Adobe Portfolio vs. Squarespace: Which is Better For Me?
Adobe Portfolio vs Squarespace, can’t decide which one to go for?
A website of your very own is the perfect place to drive existing and potential customers who want to contact you.
Moreover, it’s the best medium to learn more about what you do, and see samples of your work.
But, questions start popping up in your mind.
Will a domain be expensive?
Where do you even begin?
Luckily, there are loads of popular, professional, seamless web building and hosting sites that make this daunting task quick, easy, and fun.
All you have to do is decide which one best suits you.
Nowadays, it will be a toss between Adobe Portfolio vs Squarespace.
Let’s explore the pros and cons of these two sites.
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Building Your Website
Building your website, be it for personal or professional purposes, is no small feat.
Finding or creating the software, template, design elements, copy, and SEO takes valuable time and careful consideration.
Still, you’ll be glad you made an effort when you see the results.
As the world moves more and more toward a digital way of life, your business or cause must be discoverable online.
If you are struggling with crafting your website, professional web designers will help you for a fee.
However, it’s worth learning how your site works to make changes and maintain it in the future.
You must use your site to interact with those who visit it.
Make sure you answer their questions, engage in conversations, and thank them for any compliments.
This is something a web designer can’t do for you.
So, it’s helpful to know how to navigate, update and engage with people on your site in the best way possible.
There are essentially two main options when building a website either :
- Build it entirely from scratch or
- Use a host website such as Squarespace, WordPress, Weebly, or Wix
We’ll be exploring two of the most popular host websites below.
Both with varying levels of design skill needed to build your unique site with them.
What is Squarespace?
Since its inception in 2003, Squarespace has grown to become a globally recognized website.
They have been building and hosting companies and become the source of millions of successful (and even award-winning) websites for both individuals and businesses.
Squarespace invites business owners, professionals, bloggers, and amateurs to choose from various pre-built web templates.
Moreover, they help them make their own using their advanced resources, marketing analytics, and e-commerce tools.
This software allows small businesses to design a beautiful site without much technical background.
So, fortunately, you don’t have to be an experienced web designer to pick it up pretty quickly.
What it Gets Right
At first glance, there are several clear reasons why Squarespace is so popular with web builders across the globe.
The most significant reason among them is the dozens of sleek, professional web templates that you can choose from.
Pre-Built & Customizable Templates
Pre-built templates make life a lot easier when building your site.
That’s because you’re not coding and building your site from scratch.
You’re given an already beautiful layout to work with.
Just have to customize it to make it your own.
You can do this by subbing your brand elements, colors, images, photos, and web copy.
This is made easier because many of Squarespace’s template designs are centered around photography.
It encourages your unique style by allowing you to sub in your photography.
By subbing in your design elements and customizing your chosen template, you can make your site utterly unrecognizable from someone else’s, even if they chose the same template as you.
All of the Squarespace templates maintain a high standard of design.
They ensure color schemes are aligned and coherent and only allow you to upload high-res imagery.
The head starts that a web template gives you make Squarespace great for those who have no experience in web coding and web development.
From a user-friendly perspective, the actual Squarespace software is sleek, seamless, and easy to navigate, resulting in a platform that’s both functional and stunning to look at.
24/7 Customer Support
Another great benefit is that your site’s technical aspect is taken care of by your host.
Squarespace is responsible for ensuring that your website’s loading speed is quick.
It also takes care of online security.
Although both web design experts and amateurs have been known to use Squarespace, the software is set up with 24/7 customer support.
It also has an onboarding program that includes webinars and a community forum that will help you learn the ropes.
The onboarding process during your 14-day trial helps to get you up to speed.
Moreover, it teaches you everything you need to know about setting up your site – from template selection to design to publishing your page.
Squarespace makes advanced marketing tools easy to use & understand.
It’ll help you keep track of who your site is connecting with and who you should be targeting.
What it Gets Wrong
Despite its long list of benefits, like most things, Squarespace has its drawbacks.
More convenience, unfortunately, means less control, and Squarespace is no exception.
Customizable templates are a great help to those new to website building.
However, you don’t have the freedom you would have if you built and coded your site from scratch.
The software helps you code your website but only gives you limited access to change that coding if you wish to do so.
However, in this regard, it does offer you more freedom than some of its competitors, such as WordPress.
Another downside is the pricing.
Although it’s not unreasonably priced, Squarespace doesn’t offer a free beginner package like many other web-building host sites.
Both Wix and WordPress offer free options, however limiting they may be.
On the other hand, Squarespace begins with a basic $12 per month plan, billed annually.
Other common complaints from Squarespace users include its e-commerce limitations for online businesses and that the customization of templates isn’t exactly a seamless experience.
What is Adobe Portfolio?
Adobe has long been setting the standard for creative software.
So it’s expected that they would also offer a web-building platform to help creative individuals display their work online.
Introducing Adobe Portfolio!
This platform differs from Squarespace.
In that, it’s highly targeted towards people working in creative fields rather than businesses and e-commerce individuals.
Think of it more as a showcase of work or a creative resume than a business website builder.
It caters to a slightly different need.
But essentially, its primary purpose is still to ‘sell’ your work and your skills to those who visit your site.
