HostGator vs Squarespace | Which Should You Use?

Take a look at our quick comparison table to see whether Squarespace or HostGator wins, in our different research categories.

As a hosting provider, HostGator is focused on your website’s resources, providing plenty of storage space for content and media. HostGator offers more powerful website resources than Squarespace.

HostGator

Best for features, backups, and domains

Excellent

4.7

out of 5

• Great site speed
• Best for help and support
• Heavy on features

Paid Plans: $3.95 - $159.99 / month

Pros

• Unlimited bandwidth
• Great for larger sites
• Free backups

Cons

• Steep renewal prices
• Slow server response time
• Poor value for money

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As a website builder, Squarespace is focused on your website’s design, providing ready-made, expertly designed templates for easy website creation. Because they’re more beginner-friendly, website builders also take care of the hosting part for you. Squarespace offers more built-in design tools than HostGator.

Squarespace

Best for design

Excellent

4.7

out of 5

• Beautiful templates
• Best support center
• High-quality features

Free trial available

Paid Plans: $16 - $49 / month

Pros

• 24/7 help and support
• Great marketing tools
• Hosts your website for you

Cons

• A little expensive
• Not as many apps
• Average site speed

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HostGator Pros and Cons

Squarespace Pros and Cons

The Winner

HostGator is better value for money

With Squarespace, you’re paying for the all-in-one convenience of having your website management, design, and hosting all taken care of. But overall HostGator is the cheaper option.

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HostGator Pricing

Like most web hosting providers, HostGator offers really cheap introductory prices that then renew at a regular rate after your first payment term.

That first payment term can last from three months to three years, and the introductory price is cheaper the longer you’re willing to sign up for in advance. For example, the Hatchling shared hosting plan has an introductory price of:

• $2.75 per month when you sign up for three years in advance (so $99 total)
• $3.45 per month when you sign up for two years in advance (so $82.80 total)
• $3.95 per month when you sign up for one year in advance (so $47.40 total)

After that first term, the plan renews at:

• $6.95 per month for three years ($250.20 total)
• $7.95 per month for two years ($190.80 total)
• $8.95 per month for one year ($107.40 total)

HostGator’s prices are really cheap. It placed fifth on our list of the cheapest hosting providers, but when you take quality into account, HostGator has better value for money than most other hosts.

That said, hosting providers aren’t all-in-one tools. These low prices only cover your web hosting, so they’re not inclusive of everything else you’ll need in order to run a website – specifically, the design tools necessary to create a stunning site.

It’s true that HostGator has its own website builder available for this purpose, but like we said, it’s a pretty basic website building tool – most people use a content management system like WordPress instead.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace has four all-inclusive website builder plans (and no complicated introductory vs renewal prices!):

• The Personal plan ($16 per month) is for blogs, portfolios, and generally smaller websites
• The Business plan ($23 per month) is for local business websites and larger personal websites
• The Basic Commerce plan ($27 per month) is for online stores
• The Advanced Commerce plan ($49 per month) is for large and/or growing online stores

These prices are more expensive than HostGator’s, but it’s important to remember that the price of a website builder is all-inclusive – so for $16 per month, Squarespace will provide expertly designed website templates and take care of hosting for you.

HostGator is cheaper than Squarespace.

HostGator is the cheap and cheerful option out of the two, especially for those who need shared hosting!

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The Winner

Squarespace Is easiest to use

Squarespace’s built-in website design tools require absolutely no knowledge of code, whereas HostGator users will have to be a lot more independent.

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Squarespace: Beginner-Friendly

When you sign up for a Squarespace plan, you’re getting a fully-fledged website that you can design without any knowledge of code.

Squarespace uses a drag-and-drop template editor, which means you can literally drag things like images, buttons, and text boxes to where you want them on every page.

This is called a “what you see is what you get” editor, where you can preview the changes you’re making to a page as you make them, so you won’t have to wonder what the final result looks like.

Changing colors and editing text can be done from simple on-page toolbars:

As if this wasn’t easy enough, Squarespace actually walks you through the template editor as soon as you sign up, so you won’t even have to figure it out on your own!

Managing your Squarespace website is just as easy as designing it. From the main menu on the left side of the Squarespace editor, you can handle everything from marketing to domain names in just a few clicks.

Of course, the icing on the cake is that Squarespace also hosts your website for you, with hosting included in the cost of this website builder. This means you’ll never have to worry about managing your own web server like you would with HostGator.

HostGator: No Hand-Holding

HostGator, on the other hand, can’t offer the same all-in-one convenience as Squarespace. With HostGator, you’ll have to manage your own server, because you’ll be hosting the website yourself.

You’ll also be on your own when it comes to website templates. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, then there are some free templates (also called “themes”) to choose from. But they’re definitely harder to customize than Squarespace’s templates. 

For one thing, WordPress themes don’t actually let you see your changes as you make them. You can preview your edits before they go live, but you’ll have to do the actual editing in the backend of the website, as opposed to the on-page editing you can do with Squarespace.

That said, managing your website from HostGator’s dashboard is pretty straightforward. HostGator uses the popular cPanel dashboard tool used by many web hosts, which lets you manage your site’s files, domain information, associated email accounts, and more all from the same place.

Build Easily With Squarespace

Not only is Squarespace easier to use, it makes creating a stylish website quickly, possible!

