Squarespace or a custom website
Squarespace is good at looking finished quickly. In our Lighthouse study of 12,621 Australian small business sites, the 528 we could confidently identify as Squarespace were also among the slowest on mobile. This page sets out both halves, with the numbers, the plan prices we read off Squarespace's own pricing page, and an honest list of who should stay put.
Of the 528 Squarespace sites in the study, 47.2% scored under 50 on Lighthouse mobile performance, against 27.3% across every site we tested. The mean score was 49.4 against 62 overall. The median Largest Contentful Paint, the moment the main content is on screen, was 11.1s. Google's own bar for a good LCP is 2.5 seconds.
Squarespace was not alone. The 527 Shopify sites landed in almost the same place (45.9% poor, median LCP 11.1s), which suggests the pattern belongs to heavy hosted-builder templates rather than to one vendor. Wix, the other big builder in the sample, had the lowest poor rate of any platform with 100 or more sites, at 10%, so this is not a blanket verdict on website builders. It is a finding about Squarespace sites as they exist in Australian small business today.
Source: data/research/lighthouse-2026.json, by_platform and overall_scores.performance. Read the full study.
| Platform | n | Mean | % poor | LCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 5,554 | 59.6 | 28.7% | 7.4s |
| Wix | 707 | 66.1 | 10% | 6.6s |
| Squarespace | 528 | 49.4 | 47.2% | 11.1s |
| Shopify | 527 | 51.5 | 45.9% | 11.1s |
| Webflow | 143 | 55.9 | 28.7% | 8.4s |
Read this as a pattern, not a verdict on your site. Each site was run once, in Lighthouse's throttled mobile lab test, and the sample is skewed toward small local service businesses. Platform is detected from page fingerprints, and we only count matches at 0.7 confidence or higher; all 528 Squarespace sites cleared that bar. A Squarespace site with few, small images will beat these numbers. A heavy video hero will not.
Where Squarespace is the better tool
What a hand-coded site changes
What each side costs
Ours first: custom builds start from $8,000 AUD, fixed price, and the floor does not move. The rows below are Squarespace's public plans, read directly off its pricing page.
Source: https://www.squarespace.com/pricing, read 5 October 2026. Prices are shown in Australian dollars on the page as served to us. Squarespace states that paying annually saves up to 36% against paying monthly. Plans change; confirm on the platform before you decide.
Full price ladder, including the $1,500 Fix Sprint and the $495 Blueprint, is on the pricing page.
Stay on Squarespace if
- 01Your site is a brochure and generates few or no enquiries from search. If leads come from referrals and foot traffic, a fast-enough template does the job and a rebuild will not change how often the phone rings.
- 02You are testing an idea. Until you know the business works, A$28 a month beats an $8,000 commitment. Publish, sell something, and revisit.
- 03Your content is mostly photography and the template suits it. A portfolio with a handful of optimised images is where Squarespace performs best, and nothing about it needs engineering.
- 04You update the site yourself weekly and enjoy it. A custom build that needs a developer for routine changes is worse for you than a platform you can edit in a minute.
- 05Your budget is under $8,000. Our floor does not move. Spend the money on better photography, tighter copy and trimming the page weight of what you have.
If one of those is you, say so on the call. We would rather tell you to stay than take a build that does not pay for itself.
What moving looks like
A Squarespace move is mostly a URL and content problem. Squarespace can export much of your page and blog text to a WordPress-format file, but not your design and not everything on the page, so assume we rebuild the layout and re-enter anything the export skips. Check Squarespace's current export documentation before you rely on it.
Six weeks is the plan we scope against for a typical small business site. Larger sites, shops and booking systems take longer, and we say so at quote stage, not after.
Talk it through, or keep reading
- Wix vs a custom websiteThe one big builder in the study that rarely scored poor (10%).
- WordPress vs a custom website44.0% of the sites we tested, with a very different set of trade-offs.
- Squarespace alternatives for Australian businessesWix, Webflow, Shopify, WordPress or custom, with the case for staying put.
- The five-year cost breakdownSquarespace against a custom build, line by line.
- The full 2026 Lighthouse study12,621 sites, every table and the method.
- PricingFix Sprint, Blueprint, builds and the Care Plan, all fixed price.