Squarespace makes genuinely beautiful templates, and if you are comfortable building it yourself and never need to leave, it is a solid choice. But it is still a template you fill in, you cannot really export it, and support is a ticket queue. PeakCMS is hand-designed, yours to keep, and a real person answers.
Feature by feature
| What matters to a small business | PeakCMS | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| Custom, hand-designed (not a template) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Built for you | ✓ | ✗ |
| Edit from your phone | ✓ | ✓ |
| Looks polished out of the box | ✓ | ✓ |
| Own and export your files | ✓ | ✗ |
| Fast, static pages | ✓ | ✗ |
| A real person to call or text | ✓ | ✗ |
| Store, scheduling, email campaigns | ✗ | ✓ |
| Flat, predictable cost | ✓ | ✓ |
Where Squarespace wins
Squarespace is polished, and its templates look good with little effort. It is also a real all-in-one: online store, appointment scheduling, and email campaigns are built in. If you want to run all of that yourself from one dashboard, Squarespace covers a lot of ground.
Where PeakCMS wins
The trade is that everyone's site starts from the same templates, you are filling one in rather than getting one built for you, and you cannot take it with you if you leave. Support is a ticket, not a phone number.
PeakCMS is designed by hand around your business, it is yours to keep and move, and when you need something you call or text a real person - usually the one who built it. You edit the content yourself, but you were never on your own to design or maintain it.
Who should pick which
Need built-in scheduling, an email list, and a store, and happy to run it yourself on a template? Squarespace is a fair pick. Want a one-of-a-kind site you own, that loads fast and comes with a real person to call? That is PeakCMS.