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There are a variety of website editors and portfolio platforms available in today’s largely digital world. Still, it is always challenging to choose between those and avoid getting lost.
So, if you are a creative person like, say, a photographer, or graphic designer, you have come across Adobe Portfolio and Squarespace.
If you want to create a page template for a website or app with minimal effort on a high-quality platform, check out this Adobe Portfolio vs Squarespace comparison article.
Adobe Portfolio vs Squarespace Overview
You can use Adobe Portfolio to create professional portfolio pages for photographers or more complex websites with the option of displaying photos & videos.
On the other hand, Squarespace may not be as intuitive as Adobe, but it allows you to make and launch websites, develop catchy designs, set up domains, and more.
Adobe Portfolio
With Adobe Portfolio, you can create stunning galleries to display your images online. The collection sets enable direct integration with Adobe Lightroom, and the best is that you’ll have access to Adobe Portfolio if you are already a subscriber to Adobe Cloud.
As Adobe Portfolio has been in the web design market for quite some time, it has become one of the most popular portfolio websites, with over two hundred thousand live websites.
Beginners and web design professionals can use the system equally well, as it does not require coding knowledge.
Although the website builder is an excellent tool, it lacks some important features for a professional website builder. Among them are eCommerce and blogging engines and SEO settings. This website builder may work well if you need a quality portfolio only.
But it’s perfect for artists who want to show off their skills, artwork, and portfolios.
Squarespace
When it comes to building a professional website, Squarespace might be the best choice. Squarespace is a great choice for bloggers, small business owners, and creatives. Despite taking some time to learn, the results are worth the effort. It has the best quality of designs and features available in the market.
With its WYSIWYG (What you see, what you get) editor, customizable templates, intuitive interface, and other features, Squarespace has become a leading content management system since it was launched in 2014
There are over three million live websites, and as a web design platform, this works well for both newbies and professionals interested in going online.
The best thing is Squarespace doesn’t require any coding or technical knowledge, but a little technical confidence will certainly help.
Ease of Use
Creating a website is easy with Squarespace and Adobe Portfolio. On both platforms, the user is guided through the process of building a portfolio with prompts that will assist them every step of the way.
Designed primarily for beginners, they are easy to use. Launching a website with either platform requires little or no technical knowledge. Both newbies and professionals use them, so you don’t even need to write a line of code to go live.
Adobe Portfolio
The Adobe Portfolio website editing process is intuitive and easy to use, meaning you can launch a portfolio site within minutes.
The first step in the signup process is to choose the type of website you wish to create. The system is primarily designed for portfolio creation, so the selection will be limited.
The program offers twelve different templates. You can easily add your artwork to your website by choosing one of the cover pages and dynamic gallery themes, then uploading it. You can build a portfolio of your works with creative galleries to showcase them and a cover page to introduce yourself online.
There is also a live-view feature included. In other words, you can see the changes you make in real-time.
The possibilities provided by Adobe Portfolio will be of specific interest to photographers. Vibrant galleries and editable covers – they’ve got it got it all.
However, there is one downside of Adobe Portfolio: you will not be able to personalize your portfolio website with drag-and-drop.
It takes a bit of practice to navigate the dashboard, and undoing changes isn’t always straightforward.
It can be difficult to find how the features and toolbars work together if you’re new to Adobe Portfolio, but when you get a hold of it, it’s pretty smooth.
But, in addition to content hosting, Adobe Portfolio plans give customers access to Creative Cloud integrations.
You can host as many pages as you want with Adobe Portfolio builder. It does not provide a domain, however, Adobe uses Namecheap for custom domains. The DNS of your server can be changed to point to the Adobe IP address if you want to connect to an existing domain, or alternatively, you can use the Adobe subdomain to publish your site, which is helpful, like https://lapseoftheshutter.myportfolio.com/.
Squarespace
Compared to Adobe Portfolio, Squarespace is a much more versatile Content Management System (CMS). Beginners will find its user interface extremely easy to use.
