Duda vs. Squarespace

Learn why agencies are choosing Duda in 2023.

Duda vs. Squarespace side-by-side
comparison for agencies

Which website builder offers the best features, code integration customization & flexibility? And which gives agencies more value for their business?

	DUDA	SQUARESPACE
White label	White label dashboard, editor, stats, analytics, emails, and preview links to support the agency brand.	Does not offer white label tools or features. Squarespace’s brand is present.
Client Management	Custom roles and permissions, Site Comments, direct content upload by clients and more.	No similar tools for client management.
Team Collaboration Tools and Approval Workflows	Custom team roles and permissions. Website sections, templates and widgets can be shared between team members, and clients can provide design feedback via Site Comments.	Limited authorization of contributors to each website, no design assets sharing, no site comments.
Design Features & Flexibility	Pre-built and custom widgets and templates to create fun-to-use, personalized websites and dynamic web pages.	Limited flexibility. Blocks and features are less customizable and must be added as whole sections. No custom blocks or dynamic pages.
Editor Ease of Use	Duda’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor is fast, easy to use, and comes jam-packed with an exhaustive list of features.	Squarespace’s editor has a steeper learning curve.
Website Templates	Duda has a wide variety of thoughtfully designed templates that are made to deliver conversions and business results.	Squarespace primarily offers portfolio-type templates for bloggers, photographers, and artists.
Backup & Restore, Site Cloning	Auto and manual backup features, one-click backup/restore, easy site cloning saves you time.	No native integrated backup and restore capabilities.
Website Personalization	Robust Personalization Engine. Custom rules and triggers based on time of day, visitor location and more.	Personalization is limited to popups & announcement bars.
SEO	The Duda platform is designed and built to be aligned with Google’s recommended practices for speed, security, Lighthouse, and SEO.	Offers basic on-page SEO resources.
Online Store	eCommerce solution is easy to set up and compatible with an ever-growing number of payment processors. Product fields optimized for SEO.	eCommerce solution adequate for smaller businesses. Limited payment processors.
Site Export and Portability	You are free to export site code and content anytime.	For technical users, Squarespace supports export of some site content through an XML file.
Revenue Stream Control	You set the prices you charge your customers for your services; the Duda plan you pay for is not exposed to the end client.	Your clients will be shown Squarespace’s pricing and, if the account is in their name, the client will be billed by Squarespace.
Pricing	Duda has pricing plans tailored for agencies with multiple clients.	Pricing by the site. No multi-site plans.
Support	Top-notch customer support with a satisfaction rate of 98%.	Email, chat & online knowledge base. No phone support.
Data-driven site content	Duda can connect to internal or external databases and populate site elements.	No dynamic pages feature, some 3rd-party integrations.
Access to code when needed	Edit any site element’s JavaScript, HTML or CSS in Developer Mode. REST API access, Custom Widgets, Webhooks.	Developer Mode for certain site elements.
Multilingual Websites	Supports multilingual sites.	Offers manual, labor-intensive translation of pages.
Local Business Features	Local listing and reputation management apps, map widget for single / multiple locations, local business schema widgets, posting to Google & Facebook.	No local listing management available.

Duda vs. Squarespace
point-by-point

White label
Client management
Team Collaboration
Approval workflows
Editor ease-of-use
Design Features & Flexibility
customization
Backup and Restore
Sites designed to convert
SEO
Online Store
Site portability
Revenue stream control
Multi-site pricing
Support
Data-driven site content
Access to code
Multilingual Websites
Local Search Optimization

White label options

Which one lets your agency’s brand shine?

Duda's fully white label-enabled platform allows your web agency to use its web design tools completely under your brand. You can provide your clients with a cohesive user experience by adding your logo and colors to Duda’s editor, preview tools, stats emails, dashboard and white-label marketing materials.

Squarespace offers no white label features and is largely marketed towards individual entrepreneurs and SMB owners.

Client management

Can you manage multiple clients from a single dashboard?

Duda’s client management dashboard allows your agency to manage all of your clients from one place. You can easily check a client’s profile, set permissions, keep track of leads and more for a smoother, more efficient workflow.

Squarespace does not offer these types of client management tools. At best, the platform offers a ‘Contributor’ feature that allows agencies to access a client’s website through their dashboard.

Team Collaboration Tools

How do you set up different access levels for different team and client roles?

With Duda, your team members can access all sites in an account and customize permissions by individual or group. In addition, templates, sections and widgets can easily be shared with team members and saved for future projects to make site-building a faster, more productive process.

