Let's talk CMSs E3: Squarespace features, limits, and the Singularity website

[00:00:00] Diego: Welcome, Carlos, to this new podcast episode. On the last one, we were talking about Wix. We are overall trying to talk throughout a series of episodes about CMS systems, trying to get this under a very wide and general overview in terms of we are considering CMS systems like Wix and Squarespace, which we have tagged into a DIY category. We are considering other systems that are more tailored for developers and for designers, and we have also barely touched the surface with other more complex systems that we were telling headless, that are pretty much, much complex in our enterprise. On this episode, we are going to be talking about Squarespace . That's it.

[00:01:01] Carlos: Yeah, that's right. As you mentioned, we've been trying to scratch the surface of the features of these different platforms, the CMS platforms that we've been having a general overview of all of them and, or as many of as we can. And yeah, so we went through different features, all from Wix, from the website builder, so e-commerce analytics and such. And now, we're going to do the same with Squarespace and see what we can find.

[00:01:32] Diego: Exactly, exactly. So, welcome again, and let's get started with the features from Squarespace. And I have this list of Squarespace, this page that is called Feature Index. I believe that can be overrun index for this conversation, and there's organizing the features as websites, commerce, domains, marketing, analytical, and so on.

So, the first one is... or the first group of features into websites, and... I'm going to mention a few of them because maybe we can discuss them as a combo, or at least we might be able to group some of them and talk about them as a group. So, this website's group of features is talking about website builder, customizable templates, preview layouts, customizable page and content layouts, content types, duplicate pages, design tools, etc. So, I am going to take opportunity of those features to very briefly mention what is Squarespace, and if you may help me, you can talk about what is Squarespace into the context of the CMS comparison line that we have been managing over the last episode.

Squarespace is a website builder and content management systems. I'm going to talk about those two concepts because those are two tools that are very often working together, but, in essence, those are different tools. So, a website builder is a software tool that allows you to build websites, to create the structure, and to connect the data or content that is going to be displayed into that website.

Now, a content management system is the tool that is not all the time tied to the previous one. It is the tool that allows marketing people, or even if the marketing people is one person instead of a team, but that overall allows the person who are going... to the people who are going to edit the website to edit, to add new content, to remove content, to add new pages, or if we're talking about e-commerce, to add new products, to remove products and so on.

So, this thing say Squarespace, again, is a website builder tool that people use to build websites, and also a content management system or CMS, for short, a piece of software. Now, may you help me mentioning how is that Squarespace fits into our classification for CMS systems?

[00:04:41] Carlos: Yes, we classified Squarespace in our overall review of different classifications that we did, different kinds of CMS platforms, we... pretty much label it as DIY. For us, that means that someone that it's not an expert in web design or web development can sign up to Squarespace and easily, with its intuitive interface and prebuilt layouts and templates, they can start building their website, they can start adding content to it and in a few hours they can have it their own website up and running. We don't need a developer; we don't need an engineer or anything. So, that's how we qualify the DIY; it's very awesome. Wix is, it's very intuitive, it's very user-friendly whenever you're trying to create new layouts or sections on your website, and same for the content management of it all.

Nevertheless, as we have mentioned before, these kinds of DIY elements have limitations and really depends on what you're looking for how you work, how your plan to scale up your website; the features that you want to have at the end of the day, the integrations that you're planning on having and else. Again, this is how we qualify this, or classify this as a DIY kind of CMS platform.

[00:06:19] Diego: Exactly. Thank you, Carlos. And the reason why we had mentioned this position of Squarespace into our own classification is because this series of conversations are going to relate to... Or are going to consist on us comparing this CMS system with other kinds of CMS systems that are pretty, pretty different from the DIY approach. What I mean is there're many people who might be considering something like Wix versus Squarespace. Two CMS systems that are very comparable, and we can get deeper into other series of conversations, but this series is more a scratch in the surface of the DIY, and glad you know how it works against other very different approaches that may be only enterprise. Our consumers are going to be interested in it.

Okay, let's start talking about features. Website Builder. Okay, it says stand out online with a professional website, online store, portfolio, or blog. You can turn with Squarespace your idea into reality. And also it mentions customizable templates, prebuilt layouts. We are pretty much talking about design and build. Maybe I can elaborate on this one. Okay. So, Squarespace is a really awesome platform for creating websites. What is... what I mean is that you don't have to be knowledgeable in anything relating code or anything even relating to design to get something to look cool on Squarespace. It is somehow similar to Wix on this approach, although, that's my personal opinion. Squarespace is even easier. It makes you easier to create something that you will like. This is in terms of website building and customizable templates. Both Wix and Squarespace are DIY platforms that work with templates.

