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Discourse vs Squarespace: What are the differences?
What is Discourse? The 100% open source, next-generation discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet. Discourse is a simple, flat forum, where replies flow down the page in a line. Replies are attached to the bottom and top of each post, so you can optionally expand the context of the conversation – without breaking your flow.
What is Squarespace? Everything You Need To Create An Exceptional Website. Whether you need simple pages, sophisticated galleries, a professional blog, or want to sell online, it all comes standard with your Squarespace website. Squarespace starts you with beautiful designs right out of the box — each handcrafted by our award-winning design team to make your content stand out.
Discourse can be classified as a tool in the "Forums" category, while Squarespace is grouped under "Website Builder".
Some of the features offered by Discourse are:
- Remembers your place
- Log in with … anything
- Paste to share images
On the other hand, Squarespace provides the following key features:
- SELL ANYTHING- Easily add a store to any Squarespace website and start selling physical and digital goods immediately.
- PAINLESS STORE MANAGEMENT- Manage your inventory, process customer orders, print packing slips, and customize emails all in one intuitive interface.
- BUILD BETTER PAGES WITH LAYOUTENGINE- LayoutEngine technology gives you the freedom to create visually rich pages with any configuration of text, images, products, and content blocks. Simply drag and drop your content exactly where you want and we'll automatically align them in a perfect grid.
"Open source" is the top reason why over 20 developers like Discourse, while over 32 developers mention "Easy setup" as the leading cause for choosing Squarespace.
Discourse is an open source tool with 28.5K GitHub stars and 6.44K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Discourse's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, Squarespace has a broader approval, being mentioned in 418 company stacks & 23 developers stacks; compared to Discourse, which is listed in 43 company stacks and 7 developer stacks.
Pros of Discourse
- Open source28
- Fast19
- Email digests13
- Better than a stereotypical forum9
- Perfect for communities of any size8
- It's perfect to build real communities7
- Made by same folks from stackoverflow7
- Built with Ember.js7
- Great customer support6
- Made by consolidated team with a working business3
- Translated into a lot of Languages3
- Configurations3
- Easy flag resolution2
Pros of Squarespace
- Easy setup36
- Clean designs31
- Beautiful responsive themes8
- Easy ongoing maintenance6
- Live chat & 24/7 support team3
- No coding necessary1
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Cons of Discourse
- Heavy on server3
- Difficult to extend2
- Notifications aren't great on mobile due to being a PWA2
Cons of Squarespace
- Hard to use custom code1
