Duda vs Squarespace: Which platform is right for your evolving business?
Both Duda and Squarespace are well-known website builders, used for creating everything from basic company sites, to ecommerce stores, and beyond.
While Squarespace stands out for its exceptional themes and design tools, Duda is a popular solution for smaller companies in search of simple, straightforward functionality.
But how do they really compare against each other?
We took a deep dive into both platforms, to bring you this comprehensive comparison of Duda vs Squarespace.
Quick Summary: Duda or Squarespace?
We chosen Squarespace as the overall winner for this comparison.
It’s a more advanced platform, with stronger design tools and themes, more flexibility, and greater scalability. It also supports a wider range of business models than the Duda platform.
Squarespace is better if…
You’re in search of an easy-to-use and affordable website builder, with incredible templates, excellent customization options, and support for a range of business models.
Squarespace is convenient, reliable, and comes packed with more advanced sales and marketing tools than Duda.
Duda is better if…
You’re looking for a beginner-friendly website builder without too many bells and whistles. It’s great if you want to design a simple website from a template, and don’t need advanced customizations.
It’s also great for agencies, thanks to integrated client management and collaboration tools.
Duda vs Squarespace: Quick Comparison
|
Squarespace |
Duda |
|
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Convenient and user-friendly platform with an intuitive website builder, excellent automation, and business management tools. | Very simple template-based website builder with a drag-and-drop editor, and convenient collaboration tools. |
| Design and themes | Some of the most attractive and professional templates available for every industry, with extensive customization options. | High quality templates, and a convenient drag-and-drop editor. However, the customization options are limited. |
| Sales features | Excellent tools for selling services, physical and digital products. Omnichannel sales capabilities, and exceptional business management features. | Access to a range of payment processors, and options for selling physical and digital products, memberships, services, and more. |
| Plugins and integrations | Decent selection of integrations with leading shipping, marketing, analytics, accounting, and business management tools. | Integrations with marketing and business management tools, social media channels, and video or content sharing platforms. |
| Marketing tools and SEO | All the SEO features you need to rank well on the search engines, as well as a wide selection of marketing features, and an integrated blogging option. | Simple SEO features enhanced by an AI assistant that can optimize your site for you. Basic marketing tools. |
| Customer support | Excellent self-help resources, plus 24/7 live-chat and email support on every plan. | Email support only on basic plans, with options for priority support on more expensive plans. |
| Pricing | 14-day trial with premium plans starting at $16 per month for a personal website, or $23 per month to enable ecommerce features. | 14 -day free trial with premium plans starting at $25 per month. |
Duda vs Squarespace: Ease of Use
The Winner: Duda is a little easier to use than Squarespace, thanks to its drag-and-drop website builder, built-in collaboration tools, and AI-powered solutions. You really don’t need any technical knowledge to get started.
We consider Squarespace to be one of the simplest, and most user-friendly website builders available. That’s particularly true since the platform upgraded its website editor, to make changing segments and sections of your websites more streamlined and intuitive.
Squarespace makes designing and running your site a breeze, with award-winning templates, and an ease-of-use backend where small businesses can track all their data.
You can manage everything from inventory and orders to pricing rules on Squarespace with minimal effort.
Plus, Squarespace has some bonus features that are particularly valuable for certain types of companies. For instance, you can create your own logo with the platform, design branded invoices, and even manage appointment schedules and bookings.
However, we still had to give Duda the win for overall ease of use. Duda is a beginner-focused tool that really requires no technical knowledge to use.
Building a website on Duda involves choosing a simple white label template, and customizing it with a basic drag-and-drop builder.
You can easily undo any edits and changes you make, so it’s easy to experiment with your web design choices. Plus, like Squarespace, Duda comes with client billing tools, inventory and order management capabilities, and client management features. There are even built-in collaboration tools for agencies.
Duda also offers access to a fantastic AI assistant.
This assistant can automatically generate site content, optimize pages for SEO, and personalize content for you, saving you a lot of time.
Design Options and Themes
The Winner: Squarespace is our number one website builder on the basis of themes and design tools. The templates are beautiful, easy to customize, and mobile responsive. Plus, you can even use Squarespace to build your brand, with an integrated logo designer.
We think Squarespace definitely lives up to its reputation for being the ultimate website builder for professional templates and design tools. Although there are many site builders and ecommerce platforms with great templates available today, from Shopify to WordPress, few can compete with Squarespace.
The platform has templates to suit every business need and industry.
