Ozark Web Designs
The Squarespace Tax
A new owner asked for a basic web presence. Squarespace will sell them a login at $19 a month and never show what that login costs if the company keeps it. This article is the horizon, the three cheaper replacements, and the build order. Do not rebuild them onto the same lease.
The claim, stated so you can defend it
Ten years on Basic, no mail, no store, is $2,460. That is not tens of thousands. Do not say that it is. You will get caught, and the rest of this brief will get thrown out with the exaggeration.
The ordinary company path is Core. It is the tier without the 2% commerce fee. Twenty years, paid annually, two Google Workspace seats, domain modeled at $20 after the free first year: $10,616. Year one is $432. A later year is $536.
Paths that do clear twenty thousand: selling $40,000 a year of ordinary products on Basic for twenty years ($20,940, of which the 2% fee is $16,000), and Advanced with two mailboxes for twenty years ($27,416). Plus, the membership tier, is $15,416 before any digital-goods percent and before a rebuild on the way out.
None of those horizons are on squarespace.com/pricing. The number on that page is $19. That is the disclosure failure. The site also dies when the subscription dies, and the design does not export. The lease is the product.
Published USD prices
Annual column is the amount charged once a year. “Per month” is that charge divided by twelve. Struck figures are the annual price before the 2026 increase.
| Plan | Annual | Month-to-month | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $228 / yr | $25/mo | Commerce 2% · Digital 7% · was $192 |
| Core | $348 / yr | $39/mo | Commerce 0% · Digital 5% · was $276 |
| Plus | $588 / yr | $65/mo | Commerce 0% · Digital 1% · was $468 |
| Advanced | $1,188 / yr | $139/mo | Commerce 0% · Digital 0% · unchanged |
Standard domestic cards on Squarespace Payments: Basic and Core 2.9% + $0.30, Plus 2.7% + $0.30, Advanced 2.5% + $0.30. Not included in any total here. Google Workspace Business Starter through Squarespace is $84 a user per year after the one free seat on Core and above, first year only. Their price file still describes Core as carrying a 3% commerce fee. That sentence is stale. Totals follow the help-center schedule: 2% on Basic, 0% from Core up.
Worked scenarios
They stay on the advertised plan — $2,460
Basic, paid annually, no mailbox, no store, 10 years. This is the honest cheap path. It is not tens of thousands. It is also not the plan a company with a second person, a sale, or a custom tweak stays on.
Plan $2,280 · Domain $180 · Mail $0 · Platform fee $0
Same brochure, life of a young company — $4,940
Basic, paid annually, no mailbox, no store, 20 years. Still under five thousand. Quote this when someone claims every Squarespace site costs a fortune. Then show them the next rows.
Plan $4,560 · Domain $380 · Mail $0 · Platform fee $0
The company keeps it — $10,616
Core, paid annually, two mailboxes, a .com, no store, 20 years. Core is the plan without the 2% commerce fee, with room for more than a couple of editors, and with the mailbox offer. This is the ordinary path. It clears ten thousand dollars. You still do not own the site.
Plan $6,960 · Domain $380 · Mail $3,276 · Platform fee $0
Same company, first decade only — $5,256
Core, paid annually, two mailboxes, 10 years. Half the horizon. Already more than twice the 10-year Basic brochure, because of the plan jump and two inboxes.
Plan $3,480 · Domain $180 · Mail $1,596 · Platform fee $0
They were unsure, so they paid monthly — $13,036
Core, month-to-month, two mailboxes, domain every year including year one, 20 years. Month-to-month is how a new owner hedges. On Core it is $468 a year instead of $348, and the free domain year is not included. Caution is a surcharge.
Plan $9,360 · Domain $400 · Mail $3,276 · Platform fee $0
They started selling memberships — $15,416
Plus, paid annually, two mailboxes, 20 years, digital fee not included. Plus is where subscriptions, abandoned cart, and a 1% digital fee live. Fifteen thousand before a single percent of course sales, and before anyone rebuilds the site on the way out.
Plan $11,760 · Domain $380 · Mail $3,276 · Platform fee $0
They bought the fee down to zero — $27,416
Advanced, paid annually, two mailboxes, 20 years. This is a tens-of-thousands path with no store volume required. $1,188 a year is the only current tier with no digital-content fee. Twenty years of that, plus mail and the domain, is $27,416.
