17 Squarespace Statistics That Are Anything But Square

There are over a billion websites on the internet—though perhaps we should say that there have been that many. Estimates put the number of active sites at slightly under 200 million. The latter figure pales in comparison, though it is by no means nugatory.

But we won’t be discussing the global world wide web today; instead, we’ll focus on a small portion of it called Squarespace.

We’ll also hit you with some Squarespace statistics right from the start by letting you know that more than 1% of all active websites are based on it.

And that’s just 1% of everything we’ve prepared for you today.

Go on, don’t be shy!

Key Facts About Squarespace Users and Finances (Editor’s Choice)

• Squarespace won an Emmy for a Super Bowl commercial in 2017.
• The platform has 4.2 million unique subscriptions.
• Squarespace generated $784 million in 2021.
• Roughly 92% of Squarespace's revenue originates from subscriptions.
• The platform’s revenue grew 9% year-over-year in Q2 2022.
• There are over 2.8 million active websites built with Squarespace.
• Squarespace has a 3.71% market share in the CMS market.
• Approximately 1,640 people work on Squarespace.

Some Squarespace Info to Get Us Started

Most big companies started small, and Squarespace is hardly an exception. Its founder’s story has plenty of things in common with those of other well-known self-made billionaires in the tech field.

Like Musk, he started dabbling in tech when he was just a teenager; and like Zuckerberg, he came up with his brilliant idea in his college dorm room.

Read on and see for yourself how Squarespace began.

1. Anthony Casalena founded Squarespace in 2003.

(Source: Forbes)

Squarespace’s history begins with a man named Anthony Casalena. A student at the University of Maryland, he founded Squarespace in 2003 after growing frustrated with existing site-builder solutions.

He received a $30,000 starting loan from his parents for seed funding but otherwise ran the company alone for the next three years (mostly from his dorm room). In fact, there were no Squarespace employees until 2006.

Fun fact: Only a quarter of small businesses are self-funded; the rest of them rely on loans. However, most entrepreneurs aren’t lucky enough to have their parents act as lenders, so they turn to an official institution to get money for their venture.

2. Mr. Casalena’s net worth is $1.1 billion, making him the 2,342nd wealthiest person in the world.

(Source: Forbes)

Squarespace’s founder still owns about a third of the company, which easily makes him a billionaire. However, his wealth is directly tied to the well-being of Squarespace.

This is why his personal fortune subsided from approximately $2.3 billion in 2021 to just over $1.1 billion today. Still, he’s the 2,342th wealthiest person in the world at the time of writing.

Fun fact: Nowadays, more than 90% of multimillionaires are self-made. It seems old money is a thing of the past.

3. Squarespace won an Emmy for a Super Bowl commercial in 2017.

(Source: Squarespace)

So, who uses Squarespace?

Not John Malkovich, apparently.

In 2017, Squarespace ran a commercial during the Super Bowl in which an angry Mr. Malkovich was seen trying to convince an impostor to sell him back the “johnmalkovich.com” domain.

What the company wanted to tell its viewers was that they should secure their domain name through Squarespace lest they end up like Mr. Malkovich. The advert was so good that it got the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial.

4. The headcount at Squarespace is 1,640 employees.

(Source: Squarespace)

The one-man company Squarespace once was is now a thing of the past. Today, it employs 1,640 people in several cities, including New York, Portland, and Dublin (Ireland).

That said, approximately 90% of the company’s employees are based in the US.

5. There are over 2.8 million live websites built with Squarespace.

(Source: BuiltWith)

There are around 4.7 million websites powered by Squarespace on the internet, though not all of them are presently active.

Of the 2.89 million sites that are still live, 2.19 million (or roughly 75%) are based in the US. Around 351,000 websites are spread in the UK, Australia, and Canada. The remaining 350,000 or so are mostly in continental Europe.

Fun fact: Although 4.7 million is a very impressive number, Squarespace isn’t the biggest website builder out there. The title goes to WiX, which powers 7.04 million sites in 2022.

