Joomla! vs. Squarespace

Joomla!

Squarespace

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Joomla	Score 8.3 out of 10	N/A	Joomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.	N/A
Squarespace	Score 8.6 out of 10	N/A	Squarespace is a CMS platform that allows users to create a DIY blog, eCommerce store, and/or portfolio (visual art or music). Some Squarespace website and shop templates are industry or use case-specific, such as menu builders for restaurant sites.	$25 per month

Pricing

Joomla!

Squarespace

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Basic: $25
per month
Core: $36
per month
Plus: $56
per month
Advanced: $139
per month

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Joomla	Squarespace
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

28% to 36% discount available for annual pricing.

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Joomla!	Squarespace
Considered Both Products	Joomla Verified User Anonymous Chose Joomla Comparing to other Platform handling user management is easy with Joomla. various extensions really helpful for core level applicatiion Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Joomla Joomla! fits me better because it is flexible and simple enough to understand. WordPress is straightforward, but it can't handle bigger websites as efficiently. Drupal is powerful, but it can be more challenging to learn. Joomla! Offers a suitable mix of options that meet my … Incentivized Helpful? AR Abdul Rahuman Cloud engineer Chose Joomla low cost, easily accessible, very economical. Incentivized Helpful? JM Jeff Montgomery CTO Chose Joomla Joomla is a very stable and secure CMS platform that ranks about in the middle of the pack with the other 'modern day' CMS systems out there. It's not as complex and frustrating as Magento, but it's also not as easy or robust to work on as Wordpress. Thankfully when we do … Incentivized Helpful? Richard Gosler Managing Director Chose Joomla Wordpress has to be preloaded with a stack of plugins and a cache just to match 'out of the box' Joomla! That's why we switched. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Joomla I don't believe Joomla compares to any other programs I have used. There are similar products, but none that are quite as easy. Incentivized Helpful? Sanjeev Raghuwanshi Joomla Developer Chose Joomla At the starting of my career, I got Joomla! to work on, SO I learned about Joomla!. Initially, it was tough to learn component development but after [learning] something, I like to do it. Incentivized Helpful? PW Philip Walton Owner Chose Joomla All the reviews I read are lazy. They all say the same old, WP is easy, Joomla! harder but good and Drupal security. But that's so old, as they were measuring a decade ago. Joomla! has moved ahead. Its got over 70 languages and has been multi-language from the start. [It] was … Incentivized Helpful? AR Adrian Romero Brand designer Chose Joomla Simpler and easy to visually understand elements and tools. We don't need to do any fancy coding or use too many plugins. çompared with Wordpress and Webflow, we believe Joomla! has a more accurate and easy interface that allows the user to finish tasks in less time than the … Incentivized Helpful? Sergey Gvozdetskiy Sales Manager Chose Joomla Joomla! provides a good starting point with all templates, both free and paid. Incentivized Helpful? Fernanda Ministerio Especialista de Desenvolvimento Industrial Chose Joomla We tested other platforms like Wordpress, Magento and some local CMS. But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content. Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time. Incentivized Helpful? Nuno Reis CIO (Chief Information Officer) Chose Joomla As a user, it is more than OK for those standard daily operations like publishing and editing or comment management. As a developer, I have a very different perspective. Joomla! is not my favorite platform. Only ready-to-use tools like Wix can be less friendly than having to … Incentivized Helpful? Lonela Marinela Senior Product UX/UI Designer-Developer Chose Joomla There are many themes and other design assets for Joomla! we can use from paid and free libraries throughout the internet. WordPress on the other hand is also very good and useful, comparatively Joomla! offered more features and at a better price. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Joomla I like Joomla! a lot more than Wordpress, as I find this constrictive in the way that they have made it a one size fits all CMS. I also find that their vulnerabilities are far bigger than Joomla's. