Speaker 0 00:00:00 One of the questions churches ask us all the time is what church website platform is best for my church. Well, the two main options are WordPress and Squarespace. And in today's episode, we put those two head to head. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the reach, right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host Ian Hyatt, we're here to help your church see more visitors and grow,
Speaker 2 00:00:49 Ready to get ready to get.
Speaker 0 00:00:56 Hey guys, welcome to the re right podcast episode number 112. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas. Hey, not much man. Excited to talk today. We're gonna be talking about the age old question of what is the best website platform specifically for churches. That's what we specialize in here and the question we get the most here at reach, right? It it's kind of between two main CMSs. CMS of course stands for content management system. It's kind of the, the bones and the structure, the programming behind your website that lets you make all the changes and design it and do all that stuff. So yeah, the two main ones out there are WordPress and Squarespace. Those are the two ones that we hear about the most. Yeah. They're probably the two biggest, uh, there's other ones like, um, wicks and weeley, and there's no shortage of different places used to be, uh, things that lived on your computer.
Speaker 0 00:01:54 Like, uh, Jula was one of 'em and Ru and these different ones out there. Yeah. Used to be Adobe dream Weaver. We've been route generation of this. Right. And we've been doing web development for churches for gosh, 50, well, over a decade years now. So it's, it's embarrassing really how long we're really doing really revealing our age. Yes. So, but, uh, anyway, but today I think we're gonna take the two king pins. We're gonna do a head-to-head. Yeah. And we're gonna compare which one is best for churches now? Yes. This of course is just our opinion on stuff. There's not a, uh, hard and fast rule on any of this, but yeah, that being said, uh, we have chosen one of these as the primary one that we use for all of our web development projects. Yeah. For a few reasons that we'll talk about in here, but that's not to say the other one doesn't have its advantages.
Speaker 0 00:02:42 Yeah. Uh, there are some really great things about them, both. Uh, so I guess we'll kind of, uh, dig in a little bit today and yeah. Uh, talk about what we like and don't like about each one and give you guys some feedback on that. So yeah. Word press V Squarespace. It's the open showdown. Yeah. Let's, let's go ding, ding, the, the, uh, the bell, uh, rings. So, um, yeah, so I, I mean, maybe it's good at first Thomas to just talk about the, the differences between the two kind of the basic differences between the two. And, uh, it, I mean, I know that, uh, you've done a ton of research on this. We all have, but, uh, what are kind of some of the foundational, I guess, differences between the platforms? Yeah, that's a good question. So I think it's important to know. Um, so WordPress and Squarespace are very different in how they're set up just as organizations or companies, uh, wordpress.org specifically.
Speaker 0 00:03:34 I want to distinguish before we get too deep, there's two versions of WordPress. One is wordpress.com, which is very similar to Squarespace actually. And then there's wordpress.org. And for the purposes of this conversation, we're talking about wordpress.org. Yeah. Which is, uh, which is open source software. So it's not something that you have to pay for directly. It's open source software. That is the largest, uh, content management system out there in the world. Not just for churches, obviously, but there are millions of sites set up on WordPress. There is a development community of hundreds, of thousands of people that are making it better all the time, adding new plugins, adding new functionality. Yeah. So WordPress is in that camp. Square space is a company like WordPress is, but they are not open sourced. They are a month to month platform where everything is in house and built right there, uh, for them, for Squarespace.
Speaker 0 00:04:32 Uh, there are advantages to this platform, but you are paying for that. One thing we won't talk about further in this, but there is, uh, one of the biggest questions is one of ownership. So with a WordPress website that is yours to take with you, it lives on your servers. Yeah. Versus a Squarespace website is owned in, I guess the content may be yours, but still it lives on their platform. If you stop paying Squarespace, you don't have a website anymore. Uh, so it really is something that, uh, those are kind of the, the big kind of basic differences between the two platforms. We'll get into some of the, the more nitpicky ones and what really matters to churches, I guess, as this conversation goes on. Well, now that leads me to, I think, one question that a lot of people would have than what comes to mind versus which ones easier to use.
