Squarespace Vs iPage: Our Comparison

Choosing the suitable website hosting according to your requirements can be very confusing with several different options available. As a website owner, everyone wants a hosting service provider that is affordable, reliable, and secure with multiple features included in their hosting plan. Still, you would need proper guidance and comparison on which option suits you better from your top two choices.

According to the survey on information security breaches conducted by PWC, around 90% of large organizations have been affected by a cyber security breach. This is just to give you a perspective that you need to figure out which aspects of web hosting you can compromise. It’s because there won’t be any web hosting that would get a perfect score in every aspect.

Once you’ve identified what are your priorities and requirements a head-to-head comparison can help you make your decision. So, if you are confused between Squarespace Vs iPage then you are in the right place. Read this article till the end to see our detailed comparison of Squarespace vs iPage web hosting.

Comparison Factors for Hosting

As we discussed that you need to find out which factors are necessary for your choice of web hosting. It’s because many factors are involved in the success or failure of any web hosting provider. These factors are not only crucial for the hosting company but also help you in comparing.

So, no matter which hosting providers you are comparing you can use these factors as a guide for comparison. A few of these factors might seem technical to you but we’ll be explaining everything to make it easy for you to understand which one is better and why. Some of these factors are mentioned below:

• Pros & Cons of Using Squarespace vs iPage
• Features offered by Squarespace and iPage
• Free additional features are provided along with hosting
• Speed comparison between Squarespace and iPage
• Which hosting provider offers better development features?
• What security features are provided by each hosting provider?
• Price comparison between Squarespace and iPage
• Which web hosting company has better customer support?
• Uptime and server response time of Squarespace vs iPage
• Which hosting company is more eco-friendly?

Pros and Cons of Using Squarespace

We’ve listed down some pros and cons of using Squarespace website hosting:

Pros of Using Squarespace

• Squarespace offers a lot of premium ready-to-use templates that can be very helpful in designing and developing your website. All these templates have a minimalistic design and are best for professional websites.
• You don’t have to worry a lot about security issues and updates because they offer free automatic updates.
• It is easy to use and very user-friendly especially if you are a beginner and don’t have much experience with website design or development.
• Consider Squarespace hosting as a complete bundle because you’d get a free website builder, premium integration blocks, free domain, and hosting.
• It is very helpful especially if you are thinking about creating an eCommerce website. You can easily create checkout pages and add products.

Cons of Using Squarespace

• The starting price for Squarespace website hosting is very expensive compared to iPage. As their hosting plan starts from $16 per month.
• Their website hosting is not scalable compared to iPage and they don’t offer any phone support.
• They need to work on their website loading speed and it’s hard to expand if your business grows over time.

Pros and Cons of Using iPage Hosting

Now we’ll see what the pros and cons are of using iPage website hosting:

Pros of Using iPage Hosting

• iPage hosting plan starts at an unimaginable price of just $1.99. No other hosting provider would be hosting plan as budget-friendly as theirs
• You can create unlimited email accounts with their hosting plan
• They have an amazing eCommerce functionality that helps you create an online store with multiple features
• If you buy a website hosting plan with iPage then you can host an unlimited number of websites
• With iPage hosting, you will get a free SSL certificate
• They guarantee 99.99% of server uptime on their website
• iPage website hosting comes with a website builder that helps you create mobile-friendly websites within a few seconds.

Cons of Using iPage Hosting

• They offer only 30 days money back guarantee while the domain fee and setup cost are not refundable
• There is no website staging area so you can’t test any major changes before making them live
• Although their customer support is good, they are not available for phone support 24/7.

Squarespace Vs iPage Features Comparison

An average person who uses website hosting services knows that the very first thing that comes to mind for comparison is the features offered. And there is nothing wrong with it because every hosting provider offers different hosting features in its capacity.

It’s totally up to you which hosting you would prefer based on your requirements. Although both Squarespace and iPage have a reputation for being one of the best hosting companies but they can’t have the exact same features. So, we’ve done a head-to-head comparison.

Typically, we compare WordPress hosting features, since Squarespace is itself a CMS, so it has its own features. Here we will be comparing generic features offered by Squarespace and iPage.