Plan $23,760 · Domain $380 · Mail $3,276 · Platform fee $0
They sold on Basic and never did the division — $20,940
Basic, paid annually, no mailbox, $40,000 a year of ordinary product sales, 20 years. The 2% commerce fee is $800 a year here — $16,000 over twenty years — on top of card processing, which is not in this total. Core costs only $120 a year more than Basic and drops that fee to zero. The pricing page counts on a new owner not doing that math. Leaving the platform drops it to zero as well, at a lower rent.
Plan $4,560 · Domain $380 · Mail $0 · Platform fee $16,000
Ten cons
1. You never own the site
Cancel, miss a card, or close the plan and the public website is gone. There is no finished copy you can park on inexpensive hosting and keep. The business’s front door is a subscription.
2. The sticker is a monthly slice of an annual plan
The $19 and $29 figures are annual contracts described as months. Month-to-month Basic is $25. Month-to-month Core is $39. New owners, who are unsure, are the people most likely to pay the higher one.
3. The domain renewal is not in the plan price
Year one on an annual plan is the exception. Every year after that, the name is a separate bill, at their registrar, at a price that is not on the plan card. This model uses $20 for a .com. Confirm the extension. Some of them are ugly.
4. Email is metered per human
One free mailbox for one year on Core and above, then $84 a seat per year through Squarespace. A two-person shop is a permanent line item. Basic pays from the first seat, from the first month.
5. The plan in the ads cannot carry a real business cleanly
Ordinary sales on Basic are taxed 2%. Digital products and memberships are taxed 7%. Code injection and the mailbox offer sit on higher tiers in current plan breakdowns, which also put Basic at two contributors. Treat the contributor cap as something to confirm on the trial — it is in 2026 comparisons, not in the pricing.txt dump — and treat the fees as official. They are on Squarespace’s own fee table.
6. Selling on Basic is two bills to the card brands and one to Squarespace
Customers pay. The processor takes about 2.9% + $0.30. Squarespace takes another 2% of the same sale. On $40,000 a year that extra 2% is $800. Core costs $120 a year more than Basic and removes it. A new owner who does not divide those numbers subsidizes the platform.
7. Digital goods are priced to push the upgrade
7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus, 0% on Advanced. A coach selling a PDF, or a shop selling a membership, does not see this on the $19 card. They see it when the product is already built. Buying the fee down means $588 or $1,188 a year.
8. The rate is not locked, and 2026 already proved it
Basic’s annual bill moved from $192 to $228. Core moved from $276 to $348. Plus moved from $468 to $588. A company that keeps the site has accepted whatever the next file says. Nothing on the signup page shows a ten-year cap.
9. Their own documents do not agree with each other
The machine-readable price file, updated September 21, 2026, still describes Core as a plan “with a 3% transaction fee on commerce sales.” That is old Business-plan language. The current help center says Basic is 2% and Core’s commerce fee is 0%. A new owner should not need two articles and a data file to learn the fee. Totals in this brief follow the help-center schedule, not the stale sentence. If a sales rep quotes 3%, get it in writing — their public file still says it.
10. Leaving is a rebuild, not an export
Content can come out in pieces. The site cannot. Page design, templates, checkout, scheduling blocks, and member areas stay behind. The longer the company keeps it, the more expensive the exit, which is why a low monthly number is such an effective lease.
Ten reasons it sucks for a basic presence
1. You pay before you have a customer
A new owner with a name, a phone number, and a service area owes $228 before the first invoice if they take the annual Basic plan — or the trial ends and the pages they just wrote stop being public.
2. The trial holds the work hostage
The current offer is a 14-day trial, not a free plan. There is no permanent free site on your own domain. You build inside the trial. Then the presence exists only if the card does.
3. “Free domain” teaches the worst habit in a small company
The name gets registered where the website is. Moving it later means an unlock, a waiting period, and a day when the email breaks if you were foolish enough to park the mail in the same account. The owner should have held the name on day one.
4. The templates are the product, so the shop down the street has them too
It looks expensive on day one. By month six it looks like the category. You cannot take the design with you, and you cannot easily escape the family resemblance without fighting the editor.
5. Your developer cannot do the job you think you hired them for
There is no repository, no theme files, no staging box that is actually yours. “Fix the site” means clicking inside Squarespace. Anything structural is a CSS patch, an embed, or a conversation about upgrading. You will pay a professional to operate a rental.