Speaker 0 00:05:18 Right. We know that's important for churches, uh, because you know, a lot of times it's a non-techy lay leader, pastor, secretary that you know, is making updates to their website. And, uh, so this is a biggie, I think. And, um, so when it comes to ease of use Thomas, which one, which one do you go? Which, who wins the, the first round? Yeah. So the first round, I, I think, well, let me ask you this. I can see. And you, you, you talk to churches all day, every day. Yeah. Um, when you, when people like their fear of WordPress, when people talk about what they're afraid of with WordPress yeah. What do you hear code using code and having, uh, having to use code and having, yeah, go ahead. No, that's it, that's the number one thing I hear is, uh, U using code and, and, uh, and difficulties with that in the back end.
Speaker 0 00:06:09 Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me dispel that first of all, is that you do not need to use code to use WordPress. Right. But I, I think that it, when it comes to, when it comes to ease of use it, you can absolutely, uh, assume that square space will be easier, easier to use than WordPress. I think it's something that this is just a function of closed systems versus open systems. This is a reason why, uh, most people, over 60 years old, they are on apple products or using iPhones and not using Androids. And usually as you get younger, apple has a pretty broad cross appeal. Sure. But younger people are more comfortable with Android devices because apple is a fully closed system. So they make all of that software on there. Uh I'll you have to go through much more rigorous approval processes to get your app into the apple app store versus the Google app store or the play store.
Speaker 0 00:07:05 So it's a, Google is a much more open system. Uh, and that's really what the question is here. So square space, because it's a closed system, they build everything, they build all the functionality, all the tools, all the plugins, everything there is designed specifically to work on that one platform. Yeah. Whereas WordPress has again, hundreds of thousands of different people developing it, right? And so it tries to have a much broader, uh, range of features and things that you can do. And with that comes a little bit of complexity. Now, all that being said, I don't want any to be intimidated because WordPress has grown by leaps and bounds where you don't need to know any code. It's not something that you have to have anymore. There are, there are one click sites where you can set up a WordPress and it's all drag and drop.
Speaker 0 00:07:53 There are many easy ways to do something like that, but you can just never really compete with a, uh, a closed system, like a square space. Right. So, uh, in the end, I would say if your main concern is, I just want whatever is easiest to use. I don't care about anything else, hands down. That's gonna be Squarespace because it is, there you go. If nothing else it's definitely easy to use. Yeah. The drag and drop is loved for, um, ease of use. Again, even though you could do that with WordPress just comes a little easier there, it seems like. So, um, so I guess round one there, uh, to, uh, to Squarespace now, next, next, next one's a big one, uh, design, which one is gonna be better to design on it? The all important design look, feel, uh, you know, uploading photos, fonts, all of that.
Speaker 0 00:08:40 Um, so, um, what do you think? Yeah, I, I think this one is a borderline toss up, but I would give a slight edge to WordPress, just because again, it's the volume of different people, uh, that are able to contribute, uh, you know, square space. They have tons and tons of different theme options and design styles and things that you can do on there. But the, just the sheer volume of design options and, and choices you have with a WordPress and, and really kind of gets into the, the next one. Some of the flexibility you have with WordPress. Yeah. I think that that helps them to take, take the cake. So, but let me get this out there for the average church. I don't think this is gonna make that much of a difference because you can design something. I, I think the, the platforms are so good that they're better than most churches designability right.
Speaker 0 00:09:33 That they, that would allow. So the, the weakest link in the chain in this instance would not be the platform's designability, but your own personal designability in most cases. But yeah, if you have a professional designer or someone that really wants to knock it out of the park, uh, to me, there's no question that WordPress is the one that you would choose. So that's why I didn't say this before, but that's why we build as a, a company that helps churches do web development projects with professional designers on staff. Yeah. There's no question for us that, that we can do better design work on a WordPress platform. So yeah, in that kind of circumstance, WordPress does make sense. That's why we choose it. Uh, but I think for a lot of churches, it's basically a toss up, unless you have really high level designers on your team.
