7 Things to Know About Squarespace Courses
I wanted to break up the Field Notes on Pivoting Your Brand series today to share something cool that's launching on Squarespace — COURSES!
So you can now host courses on your Squarespace site. They’re really out here tryna be the true all-in-one for businesses, and its rad to see them expanding the platform, and really listening to their customers. I got early access over the last week or two to test it out, so I wanted to round up 7 things to know right off the bat.
(Side note — This info is correct as of the launch of Squarespace Courses, August 21st, 2023. It may change in the future!)
1 — It’s only available on 7.1/Fluid Engine.
Squarespace themselves have said it relies heavily on the new platform so if you’re still on Squarespace 7.0 it won’t be available for you.
2 — There’s no limit on the number of courses you can create, no matter which Courses add-on plan you choose.
A BIG YES on this one, Squarespace! In the past with the Member Areas inside the platform they limited the amount you could create depending on your pricing plan, and those numbers were just SO low, but I really love that it's unlimited here — it's going to make it a lot more usable. (More details on the pricing & plans below).
3 — Keep in mind this is a brand new product, so it’s not perfect, nor is it going to be as extensive as something like Kajabi.
If your site is already on Squarespace and you’re just getting started on creating education-based offerings, or you want to keep things simple, this could be a perfect & easy way to create them! Otherwise, don't go into it expecting it to have Kajabi-like extensive features, because it doesn't. There is a LOT of stuff they are working on though, so I’m hoping to see new features added regularly.
4 — You can build fully custom LESSON pages.
There’s some content sections within each course that aren’t editable, BUT there’s a lot that is! Header sections on the course home page, as well as the lesson pages themselves have the ability to add completely custom section designs. Aka you can build these out the same way you’d build out any other page on your site. This is MAJOR, in my opinion. Having that total design freedom is a huge benefit over other platforms. (Hello to using The Stash to help you build out sick courses)
5 — There’s currently no way to import customers to Courses from other platforms.
If you’re using another course platform and you’re looking at moving to Squarespace, maybe just hold off for now as this may be a feature they add in the future. (They said it’s on their radar to possibly add this, so I’m keeping an eye out)
6 — A few cool features worth mentioning...
You can set sign up dates to limit when people can join, bundle multiple courses into one offer, choose fixed, recurring or free pricing, and schedule individual lesson release dates, among other things!
7 — The pricing is... eh.
So currently I personally use Teachery* to host my Squarespace template tutorials & any educational courses/etc, and I really love it. It's $49 USD/month, with ZERO FEES, and that includes access to everything in the platform. (Though, I use Squarespace Commerce as my checkout so there are fees on that end of the process).
Enter, Squarespace Course pricing... Keep in mind this is on top of what you already pay for your site. Here's the options —
There's also a free plan if your site is on a Business or higher plan, where the transaction fee is 9% and it's limited to 30mins of video — this is mostly just designed to be a starter plan to see if it will work for you.
The fact all of these plans allow you to create unlimited products/courses is awesome, but those fees and monthly prices are steep (this screenshot is also the annual price, the monthly price is higher), especially at this early launch stage when it's still a reasonably basic platform — even more so in comparison to what you get for the same price on other platforms, such as Teachery, Kajabi, Teachable, etc.
I think this is going to be a decent hurdle for most people, including me. I would LOVE for all of my shit to be hosted in my own site, but it has to be worth it & better than what I'm doing now with Teachery, which is extremely cost effective, it works really well, and it also gets good feedback from my customers too.
Wanna super quick look at how it works? Here's a 5 minute VIDEO walk-through on Squarespace Courses —
So, would I recommend using it?
Right at this very early stage of the platform I'd suggest it for one main reason — if your site is already on Squarespace, you're a total newbie to building courses, and you just want that process to be as simple & as easy as possible. Or, if you're just a die-hard Squarespace fan and you can't wait to dive in, go for it!
I would not recommend it for you (or your clients) if you've already got your courses set up on another platform & you've got a system that works for you (also because you literally can't import customers to it right now, which is a major deal breaker, I know) — don't get distracted by the shiny object syndrome just yet, haha. Wait it out, because I know there's a lot of features they're working on adding & fixing in the future.
Personally I'm not gonna be using it just yet, I *might* test it out for some new education offerings, but I wanna try out a few more things and give it a good run before I do that.
Anyway, that’s my overview for now, if I do start using it myself I’ll share more, but go check out more on Squarespace!
*This is my affiliate link because it’s a product I use and LOVE.
