Webflow vs. Squarespace (2026): Platform comparison for beauty & wellness brands

If you're a beauty or wellness professional hiring a web designer (great choice, btw), one of the first questions that comes up is: "Which platform should my site be built on?"

Webflow and Squarespace are two of the most common answers, and while a skilled designer can work with either, they're not the same. Not even close. Especially when you want to grow your business, show up on Google, and have a site that doesn't look like everyone else's.

Here's how they actually stack up.

Round 1: Cost

• Squarespace: Plans start at $19/month for the Basic plan. Most beauty and wellness businesses end up on the Core plan at $29/month, because that's where you get integrations, custom code, and no transaction fee when you take payments through your site. If you sell a lot online, the Plus plan is $49/month.
• Webflow: Site plans start at $15/month for a simple site without a blog. Most beauty and wellness businesses land on the Premium plan at $25/month, which includes blogging, dynamic content, and all the CMS features you'd need for showcasing team member profiles, service pages, portfolios, career pages, or event pages.

(Keep in mind, these are the prices with annual billing. Paying month to month costs more on both.)

What to consider:

Webflow comes in a little cheaper at each level. Squarespace has its own scheduling and email marketing tools, but they're paid add-ons, and they're often underwhelming in their actual capabilities. With Webflow, you get to choose the tools that actually work for your business instead of settling for whatever comes standard.

Round 2: Design Capabilities

• Squarespace: The templates are polished and quick to launch. But they're also a box. You can tweak colors, fonts, and spacing all day, but if you want layered backgrounds, custom animations, or scroll effects that match your brand? You're either hiring a website designer/developer for custom CSS or installing a workaround plugin.
• Webflow: Flexible from the ground up. Custom layouts, features like filtered content and motion, and integrations that actually work with your business. Your designer has the freedom to build exactly what you're picturing without duct-taping any templates together.

What to consider:

Squarespace is for the minimal girlies who want to look good fast. Webflow is for brands that want a site that feels like them and has room to grow without needing a full rebuild later.

Round 3: Scalability

• Squarespace: Best for businesses that want everything in one place and don't need much beyond the basics. If your services stay pretty consistent year-round and you only need simple versions of things like blogging, scheduling, digital products, or member areas, Squarespace can work well. Where it falls short is anything more custom. Filtering, content that connects across pages, or a really specific client experience usually takes a workaround, if it's possible at all.
• Webflow: Built to grow with you. Whether you want to add a resource library, a podcast or events hub, a job board, a team directory, or more advanced forms, Webflow can handle it without making you rebuild your whole site.

What to consider:

Squarespace is a solid choice if you want something simple and all-in-one and don't see yourself outgrowing it. Webflow is the smarter bet if you want your website to be a true workhorse and your vision is bigger than a 5-page portfolio site.

Round 4: SEO Capabilities

• Squarespace: Covers the basics: meta tags, alt text, a sitemap. But page speed, mobile performance, and page structure are where it starts to struggle. You can do light SEO, but you're not ranking for competitive terms without fighting the platform.
• Webflow: Full control over technical SEO, including meta tags, alt text, schema markup, 301 redirects, and clean code. Webflow also sells two add-ons: Webflow Analyze (starting at $9/month), which shows you your traffic and how people use your pages right inside your dashboard, and Webflow Optimize (starting at $299/month), which lets you test different headlines, buttons, and layouts.

What to consider:

Squarespace checks the "basic SEO" box, and for some businesses that's enough. If you want your website to actually bring people in from Google or AI searches, Webflow gives you more to work with from Day 1. (New to SEO? Start with my beginner's guide to SEO for beauty brands.)

Round 5: Maintenance & Updates

• Squarespace: Drag-and-drop is easy until you need to touch anything custom. At that point, you're calling your designer/developer or writing CSS. In my experience, Squarespace is beginner-friendly, until it's not.
• Webflow: Your designer handles the build, but once it's launched, updating text, photos, blog posts, and CMS content is pretty painless. Building a new page from scratch would typically take some understanding of layouts and how websites are structured. But Webflow also knows most of its websites get built by a designer first, so it has tools made for the handoff. Your designer can set up page layouts and ready-made sections ahead of time, which lets you put together a new page out of pieces that are already designed. (Most of my clients never end up doing this, but it's good to know it's there.)

What to consider:

Both platforms let you update basic content. Webflow's editing experience is cleaner and harder to break, especially when your designer sets it up around how you actually use your site.

So, Should You Choose Webflow or Squarespace?

If you want something polished, fast to launch, and you're not planning to expand much, Squarespace is for you. There are plenty of professional templates to choose from and the learning curve is low.

But if your vision is bigger than a 5-page site, or you want something that feels custom and actually performs in search, Webflow is where it's at. It's what I recommend when clients say:

🧪 "My website has 10+ pages and it's a pain to update." → A Webflow CMS can manage repeated sections like testimonials, team bios, or blog posts so updates take minutes instead of a whole afternoon.

🧪 "I really want to start taking SEO more seriously." → Webflow gives you the structure to show up in search and the tools to improve your performance over time.

🧪 "I hate that my website is starting to look like everyone else's." → Webflow lets your designer break the template mold and build something that's actually as unique as your brand.

Squarespace is best for:

• Beauty and wellness businesses with simple, consistent service offerings
• DIY business owners who want something fast and professional-looking
• Businesses that don't mind working within template limits (or coding around them)

Webflow is best for:

• Growing beauty and wellness brands that want a custom website
• Business owners who care about design freedom and showing up on Google long-term
• Anyone working with or wanting to hire a website designer or agency

Still weighing your options? You might also want to see how Webflow stacks up against Showit for beauty and wellness brands.

And if you want help figuring out which platform makes sense for your goals, vibe, budget, and vision, learn more about Workhorse Websites.