By using its style editor, you can easily change basic template design elements such as font colors and heading sizes. Squarespace also makes it very easy to edit content.
This site has a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to display your content however you would like, and we all know that the drag-and-drop option is the easiest and the best. Using drag and drop, you can move text and image blocks around a page or drop content from other sections of your site into it.
The templates are categorized by topic – e-commerce, creativity, design, portfolio, or blog, so you can filter them to find what works for you the best. And the best thing is each template can also be previewed before starting to create or edit it.
All their plans come with free custom domains if you buy them annually, and there is an unlimited amount of storage and bandwidth available. Therefore, you can add as many pages, content, and traffic as you want. So, according to its features and ease of use, creating a website on Squarespace is quick and easy.
There is one downside, though, you cannot drag elements around Squarespace’s drag-and-drop menu because it is section-based.
Templates
Having your own website may feel intimidating, but you don’t have to be worried about getting lost in the crowd thanks to the templates on offer from both site builders.
Adobe Portfolio
There is no doubt that Adobe Portfolio lacks flexibility when it comes to design. There are about 12 different templates available. They are mobile-friendly and look pretty good, but it does, however, lack much functionality for on-page design and customization. In reality, you have to adjust gallery sizes and styles to make the gallery look as you desire.
However, the dimensions of content blocks, for example, can be edited, and additionally, users can modify margins, font types, backgrounds, and accent colors. And it is a plus that users can switch templates without affecting their existing content on the platform.
The Adobe Portfolio does not have a typical drag-and-drop editor, but it does include several baseline sections and pages you may customize and change in its ready-to-use templates. But, because of that, the process is more challenging.
There are also some functions that are confusing, such as creating a new page from scratch without any of the original sections or elements. Nevertheless, it appears to be pretty user-friendly.
To present your talent and your work to the target audience, you can set up a fully responsive multi-page website with Adobe Portfolio. As part of the software, each website includes sample material and a contact page to simplify user interaction.
Likewise, it is possible to create a Welcome page here that will be an ideal option for a personal landing page or a digital business card, for example. Other pages can be added as well if required.
If you have high-resolution images to show, Adobe Portfolio is amazing. Almost everyone who is a photographer would find this platform to be ideal. Lightroom and Photoshop integration, for example, make sense only if your work is primarily visual.
Squarespace
Meanwhile, Squarespace has a broader selection of templates. In comparison with Adobe Portfolio, Squarespace offers about 113 templates, where their design, style, and usability make them very popular.
The website builder’s catalog of themes is also neatly organized by category, meaning almost any type of website can be created using Squarespace’s website templates.
There are several categories of templates in the builder and each category has its own features and layouts. So, besides creating online stores, you can also create online photo galleries, personal blogs, and professional CVs.
There are, however, more customization options with Squarespace. The templates can be customized by changing their color themes, and you can also customize font styles, section widths, and page alignments. Users can modify and adapt templates easily and quickly, and the page management is easy, including changing photos, changing text, modifying sections, and modifying design settings.
Additionally, users can add a wide range of sections, and individual elements can be customized. You can’t play around as freely as you can, say, with Wix or custom build portfolio, but it has a lot more creative control than Adobe Portfolio.
You can always use the platform’s built-in CSS editor if you want to make your own templates.
Squarespace, on the other hand, is amazing for creating a full-fledged website. The best place for your business to upload existing work, create a blog, sell products, or make video presentations is Squarespace.
Features and Integrations
If you are an artist who wants to showcase your work, Adobe Portfolio is a good option. Other than that, it doesn’t offer many tools and features.
Adobe Portfolio is much simpler to use than Squarespace, but Squarespace, on the other hand, offers more tools and features.
In terms of features and flexibility, Adobe Portfolio and Squarespace cannot be compared equally as they serve different purposes. There are, however, a few key differences that need to be mentioned.
Adobe Portfolio
When it comes to showcasing your work, Adobe Portfolio offers enough features, such as the possibility to make photo galleries in almost any format, style or layout they want.
