Squarespace holds 3.5% of the CMS market and has built its reputation on gorgeous templates and a polished editing experience. For portfolio sites and small businesses that need to look good fast, it delivers. But the moment you need multilingual content, custom user roles, a forum, or anything beyond Squarespace’s predetermined feature set, you hit walls that no amount of custom CSS can fix.
No Multilingual Support. At All.
This is Squarespace’s most glaring weakness. In 2026, with the global internet being inherently multilingual, Squarespace has no built-in translation or multilingual feature.
The workaround? Manually duplicate your entire site for each language. Double the maintenance, no automatic language detection, no hreflang management, no translation workflow. Or bolt on Weglot at $15–$50+/month and hope the machine translation does not embarrass your brand.
Joomla ships with native multilingual support: language packs, content associations, per-language menus, hreflang tags, and RTL support. All in core. All free.
The Export Illusion
Squarespace can export blog posts and basic page text as WordPress-compatible XML. That sounds reasonable until you realize what the export does not include:
- Your design and layout — completely lost
- Product pages and all e-commerce data
- Image files (only URLs, which die when you cancel)
- Cover pages and index pages
- Form submissions
- Member areas
- Custom CSS/JS code injections
- Audio and video files
You get your blog text out. Everything else requires rebuilding from zero. With Joomla, a database dump and file backup capture your entire site — design, content, configuration, and all.
Customization: Pretty but Shallow
Squarespace 7.1 removed Developer Mode — the feature that gave you Git access and direct template editing. What remains is a visual editor that lets you customize within Squarespace’s design system, CSS/JS injection on Business plans and above, and nothing else.
No custom templates. No backend code. No plugin system (Squarespace “Extensions” are mostly integrations, not feature additions). No custom content types. No custom database. You work within Squarespace’s boxes or you do not work at all.
Joomla gives you full template control (HTML, CSS, PHP), component/module/plugin architecture, custom content types with custom fields, and direct database access.
User Management
Squarespace offers Owner, Administrator, Content Editor, Store Manager, and a few other fixed roles. No custom roles. No per-page permissions. An editor can edit any page — you cannot restrict access to specific content areas.
Member areas are a paid add-on, limited to 5 pages per area, with no complex membership tiers. No LDAP, no SAML, no enterprise SSO.
Joomla’s ACL: unlimited custom groups, per-category permissions, cascading access levels. Not in the same league.
E-Commerce: The 3% Tax
Squarespace’s Personal plan ($25/month) does not allow e-commerce at all. The Business plan ($33/month) lets you sell but charges a 3% transaction fee on top of payment processor fees. You need Basic Commerce ($36/month) to eliminate that surcharge.
Joomla with VirtueMart or HikaShop: zero transaction fees beyond your payment processor. Zero monthly platform fees. Complete control over your checkout flow.
Performance
Squarespace is better than Wix — it uses server-side rendering, which helps SEO. But typical mobile PageSpeed scores land at 40–70, with Squarespace injecting its own analytics and tracking scripts you cannot remove. No server-side caching control, no CDN configuration, no HTTP/2 push.
A tuned Joomla site routinely scores 80–100 on mobile PageSpeed with full control over every asset that loads.
When Squarespace Makes Sense
For a photographer’s portfolio, a restaurant menu site, or a small business that needs a beautiful single-language website with minimal ongoing changes, Squarespace is genuinely excellent. The templates are best-in-class, and the editing experience is smooth.
The Bottom Line
Squarespace is a beautiful cage. Joomla is a workshop. One looks great on day one. The other lets you build whatever you need on day one thousand.
If your website is a brochure, Squarespace wins on aesthetics. If your website is a platform, Joomla wins on everything else.