All of these templates are professionally created, mobile responsive, and highly customizable, so you can really make your brand shine.
With Squarespace, building a professional website is simple, and you can customize everything from your color palettes to site structures. Plus, the Squarespace mobile app ensures you can make changes to templates on-the-move.
The Squarespace logo maker also means you can quickly design an attractive business logo to add to your store in seconds, without having to hire a graphic designer.
When we experimented with building a Duda website, we discovered this platform is also particularly impressive from a template perspective. There are dozens of professionally designed options to choose from, organized into various categories and industry options.
You can also customize your template for different devices, creating unique experiences for your mobile customers with the drag-and-drop editor.
The only downside is that customization options are pretty limited. While you can change aspects of your website’s appearance, you can’t make granular changes to structure, layout, or functionality.
On the plus side, Duda does allow you to create more than just websites. You can build landing pages and even user-friendly apps, without having to dive into CSS, HTML, or other types of code.
The Winner: Squarespace wins for us again here. It offers support for all kinds of business models, includes access to inventory, shipping, and order management tools, and can even help you streamline tax compliance strategies.
Both Duda and Squarespace might not be the first platforms you think of when you imagine ecommerce.
Squarespace is popular for creating portfolios, and attractive sites for service-based businesses.
Duda is more targeted at agencies building custom sites for their clients.
However, both tools do support online selling. Duda comes with access to a variety of ecommerce tools and features. You can add up to 30+ different payment processing options to your store, including Square, PayPal, and Stripe.
Depending on your plan, you’ll also be able to leverage customizable shipping options and rates, product categories, coupon codes, and automatic tax calculations. The WYSIWYG web design tool even allows users to sell services, memberships, and digital downloads.
Squarespace offers much of the same functionality as Duda. It integrates with all of the most popular payment processing options, and offers tools for managing shipping options.
You can also create coupons and gift cards with Squarespace, automatically calculate tax, and set pricing rules for different product categories.
Plus, like Duda, Squarespace allows users to sell products, services, memberships, digital downloads, and even online courses. Where Squarespace excels is with its extra business management tools.
There are features for booking and tracking appointments (without integrations). Plus, Squarespace can integrate with POS systems for in-person sales.
Additionally, Squarespace comes with client invoicing tools, course creation features, and advanced store management capabilities.
You can even create complete fulfillment profiles and leverage shipping extensions with companies like Shippo and Shipbob.
Plugins and Integrations
The Winner: Squarespace offers a better collection of integrations to suit a range of business needs. Connectors are available for everything from fulfillment to marketing, and sales tools.
If you’re looking to add extra functionality and features to your online store, both Duda and Squarespace offer a range of integrations to choose from.
Duda supports integrations with tools like Google Analytics, MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Vimeo. Plus, it can connect with social media platforms, and Zapier for custom connections.
Squarespace doesn’t have the biggest app marketplace out there, but the collection of integrations offered is carefully curated. You can access useful tools for marketing and sales, accounting, business analytics, shipping, and fulfillment, and more.
There’s even support for dropshipping apps like Spocket, and Print on Demand providers like Printful.
Notably, Squarespace also offers more bonus built-in tools than Duda, such as POS commerce extensions, scheduling tools, and client invoicing capabilities.
The winner: Squarespace offers better marketing tools, but Duda has a slight edge from an SEO perspective, thanks to its AI-driven optimization options.
If you want to ensure your website stands out on the search engine result pages, both Squarespace and Duda are great choices.
Squarespace offers all of the built-in SEO tools you need to produce a high-ranking website, from content management and blogging tools, to a free SSL.
You can customize your URLs, meta descriptions, and alt tags on Squarespace.
Plus, you can access handy guides to help with site optimization.
Outside of SEO, Squarespace offers a range of other built-in features for marketing. For instance, there’s an included email marketing service, so you can create automated campaigns to nurture your audience, without integration.
There’s also the “Unfold” app for social media that allows you to create compelling social content with filters, fonts, stickers, and templates.
Squarespace also offers access to comprehensive customer profiles, for marketing personalization, and social media integrations. What’s more, you can use banners and pop-ups to promote your store.
Duda also covers all of the basics for SEO, with a free SSL, responsive templates, PageSpeed optimization, and customizable titles, URLs, meta descriptions, and alt text.
What gives this platform an edge is the option to leverage an AI assistant to do all of the optimization work for you. The AI tool can automatically generate and edit your content based on search engine algorithms.
From a marketing perspective, Duda offers fewer options than Squarespace.
