Creating a website or blog isn’t the easiest thing to do. Luckily, there’s Bluehost and Squarespace, two popular platforms beginners and advanced users alike turn to because of their ease of use.
They aren’t exactly the same. At their core, Bluehost is a web hosting provider with third-party website builders, while Squarespace is a website builder with hosting. Sure, they seem similar in a way, but there are a couple of key differences between them that’ll determine what kind of experience you get out of each one. At the end of the day, both can help you get your website up and running, and simply put, deciding on which one to go with boils down to a matter of preference and budget.
Bluehost vs Squarespace Comparison Chart
| Name | Bluehost | Squarespace |
 |  | |
| Price | Check Price at Bluehost.com | Check Price at Squarespace.com |
| Free Domain for 1 Year | Yes | Yes |
| Free SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes |
| Disk Space | Basic: 50 GB SSD Plus: Unlimited SSD Choice Plus: Unlimited SSD Pro: Unlimited SSD | Unlimited |
| 24/7 Customer Support | Yes (chat and phone) | Yes (email only; chat available only on weekdays) |
| Free Trial/Money-Back Guarantee | 30-day money-back guarantee | 14-day free trial |
Features and Benefits
Both Bluehost and Squarespace offer a free SSL certificate and a custom domain for one year.
With Bluehost’s shared hosting, you get one website, 50 GB of SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, CDN and a free domain for one year on the Basic plan. The higher plans have everything Basic has but ups the ante with unlimited websites and SSD storage, as well as a few additional features such as free domain privacy and automated backup.
Meanwhile, Squarespace subscriptions include a free domain for one year, unlimited bandwidth and storage and an SSL certificate. In other words, you won’t have to opt for the more expensive plans to get these staples.
As an officially recommended host by WordPress.org, Bluehost has a lot of benefits if you’re using WordPress as your content management system or CMS. Bluehosts’s shared WordPress hosting has specific features for the platform, including automatic WordPress updates and a one-click WordPress installer to set things up fast, for instance. If you’re not sold on WordPress, you can always turn to other CMSes such as Joomla.
On Squarespace, some unique advantages you can expect are its easy-to-use drag-and-drop page builder, logo maker and video backgrounds, to name a few. Moreover, it supports email marketing campaigns, providing a ton of email templates to pick from. Basically, it has every tool you need to make a blog, website, or online store all in one place.
Personalization and Ease of Use
Squarespace is arguably easier to use for total beginners than Bluehost.
In a word, Bluehost is simple to use, but it isn’t the easiest for complete beginners. On the other hand, Squarespace is designed for beginners. Its main appeal is really its user-friendly interface and the fact that anyone can create a website even without any coding know-how.
Bluehost subscribers can use an intuitive website builder for their websites too, though. They can use Weebly, which is also a drag-and-drop affair, or goMobi for mobile websites. There are plenty of free themes on WordPress they can use to boot, as well as paid premium ones. Plugins are also easy to install, such as WooCommerce. The possibilities are practically endless here.
Now Squarespace has a ton of templates at your disposal, all of which are customizable. You can tweak just about anything you want like font and colors and upload your own images and logos. For blogs, you can schedule posts and categorize them. For online stores, you can create listings of your products with videos or services and receive payments, be it for subscriptions or direct sales. You can even add online booking to your page with Squarespace Scheduling.
However, customization on Bluehost with open-source WordPress is more flexible because you get full control over how you want to design your website. That includes HTML and CSS access. Squarespace is relatively limited in that regard, and if you want to tinker with CSS or JavaScript, you’ll need to be on at least the Business plan, which is the second tier.
Customer Support
Bluehost has 24/7 support via chat and phone, while Squarespace only has 24/7 email support.
While both offer 24/7 assistance, they’re not the same. For starters, you can get in touch with Bluehost through chat or phone anytime, but with Squarespace, you can only chat with its reps during weekdays. Its only 24/7 support is through email.
The quality of each one is regarded as excellent—most of the time, at least. Thing is, you’d find mixed reviews about their customer service if you search online. The takeaway here is neither is perfect, but they do a bang-up job for the most part.
Bluehost also has a knowledge base filled with useful help articles and the like. Squarespace has something similar too, and it even has a community forum as well, which is a huge plus.
Pricing and Value
Bluehost plans cost a lot less than Squarespace’s.
The most obvious difference here is Bluehost charges annually, while Squarespace charges either monthly or annually.
Bluehost plans are easier on the budget across the board, but keep in mind that after the first term, you’ll be paying the regular rates, not the promo rates that Bluehost puts front and center on its pages. Another thing to note is Bluehost charges migration fees, but WordPress migration is free, so there’s that.
As for Squarespace, you’ll have to fork over a couple of extra bucks for email campaigns, which can really add up over time since their subscriptions aren’t exactly the most affordable to begin with.
Now Bluehost doesn’t offer a free trial, but you do get a 30-day money-back guarantee. In contrast, Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial, and the advantage to that is you don’t need a credit card to get started.
Verdict
Bluehost is the better option in most cases.
To sum things up, Bluehost provides more freedom, and you can do just about any kind of project or website you want. Squarespace is more of an all-in-one package to get your website off the ground without jumping through hoops.
As mentioned, both services have the tools and features you need to create a website, but if we had to choose, we’ll have to go with Bluehost here. Its flexibility in hosting options, WordPress customization and better scalability as your site grows are hard to pass up. On top of that, its plans are more affordable. That said, Squarespace is still a decent option. It’s perfect for individuals who want a fast professional-looking website without the hassles of web hosting, but again, it’s not cheap.
FAQs
It depends on your needs. Squarespace is better for those who want to create a website fast, while Bluehost is better for those who want more flexibility in hosting and more customization.
Yes, you can connect your Bluehost domain to your Squarespace website.
Squarespace is a website builder with hosting included. If you do create a website using its services, it’ll be your web host.
Open-source WordPress has more options for customizations, giving users a huge variety of themes and plugins to work with. Meanwhile, Squarespace has a ton of built-in features, as well as templates and the like, all in one package.
