How to Use Squarespace for Free as a Web Designer
When choosing a platform, no amount of research can substitute for hands-on experience. And for web designers, picking the right platform is a critical choice for your business. It has the power to limit or expand the sites you can build, and it’s an integral part of the final product you hand over to your client.
As a web professional, you often understand the nuances of the web more than your clients do. This means you know what to look for in a web design platform to achieve their goals. The ideal platform should combine advanced functionality for professionals like you with an intuitive interface that any client, regardless of their experience, can navigate.
With Squarespace, there are several ways to try out the platform before you or your client make a financial commitment. You can browse templates for free, play around with site styles, take advantage of a two-week free trial, and, with a Circle membership, unlock extended free trials for new websites.
Why choose Squarespace as a web designer
It doesn’t matter how affordable a platform is if it doesn’t have the features you need to build great websites. Most platforms present developers with tradeoffs between ease-of-use and advanced feature sets and between affordability and scalability. That’s disqualifying for web designers who need to offer flexible, professional, and practical solutions to clients.
Squarespace’s interface is designed to empower even novice customers to build top-tier sites, making it a great fit for clients who don’t have experience navigating a highly-technical platform. At the same time, it’s also powerful enough for web professionals’ more advanced use cases and customizations.
While individual clients have a discrete set of needs, designers don’t. Constraints in a platform are constraints on your career. Squarespace offers comprehensive feature sets for a wide range of clients. Regardless of your level of technical or coding knowledge, Squarespace’s features, like Fluid Engine and automatically responsive designs, expand your ability to create dynamic layouts quickly. When you can build brilliant sites quickly, you can take on even more happy clients.
Learn the top reasons web designers use Squarespace.
Don’t solely rely on third-party features
The more third-party plugins you use on a site, the more opportunities there are for security and compatibility issues, glitches, and failures after platform updates. While you can use third-party solutions with Squarespace sites, you don’t have to.
Squarespace has integrated email marketing features with built-in analytics; an integrated scheduling software for appointment management; and tools for monetizing content or rewarding site subscribers with exclusive resources. The platform also offers many tools specific to SEO, ecommerce, and site analytics. Because Squarespace builds many of these tools in-house, most are included in your Squarespace plan, meaning you get to try them as part of your free trial.
Pay fewer fees overall
Some platforms lower their price tags by separating the subscriptions needed to run a functional site into several parts. Not only is there a logistical cost to juggling multiple subscriptions, the illusion of savings almost always disappears as soon as you add up things like hosting services, external plugins, and other fees. Depending on your client’s Squarespace plan, not only will most of their costs be consolidated into a single fee, they’ll get access to unlimited stock photos, Google Workspace, no-fee transactions, and a complimentary custom domain for one year at no extra charge.
Explore Squarespace’s extensive library of templates
For a web designer trying to get a sense of what it’s like to build on Squarespace, previewing the library of more than 150 templates is a great place to start. These award-winning templates are designed to be both off-the-shelf solutions for clients who are looking to get started, as well as flexible, adaptable starting points for those who want to customize and tweak sites until they’re perfect for their particular use case. These templates can be a treasure trove of ideas about style, design, structure, and function. You can explore this library for free, even before launching your free trial.
Some, like the Adri template, are designed specifically for web designers and other professionals that benefit from portfolio sites. The template is a great way to communicate your professional qualifications to potential clients, establish trust, and capture leads that you can turn into valuable clients. When you take the time to build a great portfolio site, you develop critical experience on the platform and with creating a strong brand identity online.
Of course, you aren’t limited to the templates in the library. You can build your own from scratch, from mixing and matching existing templates, or by using Squarespace Blueprint AI. If your design workflow already involves custom code, no worries—Squarespace supports that, too. The same goes for third-party plugins.
Getting started with Squarespace for free
If you’re not quite ready to commit or just want to get as much experience with Squarespace before you dust off your credit card, the two-week free trial is the place to start. You can get started by creating a Squarespace account for free and working on your website, which will start your trial. You can spend those two weeks tweaking your first site, experimenting, and learning. If you’re not quite ready to start a subscription at the end of those 14 days, Squarespace will save all your settings and content for four months, giving you plenty of time to upgrade when you’re ready.
Unlock six-month trials with Circle
You can also unlock extended six-month trials by joining Squarespace Circle. The program is designed to support creatives, developers, designers, and other professionals who use Squarespace to create websites and want to take their design skills to the next level.
Circle membership comes with many benefits and perks, like discounts and early access to new features. Many developers, however, find even more value in the Circle Forum—a global community of web professionals who collaborate to get better, share opportunities, and upgrade their skills and businesses. Squarespace customers who have built or contributed to three active Squarespace sites are eligible for membership.
Trial periods are great for dialing in the fine details and making changes to your site before it’s production-ready. However, once your site is live, there’s still plenty of opportunity to update and improve. The Circle community is one of the best ways to find out how other web professionals are upgrading their sites. In the Circle Forum, you can ask for direct feedback and advice from pros at every level of experience. The Circle blog is also a great resource for learning more about growing your web design business.
A Circle membership distinguishes you as a professional, with a badge to display your Squarespace expertise. Circle members receive six-month trials for all new websites, as well as those built for clients. Extending a special, six-month free trial to new clients is an excellent way to start a relationship on the right foot.
Using Squarespace for free
A hosting platform isn’t just where you build client websites. In many cases, it’s where you build your career. Squarespace’s extensive library of templates can give you a free glimpse of the endless possibilities for your future websites. Once you’re ready to take the next step, you can get started for free with a two-week free trial. You can also use templates specifically designed for web professionals, like Adri, to waste no time launching your design business.
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings professionals together from across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.
