If you are a therapist or counsellor setting up a website, you have probably come across the same two names again and again. Squarespace, with its polished templates and promise that anyone can build a site in an afternoon. And WordPress, which powers a huge portion of the web but has a reputation for being more technical.
Choosing between them is one of the most important early decisions you will make, because it affects not just how your website looks today but how much it costs you, how easily it grows with your practice, and how much control you have over it in the years ahead.
I build websites for therapy practices, including a child and family psychology service whose site I rebuilt from the ground up. Here is my honest take on which platform is right for therapists, and the situations where each one makes sense.
For most therapists who are serious about their practice, WordPress is the better long-term choice. It is more flexible, more cost-effective as you grow, and it gives you a level of control that Squarespace simply cannot match.
But that does not mean Squarespace is the wrong choice for everyone. If you are just starting out and need to get online quickly, it has genuine advantages. The key is understanding the trade-offs so that you make the decision with your eyes open, rather than discovering the limitations after you have already invested time and money.
Let me explain the reasoning behind that.
There is no point pretending Squarespace is bad, because it is not. For someone who wants a website up and running quickly, with minimal technical knowledge, it is a genuinely good option. The templates are well designed, everything works out of the box, and you do not need to think about hosting, security updates, or plugins.
For a therapist who is just starting out, has only a handful of clients, and simply needs a professional online presence quickly, Squarespace does the job. There is real value in getting online fast, and Squarespace removes most of the friction.
The problem with Squarespace is not how it starts. It is how it grows.
Squarespace operates on a subscription model, and as your practice expands and you need additional functionality, the costs add up. What begins as a manageable monthly fee can grow significantly as you add features, and you are paying that fee every single month for as long as your website exists.
There is also a deeper issue that many people do not consider until it is too late. When you build on Squarespace, you become entrenched in their ecosystem. Your content, your design, and your setup are all tied to their platform. If you later decide that the rising costs no longer make sense and you want to move to something more economical, you will find that transferring away is difficult and often means rebuilding from scratch.
In other words, the convenience that makes Squarespace appealing at the start is the same thing that makes it hard to leave later.
WordPress is open-source software, which means it is free to use. You are not paying a monthly subscription to the platform itself. Your only essential ongoing cost is hosting, which can be remarkably cheap.
The thing many people do not realise about WordPress is that the experience of building and editing a site no longer requires writing code. Free plugins like Elementor give you a full drag and drop building experience that rivals Squarespace for ease of use, without the recurring platform fee. You get the accessible editing experience and the flexibility of WordPress at the same time.
That flexibility matters enormously for a therapy practice. With a good setup, or a developer who knows what they are doing, you can achieve a more professional and more tailored result on WordPress than you can on Squarespace, often for less money over the lifetime of the site.
The psychology practice I mentioned earlier is a good illustration of this. Before I rebuilt their site, they were on a different platform paying around £30 a month for a setup that was more complicated than it needed to be and harder to manage.
I rebuilt their website on WordPress using Elementor and a selection of free plugins. The result was a more professional, easier to manage site, and their only ongoing cost is now hosting, which is a fraction of what they were paying before. The new site does more, looks better, and costs them less every month.
WordPress does ask for more upfront. It takes time to set up properly, and there is an initial investment whether that is your time or a developer's. But that upfront investment pays for itself, often many times over, across the life of the website.
The platform debate matters, but it is only part of the picture. Therapy websites have specific requirements that many general website discussions overlook entirely.
A therapy website needs to feel calm and reassuring. Your visitors are often arriving in a heightened emotional state, and the look and feel of your site sets the tone before they have read a single word. Achieving a genuinely calming, professional aesthetic that reflects your brand is harder than it looks, and it is one of the clearest reasons to involve a professional designer rather than relying on a template alone.
Therapists handle sensitive personal information, which means your website needs a thorough, properly written privacy policy and a setup that takes GDPR seriously. This is not an area to cut corners on. Getting it wrong is not just unprofessional, it is a genuine legal and ethical risk given the nature of the data involved.
Because your visitors may already be on high alert or feeling vulnerable, your website needs to be effortless to navigate. People should be able to find what they need without confusion or friction. Clear navigation is not just a nice-to-have for a therapy practice; it is part of the duty of care your online presence represents. This is another area where a professional eye makes a real difference.
Across the therapy websites I have seen, a few mistakes come up again and again.
The first is overwhelming design. Too much going on, too many colours, too much text crammed into every space. For an audience that values calm, a cluttered site works directly against you. Simplicity and space are your friends.
The second is difficult navigation. If a potential client cannot quickly work out how to read about your approach or book an appointment, many will simply leave. Confusing menus and buried contact details cost you clients you never even knew you had.
The third, and perhaps the most damaging, is the home-made look. A website that visibly looks like it was built by someone without design experience invites distrust. Fairly or not, visitors associate the quality of your website with the quality of your service. A site that looks amateurish makes people quietly question whether your practice is established and trustworthy, even if you are excellent at what you do.
If you are a therapist just starting out, with a limited budget and a need to get online quickly, Squarespace is a reasonable starting point. There is no shame in beginning there.
But go in knowing this: as your practice grows, you will likely outgrow Squarespace, both in terms of what it can do and what it costs you. The monthly fees climb, the limitations become more apparent, and moving away becomes harder the longer you stay.
For that reason, if you are serious about your practice and thinking about the long term, my honest advice is to set things up correctly from the start. That means either learning WordPress properly or working with a developer who can build you a professional, flexible, cost-effective site that grows with you rather than holding you back.
Getting it right at the beginning saves you money, time, and the considerable hassle of rebuilding later.
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