Squarespace vs Blosm for tradespeople

Squarespace is beautiful. That’s the problem.

Let’s start with what Squarespace does brilliantly: it makes gorgeous websites. The templates are sleek, the typography is elegant, and everything feels polished and modern. If you’re a photographer, a restaurant, or an architect — Squarespace is fantastic.

But here’s the thing. You’re a tradesperson. You need a website that gets you found on Google, shows people you’re legit, and makes it easy for them to pick up the phone. You don’t need parallax scrolling, editorial layouts, or a minimalist sans-serif font that looks lovely but doesn’t tell anyone where you work.

Squarespace is a bit like buying a Range Rover to do tip runs. Beautiful machine. Completely over-specified for the job.

What Squarespace gives you

For £144-288/year (depending on the plan), you get:

• Access to their template library and drag-and-drop editor
• Hosting, SSL certificate, and a custom domain
• Built-in analytics
• E-commerce tools (on higher plans)
• Scheduling and email marketing tools
• 24/7 customer support

That’s a genuine lot of features. More than most tradespeople will ever use. The Business plan at £228/year gives you everything. The higher Commerce plans are for online shops — irrelevant for most trades.

But here’s the catch: you still have to build the thing. Squarespace gives you the tools, not the finished product. And their editor, while polished, has a steeper learning curve than people expect. It’s not as simple as Wix’s drag-and-drop. Squarespace uses a block-based system that takes time to learn.

The tradesperson test

We looked at Squarespace’s template library with tradesperson eyes. Here’s what we found:

• Templates labelled “Professional Services” are designed for consultants and lawyers — too corporate
• Templates labelled “Local Business” are designed for cafes and boutiques — too trendy
• There is no “Trades” or “Home Services” category

That tells you everything about who Squarespace is built for. They’re not thinking about electricians in Swindon or plasterers in Preston. They’re thinking about yoga studios in Shoreditch.

Can you make Squarespace work for a trade business? Absolutely. But you’re fighting the platform rather than working with it. You’ll spend hours adjusting a template designed for a different purpose, stripping out features you don’t need, and trying to make it look like a trade website instead of an art gallery.

The cost reality

Let’s compare the real numbers over time:

Year one:

• Squarespace: £144-288 + your time building it
• Blosm: £149 (domain included free)

Year two:

• Squarespace: £144-288 renewal
• Blosm: £15 domain renewal

Year three:

• Squarespace: £144-288 renewal
• Blosm: £15 domain renewal

Three-year total:

• Squarespace: £432-864 (plus 10-20 hours of your time)
• Blosm: £179 (zero hours of your time)

And remember — your time has value. If it takes you 15 hours to build a Squarespace site (realistic for a decent result), and you charge £30-50/hour for your trade work, that’s £450-750 worth of time you’re not billing anyone for.

The real cost of Squarespace isn’t the subscription. It’s the evenings and weekends you spend doing something you don’t enjoy and aren’t trained for.

Where Squarespace beats Blosm

In fairness, there are areas where Squarespace is the better choice:

Visual portfolios: If your work is highly visual — bespoke kitchens, landscape gardens, decorative plastering — Squarespace’s image handling is genuinely superior. The galleries are beautiful and the templates make your photos sing.

E-commerce: If you sell products alongside your services (tools, materials, branded merchandise), Squarespace has proper e-commerce built in. Blosm doesn’t do online shops.

Blogging: If you want to regularly publish content — project write-ups, how-to guides, industry news — Squarespace has a solid blogging system. Blosm keeps things simple.

Full control: Like Wix, Squarespace lets you adjust everything yourself. If you want that level of control and you’ll actually use it, it’s a strong platform.

Where Blosm beats Squarespace

Speed to live: A Blosm site is live in under a week. A Squarespace site takes as long as you take to build it — and plenty never get finished.

Local SEO: Blosm sites are built from the ground up for searches like “[your trade] in [your town].” Squarespace doesn’t guide you towards local SEO at all — you’d need to research and implement it yourself.

Zero effort: You send us your details. We build it. That’s the entire process from your side. No editor, no tutorials, no templates to browse.

Total cost: Over any time period longer than a year, Blosm costs significantly less. And you never pay for time you could have spent earning.

Purpose-built: Every Blosm site is designed specifically for UK tradespeople. The structure, the content, the calls to action — it’s all built around how homeowners actually search for and choose local trades.

The kitchen analogy

Think of it this way. Squarespace is like buying a professional kitchen and all the ingredients, then cooking a three-course meal yourself. It might turn out brilliant. It might turn out a mess. Either way, it’s going to take all evening.

Blosm is like ordering from a chef who only cooks one thing — and cooks it really well. You get exactly what you need, it’s ready fast, and you can spend your evening doing something you actually enjoy.

Both approaches get you fed. The question is how you want to spend your time.

What we’d recommend

If you’re a tradesperson whose work is genuinely visual — high-end renovations, garden design, bespoke joinery — and you enjoy the creative process of building a website, Squarespace is worth considering. You’ll spend more time and money, but you’ll get a stunning portfolio site that shows off your best work.

For everyone else — the plumbers, electricians, roofers, builders, plasterers, locksmiths, and heating engineers who just want a professional website that gets them found on Google — Squarespace is overkill.

Get a Blosm website for £149. It does everything a trade website needs to do, it’s built by people who understand your industry, and you’ll have it live before the weekend. Spend the money you save on a decent set of tools instead.