Disqus vs Squarespace

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Disqus

2.5K
478
+ 1
466
Squarespace

2K
368
+ 1
85
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Disqus vs Squarespace: What are the differences?

What is Disqus? Elevating the discussion, anywhere on the web. Disqus looks to make it very easy and rewarding for people to interact on websites using its system. Commenters can build reputation and carry their contributions from one website to the next.

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.

Disqus and Squarespace are primarily classified as "Commenting Service" and "Website Builder" tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by Disqus are:

  • Clean & Intuitive- We designed the platform to be clutter-free, which keeps people's eyes focused on the discussion itself.
  • Fully real-time Live discussions- Discussions unfold in real-time. Comments stream as they are posted and user activity indicates life on your website.
  • Activity indicators- Indicators make it easier for people to notice, see, and interact with new content and activity as it happens.

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.

"Ease of use" is the primary reason why developers consider Disqus over the competitors, whereas "Easy setup" was stated as the key factor in picking Squarespace.

According to the StackShare community, Disqus has a broader approval, being mentioned in 459 company stacks & 90 developers stacks; compared to Squarespace, which is listed in 418 company stacks and 23 developer stacks.

Decisions about Disqus and Squarespace
Kamaldeep Singh

I usually take a slightly different tack because the technical level of people I usually am dealing with is lower. I tend to be pitching to decision makers and not tech people. A bit of my standard answer is below.

Wix and Squarespace are proprietary systems meant for unsophisticated users who want to build their own websites quickly and easily. While they are good for that specific use case, they do not offer any way to move beyond that if your needs arise. Since they are proprietary closed systems if you need something more advanced at some point your only option is to start over.

WordPress is an Open Source CMS that allows much more freedom. It is not quite as simple to setup and create a new site but if you are talking to me then you are not looking to build it yourself so that is really a non-issue. The main benefit of WordPress is freedom. You can host it on virtually any decent web hosting service and since it uses PHP and MySQL you can have virtually any developer take over a project without problem.

I believe in open source because of that freedom. It is good for me as a developer and it is good for my clients. If something were to happen to me or my company you would have no problem finding another qualified WordPress developer to take over the site in a totally seamless fashion. There would be no need to start from scratch.

Additionally the extensible nature of WordPress means that no matter what your future needs, WordPress can handle it. Adding things like e-commerce and custom quoting systems are just two examples of advanced solution's that I have added to WordPress sites years after they were first built.

WordPress is used by tiny one person businesses all the way up to major websites like the NY Times and I think it is right for this project as well.

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Pros of Disqus
Pros of Squarespace
  • 141
    Ease of use
  • 116
    Free
  • 62
    Great ui
  • 45
    Sign-up not required
  • 40
    Wordpress integration
  • 26
    Replies
  • 18
    Up votes
  • 8
    Threaded discussion
  • 6
    Easy ghost integration
  • 4
    Tumblr Integration
  • 36
    Easy setup
  • 31
    Clean designs
  • 8
    Beautiful responsive themes
  • 6
    Easy ongoing maintenance
  • 3
    Live chat & 24/7 support team
  • 1
    No coding necessary

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Cons of Disqus
Cons of Squarespace
  • 4
    Ads
  • 1
    Poor support
  • 1
    Bugs with migration tool
  • 1
    Hard to use custom code

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

What is Disqus?

Disqus looks to make it very easy and rewarding for people to interact on websites using its system. Commenters can build reputation and carry their contributions from one website to the next.

What is Squarespace?

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.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use Disqus?
What companies use Squarespace?
See which teams inside your own company are using Disqus or Squarespace.
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What tools integrate with Disqus?
What tools integrate with Squarespace?

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What are some alternatives to Disqus and Squarespace?
Discourse
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.
LiveFyre
Livefyre’s real-time apps get your audience talking and turn your site into the hub for your community. Bloggers, brands and the largest publishers in the world use Livefyre to engage their users and curate live content from around the social web.
Jetpack
Jetpack wraps webpack to create a smoother developer experience. Jetpack can be used instead of webpack, webpack-cli, webpack-dev-server and webpack-dev-middleware without writing any configuration. Jetpack is a thin wrapper around webpack, and can be extended with any of the webpack configuration.
Discord
Discord is a modern free voice & text chat app for groups of gamers. Our resilient Erlang backend running on the cloud has built in DDoS protection with automatic server failover.
Commento
With Commento, you wouldn't need to worry about shady ad companies getting your data through hundreds of tracking services. You wouldn't need to worry about your page being slowed down - Commento uses just 22 kB total. And it's all open source.
See all alternatives