Speaker 0 00:10:17 There, there you go. And you, you said just slight advantage to WordPress on that. And you actually used a term that I, that I hear all the time, flexibility. I, I, and you're right. I talked to churches day in and day out and, and, and it used to be, the churches would always talk about design and ease of use mostly, but I'm hearing now they, they want flexibility. There are a lot of churches coming off of another CMS, another content management system that was not flexible. So, um, you know, when I'm asked that, I definitely talk a lot about WordPress is flexibility, but Squarespace has gotta have some too, right? Yeah, no, it definitely does. Uh, we're uh, Squarespace has, uh, grown by leaps and bounds in some of the things that you can do on there. But this, I think is the one where WordPress can really shine.
Speaker 0 00:11:05 Because again, you have this huge volume of developers making software for just about any scenario you can possibly think of. And this is huge for churches. So for square space, for instance, for a company, because churches are only a small subset of the entire market that they cater to, there are not great native sermon delivery options when it comes to that, where you can choose to categorize things by scripture, for instance. Yeah. But with the WordPress community, there are enough churches that use WordPress as a platform that some aspiring developers and people that are actually very talented. There's a few of these companies out there have built little niche markets around building a piece of software that has catered specifically to churches and delivering sermons. The way that a church would want to do that, where they can organize by the speaker, the topic, the sermon series, the date, and the scripture that it comes from.
Speaker 0 00:12:05 You can use all those things as search factor. So it's the little things like that that really get, let you tailor your site to exactly what you want it to be. And this is the case for, for things like sermons. I think churches do events a little bit differently. There's great event options in there that work really well for churches. Uh, there are, uh, things that are, um, I think one of the big ones that's really starting to, to become more and more prominent, uh, is that a lot of churches are looking for ways to integrate other software. So whether you use planning center or church, community builder, or fellowship one or some other bit of church management software, they all will. If they don't already natively have, uh, plugins for WordPress. Yeah. They're all going to be developing that one first. Yeah. And again, Squarespace being closed.
Speaker 0 00:12:54 It doesn't play as nicely with other third party software. You'll always have an advantage with that using a platform like WordPress. So for me, this is a big win for WordPress. And one of the reasons why we like it, especially as professional developers, we love it for churches. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. There's a plugin for everything out there with WordPress. We've seen, you could just Google it in there. It is. So <laugh> well, good. Uh, what about SEO? This is a big one, right? Because we, we talk a lot about SEO churches now that I'm speaking with, they know about SEO used to be, we would say, Hey, have you, are you familiar with SEO pastor or ministry leader? And they, no. What is that now? Yeah, no search engine optimization and most of 'em are aware of this. So this is something that's desired now, compared to years past that whatever platform a church wants to use, you know, it, it needs to be SEO friendly, uh, that term.
Speaker 0 00:13:48 So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, a website that doesn't get found is useless, right? If nobody ever sees you online, or if it's just for your members, it won't help you grow at all. So making sure that you are able to be found on search engines and that is, um, that it does a good job actually, helping you rise up in the rankings. That's really important there. So, um, natively, I would say they're about the same. So just Squarespace and WordPress, they are just about identical in how search engine friendly they are. Yeah, they are. And, and that being said, this is, once again, it kind of goes back to that flexibility point there WordPress has some of the best tools out there to juice your search engine optimization and just send it through the roof on this specifically, the one that most churches and most organizations as a whole, they, they do use and should use is one called Yost.