Squarespace offers creation of ‘Contributor’ roles within “groups” such as site owners, admins, editors, billing personnel and store managers. Individual users can be added to different groups, but there is no way to assign individual permissions or share design elements between group members.

client and designer collaborating with duda site comments

Approval workflows

What workflows exist for client content review and approval?

Duda's Site Comments feature enables your team members and clients to have a real-time dialogue as you build websites. Each comment is linked to a specific site element, and will trigger a notification via email for faster review and approval. That way, you can handle all communication from one convenient location –– the website being built.

Squarespace does not offer this type of capability. Your team and clients will have to use additional tools outside of the Squarespace platform to facilitate design review and feedback.

Editor ease of use

Which is the best drag-and-drop website builder editor?

Duda’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor is fast, easy to use, and comes jam-packed with an exhaustive list of features. Site Theme functionality enables you to change the fundamental design from one location, and you can easily copy and paste multiple sections, rows and columns, up to entire pages. You can add a row to any header or footer with one click, and auto-generate columns and rows as you drag widgets.

Squarespace’s editor has a steeper learning curve, especially since you can’t drag and drop elements as freely as you can the Duda editor or copy and paste assets. You’re also required to add an entire section for each block added to your site, and certain design elements along with headers and footers are fixed to specific templates.

Design Features & Flexibility

Who offers easy configuration of complex web design features?

Duda supports a large library of SMB-friendly widgets including Click to Call, Multi Location Map, Restaurant Menu, Yelp Reviews, Yext Knowledge Tags and more. You can also build custom widgets to extend out-of-the-box functionality and use Duda’s Dynamic Pages feature to automatically build web pages from collections of data.

Squarespace offers basic block configuration through the editor, but it is not possible to select more advanced, business-friendly block configurations. Custom blocks and dynamic pages may be created in Squarespace, but more developer work (and time) is required to implement these features.

Website templates

Which builder allows for more customization for templates and mobile sites?

Duda has over 100 thoughtfully designed templates that can easily be edited for a variety of applications, and a blank template that enables users to build sites completely from scratch. All widgets and site features are available in all templates, so you won’t have to switch templates in order to achieve a particular design. Anytime you build sites on the Duda platform, you maintain full control over how they will look and function on desktop, tablet and mobile.

Squarespace primarily offers sleek templates for entrepreneurs, bloggers, photographers and artists, but they’re not necessarily practical for business and eCommerce sites. Since certain design blocks are only available on select templates, your selection can be limited depending on the type of site you want to build. Editing and previewing are allowed for desktop and mobile modes, but there are less options for design customization.

Backup and Restore

Which website builder helps you backup and restore unlimited versions of your site?

Every time a website is published on Duda, it’s automatically backed up. Users also have the option, with one click, to manually create a backup at any time or restore a site to an earlier version.

Additionally, Duda sites can be duplicated from an agency’s dashboard with a single click. The Dynamic Pages feature enables you to build multiple web pages from data by connecting a database such as Google Sheets or Airtable to a master layout and widgets. This feature is ideal for creating sites containing multiple pages that have the same structure but different content such as real estate listings, catalogs and landing pages.

Squarespace does not have a feature that allows users to manually back up a website or restore it to an earlier version. Instead, the platform performs its own internal, automatic backups behind the scenes. Deleted pages can be restored for up to 30 days, while deleted blocks and sections cannot be recovered.

Sites designed to convert

What level of end-user personalization is available?

Duda’s Personalization Engine enables your agency to enhance every client’s site with conversion-boosting elements such as pop-ups, clicks-to-call and more based on site visit and site visitor criteria such as date, time and location. These elements can be triggered through a variety of rules based on campaign tracking codes, user device type, and other information.

Squarespace has very limited personalization tools such as email signup pop-ups and announcement bars (available only on the Business or Commerce plan). Unfortunately, these rules can be quite challenging to set up and deploy, and only two pop-up actions are offered: ‘newsletter signup’ or ‘click a button.’

SEO

Which website builder handles SEO better?

The Duda platform is designed and built to be aligned with Google’s recommended practices for speed, security, and SEO. This includes fast content rendering for higher Google Lighthouse test scores, intuitive access to on-page SEO settings such as keywords and descriptions, automatic SSL encryption and sitemap generation for every Duda-built site.

On Squarespace, SEO configuration can be cumbersome. Extra time is required to set up meta tags or change an image’s alt text. Page title and URL, SEO title and description, and social images are all found in separate tabs, and recommendations are not made for image sizes. To create page redirects, the user has to use the Mapping Panel (a separate tool altogether) and ‘image file name’ is not supported.

