Honest comparison
Joeckel Design vs Squarespace AI
Squarespace makes the prettiest templates in the AI-builder category — but pretty templates aren't the same as a custom site. Once you have content that doesn't fit the template, you're stuck choosing between "looks fine" and "looks like ours."
Cost at a glance
Squarespace AI
$16–$52/mo
- Personal$16/mo
- Business$23/mo
- Commerce Basic$28/mo
- Commerce Advanced$52/mo
You operate, configure, and maintain it yourself. Add-ons sold separately.
Joeckel Design
$39–$119/mo
- Starter$49/mo
- Growth$99/mo
- Pro$149/mo
Free build/scope. Done-for-you. Cancel anytime.
What Squarespace AI does well
We're not here to bash. Squarespace AI is the right choice for some people. Here's where it earns its sticker price.
- ✓Best-looking default templates in the AI-builder space
- ✓Built-in image, font, and brand-system tooling
- ✓Decent built-in blog and CMS
- ✓Reasonable mobile performance compared to Wix
- ✓Good built-in analytics dashboard
Where Squarespace AI falls short
- ✗Layouts have hard limits — break the grid in a way the template wasn't designed for and you cannot make it work
- ✗AI generator is essentially a template-picker with auto-filled placeholder copy
- ✗Custom code is allowed but injected at the page level, not built into the source — fragile and hard to maintain
- ✗Template changes are destructive — switching templates can lose customizations
- ✗Limited control over schema.org structured data
- ✗Server-side rendering is partial; some pages still hydrate before being indexable
Hidden costs to watch
- ·Transaction fees on Personal plan — 3% of every sale on top of Stripe fees
- ·"Member areas" and email campaigns are separate add-ons
- ·Acuity Scheduling integration is a separate $16-50/mo product
- ·Unfold (their social-media tool) is a separate subscription
- ·Annual billing is the only way to get the advertised price
What Squarespace AI customers actually complain about
"My Squarespace site looks like every other Squarespace site"
"I changed templates and lost half my customizations"
"I want a feature their template doesn't support and customizing it breaks the layout"
"Adding any custom functionality requires hacky CSS injection"
Live Client · Real Numbers
This is what we ship instead
Lighthouse mobile audit of wayneswalleyes.com, a real paying client (Wayne's Walleye World Guide Service — 2024 World Champion walleye guide). Run the audit yourself at pagespeed.web.dev. Typical Squarespace AI output is in a different league.
Performance
Accessibility
Best Practices
SEO
0.7s
First Contentful Paint
0.7s
Largest Contentful Paint
0ms
Total Blocking Time
0
Cumulative Layout Shift
1.1s
Speed Index
Where Joeckel Design wins, head-to-head
- ★Custom design that doesn't look templated
- ★Code lives in source, not page-injected hacks
- ★Schema.org is hand-built per page (Article, FAQPage, LocalBusiness, Product, etc.)
- ★No transaction fees on e-commerce — you pay Stripe, not us
- ★Adding a feature is a code change, not a workaround
Ready to ditch the template?
We'll build you a free preview site — custom designed for your business, not generated from a template. If you love it, $49/mo and we maintain it forever.
No credit card. Cancel anytime.
Frequently asked questions
Squarespace looks really nice. Why move?＋
It does look nice — until you compare it to a custom-coded site. Squarespace looks good within its own ecosystem, but the moment you need anything specific to your business that isn't in the template, you spend hours fighting the editor. Custom-coded sites start where Squarespace stops.
Can you preserve my Squarespace blog?＋
Yes. We export your posts, migrate them to a real CMS (we usually use a Git-based or headless CMS depending on your needs), preserve URL structure with 301 redirects, and your SEO comes along for the ride.
How much do I save vs Squarespace?＋
Roughly the same monthly cost ($16-52/mo Squarespace vs $39-119/mo Joeckel annual). What you gain: custom design, ongoing human updates, no transaction fees on commerce, and a site you actually own.