What it Gets Right
The first thing to note (because we all love free stuff) is that Adobe Portfolio comes free if you’re already paying for an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
Adobe Creative Cloud is the full package of Adobe products, which is all-encompassing but fairly pricey.
This also means that you can seamlessly upload your work from these programs to your website if you edit or create your work in any other Adobe program.
Any updates or changes to the work will be updated on your site instantly.
That’s a pretty big deal.
That means that those who view your site automatically see the latest versions of your creative work without you even having to change anything.
The program’s immediate association with one of the biggest brands in creativity is also a huge plus.
And pretty sure it will make a great impression on online viewers.
Because Adobe has been the benchmark for creative software.
Anyone who stumbles upon your Adobe Portfolio will immediately know that you’re the real deal.
Pre-Built Templates and Unlimited Pages
Another great aspect of Adobe Portfolio is that it allows you to add unlimited pages, galleries, and collections to your site, free of additional charge.
The basic template starts with only two pages – one gallery and a contact page.
But you’re free to add more and modify how your page is set up from there.
Like Squarespace, Adobe Portfolio offers pre-made customizable themes or templates that provide a basic layout.
Once you’ve selected a theme, you can add:
- Fonts
- Colors
- Design elements
- Creative work, and
- Web copy to make it unique and original to you
The level of originality and quality of your final website is entirely up to you.
You can take the standard template and make it unique or generic, as simple or as eccentric, as you wish.
This comes with the same benefits and disadvantages as previously stated.
More convenience means less freedom.
However, those who aren’t familiar with web design may argue that the compromise in creative freedom is worth having the site already built for you.
Of course, pre-built themes also mean no coding skills are required to create a site with Adobe Portfolio.
It makes building your site much quicker and easier, which means you can get online faster.
What it Gets Wrong
At first glance, Adobe Portfolio doesn’t appear quite as sleek and modern as Squarespace.
It doesn’t offer a clear explanation of what the platform does or should be used for.
It can be frustrating if you’re coming in the cold.
If you’re a small business or you’re looking primarily to sell products from your website, then you might want to rethink using Adobe Portfolio as your website builder.
Unfortunately, Adobe Portfolio doesn’t have e-commerce functions.
Furthermore, it doesn’t allow you to sell directly from your site.
You can link out to another webpage that you can use primarily for sales
However, this drives traffic away from your Portfolio site and can lose you, potential buyers, along the way.
Although this is a major drawback, we can see the reasoning behind it.
Adobe Portfolio isn’t intended to be an online shop developer and has no aspirations to become one.
Its main target audience continues to be the creative community.
The objective is often showcasing their work and building a reputation rather than selling products on their site.
The Price
Although access to Adobe Portfolio comes free with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, the subscription itself isn’t cheap.
There are only two Adobe packages that include Adobe Portfolio:
- The Photography package and
- The All-App package
The cheaper option is the simple Photography package.
It will only really suit you if you’re a photographer of some sort.
This plan costs $11,49 per month, billed annually, which includes:
- Adobe Fonts
- Adobe Photoshop
- Access to Adobe Portfolio
- Adobe Lightroom
The All-App plan includes the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite, and costs $60,94 per month, also billed annually.
Although this may sound expensive, keep in mind the many benefits of the Adobe Creative Cloud and how many programs this affords you.
Additionally, if we’re making direct comparisons, it’s worth noting that Adobe’s Photography package is cheaper than Squarespace’s cheapest plan ($12 per month vs. $11.49 per month).
The Templates
A common complaint from those who use Adobe Portfolio is that the templates or themes are not highly customizable.
Or, at least, they’re less customizable than those offered by other hosting platforms.
This can become a problem if you want to stand out from the crowd.
But again, this is also largely up to you and how you design the site.
Unfortunately, what can happen with themes or templates is that most users gravitate towards one or a few of the most popular ones, and they all end up having similar-looking websites.
The key to working with a template is to go out of your way to make it your own.
If you develop a unique and distinctive brand identity, it will stand out from the crowd.
Customer Assistance
Squarespace outdoes Adobe Portfolio ten-fold when it comes to customer assistance, guidance and onboarding.
It’s probably because it’s aimed at creators.
It assumes that you should just know what you’re doing and don’t need any help setting up your site.
This can be frustrating for beginners, but tutorials can hardly come by with a quick google search.
Lastly, one can say that Adobe Portfolio is not as diverse in its product offering as Squarespace, for example.
Its purpose and objective as a platform are more single-minded.
As it very specifically targets creative individuals rather than small businesses and entrepreneurs.
It’s worth noting that Adobe Portfolio and Squarespace are by no means your only options when it comes to building a website, however.
Click here to see a comprehensive and comparative list of some other popular website building and hosting platforms.
Final Thoughts
After weighing up the pros and cons of both Adobe Portfolio vs Squarespace, it’s easy to see why taking all of these considerations into account is vital for creating and maintaining your website.
Ultimately, there’s no good guy and bad guy in this situation.
It’s all about what you’re looking to achieve with your site specifically and choosing the best software for you.
If you’re running a small business and looking to up your sales, Squarespace is probably your prime candidate.
Adobe Portfolio is perhaps your best solution if you’re a creative freelancer looking to make a name for yourself.
But, above all, do your research and don’t rush the decision.
Thus, you’re sure to work out the best route for you!
Did this review answer your questions about Adobe Portfolio vs Squarespace?
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