Squarespace is still a relative unknown in the blogging community. We think that’s a real shame because it definitely deserves more attention. Squarespace is a hosting option that offers an easy way to set up a blog, or even a full website if you’re so inclined, and manage it remotely. Squarespace easily has one of the best interfaces for designing, customizing and personalizing your blog without needing to know programming language or finding third party templates. That mix of simplicity and functionality is what endeared Squarespace to us, and naturally it’s also the reason Squarespace earned the “TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award” in our review of blog services.
Squarespace prizes design and reliability over cheapness, which is why Squarespace is one of only two services in this review to charge money to host a blog. However, that same value of design and reliability are what make Squarespace worth every penny, and it’s why Squarespace ranks higher than all but one of the free blog services. You really can do more with your blog on Squarespace than with any other service.
The Squarespace interface is completely modular and customizable, both when you set it up and at any time thereafter that you feel you need to make a change. You have more freedom to move widgets, columns and plugins around than you find in other services and it’s much easier too.
Squarespace is also one of the few blog services that gives you traffic stats without the need of a third party plugin, making it especially useful if you are starting a public or business blog.
There are a few reasons why Squarespace didn’t make it to the top spot in this review. The most obvious being that you have to pay for the service when there is a free service that does it just a little better. Squarespace’s tracking tools, while useful, aren’t quite as complete as those found in the top 2 products. Even though Squarespace is an exceptional blogging service, small issues such as these kept it from being #1.
No other service offers the level of customization in blog design that Squarespace does. In order to get the same level of control over your blog design in other services, you need to know how to alter the code yourself. While it’s possible to customize your Squarespace blog design by altering the CSS code, that will be unnecessary for all but the pickiest users.
The basic Squarespace template allows you to change just about every aspect of your blog page, from the fonts, headers and backgrounds all the way down to just how wide you want your columns to be and in what order. Each module is movable so you can change the configuration of the widgets and plugins that display on your blog as well as add and delete them at will. The number of widgets and plugins are your disposal are more than the average user will need and include all the most common ones, like blogrolls, link lists, calendars and polls.
Posting blogs in the Squarespace interface is a pretty standard affair. A text box allows you to format your text with all the basic word processing tools. If you prefer to alter your text and formatting at the HTML level, there is an option to view the code.
It’s possible to post blogs to your Squarespace account even if you aren’t near a computer; as long as you have a cell phone capable of sending and receiving emails, you can submit posts to your blog through your phone.
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