After seeing this comparison table for hosting features provided by Squarespace and iPage. We can observe that Squarespace gets 7 out of 10 and iPage gets 9 out of 10 points. It’s clear that iPage has an upper hand on Squarespace.

Free Features Offered by Squarespace Vs iPage

Currently, there are thousands of website hosting providers available and due to such an increased number of service providers, all companies are competing neck to neck to get more customers. Since basic features provided by all the hosting companies are almost the same, they offer some additional free features to stay competitive.

These additional free features make a huge difference in choosing one hosting provider over the other. These features can be in terms of marketing, development, or security. So, let’s see what free features are offered by Squarespace vs iPage.

Squarespace Vs iPage Hosting Speed Comparison

Website hosting speed is one of the most important factors that you should never ignore while choosing a hosting provider. Those who don’t have any prior experience in hosting a website won’t know that your website loading speed can highly impact the success of your business/website.

Your website ranking is also affected by your website loading speed. According to Optinmonster not only it is a leading ranking factor, but your website can be penalized as well due to slow loading speed on mobile devices. If your website takes more than 7 seconds to load, then it would have more than 32% of bounce rate.

It means that you’ll lose more than 32% of your potential customers when your website has a slow loading speed. So, let’s find out which hosting provider company Squarespace or iPage is better in terms of website loading speed.

Based on our analysis and comparison iPage has an edge over Squarespace in terms of speed. Although both hosting providers are good in their own way but when we compare Squarespace with iPage it falls short.

Development Features in Squarespace Vs iPage

Before we start looking a website hosting, we know what kind of website we want to create. It could be a portfolio, WordPress, Joomla, Shopify, or a custom website. This helps us understand which languages would be used for the development of your website.

Especially, if you are creating a custom website then you need to make sure that the hosting provider has the support for those languages. What if you make a hasty decision of buying hosting? And it doesn’t have the support for the language using which your website is being built.

It would be a total waste of time, money, and resources. To avoid any such situation always see what development features and support the hosting company provides.

Well, it might seem odd to you that Squarespace doesn’t have support for any database or development languages. Well, the reason is that Squarespace is a SaaS web development platform where you can create a website by drag and drop. So, it doesn’t have support for any server-side coding language.

After this, we can conclude that Squarespace is a feasible option if and only if you don’t have any development experience. And want a website without any sort of customization in code except HTML and CSS. Otherwise, we suggest that you choose iPage website hosting due to its vast development support and features.

Comparing Security Features Squarespace Vs iPage

Based on the stats provided by TechJury daily count of websites hacked is around 30,000 all around the world. Also, 64% of companies have experienced a cyber-attack of at least one form. These stats are very alarming and depict how important are your website security features. Never compromise on the security features provided by a hosting company.

We know that every hosting provider can’t be perfect in every aspect but at least they should be ensuring basic security measures. Here we are specifically talking about the security features of Squarespace and iPage. So, let’s see which hosting company is better.

Both Squarespace and iPage ensure all the basic security measures. So, based on our analysis you can choose any of these hosting companies in terms of security without any hesitation because it’s a tie.

Technology Used by Squarespace Vs iPage

The advanced technology used by a hosting company means optimized performance and more reliability. You shouldn’t choose a hosting provider that has outdated web servers. Because they won’t be efficient enough and provide poor performance?

Everyone wants value for money, and we need to see which hosting company is equipped with better technology. iPage has advanced high-performance web servers with 24/7 network monitoring. Their data center has a power backup by UPS and electric generators.

Since Squarespace is a SaaS website development platform there is not much information available about their web server technology. However, it is using multiple technologies services, and products. A few of them include jQuery, HTML5, and Google analytics. We can simply say that iPage is a far better choice than Squarespace.

Squarespace Vs iPage Price Comparison

Everyone’s budget and requirements can vary for buying their website hosting plan. Website hosting plan price makes a huge difference when choosing a hosting provider. Even if your hosting provider has all the necessary features and requirements you want if their hosting plan is too expensive then it’s not worth it.

We have to take into consideration whether the hosting company is providing value for money or not. Here we will be doing a price comparison between the hosting packages of Squarespace and iPage. So, let’s find out which hosting provider has more economical hosting packages.

