Is WordPress or Squarespace Better for Church Websites?

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This is the ultimate showdown between two of the most popular website platforms on the planet. Is WordPress or Squarespace better for your church website? The truth is that both platforms can be great options for churches. but each comes with its own list of pros and cons. In this guide, we’ll compare the main differences between WordPress and Squarespace so you know which one REALLY is the best website builder for your ministry.

Let’s Meet the Contenders

Meet WordPress, the Most Powerful Website Builder

On one side, we have WordPress, the OG of website builders. WordPress was launched in 2003 to help bloggers post daily articles on their own without touching any code. Today, WordPress just keeps growing and powers over 40% of all websites. WordPress is undoubtedly the most powerful website platform on the planet.

Meet Squarespace, the Friendly Website Builder

On the other side, we have an all-in-one website solution. What started as a simple drag-and-drop builder for photographers and creatives, now hosts an entire community of big businesses, bloggers, agencies, and non-profits. Squarespace is clean, modern, and just works!

My Personal Obsession with Both

I have a confession. Well, more of a dilemma. I love both of these platforms. I’m a professional web designer at a WordPress shop so WordPress is my bread and butter. And I was perfectly fine with that until my college roommate, whose now the pastor and founder of Bridges Church in Nashville, asked me to help setup his church website with Squarespace. I logged in, took one look at that beautiful dashboard, and was hooked!

In fact, I came back and built this entire website with Squarespace!

So does that mean you should quit reading and go create a church Squarespace account?

Well, maybe…but maybe not! Different ministries have different needs and for some churches, WordPress might still be the best option.

Let’s keep reading...

Which Platform is More Popular?

While Squarespace is quickly winning over more and more ministries, churches have been building websites with WordPress for over a decade now. So as far as popularity goes, WordPress is still way more popular than Squarespace. I was actually surprised to find that Squarespace gets only a fraction of overall usage compared to WordPress.

Website Platform Usage

Stats from https://trends.builtwith.com/cms.

As you can see, WordPress is the most popular website platform running 44% of all websites. Squarespace is sitting at 1.7%, which my seem low, but it’s actually the most popular in its class of smaller, all-in-one platforms.

It’s just hard to beat a decade and a half of experience. But as we all know, popularity isn’t always the answer. To fully know which is best, we’ll need to see how each platform handles standard ministry features.

Squarespace is a Simple All-in-One Solution

With Squarespace, you pick a website plan, pay one monthly (or annual) price and get the complete package:

worry-free hosting
beautiful template
seamless features like events, email marketing, and even stock images
24/7 support 👈 WordPress doesn’t have that

Not only does Squarespace come with everything ready out of the box, each feature will work seamlessly with your template. For most churches, this is the perfect solution.

But what happens if you need a feature that’s not included in Squarespace? Well, you may have to get creative.

Here’s what I mean...

But Squarespace Has Limitations

Squarespace only ships with 1 solution for handling events. And while it works great for most churches, it’s not perfect. At the time of writing, there’s no way to repeat events automatically, which is pretty common for most churches. Things like weekly services, prayer groups, bible studies, etc. if you want to repeat events every week or month, you’ll have to duplicate each event and manually change the date. It’s doable, but a major bummer.

A Look at Squarespace’s Simple Event Management Dashboard

Wordpress Gives Power, Control, and Flexibility

Unlike Squarespace, WordPress doesn’t come with any specific features out of the box. It’s really just a website software to help you manage your content. It’s not going to get your church very far until you start adding other pieces to it.

To run a church website similar to a Squarespace website, you’ll need to:

set up WordPress hosting
choose a WordPress theme
add plugins for each new feature you want

Okay, so what does this mean for our repeating event situation?

While WordPress is Flexible, it Takes a Lot of Work

WordPress doesn’t actually come with any event system out of the box. But the good news…there’s over 30 different third-party event and calendar plugins that you can add to your website. And the best part - You have complete control.

Remember how hard it is to setup repeating events in Squarespace? Well, most WordPress event plugins, like the Church Content Plugin, allow you to add repeating events, and even choose specific days to override. Which is great if you have a service every week, except for Christmas. You can set the event to repeat weekly and just exclude that specific day!

A Look at WordPress’ Event Dashboard with ChurchThemes.com Plugin

But wait, where’s the catch?

All that power comes with a lot more work - you’ll need to find and purchase your favorite event plugin, add it to your website, and set it up. Oh yeah, and then make sure it doesn’t break anything! Usually it does.

Which Platform Can Launch Faster?

With a solid content plan in place, both platforms are easy to build and launch.

To recap, Squarespace website comes with everything you need to launch, but you’ll need to make sure all the features work the way your ministry needs them to. If you don’t see a specific feature, you’ll have to come up with a work around. But if you’re happy with Squarespace’s capabilities, then you can build your church with Squarespace in just a few short days.

