During your search for the best platform to use for your music website, you’ve likely come across two of the industry’s top solutions, Squarespace and Bandzoogle.
Both are powerful cloud website builders, but they are intended for different purposes which makes it harder to make the right choice between the two.
Squarespace is a comprehensive DIY site builder with pre-made templates and integrated features to help you develop any type of web project, including websites, blogs, and eCommerce stores.
Bandzoogle is a specialized website builder dedicated to the development of music websites. As such, it offers industry-specific designs and features to help musicians succeed in today’s competitive industry.
I’ve spent over 10 hours researching and comparing the two site builders to give you an answer to the question: Squarespace vs. Bandzoogle: Which is better? Read on to learn more.
1. Ease of Use
Both Bandzoogle and Squarespace are designed for ease of use. Neither site builder requires coding proficiency, and they each have a simple drag-and-drop editor ideal for non-technical users. Here’s how they compare.
Squarespace:
Squarespace does its best to simplify the process of building a website. But, due to the platform’s advanced options for design and customization, there’s a slightly steeper learning curve compared to Bandzoogle.
Fortunately, Squarespace provides you with a wide selection of gorgeous templates for musicians and bands which come with pre-configured features, including a blog, online store, about page, bio page, contact page, and links to your Instagram and Twitter feeds.
You can make the music template your own by adding more pages, such as a fan club page, album page, crowdfunding page, or a page for upcoming performance dates.
You’ll also find built-in features to connect with fans, promote your music, stream your tracks, sell tickets to performances, and share news about your upcoming tours. This means you won’t have to worry about integrating and cobbling various third-party tools to get all of this done.
Of course, you can easily integrate other third-party apps into your Squarespace website if that’s what you want. For example, you can add links to Spotify (or another music platform) to your navigation bar with just a few clicks. You can also add widgets like audio blocks to allow fans to experience previews of your offerings.
Summary of Squarespace’s Ease of Use Features:
- Simple website builder ideal for beginners
- Advanced customization options are available
- Beautiful website templates with modern design
- Add music-focused features like fan club pages in one click
- Built-in music promotion features
Bandzoogle:
Bandzoogle has a very simple web builder designed for non-techies. It allows you to create your music website as quickly as possible without going through an extended learning curve.
Once your account is created, Bandzoogle guides you through every step of the design process so you can build a site that is as simple or as complex as you like – all within minutes. This way, you’ll have more time for your music, rather than spending it educating yourself on web design.
There’s a range of mobile-friendly music themes to choose from, all of which offer easy editing and responsive support. Once you know the basics, the rest is simple. You’ll be able to customize colors, fonts, and layouts easily.
Add music-oriented widgets, stream your music, create a blog, and add eCommerce functionality – this all-in-one website builder for musicians lets you do it all with just a few clicks.
Summary of Bandzoogle’s Ease of Use Features:
- User-friendly interface ideal for beginners
- Music-focused widgets to extend your website’s functionality
- Dozens of music themes to choose from
- Simple web editor for customizing your templates
- Access CSS coding for advanced use
Winner: Bandzoogle
Both platforms are extremely easy to use once you get the hang of the process. They come with expertly designed templates built specifically for musicians. Squarespace also has templates and other categories that would work just as well for a music website with just a few tweaks which gives you even more opportunity to find the perfect template for your particular music style. However, Bandzoogle is a lot easier to use, particularly for those with limited design skills.
2. Design and Customization
The design of your music website plays a crucial role in its success. You need a website builder that helps you create a unique and functional user interface that will entice users to engage with your content and take the desired action on your website.
Let’s see what each site builder has to offer.
Squarespace:
Squarespace’s “Music and Bands” category has a wide range of template designs that command attention. Although most of them have a minimalist design, some, like the one in the image above, have a splash of color that’ll make your music website pop.
You’ll even find some with bold headers and high-contrast colors for an even more eye-catching design if that’s more in line with your type of music.
Many of the templates in the Squarespace website builder also come with built-in tools for promoting and selling your products. You can remove or add any features you want from the well-stocked widget section in your Squarespace editor.
For example, you can add a slideshow to your homepage to showcase selections from your music catalog. You can also embed an audio/video player within each image allowing your fans to listen to your tracks right away. You even have the ability to include a call to action button anywhere on the page.
A couple of standout features include the floating header and parallax scrolling features that you can use to add more depth (or at least the illusion of it) to your music website and keep fans engaged as they scroll.
