Squarespace announced its 2024 Squarespace Refresh in September, aka the rollout of brand-new features to its (already very capable) platform. Squarespace’s new features include a bunch of handy new tools, most notably the integration of AI into its website builder (Squarespace’s entry into the AI game) that can significantly help grow your brand online.
That’s not all, though. This new update also expands your online store’s reach to more countries, allows you to accept donations and appointments, and even adds branded invoices and proposals to your site’s toolkit. It’s probably Squarespace’s biggest, most ambitious, and most exciting update yet. So I’ve picked out the 10 best features that can make a huge difference to your small business and digital marketing efforts, from using AI to brand your website to setting up subscriptions.
What’s New in Squarespace Refresh? A Quick Overview
Squarespace has always been one of my favorite website builder platforms for website design. As a digital marketer, it’s no secret that how your website is designed plays a crucial role in your overall digital presence. And Squarespace has always been reliable for building well-designed websites. So when it announced its recent Squarespace Refresh, I was excited to see what new features it rolled out.
In all, Squarespace has 10 major feature updates across its main website builder platform as well as its other marketing and ecommerce tools.
- AI Design Intelligence: Enhance your website design from the get-go using Squarespace’s AI Design Intelligence, which uses AI to incorporate your brand identity into the website it generates.
- Online Store Payments Updates: Expand your online store’s reach by enabling more payment methods, including payments via the Squarespace app, and more coverage areas across Canada and Europe.
- Client Invoicing: Send invoices, proposals, and other business documents directly from your Squarespace website dashboard.
- Content & Memberships: Monetize blogs and give your visitors access to exclusive, members-only content through subscriptions and memberships.
- Email Marketing Automations: Automate your email campaigns to trigger based on certain actions, like a welcome email to new subscribers or an abandoned cart email to prospects who don’t finalize checkout.
- Domains by Squarespace: Manage all your domains and their settings easily from one dashboard.
- Acuity Scheduling: Easily allow clients to book appointments with your business through your website, toggle your available hours, and lead clients directly to checkout.
- Bio Sites: Build your own mini “link in bio” site for your social profiles using Squarespace’s signature design templates.
- Unfold: Design vertical content for social media that matches your website and post straight to your accounts through Squarespace’s content creation app—which now also supports video and 3D graphics.
- Donations: Allow visitors to donate to fundraisers or participate in crowdfunding initiatives directly from your site.
Squarespace has always been notable for its sleek designs and easy setup process. But it also has reliable ecommerce and SEO tools. For a full breakdown of the best features of Squarespace as a platform, our expert Squarespace review goes through them in detail. Or visit Squarespace and check them out for yourself.
1. AI Design Intelligence
Undoubtedly my favorite of Squarespace’s new features by far is its Design Intelligence tool, which is Squarespace’s take on using AI in its website builder, following the likes of Wix and Hostinger. However, what makes Squarespace different is its specific focus on your website’s branding and design.
Aside from simply generating a basic website, Squarespace’s AI incorporates your brand identity into the process, so you get a completely custom website that already includes your brand colors, fonts, and even your brand voice (really!). It’s a step up from just getting a generic cookie-cutter website template you’ll need to edit again later on, like with other AI website builders, which minimizes the need to reedit your site design later on.
This makes the website building process so much simpler and more streamlined, and with an even better result that will be especially helpful for web design beginners. Website design has always been Squarespace’s forte, and its new AI upgrade gives it an even greater edge.
But aside from enhancing your site design, Squarespace also has a host of other new AI tools, including an AI copywriter, product description generator, blog writer, and email campaign generator.
I’ve only used the AI copywriter so far, and while it isn’t perfect (it’s a little too wordy and slightly robotic), it still generates a very workable draft that accurately captures my brand voice. Plus, it allows multiple regenerations. Squarespace also has other AI tools slated for future release, including AI SEO and video tools, all of which help upgrade your site’s functionality—enabling you to create a website that’s hardworking as well as beautiful.
