Agency Brief
Squarespace or WordPress: which one you can put your own name on
You are not picking a platform for yourself — you are deciding whether this client becomes a recurring line on your invoice or a subscription somebody else collects.
Straight answer first
Build on WordPress and host it yourself, because a Squarespace client is one you cannot host, cannot bill every month and cannot hand over — the design argument is the smaller half of this decision.
Squarespace removes build hours on a small brochure site. It also removes your recurring revenue, your access at nine on a Friday evening, and your ability to keep this site in a cPanel account beside the other thirty-nine. On a WordPress build you keep all three, and the finish becomes a theme decision rather than a platform ceiling.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 4 August 2026
Free
Client migrations, per site
24/7
Cover behind your helpdesk
Daily
Backups per client account
$0
Setup on any reseller plan
This page is written for people who put other businesses online and expect to still be looking after them in three years. If a site you build ends up somewhere you have no login, you have sold a project rather than started a relationship, and the difference shows up in the accounts long before it shows up in the work.
One fact does most of the work here: the Squarespace export writes a partial WordPress file. Posts and pages come across; galleries, products and the design stay behind. Price that gap now, because the day a client asks you to move them is the day you find out you quoted a rebuild and called it a migration.
What the client actually meets
Start with the screens your client will see for the next three years, because that is what they will judge you on. On a Squarespace site they log in to Squarespace, pay Squarespace, and read Squarespace's name on the receipt. You appear only when something needs designing.
On a WordPress site inside a reseller account, they log in to a cPanel carrying your logo, their nameservers read ns1.yourbrand.com, and the invoice arrives from you. Ours is a name they never have to encounter. That is not vanity — it is the difference between being the agency and being the freelancer who once did the website.
The money, worked out per client per month
Reseller 1 carries one flat monthly rate billed annually, plus a small charge for each active user. Run forty live client accounts on it and the platform cost per client is measured in pennies rather than pounds. Whatever you charge above that, every month, is yours.
Now price the Squarespace client the same way. Their platform fee goes to Squarespace, so your margin on the hosting line is nil and your only income is the next design job. One model compounds; the other has to be re-sold every time.
Where a Squarespace client jams your workflow
You cannot take a backup and restore it. You cannot clone the site to staging, break it, and put it back. You cannot set the PHP version, read a mail log, or reissue a certificate. Every technical question routes through a login the client owns and half of them have mislaid.
Multiply that by a book of clients and the cost is not the platform fee — it is the hours you spend being a helpdesk with no access. WordPress on an account you administer turns those same jobs into a few clicks in WHM.
Write the exit before you write the quote
Decide, in writing, who owns the domain, who owns the hosting account, and what happens to both if the relationship ends. A client who knows they can leave rarely does; a client who suspects they cannot will test it at the worst moment.
Our part of that is dull on purpose: domains stay registered in the client's name for the term paid, they move to any registrar once the registry's standard 60-day window has passed, and a full backup pulls from the panel whenever you like. Nothing here is designed to make leaving awkward, which is exactly what you want to be able to promise.
We sell the hosting. That is the whole disclosure.
There is no affiliate table on this page and no ranking fee behind it. We are the supplier, we would like the account, and saying so plainly leaves the rest of the page free to be useful to you.
Mailboxes on the client's own domain come with the plan rather than arriving as an add-on you have to explain on an invoice.
- Tests you can run before you commit a client
- One trade price, held at renewal
- Free migration for the sites you already host
- A refund policy with no small print
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
WHM for you, cPanel for them
You get the master panel and the limits; each client gets an account of their own that cannot reach into anybody else's.
Nameservers that read as yours
Private nameservers under your own domain mean a client's DNS never spells out who supplies you.
One trade price, fixed at renewal
The order price is the renewal price, so the margin you quote a client in January is still the margin in December.
Client migrations at no charge
Send us the sites you already host elsewhere and our staff move them across free, files, databases and mail together.
Cover behind your helpdesk
Real engineers are on the counter at every hour, so a three-in-the-morning fault is not one person with a laptop.
A supplier with a company number
IGI Security Services Ltd, registered in England and Wales — worth checking, because your clients are trusting whoever you trust.
Price Tags Compared
How we compare with the household names
Typical sign-up and renewal prices across the market, set next to ours — the second number most comparison charts leave off.
| Line item | Hosting SellerBest seller | Typical big-brand host | Typical budget host | Typical loss-leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Price at renewal / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Renewal price on the entry plan is unchanged | ||||
| SSL on every plan | ||||
| Site migration included | ||||
| The entry plan uses NVMe storage | ||||
| Entry plan gets a backup daily | ||||
| Live human support, 24/7 |
*The number in our column is the cheapest plan on our shelf, priced on an annual term and pulled live from the very catalogue that feeds the pricing page, so it cannot drift out of date. Other columns show the ranges shared hosting tends to advertise inside each bracket: introductory rates that normally ask for a one-to-four-year commitment, then climb once that term expires. Naming individual competitors and printing their prices is something we have stopped doing. A figure we cannot re-check on the day you read it has no business sitting in front of you. So compare us with whoever you are genuinely weighing up, and read the renewal line first. That line tells you more than the headline ever will.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Settle ownership before you quote
Write down who holds the domain, who holds the hosting account and what happens on parting. Doing it at quote stage costs nothing; doing it later costs the relationship.
- 2
Price the recurring line, not the build
Work out the platform cost per client per month, add your support time, and quote that as a standing charge. A studio funded by build fees alone is always one quiet quarter from trouble.
- 3
Move one client, then the rest
Pick a low-drama site, have us migrate it free, and live with it for a fortnight inside the money-back window before you move the book.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- WHM for you and a separate cPanel account for every client
- Private nameservers running under your own brand
- Free SSL on every client site, reissued before it lapses
- Mailboxes on each client's own domain, included
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox you create
- DDoS filtering handled at the network edge for the whole estate
- Webmail plus IMAP, POP and SMTP, so a client's phone just works
- A backup taken daily across every client account
- Renewal charged at the order price, so your margin holds
- Thirty days' money back on hosting, seven days on reseller
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
Can I host a client's Squarespace site at all?
No. The site runs on their platform and there is no account for you to administer. The only route to hosting it is a rebuild, and the export will hand you posts and pages while leaving galleries, products and the design behind — so quote it as a rebuild, not a migration.
Is a Pro account enough for client sites, or do I need reseller?
Pro carries twenty-five websites on one account, which is right for sites you own. Client sites want separation: their own cPanel login, their own limits, their own suspension switch. That is what WHM on a reseller plan gives you, and it is why a client book belongs there rather than crammed into one shared account.
Where can our name slip out and yours slip in?
Three places worth checking on every account you open: the nameservers a client sees at their registrar, the branding on the cPanel login screen, and the client area you send them to for invoices. Set private nameservers, upload your logo, and bill through your own system, and the supplier stays where it belongs.
What happens to a client's site if they leave me?
It goes with them, and you should be able to say so without hesitating. A full backup downloads from the panel at any time, the domain stays registered in whoever's name it was registered in, and it can transfer to another registrar once the registry's standard 60-day window has passed.
Read next
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Put your own name on the hosting.
WHM, private nameservers, free client migrations and a renewal price that matches the order price. Nothing added at setup.
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