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Joomla Joomla is more of a developer's CMS. It is much more customizable than WordPress. Incentivized Helpful? Vinny Hebert Owner Chose Joomla Part of Joomla core, which is what comes with Joomla when you install it, is it's Access Control Lists. It allows you to not only control which users can access what, but allows you to create custom groups and have unique access per group. WordPress can't do that without a … Incentivized Helpful? Jason Montoya Virtual Chief Growth Officer (CGO) Chose Joomla Wordpress is designed in a way to make it fairly fool-proof for the admin, but in this approach, it handcuffs the user from having control or making it easy to do, in many cases, what are basic things (changing the title, URL segment, etc...). With the exception of the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Joomla Wordpress is probably the most popular CMS, followed by Joomla! For me, I find Joomla! much more intuitive. Both use themes and can provide excellent results, however I prefer Joomla! Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Joomla We chose Joomla! over Drupal or Wordpress because it's in the middle ground between those two systems. We needed something that can be extended down the road if we need it, but at the same time, it can't be too complex. We felt Drupal is too complex and Wordpress seems to be … Incentivized Helpful? Josh Randall Co-Owner, Operations & Marketing Manager Chose Joomla We selected Joomla because of the available extensions met are needs at the time. Incentivized Helpful? Lisa Keyser Owner \| Principal Chose Joomla Joomla! is the #2 Open Source CMS behind WordPress, which we also use, and ahead of Drupal, which we have evaluated but decided not to pursue. Joomla! generally performs better than WP for clients that need more complexity to their websites, including flexibility in templating, … Incentivized Helpful? Miles Szkoda Web Content Manager Chose Joomla I think Joomla is on-par with Drupal and Umbraco and similar platforms, but WordPress does seem to be above it. WordPress has become so common that there are more and more features becoming available to it that exceed the Joomla platform and make it hard to compete with. … Incentivized Helpful? Brittney Collier Marketing Assistant Chose Joomla I have selected Joomla when I needed an easy content management platform for a team of beginners. It's not as easy to customize or optimize like WordPress or Wix sites, but it's a great introduction until you are ready for the more advanced features offered by these alternative … Incentivized Helpful? Ricardo Melo Network Analyst 1 Chose Joomla Joomla has a more general and wide use, more documentation, forums and community that develops many templates and extensions for almost all purposes. It has a great web-based administration environment and, with the correct permissions setting, it can be prepared for a regular … Incentivized Helpful? Chris Putnam Senior Web Developer Chose Joomla Joomla is one of the least intuitive options and has had some issues with updates in the past, as compared to WordPress. Magento has similar issues, but Joomla doesn't have as much flexibility as Magento (and of course, Joomla does not have e-commerce features built-in). … Incentivized Helpful?	Squarespace Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace is more user-friendly and sleek. I'd recommend it over Freenom for beginners and those who are more interested in running a website (instead of caring about their DNS). Incentivized Helpful? Caitlin Sloan Founder & CEO Chose Squarespace I like Squarespace better if you are starting from scratch. I was able to use Wordpress when it was an existing site and I just had to make updates, but would have a difficult time starting from the beginning and building a Wordpress site. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Blackbaud DonorCentral, Donorbox, Alaya by Benevity, Intuit Mailchimp, monday CRM and monday.com Incentivized Helpful? TN Tyler Newman Marketing Director Chose Squarespace In my opinion, Squarespace beats Wix all day. We have used both for microsite development. We use Wordpress for our main site as the featureset is open source and is considered the industry best practice. You can do a lot more specific features with WordPress that are sometimes … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace None. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace if much less work than WordPress, plus hosting and security are not an issue. GoDaddy and Wix are okay, but nowhere near the flexibility or advanced feature set that you can get with Squarespace. Compared to the other products that I have used, Squarespace … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace We picked Squarespace for a specific use case because it was easy to spin up the promotional content we needed. Incentivized Helpful? Maria Halse Duloquin Innovation Consultant Chose Squarespace Squarespace is easy to use, webflow can feel clunky (though I haven’t tried it recently), and Wix is very similar, but I preferred the Squarespace aesthetic. Also, Squarespace has clear, transparent pricing - you know what you get, and I like the design styles. I’m not in a … Incentivized Helpful? BG