There is no eCommerce engine integrated, so it is not capable of creating and managing web stores. Given the website builder’s ability to create cover pages, this seems really odd, but it is what it is. However, let’s take a look at what Adobe Portfolio offers:
- There are numerous features Adobe offers you for your personal website, such as Google Analytics tracking, password-protected pages, a personalized URL, Adobe Fonts….
- Design flexibility and responsiveness- Adobe Portfolio offers professional-looking templates and designs that can be customized to suit your needs. They have designed responsive layouts that are optimized for all screen sizes, and you can preview changes as you make them.
- You can automatically sync your projects with Behance – Behance is the largest creative platform in the world. Behance is a powerful networking and discovery platform, and you can use Adobe Portfolio to create a beautiful custom website.
- Adobe Portfolio’s simple editing remote lets you watch your changes as you make them.
- You can log in to all your apps with your Adobe ID. You can also associate your portfolio with a different ID, and the support team makes that easy to achieve.
- It integrates with Stock, Photoshop, Behance, and Lightbox.
Squarespace
In comparison with Adobe Portfolio, Squarespace has a lot of more advanced tools and features.
Squarespace is the better option if you are looking for a website that can grow with your business. You get a suite of tools with a business or commerce plan on the platform.
You can use Squarespace to manage inventory, calculate shipping, recover abandoned carts, and send emails in support of your e-commerce needs. And you can update your website any time with fresh content thanks to the website builder’s solid blogging features.
Here are some of the Squarespace features:
- With Squarespace, you can also use other products, such as Xero and MailChimp, for your accounting and mailing lists. Zapier’s integration allows you to connect it to hundreds of email and CRM services. Besides credit cards, Squarespace also supports Paypal, Apple Pay, and Stripe for Point of Sale.
- eCommerce tools in Squarespace – This platform is very practical and efficient for your online shopping business. You can create an online store using Squarespace by inserting a Product Page into your website, and you can also manage your inventory, products, and coupons.
- Squarespace allows you to integrate social media accounts from over 20 platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to simplify your social media handling.
- If you already have a domain, you can connect it to Squarespace, or buy a domain from them.
- Marketers will be pleased to learn that Squarespace has recently introduced a new feature: built-in email marketing. With this new feature, Squarespace users can now design and send HTML email newsletters, something that was traditionally done with a dedicated email marketing platform like Getresponse or Mailchimp, and it includes analytics.
- You can restore deleted pages and blog posts up to 30 days after they’ve been deleted with Squarespace’s backup feature.
- Whenever your Squarespace site is connected with a third-party domain, Squarespace gives you a free SSL certificate.
- You can easily schedule classes and appointments with Squarespace’s new scheduling feature, which displays your availability based on your schedule.
- Squarespace offers integration with Getty ImYou can integrate Squarespace with Getty Images to add images to your portfolio site, and you can incorporate a Content Delivery Network to improve the speed of loading your content.
- Squarespace offers baseline parameters that can be adjusted to make your website SEO-friendly. The platform also has a checklist to ensure that tasks are completed properly. You can also prevent search engines from indexing your website until it is ready to go live.
- Integrated blogging engine with full functionality.
Storage Limit
Any platform needs a good storage limit. Each Adobe Portfolio plan includes a different storage limit, and images are currently limited to 100MB each.
- Starting Plan – 20GB of storage available
- Advanced Plan – 1TB of storage available
Squarespace lets you store your images both online and offline. You’ll get 2GB of storage for free the first time you create an account. Furthermore, you can purchase cloud storage that is secure.
Store Support
Setting up a store and selling your images is necessary if you make your living through photography.
Adobe Portfolio
There is no online store feature in Adobe Portfolio. It is very important to have features such as shipping, tax calculation, etc. However, since Adobe does not allow you to sell your images in either digital or print formats, neither of these features is available.
Squarespace
Squarespace allows users to sell photo prints, digital photographs, and other products. There are, however, some features that are common to all of its online stores, but bulk product uploads are not permitted. Photographers often have a lot of files to upload, so this type of uploading can be useful for them.
