If you are here it certainly means you are trying to decide between Bluehost and Squarespace Hosting, maybe for your blog, maybe for your e-commerce website, or perhaps for one of your customers who is sick of his website loading so slow and his visitors leaving his site because of this.
I tell you, I’ve been there too, looking for the absolute best hosting choice for my website, I know how important it is to find the perfect service, and if possible not spend a fortune on it. I analyzed and compared all the major hosts in my search for the best choice, and today I’m going to tell you my findings on BlueHost vs. Squarespace.
No time to read the full Squarespace vs Bluehost comparison?
If you don’t want to get into technical specification, or you don’t want to read my entire comparison article you can click here to see who the winner is instantly (but I don’t recommend it, as it’s better to know WHY you chose what you chose, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each choice).
Or If you want a BETTER Bluehost alternative:
Also so that you know, neither of Squarespace or Bluehost is my #1 choice. Click here if you want to see who my overall #1 choice is (same host I am using for this website, and as you can hopefully see it’s blazing fast!).
Let’s Begin The In-depth Comparison between the two Hosts…
Pricing Comparison between Bluehost and Squarespace
I always start my hosting review comparing the price of the contestants, as it’s the first thing you should know before judging them. Why? Because there might be a blazing-fast host at $100 per month, and his competitor might be a little slower, but it costs $5 a month. In this case, the clear winner will be the second one. That’s why I also like to explain and justify everything especially when it comes to this Bluehost vs Squarespace comparison.
Bluehost offers pretty cheap hosting, after applying the best discount you can find online (click here for the coupon) it’s pricing starts at $3.95/month if you buy the 12 months plan, and a special offer of $2.95/month (after discount) if you buy 24 months plan.
The price without a discount is just too high for what they offer, around $8/month, so if at the end of the review you chose to go with them I highly advise you to try to get the $2.95 or the $3.95 deal as it’s going to save you quite a bit of money.
(Ooh, and with the coupon code you also get a free domain, which is extra $10 in savings).
On the other hand, Squarespace has plans starting at $12 per month if you pay for the 12 months plan, and $16 if you plan to go with the monthly plan.
Now, you don’t need an expert to tell you that Bluehost is the winner of the Pricing contest between Squarespace vs. Bluehost, do you? Let’s see now if Squarespace does really offer something to make it worth the price, or if they have a 3x higher rate with no reason at all. On the next part of the review, we will compare the speed of websites hosted on Bluehost vs. sites hosted on Squarespace.
Website Speed Comparison – is your website faster with Squarespace or with Bluehost?
After we took a look at both host’s pricing, now it’s time to compare Bluehost vs Squarespace’s Speed when it comes to hosting your website.
As I was looking for a fast host for this exact website you are reading the review from right now, I just took a backup of my website and installed it on Bluehost’s shared hosting plan, the $3.95 one, and I also recreated the pages and design on Squarespace (Which trust me, it was not an easy job to do) and ran them through different tools.
Bluehost managed to load my page in 3 seconds average, while Squarespace had a 4.1 seconds average load time for the entire website to be loaded. Same page, the same amount of content to be displayed to the user, same images on the website, same page size… but the difference is quite big I’d say.
IS MY WEBSITE CURRENTLY HOSTED WITH BLUEHOST? No, as per my tests, Bluehost was my #2 choice and, I have to admit, I am currently hosting my Website with another host which gives me 0.7-1 seconds load time! (You can check the review of the host I am currently using by clicking here).
BUT if you are forced to choose between Bluehost and Squarespace, and you want the cheaper and faster alternative, then, by all means, I recommend BLUEHOST (Click on this link to get that discount I told you about before, so you pay $2.95-$3.95 instead of the $7.95 full price!)
Ok, you got to that point in our Squarespace vs Bluehost comparison where we are now going to review usability, limitations, SEO, support and some more other features.
Bluehost usability vs Squarespace usability
If you’ve read carefully until now this hosting comparison I am sure you already know who I’m going to pick as a winner here.
Yes, it’s Bluehost by far. When it comes to comparing Bluehost usability with Squarespace, Bluehost is by far the winner as they allow you to use WordPress (they also offer WordPress dedicated hosting which is a bit more limited than normal shared hosting though).
This is a great “feature” offered by Bluehost because you can migrate your website in minutes after you’ve bought the hosting, and also if in the future your Blog or E-commerce website needs more resources, it’s very easy for you to transfer it to another high-end host, as almost every hosting company can migrate your WordPress hosted website to them in a matter of minutes. Besides WordPress you can also use Joomla, Drupal, Magento, or Presta, so, with Bluehost, you have UNLIMITED choices when it comes to your Content Management System.
On the other hand with Squarespace, you are kind of stuck to stick with them, because if you want to transfer you’ll need to redesign your website for the new platform. Squarespace has its own CMS (Content Management System) that no other host supports.
So yeah, for usability and scalability Bluehost is by far my #1 choice here.
Limitations – Witch Hosting offers you more resources?