Bryan Grant Head of Product & Portfolio Management Chose Squarespace Squarespace was the quickest to get up and running for a basic website, and with the GoDaddy integration it simplified rapid setup. A plugin for basic language translation allowed us to be compliant from day one. Incentivized Helpful? JM Jeff Montgomery CTO Chose Squarespace Squarespace was quicker to set up and more accessible to manipulate the theme, pictures, and content. The page layouts are more versatile and fluid. With Wordpress, more time-consuming efforts go into making a template work the way you want it to (because of the lack of the … Incentivized Helpful? PL Phoebe Little Promotions and Programs Associate Chose Squarespace Submittable and Squarespace serve different functions but Squarespace is by far the easier and more user friendly platform. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Wordpress is for more advanced users and allows more functionality to be built into the website. However, Squarespace is easy to use and you will be able to get a functioning website up and running on your own. That is their main point and purpose for their mission. However, … Incentivized Helpful? Andy Ryan Launch Engineer Chose Squarespace I would choose Squarespace over all the competition unless I wanted a website builder/host that had an online course portal. Squarespace has the easiest website builder. It's relatively cheap. It automatically updates. It is easy to integrate with third-party services such as … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Elementor and Shopify Incentivized Helpful? Lisa Cooley Art Advisor Chose Squarespace Both of my fields are visual, so design is as important as functionality. Unbounce looks great, but it's not set up for the same full functionality. I've also been quite familiar with Squarespace and felt comfortable with them. Incentivized Helpful? Shawn Dehner Owner Chose Squarespace Not even comparable. I was hacked within 2 years with WordPress in a brute force attack. Since going to Squarespace, I have had zero security issues. I feel the two platforms, though similar, are incomparable. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace I found it easier for me to use square space myself rather than have a middle person between me and my website. It was a lot easier for me to access and change something and when I wanted to change something on my site. It gave me flexibility and more options to utilize my … Incentivized Helpful? Nicole Nagy Product Designer Chose Squarespace I didn't evaluate any other platforms because I knew Squarespace was the best. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace's most attractive feature in comparison to WordPress and Wix is its library of themes available to use. WordPress has a neverending supply of options but that's WordPress, the industry-standard however the limited options for Squarespace is nice so you aren't … Incentivized Helpful? Darcy Knapp, MBA Owner/President Chose Squarespace Squarespace offers better SEO options and ease of use than Wix/Weebly site builders. Squarespace is easy to manage and easy to track inventory and sales. For companies with lower skill sets in-house, it is also very easy to train staff to manage the platform. Incentivized Helpful? MG Meadow Griffin Author/Illustrator Chose Squarespace I liked the usability of Squarespace better than Network Solutions for the type of website we were looking for. I found it was easier to create and customize and I liked the overall look of the website in Squarespace better than what the end result of the Network Solutions site … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Myself and my team have used more robust web development platforms for bigger organization presence on the web. However that has always required more time, effort and talent by using web developers to setup and add content to the sites. With squarespace, a site can be setup in … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace Squarespace is the best option relative to other web hosting and design platforms we initially reviewed. It was a bit more expensive than some of the free models we looked at but those sites often came with hidden fees if we wanted to customize anything and Squarespace has … Incentivized Helpful? IS Isabel Sam Owner Chose Squarespace I actually ended up going with Wordpress's OShine theme. Squarespace just missed some of the SEO and API tracking that I wanted and Elementor was too slow and WP Rocket isn't compatible with it. OShine ended up fitting the bill so everything I wanted could work together, but … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Squarespace I really like Squarespace's all-in-one concept vs. WordPress, where you add each piece individually. However, if you are building a much larger site, WordPress may be better. For our needs in terms of sales, Squarespace was great. Incentivized Helpful?