Summary of Squarespace’s Design and Customization Features:
- Wide range of music templates available for every genre
- Widget section to add music-oriented features
- Built-in promotion tools for your music website
- Easily embed audio/video play on your homepage
- Floating header and parallax scrolling to enhance visitor engagement
Bandzoogle:
Bandzoogle has a wide range of templates for the music industry divided into various subcategories to suit every music style. Finding the ideal design will be a breeze, and you can further customize the template using the simple drag-and-drop editor.
You can switch out color schemes, fonts, pages, and styles until you are satisfied with how your music website looks.
There are even one-page templates with galleries to showcase photos or videos of your previous performances. You can also use these features to share a few releases from your music catalog.
All Bandzoogle designs are mobile-responsive and look great on all devices. This means you can add any widgets you want, including email forms, video players, buy buttons, etc. without having to worry about how it will look on smaller devices.
Summary of Bandzoogle’s Design and Customization Features:
- Music-focused templates and themes
- Mobile-responsive designs
- Drag-and-drop editor for easy customization
- Expertly designed one-page templates to showcase your music catalog
- Embed email forms, video players, or CTAs on any page
Winner: Bandzoogle
Bandzoogle has cool templates for every music genre. You’ll have no trouble finding a template with the right color, tone, and mood to capture your particular sound. All the templates come with essential functionality to make it easy for your fans to connect with you, enjoy your latest releases, and purchase your music online.
3. eCommerce Capabilities
If you intend to sell music, tickets, merchandise, and other products online, you need a site builder with the right eCommerce features, such as product pages, integrated payment tools, and more.
Squarespace:
As we’ve seen so far, Squarespace has a lot to offer in terms of ease of use, design, and customization. But, is it really the best website builder for musicians focused on making sales online?
The simple answer is yes. Squarespace has a lot to offer in this regard. Most templates come with built-in features to promote and sell your music, including SoundCloud integration so your fans can easily stream your music and videos.
You also get social media links, a blog, and email signup forms for your fans. Most templates come with a call to action button that takes visitors directly to your online store so they can purchase your music seamlessly. There are even options to let your fans stream any of your tracks as a teaser.
Some of the Squarespace music templates come with unique fan club pages to help you drive engagement on your site by offering exclusive content such as music releases and videos in exchange for a subscription fee.
Summary of Squarespace’s eCommerce Capabilities:
- Fan-club page to drive fan engagement
- Built-in features for selling your music online
- Promotional tools to reach a wider audience
- SoundCloud integration for easy music streaming
- Link to social media profiles for easy sharing
Bandzoogle:
Bandzoogle is a website builder for musicians, by musicians who understand the need for simple tools to promote and sell their music online.
It comes with stylish themes complete with built-in eCommerce features, such as a tour calendar, ticket sales, subscriptions, and a built-in mailing list.
The email marketing tools are a handy feature that makes it easier for you to keep in touch with your fans, build an email subscriber list, and send newsletters or automated transactional emails.
Bandzoogle also has flexible selling options like SoundScan, reporting, and digital download codes. You can sell everything from single tracks and albums to merchandise like vinyl, band apparel, and other physical items.
You get commission-free sales and no extra fees on any of Bandzoogle’s plans. This is in stark contrast to Squarespace, where you pay a commission fee on most of the plans.
Summary of Bandzoogle’s eCommerce Capabilities:
- PayPal integration for easy payments
- Stylish theme options for music store
- Commission-free sales of all types of products
- Sell merch and other physical products
- Sell subscriptions to fans for passive income
Winner: Tie
Bandzoogle has a lot to offer in terms of eCommerce. You get everything you need to manage your music business promotion and sales, and you don’t pay commissions.
But, Squarespace offers more advanced features that can help you grow and scale your business online. Many of its templates are designed with eCommerce functionality which makes it easy for you to sell your music or tickets to upcoming tours.
4. Blogging Tools
Squarespace:
A blog is an important part of your music website. It allows you to share important information with your fans, such as news about upcoming releases, tour dates, performance recaps, etc.
Fortunately, most templates in Squarespace’s music category are designed to not only put the focus on your music but also make it easy for you to keep your website updated with fresh content.
You can add a blog in one click and choose from various customizable blog layouts that showcase huge photos of you, your band, or your latest album art.