Online Store

Which website builder can implement your payment processor gateway?

Duda’s online store is a complete eCommerce solution with an easy product setup, SEO optimized URLs and integrations with Facebook, Instagram and Google Shopping. You can choose from many different payment processors and enable offline payments. Duda-built online stores can synchronize with Square POS, and you can implement customizable discount coupons for single or multiple products, product categories, customer groups and more. No transaction fees apply.

Squarespace’s eCommerce feature allows unlimited products, but lacks straightforward integration with payment processors, shipping, and marketing software, all of which can make setting up a fully functional online store a tedious task. Coupons can be applied to the entire store, but not by specific product. It’s also important to remember that Squarespace charges personal accounts a 3% transaction fee, while business accounts are charged only 2%.

Site portability

Can you export site code and content?

Once built, any Duda site can be exported and downloaded at any time. This can be done on-demand using the built-in Duda site export feature. Every site export contains a ZIP file with the editor preview HTML, CSS and images of the site in a format that can be installed on your external web server.

Squarespace supports the export of some page content through an XML file. However, a full site export is not possible as many design elements are reliant on the platform’s code.

Revenue stream control

Can you set your own prices for hosting and related services?

You get to choose the best Duda plan for your agency’s account (which is kept strictly confidential) and you have full control to set the prices you charge your customers for your own web design services.

Squarespace keeps a billing contact on file to receive direct payment. Since the Squarespace platform cannot currently be white-labeled, they control the prices, payment, and relationship with whomever is paying the bill for the account.

Multi-site pricing

How does pricing compare for managing dozens of sites or more?

For agencies needing to build websites at scale, Duda provides a cost-effective solution. For example, the Duda Agency plan, which supports multiple client websites. Additionally, since Duda sites can often be built in a fraction of the time it would take on other platforms, agency costs related to production time may be reduced as well.

Squarespace does not offer any plans that support more than one site. A plan must be purchased for each site you build.

Support

How does Duda and Squarespace support compare?

Duda’s support has a 98% customer satisfaction rate, with rapid response times in every channel. For agencies with larger numbers of sites on Duda, a team of dedicated Account Managers and product experts are ready to provide further assistance, according to your site volume.

Squarespace offers support via email, chat and an online knowledge base for frequently asked questions; no phone support is available for Squarespace.

designers on couch with duda support helping them

Data-driven site content

Can sites be driven from databases, Google Sheets, or Airtable?

Duda’s Content Library allows your agency to connect site elements to data pulled from a content collection form, or from an internal or external database such as Google Sheets or Airtable, with no coding required.

On Squarespace, limited integration with Google Sheets is possible via a 3rd-party integration.

Access to code

How deeply can you get into the underlying HTML, CSS, JavaScript?

Duda’s Developer Mode gives you access to view, edit and change your website's HTML, CSS and JavaScript for advanced customization when desired.

Squarespace allows you to edit CSS, but with limited customer support for complex custom code applications. Developer Mode offers template customization, but without an option to customize individual blocks. Moreover, users will need to use Git or SFTP to connect and edit the HTML.

duda code access superimposed over website

Multilingual Websites

Who makes translating your site easy and efficient?

Duda understands the importance of incorporating multi-language features into your clients’ websites and online stores. The translation feature uses Google Translate as a base, from which the content can be further adjusted inside Duda’s editor.

While it is possible to create a multilingual site in Squarespace, the process is much more manual and much less intuitive. Users will have to create a homepage linking each visitor to the version of the website in their preferred language then build multi-language pages and menus.

Local Search Optimization

Which website builder is best for local businesses?

Duda offers app integrations and widgets that are hyper-relevant and useful to local businesses. With the Uberall and Neustar Localeze apps, businesses can ensure their data remains consistent and up-to-date (across multiple online locations), maintain reputation management, and post directly to Google and Facebook. Pre-built widgets for Business Hours, Yelp Reviews, Yext, Open Table Reservations, Map, and Multi-Location Map can quickly be added to any template along with your agency’s custom-developed widgets such as IDX, mortgage calculator and more.

Squarespace does not have local listings software integration within their platform and you will have to use plugins for added functionality.

The Duda vs. Squarespace verdict

Either Duda or Squarespace can be used to create beautiful websites for small businesses, but when one evaluates the agency’s specific needs and workflow, the two platforms diverge.

For agencies that intend to build sites at scale, only Duda has designed-in features for robust client management, pricing that scales attractively for the agency use case, and white-label options that enable the agency itself to be the focus of the relationship with its clients, features that are unmatched by Squarespace.

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