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As some of you may know, we sell (awesome) Squarespace Templates! And one of the questions we get asked most often is “What is the difference between one of your premium templates, and one of the free Squarespace templates?”

I totally get it, they’re wondering why they should be forking out $100+ if they could just use one of the FREE, built in Squarespace templates. Good question.

Today I’m gonna give you a bit of a this vs that, so you can have some more info and make the best decision for you and your biz!

1. You’ll learn how to build, design and maintain your Squarespace website

Premium Squarespace templates

If you purchase one of our premium templates, you’ll notice that it involves a bit of DIY. Yup, you’ve gotta build the template out yourself.

But don’t freak, it’s hardly by yourself, we’re with you (via video tutorials) every step of the way. We give you all of the files and tools, and walk you through every step of the whole website setup.

I see this as a huge bonus. If you chose a free Squarespace template, you can plug it in instantly and get started. But how are you supposed to know what to do once you’ve installed the template?

Having to build your website from the ground up with our thorough instructions and tutorials, will make you so much more familiar with the platform.

We didn’t just want to supply you with a instant solution, we wanted to empower you with the tools and skills to build, update, and completely maintain your website.

If you know how to use your website, you won’t have to pay anyone to maintain it (which as small biz owners with small biz budgets, we totally don’t want to be doing!) You’ll be able to make design changes and update text, blogs, and feel completely in control of your own website. Cool, right?

The free Squarespace templates

That’s not the case with a free Squarespace template. It’s free, so you don’t get all of the extra educational value, you’ll have to figure it out on your own.

Luckily Squarespace isn’t too complicated, so if you have the extra time and a bit of design knowledge, this option should be ok for you! They also have a ton of help articles and free support, which is useful to help you in your web design process.

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2. Your design will stand out from the crowd

This one seems to be a big reason people deter from the free Squarespace templates, and choose to purchase our designer templates. They don’t look like anything else out there!

So often people message me saying that they want something “different”, and that the free Squarespace templates are all too generic and boring.

This is totally a personal preference thing, some people love the simplicity of the Squarespace templates.

But because we charge for our templates, we always want to make sure we’re creating something completely unique, nothing like the free templates.

ʼYou might be thinking “Well, they can’t be that unique, they’re templates!”.

True, we sell the same template multiple times, but, every finished website that gets sent to us (see some showcases here) is completely different! Back to point #1: because we give you the tools to design and update your website from beginning, you can take the template design and run with it! It’s awesome seeing what people create.

Also, our template store is pretty "boutiquey" (fancy word for small!), you would be very unlikely to stumble across someone else who is using the same template as you!.

3. You get our expertise

Squarespace is made to be a super user friendly DIY platform. But as someone who’s been working with it for a long time, I’ve discovered (and continue to discover) all of the little tricks and tweaks to create really comprehensive websites.

For someone who really knows what they’re doing (aka us!), there’s not much you can’t do with Squarespace.

For someone who is brand new at Squarespace and web design in general, (and doesn’t have a spare few years under their belt to learn it all) there’s a lot you CAN'T do with Squarespace.

The free Squarespace templates cater to those who are just starting, and want really basic websites.

Our premium templates cater to those who are just starting, but need something more unique, and want more specialized features.

Also, did you know that every Free Squarespace 7.0 Template has different functionalities? For example, one family of templates could have a sidebar function, but another may not. Not all Squarespace templates are equal, so this already puts the stress on before you even choose!

So, if you chose to go with the free option, make sure you do some good research before you start, otherwise you might spend a huge amount of time building your website, only to find out that something that you really wanted, isn’t actually possible.

With our premium templates, everything is written out clearly before you buy, for example: “sidebar function not available with this template”, or you can reach out to us at any time and just ask about the different functions of different templates and we’ll help you choose, which makes the job a choosing a suitable template much easier!

So, should you use a Free Squarespace Template, or a Premium Squarespace Template?

This is a typical situation of "you pay for what you get".

You get A LOT more from the premium templates, but of course, they come at a price!

On the flipside of that, you could score a free template from Squarespace and set up perfectly nice, but probably pretty basic.

It comes down to what you need for your business, what your budget is, and what's going to be more valuable to you right now!

I hope that helped with your decision making. You can check out the templates below! And feel free to reach out to us at any time if you have any questions about the templates.