Features

Joomla!

Squarespace

Security

Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
	Joomla! 9.6 Ratings 17% above category average	Squarespace 8.5 Ratings 5% above category average
Role-based user permissions	9.60 Ratings	8.50 Ratings

Platform & Infrastructure

Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
	Joomla! 7.8 Ratings 3% above category average	Squarespace 4.3 Ratings 55% below category average
API	6.10 Ratings	5.00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language	9.40 Ratings	3.50 Ratings

Web Content Creation

Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
	Joomla! 9.0 Ratings 15% above category average	Squarespace 7.1 Ratings 8% below category average
WYSIWYG editor	9.40 Ratings	8.10 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness	9.70 Ratings	8.00 Ratings
Admin section	10.00 Ratings	6.10 Ratings
Page templates	6.10 Ratings	7.00 Ratings
Library of website themes	8.10 Ratings	7.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design	9.60 Ratings	7.30 Ratings
Publishing workflow	9.40 Ratings	6.20 Ratings
Form generator	9.40 Ratings	7.10 Ratings

Web Content Management

Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
	Joomla! 8.7 Ratings 17% above category average	Squarespace 7.0 Ratings 5% below category average
Content taxonomy	8.00 Ratings	6.70 Ratings
SEO support	9.60 Ratings	7.90 Ratings
Bulk management	9.20 Ratings	8.00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions	7.10 Ratings	5.70 Ratings
Community / comment management	9.40 Ratings	6.70 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Joomla!	Squarespace
Small Businesses	ManageWP Score 10.0 out of 10	ManageWP Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	RWS Tridion Sites Score 9.0 out of 10	RWS Tridion Sites Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises	RWS Tridion Sites Score 9.0 out of 10	RWS Tridion Sites Score 9.0 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Joomla!	Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend	9.4 (0 ratings)	9.2 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	10.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Usability	10.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Availability	9.9 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Performance	7.8 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	10.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Online Training	8.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.7 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	9.9 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Joomla!	Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend	It seems with the release of Joomla! 4 that the weak areas have all been covered. Its always been good for the mid-level small to large business, the blogging was WP, and the large-scale enterprise was probably bespoke. But the new interface is so simple it seems pointless using WP when Joomla! is as easy and can then grow as big as you like. The Workflows feature which allows you to set up work pipelines easily is going to be a boom to any larger enterprise sites. Couples with the new API which I got to see at one of their user groups, is amazing. They were creating articles on one site then another site was taking the feed directly for just certain categories. Really blows your mind what you could do with that and the new workflows. PW Philip Walton Owner Read full review	We've found Squarespace perfect for quick, well-designed websites that you can literally design and launch in a day. However, if you want to get more complex with your website, including custom backend integrations or code, Squarespace presents a bit more of a challenge when it comes to what they will allow you to modify on their platform (especially using third-party integration apps). Incentivized JM Jeff Montgomery CTO Read full review
Pros	We use Joomla to build our websites and web applications because of its incredible intuitiveness and tools to make everything more manageable. Its working environment is quite comfortable for my development team, and its web design resources significantly speed up our work when carrying out web development projects. It allows you to use blocks to create and visually manage websites and divide them into different categories without programming knowledge. Incentivized Sergey Gvozdetskiy Sales Manager Read full review	Squarespace is very easy to use, this is a super helpful thing as small business owners we have to wear many hats and being a full blown website developer doesn't need to be one of them. Squarespace has quick and simple plugins. Squarespace allows you to easily expand as you need to. Incentivized MM Megan Murray Owner Read full review
