Geocities?  Wix?  Squarespace?  WordPress?  Which should I choose?

The following post is mostly an email I wrote to a client.  She was considering using Squarespace to host her website and asked me to evaluate this choice.  I actually read the entire TOS/user agreement.  I never do that except when someone is paying me to do it.  🙂  Who knows what I’ve agreed to.

Everything that follows is from an email where I reported my findings to her.  Any text in bold has been bolded by me for the purpose of this blog post.  Any comments in [brackets like this] were added for this post and not in the original email.  Stuff in italics is from the Squarespace website or user agreement or TOS.  Stuff preceded by “you wrote” are quotes from her email to me about her thoughts on going with Squarespace.

I love recycling.  🙂  Here we go . . .  Begin recycled material!

You wrote “I like the sophisticated look of their templates”

I can’t really argue with that. They are pretty. WordPress has 1,721 themes.  Some of them look good as well.

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

[Plus you can build your own custom WordPress themes or have someone build them for you.  Squarespace doesn’t allow that.]

You wrote “24/7 customer service (I know BlueHost has this as well)”

First, if you are needing to contact customer service on a regular basis then something is wrong.  If you had to take your car back to the dealer twice a week to get it to work would you consider this a good thing? The last time I contacted Bluehost support was never.  My other hosting company is MidPhase and the last time I contacted their support was in November 2011.  I know that ’cause I keep the emails.

Additionally the terms of service state:

“Only Services and features clearly indicated as “free” or “no charge” are free or without charge. It is not the responsibility of Squarespace to provide free support for you in the use and operation of Squarespace. All other applications, features, functionality and support provided by Squarespace and its partners are provided for the fees described for each service on the Site (“Fees”) and you are liable for such Fees.”

See that?  “It is not the responsibility of Squarespace to provide free support for you in the use and operation of Squarespace.”  Also 24/7 support doesn’t mean good support, it just means support.  Their support is probably the online forum.  You should go to the forum and read assorted posts there to see how often people get answers that solve their problems.  If there are many questions and few solutions that’s not good.  If most of the questions get answers that’s a good thing.

[This goes for any software you are looking to use.  Go to the support forums and look at what is happening.  I use a theme called Weaver for all my WordPress sites and I paid for the premium version.  It’s a great theme for sure, but a big factor in motivating me to pay for it is that when I post a question on the support forum I get an answer in less than 24 hours.  Sometimes I get an answer within 30 minutes and my problems get solved 100% of the time.  That is worth paying for.]

You wrote “if I develop a need for increased flexibility/capability, the Squarespace host site would allow me to do this.”

I still don’t know what this means.  You haven’t told me exactly what you want to do that you can’t do now.  I looked over what is provided in the business plan and there is nothing there which is not provided by Bluehost.  In fact Squarespace does not provide email addresses and limits the size of files you can upload.  Bluehost, or any other hosting company does neither of these.

[Let me add that when I wrote “hosting company” I meant “hosting company that doesn’t suck”.  I’ve since run across some hosting companies that are not worth your money.  A company called A Plus is all over this and will be subject of an upcoming post.]

Additionally with Squarespace you can only use their CMS.  I would not call that “flexibility”.  With Bluehost if you want to use a different content management system than WordPress you can do that.

“While Squarespace does not provide email accounts, you can easily link your domain to Google Apps and get email.”

“You may not upload individual files larger than 20MB.”

You wrote “(another person), just had to migrate to a new web hosting site. I believe he did this, even though it meant his website was down for a week and that made him nervous, to upgrade to a hosting site that allowed more ease and capability with posting. I’d like to launch into this endeavor with built-in ability to expand.”

I don’t know what he moved from or what he moved to, but I’ve moved a site from one hosting service to another and it took about 3 hours.  The hosting site has nothing to do with “ease and compatibility with posting”, that is a function of the content management system (CMS), not the host.  Except in a case like this where the CMS is tied to the hosting.  With WordPress the CMS and the hosting service have nothing to do with each other.

Additional reasons I myself would never use a service like this:

Squarespace owns the code and the CMS.  While you own the content and can move the content some place else if you need to you would have to completely start over with building the website.

When/if Squarespace goes out of business you have no website.  I know a few people who were using the free website service Apple provided.  When Apple shut that down they had nothing.

[All of you using WIX, this is your future.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Of course Bluehost, Midphase, or any other hosting company can also go out of business.  The difference is that with WordPress you simply get a new hosting account, install WordPress, and use your backups (you are backing up your site aren’t you) to restore your site to it’s original form.  Easily done in almost all cases.]

You will be committed to any price increases.  I use to use SmugMug, then they jacked up the price by $150 a year.  I could pay more or I could leave.  I left and lost all the work I had put into that site.

[Yes, Bluehost can raise their prices.  You can take your WordPress site to any other hosting company.  Or host it yourself if need be.  I repeat myself.]

By using any proprietary service for your primary website you place yourself at their mercy.  It can be Squarespace, or Facebook, or SmugMug or anything else.  If that is your website then they have final control over you and what you do.  With WordPress you can move your site if need be and transfer everything just as it is.

And finally, while I know Bluehost and any other web hosting site has lawyer speak in their terms of service, Squarespace has a really good one in there.

“IN THE EVENT OF ANY PROBLEM WITH THE SITE, THE SERVICES, THE MATERIALS, YOU AGREE THAT YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY IS TO CEASE USING THE SITE, THE SERVICES AND THE MATERIALS.  UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL SQUARESPACE, ITS AFFILIATES, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE IN ANY WAY FOR YOUR USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICES, THE MATERIALS, YOUR CONTENT, THE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OR THIRD PARTY USER GENERATED CONTENT AVAILABLE ON OR THROUGH THE SITE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY ERRORS OR OMISSIONS, ANY INFRINGEMENT OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OR OTHER RIGHTS OF THIRD PARTIES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND INCURRED AS A RESULT OF, OR RELATED TO, THE USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICES, THE MATERIALS, YOUR CONTENT, THE COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS OR ANY THIRD PARTY USER GENERATED CONTENT AVAILBALE ON OR THROUGH THE SITE. Certain states and/or jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties or limitation of liability for incidental or consequential damages, so the exclusions set forth above may not apply to you.”

I love it.  “IN THE EVENT OF ANY PROBLEM WITH THE SITE, THE SERVICES, THE MATERIALS, YOU AGREE THAT YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY IS TO CEASE USING THE SITE, THE SERVICES AND THE MATERIALS.”  If the service doesn’t work not only do they have no obligation to fix it or help you, but you have actually agreed that you will stop using their service and not expect them to fix it.  I have to say this is brilliant in a totally evil way.

End of recycled material.

There it is.  Read the TOS and user agreement.  You might be surprised what is in there.  Don’t count on anyone else to care about your website as much as you do.  Go with a CMS that allows you total control over your website to include both the appearance and the content.  That CMS might not be WordPress, but it shouldn’t be something proprietary and closed source that can only be hosted by one company.

WIX and Squarespace are the Flash websites of this year.  They will fade and die.  Don’t let your website die with them.