2. Online Store Payments Updates
One of the most beneficial Squarespace updates is in the payment methods on your online store. All Squarespace plans support ecommerce on your website, and Squarespace’s new updates allow even more payment methods. You can now also track your payments via Squarespace’s app, meaning you can see how many people are buying from your site in real time, anytime.
In particular, your Squarespace site can now accept payments via ACH Direct Debit, Klarna, and Squarespace Payments, as well as the existing Stripe, PayPal, and Square. You can even accept payments from Canada, the UK, and across Europe. This expands your online store’s reach and makes it more accessible to customers.
Part of Squarespace’s updates is that it now supports many more payment methods in more areas across the US and Europe. (Source: Squarespace)
3. Client Invoicing
Aside from more payment methods, Squarespace Refresh also introduces new ways to send invoices, contracts, and proposals to clients right from your website—all automatically customized to your brand. This isn’t something I’ve noticed with many other website builders, so it’s commendable that Squarespace is at the forefront of that.
The cherry on top is that it automatically generates these documents with your brand colors, aligned with Squarespace’s dedication to good branding and design. However, you can’t really edit your documents much further than changing their details—what you see is what you get.
But if you’re not too fussy about that and just need a reliable (and branded) way to send documents to clients, this new feature from Squarespace can help take over a lot of the busywork of drafting up documents. I tried generating an invoice and was generally satisfied with the results. My invoice looked professional, with all the right elements and brand colors.
4. Content & Memberships
While Squarespace has always had all the essential website features, one area I always felt it lacked most was in memberships and subscriptions—for example, if you’re a creator and want to sell exclusive, member-only content. But the Squarespace Refresh update takes care of all that with its new Content & Memberships feature.
The Content & Memberships feature lets you do several things: create paywalls for certain content on your site, monetize blogs, set up videos on demand, and even create paid courses, which are helpful if you’re an instructor or creator. It’s one of the most comprehensive membership features I’ve seen from any website builder by far (excluding WordPress, the industry leader for content management).
I find Squarespace’s new Content & Memberships tool particularly helpful for any type of content creator with a personal brand, like artists or instructors, or even if you plan to create a blog with subscriptions. Squarespace’s sleek, easily brandable website designs are also a bonus. You can set up memberships and subscriptions under the Content & Memberships tab in your editor.
Squarespace’s new Content & Memberships feature is a boon for anyone monetizing content.
5. Email Marketing Automation
Another thing I love about Squarespace’s new initiatives is its emphasis on improving its in-house marketing suite. Particularly, Squarespace Refresh finally introduces an email automation builder into the platform, meaning you can now build and automate email campaigns from inside Squarespace, whether that’s a welcome email or an abandoned cart campaign.
These new automations simplify a lot of the email marketing legwork—and make them more effective. Couple that with Squarespace’s eye-catching email templates, and you have a solid email marketing suite built right into your website platform—no need for separate email software. Squarespace also has prebuilt automation templates you can use (find them under Marketing then Email Campaigns), or you can build your own from scratch.
6. Domains by Squarespace
All the websites you build with Squarespace will come with a custom domain, but if you have multiple domains, Squarespace makes managing them much easier through its new domain dashboard. It also lets you manage your domains’ security and privacy settings. You can even set up domain forwarding, say, if you want customers to visit specific landing pages using a certain domain.
Your domain dashboard will let you see your different domains (if you have multiple), toggle their domain locks and WHOIS privacy settings, and set up domain autorenewals. You’ll also be able to connect domains with different websites and landing pages and edit their registration information. In a nutshell, you can think of it as your one-stop shop for all things domain management.
Squarespace’s new domains dashboard makes it easy to manage your domains all from one place. (Source: Squarespace)
7. Acuity Scheduling
Acuity Scheduling is an upgraded, much easier-to-use platform for scheduling appointments and making transactions with your clients. For instance, if you own a salon or a consultation service, the Acuity Scheduling feature lets you display your available hours on your website, where your clients can also book appointments directly and even go straight to checkout.