What that means is that you're having limitations in terms of what you can create. If you are a designer and you're used to just draw and to elaborate visually on how you want something to look like, and you always just lend that to a developer. If you're that person, you might feel a little bit limited by the interface that Squarespace provides. However, if you're a business owner, or if you're a designer who... if you're not a UI designer, you're just a designer, and you're working with Squarespace, you're really not used to create UI. So, if you're that person, and you're willing to work with the limitations of Squarespace in terms of design and other things, then Squarespace is a really awesome tool.

Now, it saves prebuilt layouts. This is something I like about Squarespace. When you are designing... or let's start with the beginning. When you are creating the website, you have different templates to choose from, and with the template you choose, you will get started with your website. What's cool about Squarespace is that. It is technically one template, only that each template is having like sections, like prebuilt sections, that allow you to start with something that looks cool. But technically you can start with one template, because you... you choose... if you have chosen one over the other, it doesn't mean that you can't do something there that you are missing from the other one, because it is technically one template with prebuilt layouts, and you can't always go for template A and just drag and drop something that you need in order to do something that you saw in template B.

What else can I say here? It says customizable page content layout. Each design is built with customizable content areas, that is for truth. I believe that among the DIY CMS systems, Squarespace is pretty customizable. It is not like there are other template systems that aren't as customizable or aren't as easy to customize. One example being HubSpot for instance, HubSpot also have templates, but the approach for their templates, if you can DIY a website with those, the approach for templates is not as... it is not one that allows users with a as easy to manage interface that Squarespace is offering. So, overall, I believe that in terms of those features, prebuilt layouts at Squarespace is great. In terms of customizable templates, Squarespace is great. In terms of customizable page and content layouts, Squarespace is pretty great.

Now, and prior to go to the next one, even if it is great among DIY, it doesn't necessarily mean that this tool is really unlimited. In terms of what you can build, there are limitations, indeed, there are many limitations. So, again, if this is just if you're a business owner or marketing person, a designer, that is okay who is okay with accepting limitations, if you're that person, this will work for you. Otherwise, if you require something that is truly customizable, then Squarespace is not going to allow you to build many things. Okay, let's go with the next one.

[00:13:17] Carlos: It will allow you to with custom CMS, custom CSS. The limitations are going to be in order to make it user friendly whenever you're editing that content, making changes to it, like it allows you to have custom CSS on your website, that could work for a few things, but if you're going to make it everything custom, then it's pretty much a platform for a developer to edit, not a person that is not versed in coding or development. So, there's some kind of trade-off there, and that's why there's limitation, as you mentioned, whenever you're looking for really a completely custom design, you're going to be limited to the, as I mentioned, prebuilt layouts and templates; in that regard, you can use custom CSS for a few sections, but we wouldn't recommend to go all the way with custom CSS because it's going to end up being something that's not really that customizable for someone, or the content wouldn't be editable by someone that's not well versed in custom code or in coding or development.

[00:14:26] Diego: Exactly, totally agree with that. I was about to finish this first group of features with a mention... what... which scenarios are good for Squarespace and which aren't, like in terms of, is this a bakery? Yes. Is this, I don't know, any other type of business? Yes or no. But first, I want to take opportunity on that mention that you made on CSS custom code. Following I'm going to share my screen here with the Singularity website.

Okay, here it is! Sharing. Okay, here it is! I really wanted to bring attention to this because... Yes, this is built on Squarespace. This is, by the way, a website from Squarespace that they used in the Metal Faye campaign, on which there even was a Super Bowl video ad; this is part of that campaign, and what I consider... okay... let's first scroll through the page, and we can see that this is a really nice looking website with really cool effects. Look at this interaction when I go towards this part here, this sort of thing here, with even the face changing in 3D and stuff. Or look at what happens here when I scroll through... Okay. This is a very interactive website; look at this, scroll through. It even has interactive audio saying -click me, and if I click... he's talking some stuff. So, it is incredible. But you know what? None of this can be built with anything native Squarespace. This is all custom code. Like truly someone who look at this website and thinks, how that can be built on Squarespace will be very wrong. Technically, it won't be wrong.