I am sure you are aware that you can’t simply buy Bluehost smallest shared hosting package or Squarespace lowest priced plan and have unlimited websites and traffic to them, so let’s see between our two contestants, Bluehost, and Squarespace, who limits you less with the smallest plan?
We are going to look at Storage, Bandwidth, control panel and of course to the number of websites you can host with each of the two hosting companies.
Storage Space
Bluehost comes with 50 GB (SSD) limit, while Squarespace offers Unlimited Storage. At a first glance you might be tempted to say Squarespace has a better deal here but in reality it’s not, as 50 GB SSD offered by Bluehost is more than enough for you most likely (except if you want to host A LOT of videos, or have more than 3000 pages on your website).
Bandwidth
Both Squarespace and Bluehost offer unlimited bandwidth, so you have nothing to worry about here no matter your choice between the two hosts.
Control-Panel
Again, both options offer cPannel here, so it’s a tie.
Number of Websites
With Bluehost, you can host an unlimited amount of Websites, as long as you are not going over their 50GB previously mentioned limit of storage, with Squarespace, unlimited websites, unlimited storage (if it’s unlimited does not mean you really want nor need it though).
Which is better for SEO? Bluehost or Squarespace?
Choosing the right hosting company is crucial for SEO if you are reading our comparison most likely that’s the reason you want to choose the best option, for SEO purposes.
When it comes to a good host for SEO, the main thing we want to look at is the load time it gives to our visitors, and as we tested before, Bluehost is clearly better compared to Squarespace when it comes to speed.
I want to mention again though, Bluehost would not be my #1 recommendation for a good SEO hosting, and as a matter of fact, as I said before, I am not hosting with any of our current contestants. I also wrote an article comparing Bluehost to my current Host that I advise you to read before taking any kind of decision. (Click here to see that comparison).
Bluehost Support Service vs Squarespace Support – Do we have a clear winner?
Bluehost offers Live Chat Support, which means that a chat assistant will help you fix your problems 24/24, they also offer phone support, email support, forum support (where you can get help from their trained experts or from other Bluehost users), Video Guides and a comprehensive Knowledgebase.
Squarespace, on the other hand, does not offer any of that except email support which can be pretty frustrating when you have an urgent problem, or if you don’t like waiting 24-48h for a reply via email.
When it comes to support, between Squarespace and Bluehost, we have a clear winner and of course, it’s BlueHost.
BEST Choice for Ecommerce
If you want to start an e-commerce website, and you don’t really care about SEO because let’s suppose your traffic come from Paid Ads from Facebook or Google AdWords, and you are looking for an easy to set-up platform for your e-commerce, in this case, Squarespace might be the better fit for you here.
Compared to Bluehost, Squarespace is more targeted to E-commerce owners, and their content management system is pretty easy to use to set up a small e-commerce. On the other hand, with Bluehost you have to install WordPress, chose a theme that allows you to do e-commerce and then build your store, it simply requires a bit more knowledge to get the same result.
So, despite the many advantages Bluehost has over Squarespace, if you are looking to start an e-commerce business, and you don’t have a lot of WordPress knowledge then yes, Squarespace is the winner for you here.
But chose Squarespace for your store only if you have no other options, otherwise I’d recommend you to go with a great alternative to Squarespace witch is Shopify.
Other Features offered By Bluehost and by Squarespace
Money Back Guarantee Policy
Squarespace offers a 14-day trial, while Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. In this particular case, I’d prefer Bluehost’s offer, not only because they offer more days to change your mind, but also because if you change your mind you can easily transfer to another hosting company in minutes.
If you change your mind after the 14 days Squarespace trial, you have to start your website from scratch with another hosting, so you’ll lose 14 days of work on your virtual property.
Bluehost Extras compared to Squarespace’s Extras
First extra I’d like to talk about is Bluehost’s free domain offer. If you buy any subscription plan for 12 months or above they give you a free domain, which normally costs between $10 and $20 depending on the registrar you chose, so that’s a first advantage of choosing BlueHost.
Squarespace, on the other hand, offers you a domain too, but they give you the domain in “rent” which means that if you stop paying them and you want to move your business elsewhere, not only you have to rebuild your website on the new host, but you also have to get a new domain.
So, if you plan to go with Squarespace I’d recommend you to be ready for a very long-term commitment.
If you’ll choose one of BlueHost higher-end plans, they will also give you $200 in credit form for Facebook or Google ads which can help you start your business more easily.
All things considered, Bluehost or Squarespace? Witch one for your website?
If you plan to start a Blog, or an Affiliate website, or basically anything else rather than an E-commerce, I’d say Bluehost is your perfect fit between the two (Make sure to get the discounted price by clicking here). If you can choose someone else rather than Bluehost I’d advise you to read the comparison between Bluehost and my Host of Choice by clicking here.
In case you plan to start an E-commerce store, then between Bluehost vs Squarespace, Squarespace might be the best way to go, but another great option would be Shopify for sure (my #1 Choice for e-commerce by far).
If you have any more questions please feel free to use the comment section, I will try to reply you in less than 24h, or if you want help in private, feel free to use our contact page to email me directly and ask for personalized advice for your project and where would be the best to host it.