You can also set up one-on-one or group appointments and, in true Squarespace fashion, even design your appointments page with different fonts and colors. It’s a really neat way to keep your appointments organized and super helpful for any service-based business.
Set up your appointments under the Scheduling tab when you build your Squarespace website. It’s definitely one of my favorite new tools from the Squarespace Refresh upgrade.
8. Bio Sites
Ever wanted to have one of those “link in bio” sites influencers and creators often have on their social media profiles? If you don’t have one yet, Squarespace is where I recommend building them—its Bio Sites feature is expressly for that purpose.
While you can build miniature, mobile-optimized websites using any website builder, I like using Squarespace because all its website designs are automatically optimized for mobile screens—especially with the new Bio Sites feature. You can build a minisite with links to your portfolio, blog, and other social media profiles, or even display your products and accept tips. What’s missing, though, is the ability to prompt messages or phone calls.
Still, there are a handful of templates to choose from, all designed with Squarespace’s design sensibilities, and you can easily add your images and links. The best part? It’s all completely free, even if you don’t have a Squarespace subscription. Consider it an extra gift from Squarespace to grow your online presence.
9. Unfold by Squarespace
While technically not one of Squarespace’s new features, Squarespace’s Unfold app is one of my favorite tools from the platform. If you aren’t aware of it yet, Unfold is a content creation app by Squarespace specifically for creating vertical content—or content designed for Instagram and Facebook Stories or Pinterest Pins, and now even TikTok—with its brand-new video editing feature.
Like Bio Sites, Unfold is also 100% free to download and use, although you can upgrade to the paid versions for more templates and the ability to post directly to your social media accounts. Now, you can also edit videos for TikTok or Instagram Reels using templates and even add 3D graphics and other effects (like removing video backgrounds).
Overall, Unfold is a handy tool for any brand or creator with a social media presence (it’s even one of our best social media marketing tools for small businesses), and its new video editing tools make it even better. Unfortunately, you can’t use it from inside the Squarespace platform, although the app’s interface is very convenient and easy to navigate from your phone or tablet.
Unfold by Squarespace is available on app stores and is helpful for creating content for social media—even videos.
10. Donations
One last noteworthy new feature from Squarespace is the Donations tool, which enables people to make donations directly through your site. This is significantly helpful if you run a nonprofit or any other type of organization accepting donations. You can simply add a “Donations” section to your site, and users can choose their donation type and method.
You can even set up regular donations (weekly or monthly) or set up crowdfunding or fundraisers to reach a certain goal. And, of course, because this is Squarespace, you can customize your donation page to fit your branding. All of this also comes at no extra cost—it’s included in every Squarespace plan.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The newest version of Squarespace is version 7.1 (aka Squarespace Refresh 2024), which incorporates AI into the Squarespace website builder. This enables you to generate websites using AI that can even incorporate your brand colors and fonts. Aside from AI integrations, Squarespace version 7.1 also includes more payment methods for your online store and new features for memberships, appointments, and donations.
Some of Squarespace’s best features as a website builder are its sleek, modern website templates, its Design Intelligence AI that incorporates your brand identity in its AI-generated websites, and its easy setup process that even beginners can navigate. Squarespace also has ecommerce tools to set up an online store on your website, memberships and subscriptions, online appointment scheduling, and a “link in bio” site builder.
Unfortunately, Squarespace does not offer any free plans. It offers a 14-day free trial, though, to test out all its features. Plans range from $16 to $52 a month (on annual billing), and all plans allow you to build an online store, use the AI website builder and any of Squarespace’s 100-plus templates, and connect to a custom website domain.
Bottom Line
Squarespace has been a reliable website builder for years, and while it’s a little late to the AI game, I can confidently say it’s worth the wait. The 2024 Squarespace Refresh update not only marks Squarespace’s entry into the AI game but also enhances it even more by incorporating your branding into your site so you don’t have to. It also adds a handful of nifty features to your site, like subscriptions, appointments, and more payment methods.
