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GitHub Pages vs Squarespace: What are the differences?
What is GitHub Pages? Public webpages freely hosted and easily published. Public webpages hosted directly from your GitHub repository. Just edit, push, and your changes are live.
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.
GitHub Pages and Squarespace are primarily classified as "Static Web Hosting" and "Website Builder" tools respectively.
Some of the features offered by GitHub Pages are:
- Blogging with Jekyll
- Custom URLs
- Automatic Page Generator
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.
"Free" is the primary reason why developers consider GitHub Pages over the competitors, whereas "Easy setup" was stated as the key factor in picking Squarespace.
According to the StackShare community, GitHub Pages has a broader approval, being mentioned in 576 company stacks & 682 developers stacks; compared to Squarespace, which is listed in 419 company stacks and 23 developer stacks.
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.
We use Netlify to host static websites.
The reasons for choosing Netlify over GitHub Pages are as follows:
- Netfily can bind multiple domain names, while GitHub Pages can only bind one domain name
- With Netfily, the original repository can be private, while GitHub Pages free tier requires the original repository to be public
In addition, in order to use CDN, we use Netlify DNS.
Pros of GitHub Pages
- Free289
- Right out of github217
- Quick to set up185
- Instant108
- Easy to learn107
- Great way of setting up your project's website58
- Widely used47
- Quick and easy41
- Great documentation37
- Super easy4
- Easy setup3
- Instant and fast Jekyll builds2
- Great customer support2
- Great integration2
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 GitHub Pages
- Not possible to perform HTTP redirects4
- Supports only Jekyll3
- Limited Jekyll plugins3
- Jekyll is bloated1
Cons of Squarespace
- Hard to use custom code1