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The Winner

Squarespace has easy web design

Its template designs are the absolute best that we’ve seen, and although it’s not as customizable as HostGator can be, that also means it’s virtually impossible to make a design faux pas with Squarespace.

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Squarespace: Effortless Style

Squarespace has the best-designed templates of any website builder on the market – we’ve spent over 400 hours researching and testing the top website builders, and Squarespace’s templates impressed even us.

There are 113 templates to choose from, and you can filter your search by industry and website type (personal portfolios, online stores, etc.).

Here’s what one user had to say about Squarespace’s templates in our testing:

“It’s a huge challenge to create a site by yourself unless you’re a designer, so the fact that the template offers relevant industry features and is already done for you is a huge benefit. I would say it was up there as one of the most important factors.”

HostGator: Limitless Customization

Okay, so HostGator doesn’t actually have any website design tools built-in (unless you count its website builder, which we mentioned earlier).

Instead, you’ll have to use a content management system like WordPress or Magento to design your site. The process is similar with both, but because WordPress is used by 41% of the entire web(!!!), we’ll focus on this CMS in particular.

WordPress themes aren’t as nice to look at as Squarespace’s. And while every Squarespace template comes included in the cost of a website plan, WordPress templates can cost anywhere from $0-$130.

So, what’s the appeal? Well, WordPress themes are a lot more customizable than Squarespace’s, so even if you don’t like the initial look, you’ll have the tools to change it into a totally unique and stylish format for your site.

The only catch is that you have to sacrifice some ease of use for that design freedom. When we spoke to Neil Thacker, a digital marketer who built his website with WordPress, he summed up the experience like this:

“I love the freedom of using WordPress. Having initially used more restrictive platforms like GoDaddy’s website builder and Wix, it was a breath of fresh air to finally have full control over every element of my online presence.

It was definitely a steep learning curve, though. One of the pain points, for me, is how easily you can make mistakes and accidentally ruin something!”

Squarespace's Templates Make Web Design Easy

Web design is made simple with Squarespace, no need for tech knowledge or coding!

See Squarespace’s Templates

The Winner

HostGator wins for features!

HostGator wins in sheer volume of possible plugins with WordPress. Keep in mind that while Squarespace may have less, the features it does offer are high quality. WordPress plugins can be hit-or-miss.

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You might be wondering why both Squarespace and HostGator both technically offer unlimited bandwidth and storage.

Both Squarespace and HostGator offer unlimited bandwidth and storage “within reason,” which means that their caps are set high enough that it’s very unlikely you’ll ever exceed them.

That said, hosting providers have higher bandwidth and storage thresholds than website builders, so if you did end up exceeding your limits on Squarespace, you’d probably still be within HostGator’s limits.

What About Apps?

Apps and plugins are extra tools that you can install to add more features to your website. They could be anything, from social media promotion to ecommerce shipping tools – and they’re a pretty important way to take your site to the next level!

Squarespace has its own app store, called Squarespace Extensions, where you can find high quality tools. There are free options, and some paid options ranging from $5-$40.

There are only 24 Squarespace extensions available, but it’s very much a quality over quantity situation. Every extension is vetted and picked by Squarespace, so you can be sure that these tools are high quality and compatible with your site.

There are fewer extensions available in the store because so many of Squarespace’s features come pre-built into each site, like contact forms and image galleries. This means that there’s less of a need to download extra apps!

HostGator, on the other hand, doesn’t have its own extensions store, so you’ll have to use the one associated with your CMS. If you’re using WordPress, you’ll have access to the WordPress Plugins marketplace, which offers over 50,000 tools to choose from!

This means there’ll be a plugin (or ten) for nearly any website feature you can think of. Just beware that almost any developer can create WordPress plugins and post them in the marketplace, so quality is not guaranteed the way it would be with Squarespace.

There are plenty of excellent tools available in the WordPress marketplace – you’ll just want to make sure you read a plugin’s reviews before installing it. 

HostGator Offers More Possibilities!

The WordPress app integrations are endless, which is why HostGator wins this round!

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The Winner

HostGator has better performance than Squarespace

Because hosting providers are so focused on a server’s resources, HostGator will pay a lot of attention to your website’s performance, rather than its visual appeal.

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Performance and Security Features

Go with HostGator For Top Performance

Give HostGator a try if you need optimal performance for your website.

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The Winner

It's a tie!

Both Squarespace and HostGator have really great help and support options. It’s good to know that whichever you choose, you’ll feel supported by these providers.

At a Glance

Both HostGator and Squarespace impressed us when we tested out their support options. HostGator’s knowledge base impressed us with its wide range of helpful articles, and its 24/7 phone support is a major plus. That said, we did think its live chat support could’ve been a little more responsive, and the replies we received weren’t as detailed as the articles in the knowledge base.

Squarespace doesn’t have 24/7 phone support, but we were impressed with its live chat team. Plus, you’re less likely to need a round-the-clock support team on hand, because Squarespace provides you with helpful tips and guidance as soon as you sign up – meaning you won’t feel lost in its template editor.

Create A Stunning Website With Ease!

Squarespace makes building and hosting your website super easy!

Try Squarespace

If you’ve read this far, then it’s no secret that HostGator and Squarespace are two very different platforms. Overall HostGator just about wins! But we’d say if you’re a beginner then there’s no question that Squarespace is a fantastic platform too.