Squarespace is a subscription website builder — you pay roughly £12 to £40 a month, pick a template, drag blocks around, and your site lives on Squarespace's infrastructure for as long as you keep paying. It is fast to start and hard to leave. 1 Week Sites is the opposite trade-off: from £1,000, paid once before work starts, for a bespoke site, custom-coded in Astro or Next.js, live in seven days, running on your own Vercel account and deployed from your own GitHub repo, or built in Webflow, on a site plan you pay Webflow for directly, if you want to edit pages yourself. You stop paying me the moment the site goes live. Over five years a £25-per-month Squarespace site costs £1,500 in subscriptions plus any template work; a standard 1 Week Sites custom build costs £1,000 plus roughly £60 a year in domain and email. The break-even lands around month forty. Choose Squarespace when you need something live this weekend and expect to keep paying for it. Choose 1 Week Sites when you want to own it.
Upfront vs five-year
Squarespace Business plan at £25/mo × 60 months = £1,500. Domain and email on both sides excluded for parity.
When Squarespace is the right call
- You need a site live this weekend and you already have brand assets — Squarespace can absolutely deliver that.
- You want to edit copy and swap images yourself, confidently, without learning a code workflow.
- You sell through Squarespace Commerce and benefit from the built-in store, inventory, and tax handling.
- You don't mind renting the site — you accept the subscription as a normal business cost.
When a 1 Week Sites build is the better buy
- You want to own the code and the hosting account, which a custom build gives you outright — so nobody can price you out of your own website.
- Core Web Vitals matter to you, because Squarespace sites commonly land in the 60–80 Lighthouse mobile range.
- Your brand needs something bespoke — type pairings, editorial rhythm, interactive touches — that templates can't reach.
- You expect the site to run for more than three years and you don't want the meter running.
Squarespace vs Wix vs WordPress vs bespoke — the four-way view
If you're weighing Squarespace you're probably also looking at Wix and WordPress. The real split is rented vs owned. Squarespace and Wix are rented — low effort, perpetual subscription, limited escape hatch. WordPress is owned-ish — free core, but you pay for hosting, a theme, plugins, and the person who keeps it secure. A custom build in Astro or Next.js is fully owned — more upfront, nothing ongoing except hosting you control. There's a side-by-side against each of them in /compare.
| Squarespace | 1 Week Sites | Winner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | £0 trial → £12–40/mo | From £1,000, once | Depends |
| Ownership | Rented | Yours | 1 Week Sites |
| Typical mobile Lighthouse | 60–80 | 95+ | 1 Week Sites |
| Time to first edit | Minutes | Git commit | Squarespace |
Side-by-side
| Squarespace | 1 Week Sites | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | £0 trial, £12–40/mo after | From £1,000, once |
| Ongoing cost | £144–480 per year, forever | £60 per year (domain + email) |
| Timeline to live | Hours DIY, 2–6 weeks with a designer | 7 days |
| Ownership | You rent the site and hosting | Custom build: code on your GitHub, hosting on your Vercel. Webflow build: in my workspace, plan billed to your card, transferred to you on request |
| Performance | Mobile Lighthouse typically 60–80 | Mobile Lighthouse 95+ target |
| Design freedom | Template-bounded — good within the lane | Bespoke — anything reasonable is on the table |
| Editing after launch | Visual editor, no code needed | Markdown or a small CMS — I can bolt one on |
| Exit cost | Content export, no code — usually means a rebuild | Everything is yours already |
| Accessibility | Template-dependent, often WCAG-weak | WCAG 2.2 AA baseline built in |
| Revisions | DIY or hire a Squarespace designer each time | One round included same week |
Five-year total cost
The £25-a-month plan is the most-chosen Squarespace tier for small-business sites. Over five years it comes to £1,500 in subscriptions alone, not counting the designer who set it up or any add-ons. A bespoke build from £1,000 looks dearer on day one and cheaper by month forty.
| Option | Five-year total | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace (£25/mo × 60 months) | £1,500 | plus £0–1,500 optional designer setup, plus any add-ons |
| 1 Week Sites custom build + 5 years of hosting | ~£1,300 | £1,000 build + £60/yr domain & email |
Common questions
Can I move my Squarespace content to a new bespoke site?
Yes. I migrate the copy, images, and any blog posts as part of the seven-day build. You keep your existing domain, and we point DNS at the new Vercel deployment on launch day. Old Squarespace subscription can be cancelled once the new site is live.
Is £1,000 really all-in, or do I pay extra later?
£1,000 is all-in for a five-to-seven-page bespoke marketing site, custom-coded or built in Webflow: brief, design, build, one revision round, launch. There is no monthly fee, no retainer, no kill fee. You pay for your own domain (≈£12/year) and email hosting (≈£4/month on a provider of your choice), and on a Webflow build the Webflow site plan, from $15 a month billed yearly, USD plus tax. Nothing goes through me. Sites that need more pages take longer than a week and are scoped and priced on the discovery call.
What happens if I want changes six months after launch?
On a custom build, three options: edit the content files yourself (I leave clear comments in the repo), hire any Astro or Next.js developer, or come back to me at £99 a month for changes. Because you own the GitHub repo, none of those is locked to me. If you want to edit pages visually yourself, say so on the call and I build in Webflow instead, on a site plan you pay Webflow for directly; if you ever want it in your own Webflow account, I transfer it.
Why is your bespoke site faster than Squarespace?
Squarespace has to serve a million different templates from one platform, so every page ships a lot of shared JavaScript. A custom-coded site only ships what your page actually uses. That usually means mobile Lighthouse scores of 95+ instead of the 60–80 range Squarespace sites typically hit.
When is Squarespace the right answer instead?
Squarespace wins when you need something live in 48 hours, you want to edit it entirely yourself with no code, and you run a service business that doesn't need custom design or unusual Core Web Vitals. If that describes you, genuinely — use Squarespace. The side-by-side against the other builders is in /compare.
Do you rebuild Squarespace sites, or only greenfield?
Both. A migration from Squarespace is exactly the same seven-day sprint — brief Tuesday, design Wednesday and Thursday, build Friday, revisions Saturday, QA Sunday and Monday, live the following Tuesday. Refund applies the same way: if your new site isn't live by day seven, full refund within 48 hours.
Bespoke, live in seven days.
From £1,000, one sprint, paid before work starts. Full refund if I miss day seven. Code, hosting, and domain all in your name.
Free · no obligation · I’ll tell you straight if it isn’t a fit