Squarespace has been one of the most popular website builders for over a decade. It's polished, has excellent templates, and produces professional-looking results. If you've thought about building a website, you've probably heard of it.
8pixel is different. It was built specifically for small service businesses such as cleaners, plumbers, therapists, salons and electricians, who need a professional website quickly without becoming website designers in the process.
This comparison is honest: both products have real strengths. The right choice depends on what you're building and how much time you have.
Who each is built for
Squarespace is built for people who want creative control over their website's look and feel. It's popular with photographers, designers, restaurants, boutiques, and small businesses that have a strong visual identity to express.
8pixel is built for service businesses where the website's job is to communicate what you do, where you do it, and how to contact you, and to do that job well without requiring design expertise or significant time investment.
If you're a photographer who wants to build a beautiful portfolio, Squarespace is probably the better fit. If you're a plumber who needs a professional website that converts visitors into customers, 8pixel is built for you.
Setup time and effort
Squarespace: You start by choosing a template, then replace placeholder content section by section. The editor is visual and intuitive, but you're still responsible for writing all your content, choosing your photos, and making design decisions about colors, fonts, and layout.
8pixel: You describe your business in a sentence or two, or add material you already have. 8pixel builds a complete first version in a few minutes: multiple pages, written content and a structure suited to your business type. You review and refine from there.
The difference is significant. 8pixel's AI starting point means you spend your time reviewing and editing, not building from scratch.
Design and templates
Squarespace offers a large library of professionally designed templates, most of which look excellent. The templates are polished and flexible. If you pick the right template and fill it in well, the result can be beautiful.
8pixel doesn't use templates in the traditional sense. The website is generated specifically for your business type. A plumber's website and a therapist's website look fundamentally different: different section types, different content structures, different visual emphasis, because they serve different purposes.
In practice, Squarespace gives you more visual flexibility, while 8pixel gives you better defaults for your specific business type. For most service businesses, 8pixel's defaults are closer to what you'd want anyway.
Pricing
| 8pixel | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Free to use | Yes, during the invitation-only beta | Free trial, then a paid plan |
| Card needed to start | No | See Squarespace's trial terms |
| Your own domain | Not open in the beta yet | See Squarespace's plans |
| Plans and prices | Shared before launch | On Squarespace's pricing page |
8pixel is in an invitation-only beta. Beta accounts build and publish for free on an 8pixel address. Plans and prices are not set yet, and we share them before launch. Squarespace shows its current prices for your market on its own pricing page, so check there for today's figures.
SEO capabilities
Both platforms produce SEO-friendly websites, but they take different approaches.
Squarespace gives you manual control over page titles, meta descriptions, and some structured data. You can configure most SEO settings, but you need to know what to configure and why.
8pixel generates SEO metadata automatically from your business information: page titles that include your service and location, meta descriptions written for your industry, structured data (LocalBusiness and Service schema) injected without any configuration. For a small business that doesn't want to think about SEO settings, this is a significant practical advantage.
More than one language
8pixel handles several languages from the start. You write in one language, the AI translates the website into the others you pick, and visitors switch language with one click. This matters for companies that sell across borders, or that serve customers in both Swedish and English.
Squarespace: if you need several languages, check its current help pages for how that works on your plan.
Who should choose Squarespace
- You have a strong visual brand to express
- You're a creative professional (photographer, designer, artist)
- You want maximum control over design details
- You're happy to build the website yourself, section by section
- You want a large ecosystem of templates and integrations
Who should choose 8pixel
- You're a local service business (trades, health, cleaning, personal services)
- You want to be online in hours, not weeks
- You don't want to write all your content from scratch
- You need more than one language
- You want the search setup handled for you
- You want to try it free during the beta
Both platforms can produce a professional small business website. The question is whether you want to build it yourself (Squarespace) or have AI do most of the work and refine from there (8pixel). For a service business owner who'd rather spend time on the job than on the website, 8pixel's approach is the more practical one.