Speaker 0 00:14:44 Uh, so Yost is a fantastic tool. There's other tools called like all in one search engine optimization. And there's lots of different ones. If you wanna take a look at it, but if you want to take it from me and people that do this all the time, yeah. Yost is Barnum. The best search engine optimization plugin for WordPress. So agreed if we're saying just WordPress versus Squarespace by itself. I think they're about the same, but if the question really is, uh, Squarespace versus word, plus WordPress with Yost, not even close with Yost, it lets you optimize every single post, every single sermon, every single event, it tells you, are you getting the keywords in there enough? Uh, is it going to be ranking here's some other things you can do it juices up all of your search engine performance throughout the entire site with a click of a few buttons.
Speaker 0 00:15:33 Uh, so bar none, that is the best search engine optimization tool that is out there. Uh, just kind of a full, and it really is free too. You can pay extra for the professional. I think if you're a larger church, that makes sense, but it costs nothing to do. Go ahead and plug in Yoast on any WordPress site. Uh, it'll be better than anything else out there. That's good stuff. So I think so far through this, uh, throughout this fight, we're starting to see WordPress. Uh, well, I think Squarespace maybe has like a bloody nose and maybe the eye is swelling a little bit, but, uh, but they're not, they're not out of it yet. Uh, the next one, I think this is a big one pricing. What, who has the edge on pricing? And this is a concern for churches. There's, you know, churches, uh, every church wants to, to, to be good stewards and they want to do things cost effective.
Speaker 0 00:16:20 You don't always wanna play it cheap, but there's a lot of churches on budgets and that, uh, don't have big marketing budgets and web budgets. So yeah, who's, who's got this one. This one is, uh, there's two ways to think of this. So I think if you think about the monthly side of things, yeah. They're going to be pretty close. I'd say maybe a slight advantage for WordPress. Okay. Uh, so if you think about that, like WordPress, again, wordpress.org, it's something that you own, and it's something that you will put onto your own server. So in most cases you don't wanna have a server at your church to do that. That's right. That's something you would've done 20 years ago, but that's not the way to do it. Now. You want a professional dedicated hosting company to do it. You can find decent hosting for about $10 a month and that's gonna be cheaper than any kind of a, a square space plan out there.
Speaker 0 00:17:12 Yeah. Um, we recommend a company called WP engine. They're a little bit more so for a standalone church, uh, a standalone church hosting package, uh, you're gonna be looking at about $30 a month. Uh, so that's a, that's kind of that's for really premium type hosting, uh, alternatively with square space, you're looking at for most churches, about $25 a month is what that will cost there. So kind of a wash depending on what you do. Now, the other side of the question is what will cost more in the initial side? So now I think you can choose to set it up yourself on both platforms. Yeah. WordPress, you can go at it on your own Squarespace. You can go it on your own. Both of those would have free options. It wouldn't really cost you anything. Yeah. Um, I think by and large, most developers, if you're gonna pay someone to do it, usually they're gonna prefer to be on WordPress over Squarespace.
Speaker 0 00:18:05 There are some companies out there that do Squarespace design work for you. Yeah. That usually be, will be more template based and less expensive. Yeah. Usually WordPress is a little bit more because it focuses on, on, uh, flexibility and integrations and those things you'll usually pay a little bit more for that because you'll want some premium kind of integrations in those things. So I think it's kind of a wash, maybe a slight advantage to, to square space. If you're gonna give one, one way or the other. But again, if you're comparing apples to apples, if you're designing it yourself yeah. And hosting it, it really is the exact same price. So yeah, I think it's best just to call that one, to draw calls it or draw. So they're trying to hang in there. No, one's been knocked out. It's the last round here, uh, last but not least who, what, what has better support?
Speaker 0 00:18:51 How do you get better support through one of these? Yeah. So it depends on what you're looking for for support. Again, this is another one of those tough questions. So if you, by support, you want someone that you can pick up the phone and call and have them talk you through something. There's nobody. You can do that
[email protected]. There's nobody. That's gonna take your call and cuz you're not paying them anything. Yeah. You're not paying for the service. Yeah. Uh, you can call your host and they can help you with some of those issues and those things. Whereas with Squarespace, there are people you can pick up the phone. If you have a plan that allows for it, you can pick up the phone and call 'em and talk to someone and they'll talk you through it. And because it's a closed system, they can almost always solve your problem because there's nothing new under the sun there.