[00:16:49] Carlos: It can be built.

[00:16:50] Diego: It can be built, but this is all custom code. You're really not using Squarespace; you're just coding stuff and uploading that code into Squarespace, and not only that, we might touch this a little bit later in terms of when we come to managing content, but anyway. Yes, this is a Squarespace website, but no, this cannot be built using any tool from Squarespace. It will be all custom code. That being said, I would like to talk a little bit about, in terms of design, when is Squarespace a good option, let me just stop sharing this screen. Perfect. And... okay. Which scenarios is Squarespace a good option for people or businesses in terms of design? I will argue that: first, you are a business owner, your business is having the need of several standard pages to showcase information about the business. You also require, maybe, galleries, blogs, calendars, booking systems.

So, we might be touching restaurants, local... overall local services businesses. We might be touching personal services brands, coaches, lawyers, stuff like that. And we might be touching a little bit of e-commerce, like maybe you are a YouTuber, and you have some merchandise to sell, but you're not all that into e-commerce, like e-commerce is not the core of your business and, therefore, your website, because otherwise you might be better to go for Shopify or something like that because of several other reasons. So, if you're having that kind of scenario, then Squarespace, I will argue... Oh! And by the way, and you're required to build and manage the website yourself, that's fair, because if you're hiring an agency for doing that for you, then you might find out what better solution is when having discussions with that agency. So, if you're the person who is creating all of this, Squarespace, I would argue, is an incredible option.

Also, if you are a marketing people... if you're a marketing person, I'm sorry! If you are a marketing person who either doesn't have the technical expertise, or the time to building stuff and coding stuff, and you're a marketing person alone, it is a business who is not having a marketing department, plus a marketing... plus a designers and developers department, or agency that can do desktop for you. If you're a marketing person and you require a website for, then again, the very same kind of organization, local business, perhaps, services, a lawyer, somethig tha can fit very precisely within the functionalities in terms of blog e-commerce and so on that Squarespace offers, then I will argue, again, that you are at that Squarespace is a pretty good option for you.

[00:20:49] Carlos: Yeah, right!

[00:20:51] Diego: Okay, let's move on with more features. Already touched CSS, command and system, multiple contributors, and access levels. Okay, this is interesting. Contributors and access levels, because we're talking about CMS for teams instead of individuals. Maybe would you like to elaborate a little bit on this? Not specifically as a Squarespace feature, but rather as what is this about? And why would that be important for scenarios on which it is a team rather than an individual?

[00:21:38] Carlos: Yeah, exactly! You pretty much have levels of accesses that you can... or kinds of permissions that you can give to different members of your team. Someone or just a couple of people are going to be the ones that are developing or work on the core of changes of the site, updates of the site; not only in terms of content, but a little bit of changes in terms of the design or the layout itself. You have those people who have more like an admin access to the website, and they're able to make changes or general changes. But let's say you want, you have people from your team that the only thing that they do it's working on the copy, the writing content, or graphic content as well, just imagery and copy that it's going to go into your websites.

Those people are a cost, or they don't have the expertise to make changes on the layout of the site, and they will be only having some kind of content editor access to the website. And you want to have those separated because if someone is not familiar with how the, in this case, the platform works, or in this case it's Squarespace, but it could be any other, and they start making changes and they can have like complete full access to make changes on the layout and they don't really know how to manage that, they can damage something on the website or come up with errors on the layout because they didn't know what they were doing and they had access to do. So, you want to keep those separated. You want to keep the people that are going to be editing content only having limited access to change the layout, and you want the people that are actually engine the layout of the website and the design... and some designs of it all and for them to have complete access to it, and you want to keep those separated. And that's how this kind of features work and it's really good for, again, for teams to work on the website and to for them to fulfill their roles accordingly without that being on into others people's business or the things that they are supposed.

[00:23:57] Diego: I agree with that, and I believe this is a matter of safety in terms of you don't want. If the website is small, if the business is just getting started, and you're the person who is doing everything, it's pretty pointless to be worried about access levels. But if you are talking about a larger organization, a larger website, a more critical website, like you can't afford that either because of an error or because of something internal, something gets broken, then access levels are getting an important... getting pretty important here.