Squarespace Subscriptions

Subscriptions are the most important part of Squarespace—for the customer, they’re the only way to get access to the platform’s tools; for the company itself, they’re its largest source of revenue by far.

This is why Squarespace offers multiple membership tiers, each tailor-made for a particular customer archetype—but you can learn all about them on the company’s site.

Here, we’ll analyze some harder-to-find stats, such as how many people use the service and how much they pay.

6. Squarespace boasts 4.2 million unique subscriptions.

(Source: Bloomberg)

A Squarespace subscription is necessary to use any of the platform’s services, including its website builder, domain registrar, website analytics tools, and integrated ecommerce functionality.

As of Q2 2022, Squarespace has 4.2 million active unique subscriptions, up 6.2% year-over-year (there were 3.9 million in Q2 2021). Presumably, this growth directly correlates to a 7.6% increase in marketing expenditure during the same period.

Fun fact: This is the 26th consecutive quarter in which the number of Squarespace accounts has risen. In other words, Squarespace has been continuously growing for six-and-a-half years.

7. Squarespace subscriptions are behind 92% of the platform’s revenue.

(Source: Squarespace)

Squarespace primarily generates revenue through its membership-based model, though various fees earnt through partnerships with third-party services and solutions contribute about 8% to the total.

Still, Squarespace statistics from Q2 2022 show that 91.6% is derived directly from subscriptions. This figure has fluctuated very little over the past year, remaining firmly in the 91.2%-92.7% range.

8. Users prefer annual subscriptions.

(Source: Squarespace)

There are two types of memberships available on Squarespace—monthly and annual. The main difference, of course, has to do with whether you pay each month or just once a year. But the latter option comes with some boons—first of all, you save roughly 30%; moreover, you get a free custom domain.

As such, it’s of little wonder why most Squarespace users prefer this one. When seen in terms of revenue, annual subscriptions represent 70% of the 91.2% we talked about earlier. The remaining 30% derives from monthly subs, which, although fewer, are more expensive.

9. Squarespace’s ARPUS hit $204.

(Source: Squarespace)

An ordinary Squarespace membership can cost as little as $16 or as much as $65 monthly. That said, various extras exist—such as a custom domain or a Google Workspace account—and each count as an individual subscription.

This means that a single Squarespace-based website can have multiple subscriptions active simultaneously.

For the twelve months preceding June 30th, 2022, Squarespace recorded an average revenue per unique subscription (ARPUS) of $204. That’s a 5.8% (or $11.1) increase from the previous period when the platform’s ARPUS stood at $193.

This change is primarily due to customers preferring Squarespace’s more expensive, ecommerce-oriented membership tiers.

Squarespace’s Revenue

Squarespace’s journey started with an initial capital of just $30,000, but Mr. Casalena has made several thousand times the amount his parents once lent him. Case in point, Squarespace went public in 2021 with a $6 billion market cap.

And it doesn’t look like Mr. Casalena is done yet, either—Squarespace is already boasting some record figures in this 2022’s quarterly reports; it may be looking forward to an even brighter future.

10. Squarespace went public in May 2021.

(Source: Fortune)

Squarespace’s valuation stood at $10 billion immediately preceding its DPO (direct public offering, also known as direct listing) when it raised $300 million in a funding round in March.

After going public in May 2021, the company’s valuation fell to $6.3 billion, with share prices down 7.7% ($46.13 per share). A month later, they reached a peak of $64.10.

Since then, prices have tumbled down more than threefold to just $21.65 per share, earning the company a total market cap of $3 billion as of September 2022.

11. The platform’s annual revenue hit $784 million in 2021.

(Source: Squarespace)

Despite the company’s not-so-great performance on the stock market, Squarespace’s sales have not only remained strong—they’ve even grown.

In 2021, the company reported $784 million in total revenue, a vast increase compared to 2020’s $621 million or 2019’s $484 million.