We typically do a head-to-head price comparison, but Squarespace provides only one type of hosting and that is shared hosting. So, we’ve mentioned their hosting prices on different tables.

Besides the amazing hosting features offered by Squarespace, their hosting plans are very expensive. As their hosting package starts from $16 while the iPage hosting package starts from $1.99. This means iPage is a clear winner in terms of price comparison.

Server Performance in Terms of Uptime

Servers are the key elements of a web hosting company and have a direct impact on your website performance. Uptime and downtime of a web hosting provider are also dependent on the servers. Gremlin did research and according to its findings, one-minute downtime for Amazon would cost $220,000.

This will help you understand how bad it could be for your website if the hosting provider has one minute of downtime. So, let’s talk about the server performance in terms of uptime for Squarespace and iPage.

iPage guarantees 99.9% uptime and ensures that its users don’t face any downtime. It is very reliable in terms of uptime and hasn’t faced any issues in the past. However, Squarespace doesn’t guarantee their uptime and a lot of users have experienced downtime.

Again, iPage turns out to be the winner, and let’s see where data centers are located for both hosting companies.

Data Center Location Comparison

Which Hosting Has Better Customer Support?

Customer support plays a huge role whenever you’re stuck with some issue and can’t find a way out. Customer support is an essential factor that must be considered before buying a hosting plan. No matter how good hosting provider you choose you can face an issue anytime.

For instance, your payment method isn’t working for domain renewal.  It could be a headache because you can lose everything. To avoid such problems, you need good customer support. Squarespace and iPage both are good when it comes to customer support but let’s see their comparison table.

Squarespace turns out to be better at customer support features compared to iPage hosting. Although iPage has good customer support, they have very limited support features.

Types of Website Hosting Offered

There are different types of hosting available and you can choose one of them based on your requirements. Some types of website hosting are very common and almost every hosting company provides its services. However, there are some uncommon and not-so-popular types as well

So, we’ve listed down the types of hosting provided by Squarespace and iPage. This is not for comparison but just to give you a perspective on what options are available. One more thing is that Squarespace provides only one kind of hosting. So, we’ve mentioned their hosting plans instead of different types.

Types of Website Hosting Offered by Squarespace

• Reseller Hosting
  • Personal Hosting Plan
  • Business Hosting Plan
  • Basic Commerce
  • Advanced Commerce

Types of Website Hosting Offered by iPage

• Dedicated Hosting
• Shared Hosting
• WordPress Hosting
• VPS Hosting
• Reseller Hosting

Which Website Hosting Is Greener?

Squarespace is not a green website hosting because its data centers are not powered by renewable energy. They don’t do carbon offsetting either which means their hosting is not green at all. While on the other hand iPage is one of the best green hosting providers as they offset its carbon footprint by 200%.

Squarespace Website Hosting Is Best For

If you have no experience in web development and want to create a website where you have to do little to no work, then Squarespace is the best option for you. As Squarespace is a SaaS website builder platform where you can create websites just by drag & drop. After that, all you need to do is customize it according to your requirements.

iPage Website Hosting Is Best For

If you have a very low budget and want to host an unlimited number of websites, then iPage website hosting best option for you. As their hosting plan starts as low as $1.99 per month and even on that plan you can host an unlimited number of websites.

iPage might not be suitable for many things but every hosting provider has some specialty and for iPage, it is affordability with unlimited resources. If you think these are your requirements, then don’t hesitate in buying their hosting plan.

Overall Comparison Between Squarespace Vs iPage

We’ve covered all the aspects for comparison of hosting providers. In some factors, Squarespace has an edge over iPage. While in other iPage turned out to be better. Now we’ll see which hosting company is the winner between Squarespace vs iPage.

Conclusion (Our Verdict)

Both hosting providers Squarespace and iPage have benefits and drawbacks. However, after we did our own detailed analysis and comparison iPage turned out to be the winner. It doesn’t mean that Squarespace isn’t good for anyone.

It depends on priorities as well, but we would recommend you choose iPage website hosting. If you are still confused about making your final decision or have any queries, please let us know in the comment section down below. We’ll be happy to help you.