And just to scratch the surface in terms of, again, the how it compares between Squarespace and other systems that can be even more enterprise... and just to scratch that surface and declut our audience understand that there are many approaches to this in terms of how much enterprise you need this solution to be, so, yes, there are access levels with Squarespace. However, those access levels are pretty much limited to whether you are an administrator who can add more users, or whether you are the responsible for paying for the application, for the software, so you can access the billing tab, or whether you are a marketing people who requires access to analytics, or whether you can publish or just schedule... exactly... or whether you... because... by the way... because we're talking about DIY systems, there are many tools that in other CMS systems wouldn't exist at all, like being able to manage email campaigns, for instance. If you're talking about a headless CMS system, that doesn't exist at all in those systems.

So, then again, okay, you have permissions to manage campaigns and so on, or to manage store the e-commerce part of it. However, those are like pretty general access levels, like we don't have a more granular way to give access to things like which pages, specific pages can be edited, or which specific blocks can be edited. So, we can't invite an external agency to collaborate in building up some landing pages and have them work only on those landing pages; or even, going even more granular than pages. What if we're required to allow access to an external collaborator to a specific set of pages? But not only that, they can't edit the structure of the pages, they can only change the content of the already set structure there. So, what I mean is that, yes, we do have access level, but there are scenarios on which more enterprise organizations require to leverage more granular control or access to different teams of collaborators, either inside the organization or external people.

And that is, well, something like Squarespace or overall DIY systems like... better not... I believe that we're not talking about Squarespace specifically; this is something that Wix is also sharing in similar CMS systems. This is a scenario in which those can't... This is like the limit on what they can do to relating this specific functionality. Okay, let's move on. Built-in mobile websites. Would you like to elaborate on that perhaps?

[00:28:19] Carlos: There's not much to say, I guess... probably there is, but I guess I'm speaking from a point of people like us which work with websites regularly, it's like our everyday thing. And most of the platforms nowadays have to adapt to responsive design. And it's very important that a website looks good, not only on their desktop versions, but also on their mobile versions, and everything in between, of course. So, Squarespace is very helpful with that, whenever you build on your desktop version, you can also have a mobile website builder which you can edit the mobile version of the website as well. So far, you have only two breakpoints mobile and desktop, which is for some people it could be just a few of breakpoints or very few breakpoints. Some people are used to having at least five or six breakpoints for your break... for your website, and with breakpoints what I mean it's the size of the screen, or how wide it is, how wide a screen is it's going to determine how some elements and sections of the website are going to look like. If there are... for example, if you have two columns, whenever you have more narrow space on your screen, then you're going to have it stack instead of having two columns, you're going to have one, and this is what I mean with breakpoints. Depending on the size of your screen do you have a specific set of elements are going to look in a specific way. So, Squarespace allows you to have two breakpoints: you have the mobile version, or you have the desktop version, and they adapt pretty well. I can mention that they adapt pretty well and look pretty good, and you can make it look as you want pretty much on mobile.

So, that's a feature that I believe is important, obviously, but it's a feature that we are very accustomed to seeing on all kinds of CMS platforms. And it's very... I don't know... it's very standard for people to build; not only at least they will have to take into consideration two breakpoints: one for desktop versions and one for mobile versions. And that's the way it goes, and that's the reason why I mentioned that I may not have much to say about it, but for some people that are not familiar with it, yeah, it's important to that these platforms offer you the ability to not only provide or launch a website that looks great on a desktop device, but also on a mobile device.

[00:31:04] Diego: I agree with that. I Just wanted to add a little bit more information for people who might want to understand or to have an idea on how it compares to older categories of CMS systems. So, first of all, DIY systems allows you this kind of feature like a magical thing, like it helps you get the mobile interface ready to go. That's very important because as we advance in other CMS systems, it allows you with the possibility some of them allows you with the breakpoints, like they facilitate you to breakpoints. So, for instance, on Webflow there are five breakpoints; here, we have two. Now, Webflow doesn't do the magic for you; you have to organize everything into each and every single one of those breakpoints. So, that's game-wide, Squarespace and Wix and those kinds of systems and sash website builders are DIY because they really truly help you do that without hassles.

As we advance even more with Headless systems, Headless aren't website builders; those are just website management systems. So, you don't have breakpoints; you don't have anything, you build whatever you want: five, ten breakpoints, whatever you want. You build those, then you integrate those with the CMS systems. So, there like we are having the most possible flexibility and also we are having zero, absolute zero magic, it turns out; there's nothing there to help you build that for you.