A WordPress website doesn’t come with all the pieces at first, but you’ll have complete freedom to add exactly what your ministry needs now and as you grow. Just make sure to roll up those sleeves...building a Church WordPress site will add a few more days to the process.

Okay, let’s move on to what you really want to know.

Is Squarespace or WordPress More Affordable for Churches?

To make this fair, we need to compare similar church website setups and features. Each setup needs:

a solid hosting plan
a good design
popular ministry features like events and sermon management

For Squarespace, it’s pretty easy. We’ll pick a plan with the options we need and we’re all set. Our biggest decision is whether we want to pay monthly or save up to 30% by paying annually.

Quick tip: you can save yourself some setup time by starting with a prebuilt church template for Squarespace or WordPress. Just in case, here’s some links…

👇

The Best Squarespace Plan for Churches is the Personal Plan.

It turns out, the Personal Plan, which is Squarespace cheapest plan has everything we need (and even includes a free domain name for the first year + 24/7 support).

Squarespace’s Personal Plan costs $16 per month or $12 per month when we pay annually. We like to save as much money as possible around here so let’s pay upfront for the year and save ourselves $48 bucks.

That means our entire church website will cost $144 for the entire year. Not too shabby.

My Recommended WordPress Setup for Churches is Flywheel Hosting + Churchthemes.com

Remember how I said that WordPress requires more work? Well, the setup piece may not be as bad as it sounds.

Meet Churchthemes.com, a company that makes church WordPress themes that comes with an all-in-one church plugin built in. That’s right - with churchthemes.com, you’ll get a beautiful church theme and features like events, sermons, and locations management ready to go.

A full churchtheme.com theme and bundle package will costs $199. In full transparency, you can buy WordPress themes as cheap as $19 to $59 bucks on some websites. But this is definitely one of those moments where mom and dad are right, you really do get what you pay for.

Okay we have our church WordPress theme, now what?

Good call! Even with a nice church theme in place, you won’t actually have a working website until you get hosting. A hosting partner handles most of the technical pieces that run your website behind the scenes. Basically the servers and software that make it live online.

My favorite hosting partner is Flywheel. Flywheel is considered a “managed” hosting provider, which means they take care of running WordPress and keeping everything up-to-date for you.

In fact, they make WordPress easy. All you have to do is click a button and your new WordPress site will get spun up in a matter a minutes. Upload that churchthemes.com bundle and you’re ready to drop in your content! Oh, and if you get stuck, you can open up a support chat and get help at any time!

A Look at the Friendly Flywheel Hosting Dashboard

Flywheel WordPress hosting is similar to the monthly Squarespace fee. Their starter plan is just $15 a month.

Let’s Recap Overall Church Website Costs.

Upfront Costs

Yearly Cost

A church Squarespace website costs $144 per year when you choose to pay annually. If you buy one of my templates, you’ll need to pay $49 upfront. A church WordPress website will cost $199 for the theme and plugin from churchthemes.com and $180 per year for Flywheel hosting.

Squarespace comes out a little cheaper, but both are in the same ballpark. So if price isn’t that different, what else is there? Glad you asked…

Is Squarespace or WordPress Easier to Use?

Most Squarespace and WordPress comparisons I’ve read online miss one very important factor...which system is actually more fun to use?

A Look at Squarespace’s Live Drag-&-Drop Editor

A Look at WordPress’ Backend Page Editor

You need to view both platforms as marketing tools. Great church websites exist on both platforms, but the really good ones are made by producing valuable content on a regular basis. The more relevant and updated you keep your site, the better chance you have at reaching new visitors and growing your church. The point of this little rant…you need a church website builder that you’ll actually enjoy using everyday!

You’ll find a million opinions on which platform is easier to use, but for me...Squarespace wins. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy WordPress, but I have more fun working with Squarespace.

WordPress has all the options, if you can dream it, you can build it with a Church WordPress website. But all those options can get confusing. And for most churches (and businesses, and bloggers, and non profits) it’s more important to have a system that you can actually use.

There may just be one way to add events in Squarespace, but it works every single time. And instead of spending extra money on plugins and an entire day configuring a thousand settings, most churches leaders just need to add the event and move on! Plus, I’m convinced that anyone on your team can learn Squarespace in just a few sessions.

My Final Verdict

For the 20% of churches who have large databases, complex integrations, or need custom features, WordPress is the best church website solution.

For the other 80% of churches, Squarespace is the quickest and easiest way to launch and grow a church website.

Remember, a website builder is just a tool. What your ministry does with the tool makes all the difference.

Happy Website Building!

Did I miss anything? If you’d like to share your thoughts on WordPress vs Squarespace, we’d love to hear it in the comments!