Also, you cannot set print sizes, which is an important feature if you are selling photographs. However, the Squarespace eCommerce platform can be used to create small or medium digital stores.
Security and Password Protection
Creating images is a regular part of your job as a photographer. People are easily able to steal photos and use them without giving them credit because of the open nature of the internet. No matter if you take pictures for a client or for yourself, you’ll need to make sure your images are protected since the internet is so open.
Adobe Portfolio
Adobe Portfolio does not offer Client Galleries as some platform does, but the password-protected pages are helpful if you share your portfolio with clients, recruiters, or team members who need to access different areas
The search engines will not index portfolio sites or pages that have a password from the time they are first published until the password is removed. Each session of browsing keeps passwords cached (saved) for 24 hours.
Password protection is available for:
- Sub-pages: The sub-page will still be visible in your Collection, but it will need a password to access
- Collection Pages: Accesses the pages within that collection
- Pages: allow you to access only that specific page
Image Protection
Adobe Portfolio doesn’t offer the feature to watermark your photos, but you can protect them from being saved by preventing visitors from right-clicking them. It also prevents users from dragging and dropping images. However, you can always watermark your photos before uploading them.
Squarespace
Squarespace does not offer client galleries, too, so your images will be visible to everyone who visits your site. But you can also password-protect your pages.
In page settings, you can make individual pages inaccessible to the public. This allows you to make some pages of your site public but keep others private.
Lock icons appear next to password-protected pages, however, password-protected pages use the same password for everyone accessing them
Image Protection
There is several ways to protect images on Squarespace. The platform automatically marks all uploaded photos with a copyright notice. The notice indicates that the image is copyrighted and cannot be used without permission. However, Squarespace also watermarks images to protect them. It makes it harder to steal or misuse an image when the mark identifies it as being owned by the original owner.
Right-click protection is included in Squarespace’s default settings. Basically, visitors cannot right-click on any content on your site and save it. Unfortunately, screenshots and recording software are not prevented from capturing your content.
And finally, Squarespace allows you to disable social sharing by unchecking the media sites in the Share Buttons Menu.
Pricing
The price of your website builder is one of the most important factors to consider, meaning the decision to use a website builder should be based on your financial capability. So, the following table compares the pricing plans of Adobe Portfolio and Squarespace.
All Creative Cloud subscribers have access to Adobe Portfolio for free. Therefore, Adobe Portfolio is the right choice for you if you already are subscribed to Creative Cloud, but however, Adobe Portfolio has a trial period of 14 days.
You can choose between the following available plans:
- Creative Cloud – Photography Bundle – $9.99/month, $19.99/month (annually, paid monthly), or $239.88/year
- Creative Cloud – All Apps – $82.49/month, $54.99/month (annually, paid monthly), or $599.88/year
- For Students and Teachers – Creative Clouds All Apps – $19.99.monthly the first year, after that it is $29.99/monthly
Squarespace, on the other hand, offers four plans, with also 14 days trial. And, a credit card is not required.
- The Personal Plan ‒ $23/month or $192/year – Includes best-in-class templates that can be customized.
- The Business Plan ‒ $33/month or $276/year – Includes simple tools for selling.
- The Commerce Basic Plan ‒ $36/month or $324/year – Providing tools to grow your business without transaction fees.
- The Commerce Advanced Plan ‒ $65/month or $588/year – You get all the tools you need to be a successful seller with no transaction fees.
Final Thoughts on Squarespace vs Adobe Portfolio
The clear winner in this comparison is Squarespace, based on a careful analysis and comparison of both options.
But what’s the best one for you? There are several factors to consider.
If you’re a creative who wants to showcase your work on a simple site-building platform, then you can go with Adobe Portfolio. It’s easier to create a portfolio with Adobe if you already use apps like Photoshop and have a Creative Cloud subscription.
Squarespace, on the other hand, is a better option if you need advanced SEO or developer features or need more flexibility with designs and templates, or if you want to sell your products online.
However, after all, it all depends on your needs.
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