bytebrise vs Squarespace
An honest web design comparison for small businesses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Where Squarespace is strong and where bytebrise pays off: a factual side-by-side, without marketing speak.
In short
Squarespace suits you if you only need a website and handle being found yourself. bytebrise Sichtbar suits you if you want to be found on Google, in the map pack and in AI answers without working on it yourself.
bytebrise and Squarespace side by side
The key technical and process differences. All figures are based on platform documentation and our own measurements, as of September 2026.
| bytebrise | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Rights to the code | Right of use, permanent after 24 months or through a buyout | Vendor lock-in |
| SEO depth (Schema.org, JSON-LD) | Tailored to each industry | Basic SEO with templates |
| Multilingual (DE/EN) | included | Limited, workarounds needed |
| GDPR compliance out of the box | Google Fonts hosted locally, EU hosting | US servers, data processing agreement more complex |
| Maintenance (patches, updates) | Included in the maintenance package | Automatic (platform) |
| Custom functionality (industry logic) | anything you need | Templates can be extended, but limited |
| Delivery time (5-7 pages) | 2-3 weeks | 1-5 days (built yourself) |
| Scaling as you grow | Easy to extend | Migration needed beyond a certain point |
| Point of contact | One person (Jakob, directly) | Support ticket, in English |
| Being found (profile, directories, reviews) | included, documented every month | up to you |
What costs what: a realistic calculation
What costs what? A website builder costs less if you build and maintain the site yourself. Sichtbar costs more because the work on your profile, directories, reviews and website is included. Calculated over three years:
Squarespace · 3-year TCO
Squarespace Business or Commerce plan (€23-49/month) plus your own domain. Commerce features add transaction fees, and multilingual sites add workaround effort.
bytebrise · 3-year TCO
Included: your website, hosted, maintained, secure, with one page per service. Your Google Business Profile, fully maintained. Reviews coming in at a steady pace. Your business in the right directories. Three numbers and a call every month. See Pricing.
When Squarespace and when bytebrise
Squarespace is the right fit if …
you are a designer, artist or photographer and mainly need a beautiful portfolio site with large images. You want an American aesthetic, are fine with English-language support and have no local SEO ambitions in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. And if you want to maintain your profile, directories and reviews yourself.
bytebrise is the right fit if …
you want to be found on Google, in the map pack and in AI answers without working on your profile, directories and reviews yourself, and you want to see proof every month of whether it works. Industry-specific modules and an admin backend for text and images remain part of the website, but take second place to the visibility work.
Switching from Squarespace to bytebrise
The Squarespace export only delivers blog posts as XML, no design code. We rebuild the site based on the existing look and feel, transfer the content and set up 301 redirects for the old URLs.
Frequently asked questions: comparison with Squarespace
Squarespace uses a global CDN for delivery, but the main data sits in the US. For plain brochure sites, that is often not critical. As soon as you have contact forms, orders or customer logins, the EU-US data transfer becomes complex, and the data processing agreement with Squarespace needs close review. An EU-hosted site avoids this discussion entirely.
Yes. bytebrise Sichtbar costs €490 setup plus €149 a month, cancellable monthly, €5,854 over three years. All prices are final prices; under § 19 UStG no VAT is charged. Squarespace stays cheaper if you handle being found on Google, in the map pack and in AI answers yourself. Whether the difference pays off, you see every month in three numbers: AI mentions in test queries, map pack position, enquiries via the website.
We build every site individually, no recycled templates. That takes more effort up front, but your site does not look like hundreds of other Squarespace sites. We make design decisions together, based on your brand and target audience.
Moderate. Blog posts come as an XML export, images have to be saved one by one, and we transfer custom code blocks manually. For a typical 5- to 10-page Squarespace site, expect 2 to 4 weeks of build time.
Yes. Multilingual support (DE/EN, more languages on request) is part of the standard package. With Squarespace, multilingual sites only work via workarounds or plugins; we build it in natively.
Yes, we integrate member areas and shop features natively via Stripe (subscriptions, one-off payments) or our own authentication layer. Unlike with Squarespace, you pay no percentage transaction fee.
The site goes offline: Squarespace is an ongoing subscription model with no transfer of ownership. Also check whether the advertised introductory price only applies to the first contract term, which is often the case with website subscription models. With bytebrise Sichtbar, design, source code and configuration belong to bytebrise during the term, and you hold a right of use. After 24 months from the agreed work start date, you receive the permanent rights of use at no extra cost, and a buyout for €1,990 is possible at any time. If the contract ends earlier without a buyout, the website is deactivated. Your own content and your domain are yours from day one.