Speaker 0 00:19:33 They can always figure something out because they've seen it all before. With that, that being said, if you're looking by support, if you mean like, uh, help from the community out there to get things done in a creative way or to be more creative or to do integrations, uh, the WordPress community is enormous. There's a, there are so many hundreds of thousands of people, again, developing on WordPress and you type in any WordPress question you can possibly think of into Google and you'll get hundreds of answers, usually kind of the same thing. But yeah, there's just, there's forums. There's Reddits. There's all kinds of different places that you can go to kind of take a look at what other people have done in WordPress. So the community wide support, I think is a huge advantage to WordPress. So personally I'm the kind of person that would rather not waste half an hour waiting on hold and calling someone and having, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:20:28 Uh, getting talked through something in most cases, my support needs are, Hey, what do I put in this one place here? Or why is this not working? It's something that someone else has faced before. So I would rather Google a question and get an answer yeah. Than trying to wait and talk to a person. But that's really gonna be a personal preference thing. Maybe some you're just, you want to pick up the phone, we have clients here at reach, right. That are both right. I'd say most of them would rather just, you know, type in a Google search and figure out an answer. Right. But there are some that want to call and say, Hey, let's talk about it for half an hour and we'll go through and do a walkthrough on how to fix. And we love you guys too. So yeah, absolutely. I, I don't know how to score this.
Speaker 0 00:21:06 I mean, you can kind of decide which way you go on this one, Ian, but I'd, I'd call that a draw depending on what you're looking for is kind of my guess. Yeah. We had a couple of draws. It sounded though, like earlier in the fight, WordPress just had a slight advantage and, and some strong advantages. So I, I think no Squarespace doesn't get knocked out. We come down to a judge's decision. I think WordPress, but again, like we've said, you gotta look, think about what's best for your church. Yeah. And you know, we hope all of this is for those that might be wondering, okay, which one of these two, and we hope this has been helpful for you to kind of weigh out, you know? Okay. Maybe I do like some of the advantages of, uh, of square space, but, uh, I would give it to WordPress based on what we've talked about, uh, here today.
Speaker 0 00:21:51 So yeah. So it's no secret. We love WordPress here. That's why we develop on it. We've done it for as long as our company has been in existence. It's not going anywhere. Um, it's a great platform, a great community. I would say if your church is just looking for a, a easy way to get this done, to get a, a good quality website up and you have the time to do some of it yourself, you want it easy. But again, here's the thing is that you still have to write content. You still have to take pictures. That stuff doesn't happen all by itself. Yeah. So don't, don't think you're gonna get a great website by putting 90 minutes into it on Squarespace. Right. And neither one of those is gonna do that. But if you wanna skip, uh, if you want the easiest option out there, I think that Squarespace would probably be a good choice for you.
Speaker 0 00:22:37 Yeah. Um, I think if you're looking for something that is more flexible and church specific, or if you have a little bit more budget to have someone help you with it. Yeah. I think that WordPress hands down is the one that, uh, we would choose. So that's kind of how we land on this, our choice, WordPress, your choice might be either one. We'd love to hear what you use in the comments. Yeah. So if this has been helpful to you or it's been, uh, hurtful to you and you're offended because you're a, a square space fanboy or a WordPress fanboy and we didn't use yeah. Maybe people didn't like my boxing example and uh, the rounds, hopefully whatever it would be, we, we just love all kinds of feedback on this. So if you have any feedback for us, do let us know when the comments down below rate, review, subscribe, like do all those kinds of things. That means the world to us. We really, uh, just thank our Rere family for being a part of this. So, uh, thanks for listening and watching this week. And we hope to get you next week.
Speaker 3 00:23:31 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online at reach, right studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
