ticketing, Tidio Live Chat for customer support, Infogram for creating infographics, and social media platforms for sharing content. You can also embed YouTube videos and access a stock image collection in Jimdo’s gallery.
The platform provides multilingual support, enabling you to create websites in multiple languages, although the selection is limited. The classic interface supports eight languages, while the editor can be used in any language you choose, offering flexibility for international users.
For businesses, Jimdo includes a useful Business Listing feature, which simplifies promoting your business online. This tool lets you submit your business to multiple local directories directly from the dashboard.
Another notable feature of Jimdo is its free Logo Creator, which lets you design a custom logo for your brand. It’s an easy-to-use tool, housed in the “My Logos” section of the dashboard, where you can create, store, and manage logos.
Squarespace: Can integrate eCommerce apps
The website builder allows you to embed Google Maps into your website to provide a detailed location of your business. This contributes to more effective company promotion and increases customer satisfaction. It also lets you integrate an online calendar into your project to keep users aware of upcoming events, news, special offers, and other business-related information.
The system lets you set up and manage effective email marketing campaigns to promote your business online. The website builder lets you import your website content into draft emails in almost no time to save it for future mailouts.
Like Jimdo, Squarespace can create and integrate logos to boost your company’s exposure. You can choose a logo style, adjust settings, and add design elements to create a unique logo.
Another system advantage is that it encourages team cooperation. Suppose you intend to work on the project development with a team of co-workers. In that case, you can add multiple contributors to the same account and assign individual roles to them, such as Administrator, Content Editor, Billing, Reporting, Comment Moderator, Trusted Commenter, and Store Manager.
One of the website builder's highlights is its Unfold App. This advanced storytelling toolkit allows users to create engaging stories for popular social networks and Snapchat. The app can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play Store for free, and premium features are also available at an extra cost.
5. Template editing
I know what you’re thinking. Why did I place the template part at the bottom of my article? If you’ve been following my blog for quite some time, you know I always discuss templates at the beginning of the comparison.
However, I faced a hiccup when writing this Jimdo vs Squarespace guide. I didn’t find the templates attractive or customizable. Yes, they were good, but not good enough.
Jimdo: Made for both beginners and professionals
Jimdo provides two website development options to accommodate users with varying skill levels and needs.
The Creator Editor is designed for coding experts and offers a selection of 15 ready-made templates. These templates are free, responsive, and customizable, ensuring they look great on mobile and tablet devices right from the start.
For added convenience, the themes are organized into over a dozen categories based on different topics, making it easy to find a suitable design. Once your site is complete, you can switch templates without losing any content, allowing for flexibility in design.
With the Creator Editor, users can build custom navigation menus, eCommerce stores, and other design elements using their HTML and CSS coding skills. If you don’t find a template that fits your vision, you can start from a blank design, giving you complete control to create a unique website from the ground up.
On the other hand, Jimdo also offers an advanced AI tool for non-technical users. This option doesn’t involve a template selection process; instead, you respond to a series of automatically generated questions that help the system determine the most appropriate theme for your project.
Customizing this theme is straightforward—you simply replace the demo content with your own, making the process quick and user-friendly. This dual approach ensures that both tech-savvy users and beginners can easily create compelling, visually appealing websites.
Squarespace: Drag-and-drop user interface
Squarespace is renowned for its modern and visually appealing themes, considered some of the best in the industry. The templates are designed with great attention to detail and are fully responsive, ensuring your site looks stunning on any device.
Most templates come with unique designs optimized for mobile use, translating interactive features into a mobile-friendly format that includes readable fonts and collapsible menus tailored for touch gestures.
This mobile optimization is enabled by default, but you can disable it on most templates if preferred. The Device View option in the control panel lets you preview how your site appears on phones and tablets, ensuring a seamless user experience across devices.
Additionally, Squarespace features an advanced Cover Page Builder that simplifies creating attractive cover pages for your projects. Users can choose from over 29 pre-designed cover page layouts and fill them with customizable blocks, edit settings, and add content relevant to their industry.
For those on the Business Plan, the added benefit is access to the HTML/CSS code editor, which enables deeper customization to achieve a more personalized look for their websites. This combination of user-friendly design tools and coding capabilities makes Squarespace an excellent choice for creating a visually stunning and functional website.
Pricing structure
The pricing is another determining factor you must keep in mind. Don’t get me wrong, but I will immediately look for other alternatives if I see a website builder with a high price tag.
While this is not true for many people, small businesses don’t want to pay thousands of dollars for website builders. Fortunately, both Jimdo and Squarespace offer affordable pricing.
Jimdo: Affordable pricing
First, let's discuss Jimdo's pricing structure. I really admire that Jimdo kept their pricing plans affordable for every user. This is true especially if you're a solopreneur or a small business owner. You don't need to worry about spending too much to leverage Jimdo's features.
Jimdo pricing structure
1. Play: $0
2. Start: $11/month
3. Grow: $17/month
The pricing structure you see above is designed for building a small or large business website. Yes, these websites would be highly functional, but they are not made for eCommerce platforms. If you want to create an online store, you would need a different pricing structure.
Jimdo Online Store pricing structure
1. Business: $21/month
2. VIP: $28/month
Unfortunately, you won't get a free plan when choosing the online store pricing. It's slightly more expensive than the basic pricing structure. Jimdo made it this way, given the complexity of eCommerce stores.
Squarespace: Affordable pricing
Now, let's discuss a thing or two about Squarespace's pricing plans. Squarespace also understands the importance of having a cost-effective pricing structure.
Squarespace pricing structure
1. Personal: $16/month
2. Business: $23/month
3. Commerce Basic: $28/month
4. Commerce Advanced: $52/month
However, despite giving affordable plans, these are still more expensive than Wix. I mean, only a handful of small business owners or entrepreneurs will choose the Commerce Advanced plan to create a website. You will get a free plan, but it's only for the sake of giving a free plan. It doesn't do much.
Which website builder to choose?
Let’s come to the conclusion part. Right now, I believe you have a pretty good idea of which website builder to choose as per your needs.
If you ask me, I like both Jimdo and Squarespace. Jimdo is perfect for creating a website for small businesses. On the other hand, Squarespace is more geared towards creating online stores.
I hope you’ve found this Jimdo vs Squarespace blog informative. What’s your opinion on Jimdo and Squarespace? Let me know in the comments below.