Squarespace vs. Custom Website for Contractors: Which Actually Gets Calls?

You've seen the Squarespace ads. Good-looking websites, drag and drop, done in an afternoon. For plenty of businesses, that's all they need.

A contractor's website has one job, though: make the phone ring. So here is what Squarespace does well, where it gets in the way of calls, what it costs, and when a custom website is worth paying for.

By custom, we mean a website someone builds for your business and keeps improving, instead of a template you fill in yourself.

What Squarespace does well

It looks good out of the box. The templates are clean and modern. If your current website looks ten years old, a Squarespace template is an instant upgrade.

You can change it yourself. A new photo, a new service, new hours: minutes, not a support ticket.

Hosting and security are included. Every plan comes with fully managed hosting and a free SSL certificate, which puts the https at the start of your address. There's no server for you to look after.

The SEO basics happen on their own. Squarespace builds and updates your sitemap, the list of pages Google reads. Every page gets a clean address. It also adds structured data, hidden labels that tell Google what a page is about, including a local business type.

The prices are published. Four plans, and a 14-day free trial with no credit card. Prices below are from Squarespace's pricing page, checked on 23 September 2026.

Plan	Billed yearly	Billed monthly	What a contractor should know
Basic	$19 a month	$25 a month	No code injection, no mobile information bar
Core	$29 a month	$39 a month	Adds code injection, the mobile information bar and a button and form report
Plus	$49 a month	$65 a month	Mostly extras for selling online and memberships
Advanced	$99 a month	$139 a month	The most selling tools, no membership fees

Yearly plans include a free domain for the first year. After that it renews at Squarespace's standard rate.

If you stay on Squarespace, Core is the plan to be on. Basic leaves out two things that matter for calls: the mobile information bar, and code injection, which call tracking needs.

Is Squarespace slow? Less than you've heard

We used to say Squarespace websites were slow, in an older version of this very post. The data says otherwise.

Google judges what real visitors experience with Core Web Vitals: how fast the main content loads, how quickly the page reacts to a tap, and whether things jump around while it loads. Google says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems.

Passed Core Web Vitals on phones, real visitors

Squarespace72%

All websites53%

Median lab score on phones, out of 100

Squarespace29

All websites49

So why do so many owners hear that their Squarespace website is slow? Because the score most people check is a lab test. PageSpeed Insights shows two kinds of numbers: real-visitor data, and a score from a simulated test run by a tool called Lighthouse. Google's own page says the lab test "may not capture real-world bottlenecks." On that kind of lab test, the median Squarespace website scores 29 out of 100 on phones, against 49 for all websites.

Before you blame the platform, look up the real-visitor numbers for your own website in PageSpeed Insights. If yours passes, speed isn't the reason the phone is quiet.

Where Squarespace gets in the way of calls

The call button on phones

On a phone, the call button is the whole point. Squarespace offers a mobile information bar and a header button for it, and neither stays in view the whole way down the page.

• The mobile information bar (Core and up) shows Call, Email, Map and Hours buttons in a banner at the bottom of the screen. It appears while a visitor is at the top of the page and disappears as they scroll down.
• A header button. On phones, Squarespace says it "always appears below your navigation links."

For a call button that stays on screen as people scroll, plan on adding your own code.

★★★★★Our ServicesRepairsInstallsTune-UpsBar goneSquarespace's information bar★★★★★Our ServicesRepairsInstallsTune-UpsCall NowA call bar that stays

Counting calls

Every plan shows basic numbers: visits, where visitors came from and your most popular pages. On Core and up, Squarespace also counts clicks on button blocks and form submissions. Its help page lists buttons it doesn't count, navigation buttons among them.

A tap still isn't a call, and a call isn't a job. Some people read your number and dial it by hand, and no button report sees that. To count real calls, you need call tracking. CallRail's own guide installs it on Squarespace through Code Injection, which is Core and up. Our guide to tracking calls from your website covers the tools and what they cost.

What you can't change

Squarespace decides a lot for you. Its help pages say you can't edit the sitemap or a page's source code, and you can't edit or remove the structured data it adds. You can add your own code, with more options from Core up, but only on top of what Squarespace builds.

For a small website, that's usually fine. It pinches when you want something Squarespace didn't plan for.

What you keep if you leave

Not everything comes with you. Squarespace exports some content as a file you can import into WordPress: layout pages, one blog, text and images. Style settings and custom CSS don't export, so the design stays behind. Store pages, index pages and several other page types don't export either.

Whoever builds your next website, ask the same question: what do I keep if I leave?

The real difference is who does the work

The platform matters less than the work done on it. Google says it "always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par." So what your pages say, and whether they answer what people search, counts for more than what they're built on.

The work that brings in calls:

• A page for each service you want calls for
• Your towns and service area, in plain words
• Your Google Business Profile, filled in and kept up
• A call button that's always one tap away
• A way to count the calls

Squarespace can hold all of that. It won't do any of it for you. More on getting found in how to get your website to show up on Google.

The gap between Squarespace Core, billed yearly, and Foundation is $320 a month. So the question is simple: will someone doing that work bring in enough extra jobs to cover it? If your average job is $1,000 and you keep half, one extra job a month does it. Your hours count too. Every evening spent on the website is an evening you're not quoting jobs. Here's what a website costs to build and run, every way you can pay.

If you don't know how many calls your website brings in today, start there. Count them for a month, then decide.

When Squarespace is the right call

Squarespace is a sensible choice when:

• You're just starting out and need something professional up this week.
• Most of your work comes from referrals, and people only visit your website to check you're real.
• You like doing it yourself and have the hours for it.

If you stay, do these five things:

1. Be on Core or higher. Basic leaves out code injection, the mobile information bar and the button and form report.
2. Turn on the mobile information bar with your phone number, so a phone visitor sees Call the moment they land.
3. Put your phone number near the top of every page. The contact page alone is too late.
4. Give each service its own page, with the towns you cover said plainly.
5. Add call tracking through Code Injection, so you know what the website brings in.

When it's time to switch

• The phone doesn't ring from the website, and you don't have the time to fix it.
• You're about to pay for ads. Paid clicks land on your website, so it has to be ready.
• You offer several services in several towns and need a page for each.
• You want one team responsible for the website, your Google listing and the numbers.

If you switch, keep what ranks

Moving off Squarespace doesn't have to mean starting over on Google.

1. List every page you have now. Squarespace keeps your sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
2. Keep your best page addresses, or redirect them. Google recommends permanent (301) redirects from each old address to its new one, and says rankings can move around for a while as it catches up.
3. Bring your domain. Squarespace lets you transfer it away. If your email runs on Google Workspace through that domain, its settings have to move too, or your email can stop.

So which should you pick?

If your website only needs to exist, Squarespace is enough. If it needs to bring in calls and you don't have the hours, that is when a custom website is worth paying for.

Not sure which one you need? Get a free audit of your current website. We'll tell you in writing what's working, what's costing you calls, and whether switching is worth it at all.