6. The next ordinary need is an upsell
A second editor. A popup. A paid PDF. A membership. A booking that takes a deposit. A shop. Each one is how a “basic web presence” becomes Core, then Plus. The page you came for — who you are, what you do, how to call — was the loss leader.
7. You still do all the work
Support will not write the services page, photograph the truck, or decide what the homepage should say. You paid for a logged-in editor, a template, hosting, and a bill. The business part was never included.
8. You cannot leave a finished site up for cheap
A WordPress folder can sit on any host. A one-page Carrd site can sit on Carrd while the domain stays yours. A Squarespace site cannot be “left up” somewhere else for the cost of hosting. Stopping the subscription takes the page down.
9. Being unsure costs more
Month-to-month is the cautious choice, and it is the expensive one. Basic goes from $228 a year to $300, and the free domain year disappears. Core goes from $348 to $468. Hedging is how the lease gets richer.
10. You can finance a real website and never hold the keys
Twenty years on Core with two mailboxes is $10,616. That is enough to have paid for a proper independent build and a long run of hosting. At the end of the Squarespace path the asset is still a password. If the company needed Plus or Advanced, or sold on Basic without noticing the 2%, the total moves into the teens and the twenties — and the pricing page never showed that horizon.
Three cheaper options
Mail, when included, is $84 a seat every year, including year one. These stacks do not get Squarespace’s free mailbox year. Domain on Carrd and on self-hosted WordPress is $10.46 every year. WordPress.com comps year one, then this model uses $18.
Your domain + WordPress
A real business site. Many pages, a blog, a shop later, a developer who works in files. This is the independent stack. About $10.46 a year for the .com at Cloudflare, plus $108 a year as a hosting budget at renewal prices. WordPress itself is $0. A paid theme, if you want one, is a one-time purchase around $50–$100 and is not in the model.
10 yr, no mail $1,184.60 · 20 yr, no mail $2,369.20 · 20 yr, 2 mailboxes $5,729.20
Give up: Someone has to update it. Backups are your problem, which is also why they will exist. Do not model the $2.99 ads. Those renewals jump.
Carrd Pro Standard + your own domain
One page: who you are, what you do, how to call, a form. The right tool when “a basic web presence” is actually the whole request. $19 a year for Carrd Pro Standard, the tier 2026 writeups agree includes a custom domain, forms, and embeds. Do not quote the $9 Pro Lite tier as a custom-domain plan. Sources disagree, and the stricter September 2026 breakdown says the domain starts at Standard. The domain itself is separate, about $10.46 at Cloudflare.
10 yr, no mail $294.60 · 20 yr, no mail $589.20 · 20 yr, 2 mailboxes $3,949.20
Give up: It is one page per site, not a blog, not a catalog, not a course platform. If you need those, do not force them into Carrd. Use WordPress.
WordPress.com Personal
A simple WordPress site when the owner will not keep a host updated and you refuse to put them on Squarespace anyway. $4 a month, billed annually, which is $48 a year, per WordPress.com’s Personal plan page (reviewed August 11, 2026). The first year of a domain is included on an annual plan. This model uses $18 a year after that, as a planning figure, not a checkout quote.
10 yr, no mail $642 · 20 yr, no mail $1,302 · 20 yr, 2 mailboxes $4,662
Give up: You are still renting. Personal is a presence, not a developer platform. Premium is $8 a month ($96 a year) once you need their payments tools. Business is $25 a month ($300 a year) — that is no longer the cheap option, and it is how people wander back into a Squarespace-sized bill. Plugins were offered on paid plans in the September 2026 docs. That policy has changed before. If the plugin list matters, self-host.
Recommendation: register the domain independently, self-host WordPress, keep mail on its own invoice. Use Carrd only when the entire presence is one page. Use WordPress.com Personal only when nobody will run a host and you have already refused Squarespace. Do not walk them up to WordPress.com Business at $300 a year and call it a savings story.
Build this instead
- Put the domain in the client’s name before you design anything. Cloudflare Registrar or Porkbun. The client owns the login and the card. You are a delegate. Registrar lock, two-factor, and the recovery email set to something that is not the website host. Do not buy the name from Squarespace, from a website builder, or from a “free domain” checkbox at a host.