Squarespace allows you to adjust your blog parameters to suit your needs. Schedule and update posts from your dashboard, enable user comments for more engagement and add content creators/moderators to help manage your blog.
Summary of Squarespace’s Blogging Tools:
- Music blog templates available
- Easy blog update for regular fresh content
- Schedule post-publishing or updates
- Built-in blog promotion tools
- Enable user comments on your blog pages
Bandzoogle:
With Bandzoogle, you can add a blog page or create a blog section on your music website. You can choose from the dozens of pre-designed blog templates on the platform, each with its own unique look and functionality.
Add widgets or blocks to your pages to make it easier for you to add the required content, such as music, images, text, email forms, calendars, events, news, etc.
All blog themes are mobile-ready and optimized for search. Use the drag-and-drop editor to customize your chosen template by changing everything from fonts and colors to styles and layouts to build a design that is uniquely yours.
Summary of Bandzoogle’s Blogging Tools:
- 100% customizable music blog templates
- Simple widgets with image, text, video, and audio add-ons
- Easy drag-and-drop editor perfect for non-technical users
- 24/7 support to help you build a successful music blog
- Blocks with music-focused features for more website functionality
Winner: Tie
If you intend to add a blog to your music website, you’ll appreciate Squarespace’s built-in blogging functionality which lets you create content quickly, upload easily, and update on the go.
Bandzoogle has just as much to offer thanks to blogging-specific templates to help you keep your music fans engaged with fresh content.
5. Search Engine Optimization Tools
Being able to make your music website appear in search engines is an important factor to consider when choosing a site builder. Fortunately, both Squarespace and Bandzoogle come with built-in SEO features to assist you in this regard.
Squarespace:
Squarespace offers quality SEO features for your website, including automated XML sitemap creation, site structure, internal linking opportunities, and web analytics. All of these tools together will help you get good rankings for your music website.
Also, the code used in all of the platform’s templates is search engine optimized, making it easier for Google to crawl your website.
As a new Squarespace user, you’ll get a list of SEO best practices to follow to help you make your website more visible in search results. This is a handy tool that you’ll appreciate if you are not SEO savvy. It helps take away much of the guesswork and frustration you might otherwise experience when trying to rank your own website.
Summary of Squarespace’s Search Engine Optimization Tools:
- SEO checklist for current best practices
- Clean website code makes it easier for Google to crawl your site
- Mobile-optimized websites to enhance SEO
- Automatically generated XML site map
- Google Search Console integration for in-depth visitor data
Bandzoogle:
Bandzoogle is tailor-made for artists, and it comes with integrated SEO tools to help you get found by your fans online. Most of the tools are configured for website optimization out of the box, but you can also adjust the basic SEO parameters to further optimize each page or project.
Add your website title, description, and meta tags. Optimize keywords, adjust 301 redirect paths, and more – all from your dashboard.
In addition to these useful SEO settings, Bandzoogle also provides you with fan data so you can see where your customers come from and how they behave on your site. This type of information can help you determine what’s working well for your music website, and what isn’t, allowing you to create more content and products that resonate with your fans.
Summary of Bandzoogle’s Search Engine Optimization Tools:
- Create a band website with the SEO features you need built-in
- Optimize keywords for better SERP placement
- Fan data for insights into content performance
- Boost engagement with built-in social sharing media tools
- Mobile-friendly themes for better SEO performance
Winner: Tie
Both Squarespace and Bandzoogle have useful SEO settings that allow you to add meta titles, descriptions, keywords, etc. It may seem that Squarespace is a bit more SEO-friendly since it has more features for optimizing your websites and content, but Bandzoogle’s SEO features are fully focused on helping musicians succeed. If you’re a musician, it makes sense to choose the website builder made for musicians, which is why I consider this to be a tie.
6. Community and Support
Both Squarespace and Bandzoogle offer robust customer support in a variety of channels ranging from email to live chat. This is an important consideration, especially for new users who are likely to require assistance somewhere along their site-building journey.
Squarespace:
Squarespace offers email support and chat support to its users. There’s no phone support, but the platform does offer a 24/7 callback option for premium users.
You can get additional help through the Help Center which is filled with value-packed resources, including in-depth articles, how-to guides, video tutorials, and webinars on every topic pertaining to the website builder.
You can also reach the Squarespace support team on the Squarespace Forum, as well as on Twitter and other social media platforms.