Cons	Updating was never as seamless/easy as it seems to be with Wordpress. Obviously we accounted for this with our own workflow/methods, but I remember whenever we did WordPress updates it always seemed a breeze compared to the time/energy involved with a Joomla update/upgrade. For a while (I think this has changed some) Joomla left itself open to attacks when administrators were not as well versed as they should be. There were developer additions that did security checks/audits for you, but the CMS was the subject of a lot of attacks when left in the hands of our clients for a long time (who had changed permissions to make editing easier/convenient). Ideally the CMS would have been more restrictive on some of these things to prevent easy abuse. Obviously this is more the fault of the misinformed/human then the CMS, but it could have been more dummy-proof. No native versioning. There are some community extensions that add this functionality, but they pale in comparison to the versioning plugins of other CMS's (WordPress specifically). Again this was some time ago and in our experience, it could have changed by now. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Customizing the sites can be highly UN intuitive Navigation for editing the sites can be difficult and frustrating Squarespace has different versions and it's hard to know which version you're on. You can't switch after you start making a site with one version. Incentivized Lisa Cooley Art Advisor Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever. Incentivized Leontine Vandermeer Owner Read full review	It's a great CMS tool. Easy to use and maintain. It looks great and the support is excellent. Incentivized Sharon Reaves Owner/Founder/Design Guru Read full review
Usability	The user experience and interface are good, but sometimes it is down. Delayed in the loading speed. Workflows can be simplified, and understanding templates needs much time. It is user-friendly and with multi-language support. Users can be added to the groups, which is easier. User controls can also be created based on role-based permission. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	It's dead simple to use. There are no over complicated controls or tons of menus to screw things up. People with bad taste couldn't make an ugly website. While it may be frustrating for the pro designer to get exactly what they want, it prevents the uninitiated from making something ugly Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Performance	Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever. Incentivized James Fauria Webmaster \ Web Developer for the City of Pomona Read full review	No answers on this topic
Support Rating	Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best. Incentivized Jen Garfinkel-Canseco Owner - Web Designer/Developer/Marketer Read full review	Help is available directly from the back end and uses full sentence searching to find answers to questions others may have asked before. With a ton of articles and support questions documents, it is very likely that your question has been answered. If not each page has the ability to open a direct email to support. Each case has a number and can be followed. Responses are often quick and have links and directions clearly stated Incentivized Angela Skees Director of Graphics and Marketing Read full review
Online Training	It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing Johann Joubert Owner Read full review	No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating	Make sure that PHP.ini is set to at least 60 ms for computer priority, 60MB for maximum downloads and 128MB for uploads. This is the minimum. It is best to run Joomla on a business host if you are using a shared hosting environment so that there are fewer accounts on the server. Make sure you have access to the root on CPanel. Be sure to point the DNS to the host and set up all zones prior to implementation and run your new version in a sub-domain hidden from the live version until you are ready to cut over. Rita Lewis Freelance Web Designer and Content Strategist Read full review	No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	Joomla is a very stable and secure CMS platform that ranks about in the middle of the pack with the other 'modern day' CMS systems out there. It's not as complex and frustrating as Magento, but it's also not as easy or robust to work on as WordPress. Thankfully when we do utilize it, there's still an online community our we can bounce issues and ideas off of. Incentivized JM Jeff Montgomery CTO Read full review	Squarespace if much less work than WordPress, plus hosting and security are not an issue. GoDaddy and Wix are okay, but nowhere near the flexibility or advanced feature set that you can get with Squarespace. Compared to the other products that I have used, Squarespace definitely offers more options, customization, advanced features and design options than others, for a great price. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Return on Investment	Deploying Joomla! for clients has helped them discover the benefits of using Open Source software while helping them appreciate our expertise. Because the Joomla! community is smaller than the WP community, we are able to reach a wide range of clients looking for experts in the software, boosting our bottom line. Occasionally a client will find Joomla! too complicated and wish to move to a proprietary DIY CMS, which we do not support, so we have lost clients looking for that level of flexibility. Incentivized Lisa Keyser Owner \| Principal Read full review	I can see how squarespace can improve efficiency since it's so quick to build a site on there. For those who don't want to hook up a bunch of different stuff to their website and make it work...they most likely have whatever plug in you need and you can add it. Worst case scenario, they have developers you can hire who can make what you need. As your business grows you can add an online storefront to your site and make more money that way! Easy peasy! They have an easy system for adding special SEO words/phrases so you don't have to learn SEO at all! Incentivized IS Isabel Sam Owner Read full review
ScreenShots