- Split DNS from the lease. The website is an A record or a CNAME. It is not the owner of the name. Email is MX and a couple of TXT records. Write them down in the project folder. A future developer should be able to move the site without opening a support ticket at the registrar.
- Default to self-hosted WordPress unless the site is one page. Budget hosting at a renewal price. The number in this brief is $108 a year, on purpose, so nobody pastes a coupon into a proposal. Software cost is zero. If they will never edit more than a single screen, use Carrd and say so in the proposal. Do not sell a CMS to a one-page request.
- Keep mail off the website invoice. Google Workspace direct, or a forwarder into an inbox they already check. Canceling or moving the site must not take down hello@thecompany.com.
- If they sell, do not accept a platform percent. WooCommerce, or a Stripe payment link, or a real checkout you can leave. The card processor gets paid. Squarespace does not need a second cut. On Basic, $40,000 of ordinary sales is $800 a year that this stack does not charge.
- If they are already on Squarespace, plan a rebuild, not a miracle export. Take the blog export, the product CSV, and every image. Inventory every public URL for redirects. Lower DNS TTL a day before the cut. Do not promise a one-click move. The design does not come with you. Quote the rebuild as its own line, and put the twenty-year Squarespace number next to it so the client can see what staying costs.
- Put this file in the repo and the number in the proposal. The ordinary company path in this model — Core, annual, two mailboxes, twenty years — is $10,616, and they still would not own it. The independent stack with the same two mailboxes is about $5,729. Without mail, it is about $2,369 against $7,340 to stay on Core. Update the constants at the top of the data file when Squarespace changes the price again. They will.
- Quote maintenance in the open. Updates, backups, and an hour when something breaks are real on WordPress. Say so. Squarespace hides that labor inside a subscription that also holds the domain, the design, and the exit. Hiding it is the product. Do not copy that move. A known hourly line is cheaper than a lease you cannot leave.
What this model will not do
This brief does not claim every freelancer on Basic for eighteen months spends tens of thousands of dollars. Ten years on Basic with no mail and no store is $2,460. That number is in the scenario table so nobody has to inflate it.
Card-processing fees are not counted as a Squarespace invention. You pay a processor everywhere. Only the extra commerce percent and the digital-goods percent are treated as platform rent.
Hosting is not modeled at the $2.99 introductory rate. Those prices are a down payment. The $108 hosting line is a budget, not a quote from a specific host this week.
WordPress is not free in the sense of zero work. It is free in the sense of zero software license, portable files, and a host you can fire.
The Squarespace domain line ($20) and the WordPress.com renewal line ($18) are planning figures. Confirm both at checkout. The Cloudflare .com line ($10.46) matches published at-cost checks in September 2026 and will move when the registry wholesale price moves.
Sources
- Squarespace pricing — USD plan cards. Basic $25 / $19, Core $39 / $29, Plus $65 / $49, Advanced $139 / $99. Annual figures are the per-month equivalent; the charge is the yearly total. squarespace.com/pricing
- Squarespace pricing file — Last updated September 21, 2026. USD annual totals: Basic $228, Core $348, Plus $588, Advanced $1,188. The Core blurb still says a 3% commerce fee. Do not use that sentence. See the fee article. squarespace.com/pricing.txt
- Transaction fees and payment processing — Standard domestic cards and commerce fee schedule (Basic 2%, Core and above 0%). Squarespace support: transaction fees
- Selling on Basic, Core, Plus, and Advanced — Digital product fee 7% / 5% / 1%, commerce fee schedule, and one free Google Workspace user for the first year on Core and above. Squarespace support: selling plans
- Google Workspace pricing through Squarespace — Business Starter: $84 per user per year. Squarespace support: Google Workspace pricing
- WordPress.com Personal — $4 a month, billed annually. Free domain for the first year on an annual plan. Reviewed August 11, 2026. WordPress.com Personal plan
- WordPress.com plan overview — Premium $8 a month and Business $25 a month, both billed annually. Reviewed September 21, 2026. WordPress.com plan features
- Carrd — Pro Standard at $19 a year is the comparison tier for a custom domain. Confirm on carrd.co the day you buy. The $9 tier is not used in this model.
Prepared September 27, 2026. USD, United States. Price file September 21, 2026. Re-pull Squarespace’s price file before you paste a number into a contract.