Bandzoogle:
Bandzoogle is designed to make it as easy as possible for you to figure out everything on your own. But, should you require assistance using the music website builder, you can reach the support team at any time of day or night via live chat or email.
There’s always a knowledgeable expert on hand to answer your questions and help you with your website creation or management process.
If you prefer the self-help option, you can browse through the website’s knowledge base and FAQ page to find the answers you need. There’s also a vibrant user forum on which you can interact with other users who are on the same journey as you.
Winner: Tie
Both Squarespace and Weebly offer robust support for their users. If you need assistance at any stage of your website-building journey, you can get it in a number of ways ranging from live chat to dedicated personal email.
7. Pricing
Squarespace:
Squarespace has four growth-focused plans to choose from. They are as follows:
- Free Trial: $0/Month: You can sign up for a free trial to test out the platform’s core features. No credit card is required, and you can publish a website on a subdomain. However, this free trial has limited features, which is why it’s a good idea to upgrade to one of the premium plans if you want to build a professional website.
- Personal Plan: $16/Month: If you opt for the annual website plan, you get a free custom domain for the year. This plan also comes with SSL security, unlimited bandwidth, and built-in SEO features for website visibility.
- Business Plan: $23/Month: The “Business” plan includes everything in the “Personal” plan plus unlimited contributors, professional email, premium integrations, and promotional banners and pop-ups. You also get access to Squarespace Video Studio App to help you create and share engaging videos.
- Basic eCommerce: $27/Month: The Basic eCommerce plan has everything in the “Business” plan. It also comes with 0% transaction fees. Just note that your payment processor might still apply its own transaction fees. This plan also includes product reviews, customer accounts, products on Instagram, and point-of-sale which allows you to sell in person using the Commerce app.
- Advanced Commerce: $49/Month: The Advanced Commerce plan has everything in the “Basic eCommerce” plan + abandoned cart recovery features, and the ability to sell subscriptions. You also get advanced discounts, advanced shipping, and commerce APIs.
Bandzoogle:
Bandzoogle has three premium plans designed to help take your music from garage to arena. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial, and you can change your plan at any time.
- Lite Plan: $8.29/Month: This plan is ideal for bands that are just starting out. It has all the basics to get your music website online. You can create 10 pages, 10 tracks, and 100 folders. It comes with SSL security, fan data, themes, and custom design tools. You also get a range of selling tools, including subscriptions, music download sales, crowdfunding, and 0% commission fees. There are built-in SEO tools, a tour calendar, and electronic press kits (EPKs), and you can have 100 fan subscribers on your mailing list.
- Standard Plan: $12.46/Month: This plan is ideal for bands growing a fan base. It comes with all the basics, including unlimited award-winning support, a free domain name, premium hosting, unlimited bandwidth, and hundreds of mobile-read, music-focused themes. There’s also a built-in blog and music player, as well as tools to sell music downloads, subscriptions, merch, and crowdfunding.
- Pro Plan: $16.63/Month: This plan has everything in the Standard plan. You also get advanced tools that are perfect for established bands. For example, you get unlimited pages, tracks, and folders, together with advanced fan data features, video headers, custom fonts, and the ability to sell tickets. You can bundle products, use Facebook pixels, and integrate third-party print-on-demand tools for your merch.
Winner: Bandzoogle
Starting from just $8.29/month, the pricing for Bandzoogle hits all the right notes. You’ll be able to sell music without paying a commission. You also get access to crowdfunding tools which is a big plus for musicians who want to run fan-funded projects.
Final Thoughts
As this guide has shown, Squarespace and Bandzoogle target diverse user categories, which makes it hard to choose the best website builder for musicians.
Ultimately, your choice will depend on your goals and the integrated functionality you want in a website creation system.
To quickly recap:
Choose Squarespace if: You want an all-in-one website builder with stunning mobile-friendly templates and integrated features to build any type of web project, including music websites. You’ll find plenty of pre-made templates in the music category, each of which comes with an abundance of built-in functionality to help you run a successful music website.
Alternatively, check out how Squarespace compares to some other website builders:
You may also want to read my Squarespace review to fully understand what this website builder can offer.
Choose Bandzoogle if: You want a specialized site builder to develop your music website. Bandzoogle comes with industry-specific tools and customization solutions to help all types of musicians with their projects. You’ll get all the tools you need to build a website, promote, sell, and manage your music online – all without the need to handle code or hire expensive developers.
Check out how Bandzoogle compares to Wix in my comparison article.