[00:33:01] Carlos: Yeah, the magic, quote-unquote, magic happens all behind a curtain, yeah. In terms of, as you mentioned, CMS, Headless CMS, all this magic, as you mentioned, happens behind a curtain. It's what the developer can do, and what it's set up, or well integrated with your mess, that is going to allow you to see: okay, this is truly magical, or this is really not what I'm looking for when I'm checking out the mobile version of the website. It's not that, as you mentioned, "magical"; as when you can preview something right away on the mobile version, as you do on Squarespace just by clicking a button. But, yeah, it can be as flexible as you mentioned. The flexibility is going to depend on the developer behind it.

[00:33:52] Diego: Yes. And one last thing that I wanted to add to get this feature of mobile websites to an end is that among the DIY solutions, I truly consider that Squarespace is a very good one in terms of this feature, especially when we compare it to something like Unbounce, which is ugly for someone to build the mobile interface. So, Squarespace is overall pretty good in regards to this specific feature.

Okay, let's move on. Squarespace app. I'm going to mention something very quickly on this one. Having an application to manage at any aspect of your website is something very relating to DIY systems and only to them.

As we move on to other kind of systems like Webflow, HubSpot does have an app, but not for anything relating to CMS, or as we move to Headless, there's nothing like having a mobile app that you can download to manage anything about this. It's nice to have, it's something that is only available for DIY systems. And for an... by the way, just a quote also for e-commerce, but again, as we have mentioned on previous episodes, within the context of this series of videos, we are going to manage everything e-commerce apart because the things like Shopify really try to cover everything from DIY to very cost.

That being said, let's move to the next group of features. Oh, no! We have more here, Blogging. Good, this is a cool one. Okay, most customizable layouts. We have already talked about design. It is... I truly consider Squarespace to be great for design, given the context, or given the fact that it is not limitless when you're talking about truly UI custom design and development, but within the context of that, I really like this platform. When you try things like Unbounce, which is, again, ugly, you come to realize that Squarespace is a beauty to create in there. Okay, I won't talk much about customizable layouts, I believe design is straight in that regard, given its limits.

Now, workflow. You can publish, draft, and shadow posts, or have them as in the need of reviews. I believe we have already touched something similar to this with access limits, like depending on how big the business is, how critical certain aspects of the website are for your business, you might require more or less granularity in terms of who can have access to do what.

Okay. Markdown support. Okay, this one is interesting. I believe it is interesting because, even if you take it for granted, there are CMSs into the category of more for developers and for designers that aren't having things like this one. Maybe would you like me to elaborate on this, Carlos?

[00:37:32] Carlos: Yes.

[00:37:32] Diego: Okay. So, Markdown. Yes, it is available on Squarespace. This is pretty much a feature that allows you to create links, balls, italicization, quotes, lists, and stuff. And that you can have... you have like by default on DIY systems. You can configure them as you may want onto Headless systems; there pretty much more flexible, but even so they're Headless systems that I don't really friendly in terms of following you with that. I believe that Prismic is one of them because, if I'm not mistaken, Carlos, we have a client who mentioned to us that they struggled to do very simple Markdown things on some text paragraphs on their websites. Am I correct with that?

[00:38:44] Carlos: Depending on what you want to build at the end of the day, sometimes you're very accustomed to having a bunch of features available to you on a text processor like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, and when you translate that to a rich text blog, for example, on a CMS platform, sometimes that CMS platform can have limitations like nested, bullet points, in that regard. So, whenever you have that... whenever you have that kind of limitation you can get a loop bit. Okay, so this is not really as comprehensive as we're looking for to have the opportunity of, as you mentioned, Markdown support someone that's well versed in Markdown, and which they can build wherever they want on Squarespace. Nevertheless, again, this is a good opportunity, but still, it's not as user-friendly as my guess a test processor, as I mentioned, as Google Docs or Microsoft Word, and same with Prismic, as you mentioned. So, you can have custom CSS or HTML, a block on Prismic, whenever you're processing text or a specific section, and if you're well versed in CSS, you can add tables, you can add nested, bullet points and, etc., but it's not ideal in comparison to having everything at your disposal on the rich text blog and like it's a number more user-friendly interface to come to.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I can tell about that, it's; I can be limited somehow whenever you're expecting an interface that it's very similar to what you can do using a text processor like Google Docs versus what you find whenever you have a limited rich text blog on a platform or any CMS platforms that may have its limitations in comparison some others, for example, Shopify, whenever you're going through a blog post or a description, you can see the rich text blog, and you can see the version of it all, and you can switch from one to the other in an easy way. So that's, that can be helpful, but again, it's also depending on the person's knowledge on custom HTML and CSS to make that happen. It's... Still, I believe all the platforms had some limitations in terms of the interface that they allow you to have with their rich text blogs or sections with rich text that you want to have, like blog posts.