At the same time, due to Squarespace’s direct listing in May 2021, various “general and administrative” expenses also skyrocketed from $54.6 million in 2020 to $367.9 million in 2021.

This caused the company’s net income to fall drastically, going from $30.5 million in 2020 (profit) to –$249.1 million in 2021 (loss).

12. Revenue grew 9% year-over-year in Q2 2022.

(Source: Bloomberg)

As the number of Squarespace customers has continued to increase, so has its revenue. In Q2 2022, the company earnt $212.7 million in revenue. This represents a 9% increase year-over-year (GAAP).

Moreover, Squarespace saw a net income of $64.5 million this quarter, which is quite an improvement compared to the losses in Q2 2021 (-$234.5 million).

13. Squarespace anticipates total annual revenue of up to $867 million for 2022.

(Source: Bloomberg)

With the number of websites using Squarespace rising further this year, it’s no surprise the company expects to break records by the year’s end.

Its Q2 report estimates total annual revenue should reach around $857-$867 million. In other words, approximately a 10% increase from 2021.

For comparison, the company’s projections for Q3 are much more conservative ($213-$218 million, that is, a 6%-8% rise from Q3 2021). This is not out of the ordinary, as Squarespace generally sees the most considerable boosts in revenue in Q1 and Q4.

14. International customers represent 30% of total bookings.

(Source: Squarespace)

Squarespace users are spread all over the globe, though the majority are based in the US. Consequently, that’s where most of the company’s profits originate.

In Q2 2022, international customers represented roughly 30% of total bookings. Bookings include all cash receipts for purchased subscriptions and those yet to be paid for but contractually agreed upon, so it’s a reasonably accurate measurement.

Total bookings saw a 6.4% rise year-over-year to $219 million in Q2.

Squarespace Competitors

Squarespace might be one of the best ecommerce website builders, but it’s certainly not the only one.

Squarespace seems to be particularly well-appreciated among photographers, graphic designers, and other visual artists. But options such as WordPress offer far more customizability—albeit at the cost of a steeper learning curve.

Let’s see how Squarespace stacks up to its peers.

15. Squarespace has a 3.71% share in the CMS market.

(Source: BuiltWith)

The most significant Squarespace competitor at the moment is WordPress, which boasts a 45% share in the content management system (CMS) market. This translates into 34.8 million websites built on it.

Squarespace’s other main competitors are WiX (7.8 million sites) and Sitefinity (3.3 million). 

Squarespace’s market share is approximately 3.71%, ranking fourth with 2.8 million websites. Hundreds of other smaller platforms make up the remaining 37%.

16. In 2021, Squarespace spent $339.9 million on advertising.

(Source: Squarespace)

Last year, the company spent an astonishing $339.9 million on advertising both domestically and internationally—that’s 30.7% more than in 2020, when Squarespace’s marketing expenditure stood at $260 million. One year earlier, in 2019, advertising spending was $184 million, or slightly over half the current amount.

Seeing as revenue has grown at nearly the same pace, Squarespace’s strategy appears solid so far.

17. Squarespace has made four acquisitions so far.

(Source: Crunchbase)

Squarespace has many competitors, and one way to gain some leverage is by doing what any large corporation does—acquire smaller companies.

The latest acquisition Squarespace completed was Tock (a reservation manager), which was bought for $400 million in 2021. Earlier, in 2019, the website builder acquired Unfold (a digital storytelling app) and Acuity Scheduling (an appointment scheduling program). 

However, Squarespace’s first acquisition occurred in 2015, when it purchased Brace, a minimalistic website building service.

Wrap Up

Squarespace is a visual platform, so it lends itself quite nicely to those who rely on imagery to attract customers—from artists striving to build and showcase a portfolio to restaurants looking to seduce visitors into buying one or more of their tasty offerings.

We admit that the longer we at Web Tribunal researched for this list of Squarespace statistics, the harder we struggled not to give into temptation and buy one thing or another off the many sites we visited.

Good luck resisting temptation, too.