However, we were impressed by its templates for landing pages, and tools specifically designed for agencies. For instance, you can access white label sales decks and handouts.
Customer Support and Service
The Winner: Squarespace offers more comprehensive customer support on every plan, whereas Duda’s support varies depending on the package you choose.
From a customer support perspective, we thought Duda and Squarespace both had some excellent self-help resources to offer customers.
Both companies have guides, templates, videos, blogs, and FAQs that can give you a head-start when creating your site.
Squarespace, however, wins in terms of direct customer service. All Squarespace plans come with access to 24/7 live chat and email support. You can also purchase extra expert assistance for an additional fee.
With Duda, your support level is based on your plan.
If you want more than basic email support, you’ll need at least an “Agency” plan or above, starting $52 per month.
On the plus side, email support is still offered on a 24/7 basis, and you can always use the knowledge base if you get stuck.
Duda vs Squarespace: Pricing Plans
The Winner: Squarespace is the cheaper option overall, particularly if you’re paying on a monthly basis. It also offers better value for money, with more features on every plan.
Squarespace and Duda are both relatively affordable platforms for smaller businesses.
One thing that sets Duda apart as one of the best website builder options for new business owners, is that you can access e-commerce features on the cheapest plan.
There are five plans in total, a 14-day free trial, and a discount of 25% for annual subscriptions. Options include:
- Basic: $25 per month: 1 Site, AWS hosting, email support, and a 99.99% uptime SLA.
- Team: $39 per month: All the features of the Basic plan, plus 3 team members, dynamic pages, and client managers.
- Agency: $69 per month: The features of the Team plan, plus 6 team members, site export solutions, and priority support.
- White Label: $199 per month: The features of Agency, plus a fully white labelled platform, custom domain, branded client communication and login screen, and a white label support portal.
- Custom: Custom pricing: The features of White Label, plus a DIY editor, single sign-on, Duda API access, a native widget builder, advanced security, and a dedicated account manager.
Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial, and four different premium plans to choose from. There’s also a discount available to users on annual plans.
Options include:
- Personal: $16 per month: Leading website builder and Squarespace templates, SEO tools, free custom domain, and marketing capabilities.
- Business: $23 per month: The features of Personal, plus ecommerce features (3% transaction fees), domain-based checkout, advanced website analytics, unlimited admin accounts, and options for selling courses, videos, and memberships.
- Commerce Basic: $27 per month: The features of business, plus ecommerce with no transaction fees, merchandising tools, integrations for sales on Facebook and Instagram, POS integrations, and product reviews.
- Commerce Advanced: $49 per month: The features of the Basic Commerce plan, plus advanced discount and shipping rules, commerce APIs and add-ons, subscription sales, abandoned cart recovery and more.
You’ll need at least a “Business” level plan with Squarespace to start selling products or services, but this package is still cheaper than Duda’s Basic plan.
Duda vs Squarespace: Which one should you choose?
While both Duda and Squarespace are excellent website building platforms, we think Squarespace offers the best user experience, and the best value for money.
While it has a slightly higher learning curve than Duda, it also gives you more granular control over website design and development.
Squarespace features stronger marketing tools already built into the platform, more support for different types of business models, and even more affordable pricing.
We’d really only recommend you use Duda if you want a basic template-based building experience, or you’re running an agency selling website design services to other customers.
FAQ:
Is Duda better than WordPress?
Duda is a slightly simpler platform than WordPress for beginners. WordPress has a steeper learning curve because it offers more flexibility and customization options. However, it also offers a wider range of features for companies in search of a scalable platform.
Is Duda a good website builder?
Duda is a good website builder. It’s a user-friendly platform with access to a range of convenient and professional looking templates. Plus, it features drag-and-drop editing functionality, making it an excellent choice for those without coding knowledge.
Do professional web designers use Squarespace?
Absolutely, Squarespace has an excellent reputation for being a beginner-friendly platform with excellent design tools and customization options.
It’s great for website designers looking to sell apps, services, and other websites. However, Duda offers more agency-focused tools.
Is Duda good for SEO?
Duda is decent for SEO. It allows you to customize alt tags, meta descriptions, URLs, and titles. Plus, the AI wizard built into the platform can create and edit search optimized content on your behalf.
However, it does lack some advanced SEO capabilities.
Is Squarespace SEO good or bad?
Squarespace has all of the crucial features you need to create a high-ranking website, from fast-loading templates, to excellent customization options for URLs, titles, alt tags, and meta descriptions. Plus, it’s great for content marketing and blogging.
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