[00:41:40] Diego: Totally. Now, just to end up this feature. If you're a Markov fan, if you'd like to try, I don't know, if you instead of... if you like to create a headline via a dash heading one or something like that, or... anyways, if you truly like markup language, I'll say, worry not, Squarespace isn't the only platform that is going to allow you with that. Webflow is having nothing like that at all, but, as Carlos mentioned, it can be done by a custom CSS, or Headless platform have nothing, supported nothing like that, but again, Headless is like the most flexible possible CMS system, and your developers can totally come up with a custom Markup that you can use on the website.

Okay, move to the next one. Shadowing posts. I will say... I will argue this one: Shadowing posts is kind of relating access levels in some manner, or maybe not, but overall this is into the group of features that we'll call relating to content management more than a website building. It is nice to have; I wouldn't take it for granted because for instance, Webflow, three years ago wouldn't allow you to shuttle something like that, but I believe today, all the platforms are allowing you with this possibility. So yeah, it's nice to have nowadays.

Podcast support. Okay. Here's when it get interesting in terms of who is Squarespace for. If you have a podcast and you want to have very out of the box tools to offering you a possibility to integrate a sort of block with the podcast episode audio into a blog post, and to integrate somehow that with Apple podcasts, then a DIY solution is great because it is already there. Instead, if you would like to have something like that in Webflow, you will have to create it use some custom code and editing that is a nightmare for marketing teams on Webflow. Now, if you would like to get that into a more flexible CMS system for your marketing team to be able to be more efficient, then you will have to create the entire interface functionality all that code, integrate that into the CMS system, then you can use it. Now...

[00:44:34] Carlos: I don't know if I would call it a nightmare, but I will definitely mention that there are more steps along the way that you have to do. I don't know; if you're talking about Spotify, you'll have to export the embedded code to get the idea of the podcast episode, for example, and if you have a well-integrated with the CMS, all the next steps will be just copying or pasting that ID on a field on Webflow CMS, and that will be it, but still, there's still, as you mentioned, it's not a native integration. It has a few more steps than in this case, native, already built-in integration between Apple Podcasts and Squarespace. So, yeah, it definitely takes more time, more steps, and if you are watching a bunch of focus episodes, let's say you have one, or two episodes a day and you want to launch all of them it all the time that you're investing in adding that to your blog, it definitely adds up, and at the end of the day, that's what matters. I guess that the time that you're wasting or that you shouldn't be investing. In that, if you're again doing that, if you have just, I don't know, an episode a month having just one extra minute, or two minutes to publish your podcast on your blog or on your site, is doesn't seem like a big deal. But if you have a workflow that it requires you to do that constantly, regularly, all the time that you're investing in that can add up, and it may not be the solution for you long term.

[00:46:20] Diego: I really like that you mentioned nightmare, that word, nightmare, because I believe that the beauty behind this series of conversations is that to identify in which scenario that word nightmare exists. For instance, if this is a small business... I'm not... I won't say small because it can be a very profitable and large business, but a small in terms of technical requirements. I'll rather change that small word: if you are a business owner, you don't have either an external agency to create something technical for you or a marketing team to manage a lot of marketing content for you. So, if you're that person, you need to start a podcast, and you need to get that podcast into your business website, then this is a perfect solution for you. However...

[00:47:27] Carlos: If you're using Apple Podcasts.

[00:47:28] Diego: Exactly. And the other way around, having headless or something very complicated like HubSpot or something like that will be a true nightmare. However, let's switch the table and see this another way. What if you are a business owner and you didn't have time for marketing, you didn't have time for technicals, you didn't have time for this? So, that's for one, you didn't have time, you're lacking time. So, you're having a marketing team collaborating with different campaigns, on which the podcast is connected... to which the podcast is connected to. So, your marketing team consists of six people, and they're having pretty solid salaries, so you can't afford to waste their time. You need them to be very efficient. Plus, you have an external agency that can help you with anything technical that can save them time. In that scenario, the nightmare will be for the business owner to try to make it work with some DIY solution.

