Squarespace VS Webflow: Website Building Platform Review

Key Takeaways

what up guys today I want to explore the difference between two website building platforms web flow and Squarespace now I realize this might come off a little bit funny since web flow are the sponsors of my web site so you might think that I'm biased but because I am a designer and I work with many different clients who each want to work on a different platform I had the experience of working with both and I do think that you know not every platform fits everybody so I don't think that web folk is the solution for everybody I think it depends on what you need and who you are and in this video I want to share kind of the two platforms what are the pros and cons and try to help you make a better decision when you are choosing a platform to build your website on so for those of you who don't know let me just show you Squarespace if you don't know it's I would call it like a Wix competitor but a really nice week's competitive so they have branded themselves really high level like upscale web site for maybe artists and artisans everything looks really really amazing they have super nice templates and typography basically I'm in love with their brand I think branding wise they did an amazing amazing work and also kind of a platform is really well designed so I like it I like what they did web flow if you don't know it it's actually I wouldn't even call it a wick competitor I would maybe call it like sketch for the web because this is a like a totally a design and development tool that allows you to really create visually you actually code without knowing how to code so this is a much more I would call it design and development platform rather than a website building for for dummies or for consumers I would say so those are the two platforms now let me start off at the end with the bottom line I know you guys are busy and maybe you don't want to stay for a whole thing so let me just come off and give my recommendation upfront and then I will explore a little bit more that so for me I think that Squarespace is a really really good solution if you do not really know how to design and control the web and you just want to pick a super super beautiful and good-looking template and change it to your change the content to your business or the website that you need if you do not need to make like structural and design changes to your website then Squarespace can be a really good solution for you it's kind of a no-brainer you don't have to learn anything and it can be a really good solution if on the other hand you are a designer and you are looking to implement your vision and and build a design that you have already designed so maybe not really start from from a template but implement a design that you have designed in sketch or on paper or someone somewhere else then actually I think that web flow is the right solution for you actually Squarespace you can't even start from scratch you have to start from a template and in order to adjust that template to your design would be really a hassle and actually you might need some custom code for that and so I think that even if you want to start from a template because web flow as I'll show you in a minute does have templates to get you started if you want to make adjustment to the template it will be much much easier to do on web flow rather than on Squarespace so again in short if you're not a designer if you just want to take something beautiful replace the content and have a beautiful website ready super fast you go with Squarespace if you want to adjust the design if you want to create something that's a little bit more custom to your needs to your design if you want to make even small I would say structural changes to your website you definitely need to go with wet flow now let's dive inside those platforms and I want to show you how some things which you might think are my very very simple to do are maybe very simple and one flat form but not in the other so let me take you into Squarespace and I will just create a website so let me try and create a portfolio website so as you see when you create a website on Squarespace you can't even get started from a blank you have to start from a template and they do have lots of categories and as I said templates looks pretty good so let me look for a portfolio right I'm gonna go with a really simple portfolio template not very far from the one I reviewed last week so it'll be a good good idea to see how you can build a portfolio really quick so when you start with with Squarespace template they kind of ask you for a few questions to customize your website so let me call that run Segel's portfolio let me write a description I'm a designer living and working in Israel all right done let's see what it gives us all right so basically what I have here I think I have a preview on the right and some kind of a navigation on the left and portfolio looks pretty solid I guess I can change the work but let me see if I want to change the headline here I can't just double click it which is what I initially try to do I have to click Edit and then I don't edit it here I have to go on the left here and edit here runs work and then tagline let's say for designer now I have to save it and only then it will update alright so that's the first thing I can't edit in line and I have to edit here in the editor next thing that I want to do I want to do something that is really really simple as I've mentioned in my portfolio review I always like to have a contact button here so I actually need a button here but if I do edit navigation I get to the hole this is the whole navigation so I have works here and many worse pages for the worse I have a blog and a heaven about page but I don't want to add a contact page I just want to add a link that sends to my that sends to my email but I actually don't know how to do this or even if it's possible because all I have to do is add a page and I don't really want to add a page I just want to add a simple link and I have here not length which is pages which are not so doing something super super simple is adding a link here becomes very very difficult or rather I would say impossible so that's that's one thing let's see how we work in web flow so let me start a new project on web flow and on web flow I can start from scratch and just build whatever I want but let's go here to a free template and choose a portfolio all right I have a portfolio here that looks rather similar so let's get started with that okay so now I'm in the web flow editor you can see template is not very different but if I want to change here the title let me just double click it and then right here inside run Segel's portfolio so as you can see here editing is really in inline and in general here every element is actually a web element so if I have a navigation link here I can just copy paste it to create a new one and double click it to create contact so now I have just another link here in the menu and by going to the setting I can just set it up by default it's going to a page which is what Squarespace does but here I have some more options like an email which is what I wanted so I can put my email here and now clicking on the link will just go to for to fold your request it will just pop up an email for me which is what I wanted to do so let's go into for example a page showing one of my works so I guess those are those are pretty similar let's go in here okay let's go inside here yeah so basically we have some images and then some text but in webflow the text here is just I can add a text if I want to say let's I want to add a category here so I want this to be UX design because this is what I did on this project and so I can come in and style this exactly how I want change the font and the size of this title while here if I want to add text here see how I do this I don't even know how to do this so I can't click on it there is no edit so maybe I have to go to page and click on the page demo okay so this is where Squarespace becomes a little bit not intuitive okay so I had to click on the page settings and then I have a title here and a page title in the description but I can't add another kind of like tag can maybe add a line here you axe design and make it bold but it's not like I have let me save this alright so it did what I wanted but I don't really have design control over that right now and for some reason it also deleted my images so I don't know why but I guess you can see my point if you want to stick to the template and just added the text in the images I guess you can stay with Squarespace and it will look pretty good and you don't have to learn anything but once you want to start adding a little bit of text changing the structure a little bit or touching the design then it's much much easier to do it on web flow now it has to be said that when you are working with web you have to understand how the web works so you have to know what CSS styles are and and there is a little bit more of a learning curve and that's why I said if you are a designer if you understand how the web works if you understand the con the concepts of you know what it's CSS what is styling which you probably do know if you're working with any design software like you know sketch InDesign Photoshop then you know what styles are but if you are let's say of consuming if you are a musician you don't know nothing about design you don't know nothing about the web you just want to create a great looking website then probably Squarespace is the easier place for you to go to go and yeah it'll probably be easier for you so again I think you have to choose the platform based on your own needs and your current knowledge and how much you want to invest in that if you are a designer I suggest you do make the investment in kind of going through the learning curve in web flow so that you know next time it'll be super easier for you - all right hope this was helpful for at least some of you guys have a great day and I'll catch you tomorrow [Music]