And the contrary to that nightmare might be to have the external UI and development providers to create a very custom-tailored main solution for the six-people marketing team to be able to be as efficient as possible and to save their time, therefore, to save money. And at the end of the day, the business owner to be worry-free and to forget about what technicalities and other issues are relating to have that podcast published into the website.

This is interesting note when you consider two scenarios on which the nightmare can be at one side of the table or at the other, or, just one last example, what if you require something custom in terms of UI design for that podcast presentation? Also some custom workflow in terms of the backend for that podcast connection with other podcast platforms or YouTube and so on. What if you needed that? Then, in first place, we're touching the design limitation of Squarespace. Like at beginning, we mentioned that it is flexible; it is great for design as long as you stick to its limitations. So, in this example, the moment you want to make something very custom, crazy custom thing with a Squarespace podcast, you won't be able to.

Even if you use CSS, there will be scenarios in which you will just not be able to do that. What if you don't want to have the widget for the podcast into a blog post and the widget to be either Apple's or Spotify's?. You rather want this to be YouTube, and you want the translation to be synchronized with the audio from YouTube so that the reader of that podcast page on the website can scroll through the transcription and click to a specific moment, and then get into that moment in the audio or video if you want a video. What if we wanted that? You can't even with the CSS, you can't do that with Squarespace. So that's the kind of scenario in which we start to see the limitations of Squarespace. Now, whether that's necessary or not, that all depends on each one's scenario at specific time. But I really wanted to point out this is the word nightmare is relative to how you look at this and how each specific scenario is shaped.

Okay. Email marketing campaign integration. I believe that in regards of email marketing campaigns, I wouldn't like to say that much because our conversation is about to compare mass and overall websites management across different categories, and email marketing is more kind of function for being compared with HubSpot marketing, or with MailChimp. So, I believe that all that I will say is that DIY platforms nowadays because this is something new; this is nothing that five years ago, those platforms had. Nowadays, email marketing is part of the DIY platforms. It is very much not part of the other categories of MS systems, so Webflow, WordPress, I'm not talking about plugins on WordPress, or HubSpot when it is only CMS HubSpot or any headless won't offer you that integration at all those are created to be integrated with other solutions.

[00:52:44] Carlos: And actually email marketing platforms like MailChimp for example, they started to expand to landing pages and it happened the other way around, and they're trying to cover as much ground as possible. So, people using MailChimp wouldn't only have the ability... the capability of write email or marketing campaigns and email templates and all that, but also the landing pages that are connected to these campaigns. So, yeah, the platforms that are DIY not only talking about CMS, but also, in this case, focus on email marketing like MailChimp. They're also trying to expand and allow people to create landing pages as well to connect to dizzy email marketing campaign. So, that's really interesting that, as you mentioned, the DIY solutions are trying to cover up as much ground as possible with their features, while more headless kind of systems, they're trying their best to be as flexible as possible, but not trying to cover that much ground in terms of integrations, because that those could be covered with API call integrations that developers will do specifically for those.

[00:54:04] Diego: Totally. We have now we're talking about this specific CMS. There are many more features to talk about...

[00:54:14] Carlos: There are many of them, yeah.

[00:54:15] Diego: We're still within the very first group of features, and... we need to end this conversation so that it doesn't get to infinity. So, what I propose is to continue to talk about the features of Squarespace, again, in terms of comparing them to other categories of CMS systems out there, from DIY to enterprise, and in the... into our next podcast conversation...

[00:54:44] Carlos: I agree, yeah.

[00:54:46] Diego: Yeah. That one will be touching the following. We'll continue to talk about it's like art as indication the possibility of having tags for blog posts. We might touch into what blog posts are into this CMS compared to others in which we have more flexibility like Webflow in terms of collections, or in headless in terms of whatever want to do, or similarities with HubSpot in which we don't have something like collections, we just have blogs. We will be talking about multiple authors, then again, blog posts. We'll be talking about portfolios, and with that, I'll close the first group of features website. Then, we have to talk about commerce, domains, marketing, analytics, extensions, and so on. This is it. Thank you very much, Carlos, for joining me ...

[00:55:51] Carlos: Thank you.

[00:55:52] Diego: And we'll see you in the next one.

[00:55:55] Carlos: Thanks. Bye bye.

[00:55:57] Diego: Bye bye. Thank you.