Is Squarespace email marketing right for you?
MailerLite SRE & Deliverability Project Manager Marta
A good website gets visitors. But it’s the emails that bring them back. And while Squarespace promises to deliver on both fronts, we’re putting its email marketing tool to the test.
Plenty of people use Squarespace sites, and with good reason. But do Squarespace email campaigns hit the bar, too? In this review, we’ll put its email platform through its paces to see where it shines and where it falls short.
Most importantly, you’ll learn how to go further, with the freedom to keep your Squarespace site while plugging into something smarter.
Introducing Squarespace email campaigns
Squarespace promises to make email marketing as polished as your website, with a built-in tool designed specifically for Squarespace users.
Called ‘Email Campaigns’, this add-on lets you create and send emails right from your site’s dashboard, pulling in your logo, blog posts, and product content with minimal fuss.
But it’s only available if you already have a Squarespace subscription (or a standalone Acuity Scheduling account). It’s an extension of your existing plan, and the cost is added on top of whatever you’re already paying for your website.
Pricing depends on how many emails you want to send each month. Email campaign plans start at $7/month for send limits of 500 emails and scale to $68/month for up to 250,000 sends.
No matter which plan you choose, you get access to features like unlimited contacts, email templates, automation, segmentation, e-commerce tools, and basic analytics.
Simple? Yes. But as we’ll see, that simplicity comes with some trade-offs.
Getting started: Onboarding with Squarespace email campaigns
Squarespace is known for keeping things simple, and their email tool follows the same playbook. Once your website is up and running, getting started with email campaigns is straightforward.
You can choose from five ready-made templates: Newsletter, Promotion, Discount, Thank You, or Welcome. It’s a solid mix that covers the most common types of campaigns, so you can jump in without staring at a blank page.
Squarespace also offers an onboarding checklist in your dashboard to guide you through the basics. It helps you tick off the first steps quickly: choose a template, build your mailing list, and add your sender details.
The setup: What happens behind the scenes
Like with any email marketing platform, there are a few housekeeping pointers to run through before you’re ready to start sending email newsletters. Thankfully, Squarespace’s email campaigns dashboard makes it a piece of cake.
Domain authentication
Squarespace makes it easy to get started, but they also give a helpful nudge toward best practices. Once you enter your sender details, you’ll be prompted to verify your domain. A verification code lands straight in your inbox, making this step quick to complete.
You’ll also get a reminder inside the email editor to authenticate your domain properly. Why does that matter? Because authenticated emails are far less likely to end up in spam folders. It’s a small step that will make a big impact on your deliverability.
Brand assets
Another nice touch: your emails can automatically match the look and feel of your website. Squarespace pulls in your logo and color palette, so your campaigns feel like a true extension of your brand without the extra design work.
Creating your email: The builder and templates
Building an email in Squarespace is simple, but simplicity has its limits. From drag-and-drop editing to AI-generated blurbs, here’s what it’s like to craft a campaign. You won’t get lost building an email, but you might find yourself wishing for a few more tools.
The builder
Squarespace keeps the email builder refreshingly simple. Editing feels intuitive. Just hover over any section to add new content blocks, update text, tweak fonts, or drop in images. If you’ve built a Squarespace site before, the experience will feel familiar.
However, the builder lacks more interactive newsletter blocks. For example, there’s no functionality to add quizzes, surveys, countdown timers, or events. These types of email marketing features can boost engagement. Their absence means that Squarespace campaigns are limited to static content only.
Personalization
You’ll find a personalization option labeled “Mail Merge Tags”, although the wording might leave some users guessing. It’s a way to drop in details like a subscriber’s name, but the choices here are pretty limited. Currently, there are only three personalization options available, so if you’re looking to tailor content based on a wide range of subscriber data, you might hit a wall.
AI generator
Squarespace also offers an AI writing tool to help with content creation. You can ask it to generate a paragraph, a short blurb, or a sales pitch, and then tweak the result by choosing to simplify, shorten, or lengthen the text.
But the results aren’t always perfect. For example, while the AI can follow basic prompts, it tends to miss the finer details, like mixing up sentence length for better flow or hitting a more natural rhythm (even when we asked it to).
Templates
Templates in Squarespace are clean, polished, and easy to use, just like the websites it’s known for. You can start from scratch, choose from past emails, or let the platform generate a layout automatically based on the vibe or intent you select up front.
There’s a good range of categories too, including seasonal campaigns, promotions, content sharing, sales, thank-you notes, and welcome emails. It’s quick to find something that fits your message without spending half an hour scrolling.
Sending your email: Lists, segments, and (some) head-scratching
With Squarespace, choosing who gets your email is a breeze. Scheduling it? Slightly less so. But apart from some minor UX speed bumps, you should be able to blast campaigns in no time.
Test emails
Before hitting send, most users like to send a test email to ensure everything looks right in an actual inbox. So it was a bit surprising to be blocked from doing that, without a clear reason why. The user experience here could use a little polish, especially for something as basic (and useful) as testing your work.
Selecting recipients
Once you’re ready to send, selecting your email list is smooth. You can do it directly from the builder, which is a nice touch—no jumping between tabs or settings. You can choose from your mailing lists or use smart lists like new subscribers, donors, or potential customers.
You can also get more targeted with segments and tags. Filter by subscriber behavior, organize groups, or focus on people who’ve purchased digital products.
Scheduling
Scheduling, however, isn’t as intuitive as it could be. At first glance, it seems like your only option is to send right away. The scheduling button only appears once you toggle off “Send immediately” which feels a bit backwards. The feature is there, but it takes a moment to find it.
Also worth noting: there’s no smart sending based on things like open behavior or local time zones. So if your audience spans different regions or you want to optimize for engagement, you’ll have to make those decisions manually.
A/B testing
Squarespace doesn’t offer built-in A/B testing for email campaigns. If you want to test different subject lines, content, or designs, you’ll need to do it the manual way, by duplicating your campaign, making changes, and sending each version to a different segment yourself. It’s doable, but definitely more work compared to platforms that offer easy, automated split testing.
Automation: Basic workflows, with some roadblocks
Squarespace Email Campaigns does offer automation, but the features depend heavily on the plan you’re on.
During the free trial, you’ll get access to a couple of basic automated campaigns, like abandoned cart recovery and review request emails. They're useful for simple follow-ups, but beyond that, options are limited unless you upgrade to a higher-tier plan. Paid plans unlock a wider library of automations, covering more triggers and scenarios, such as welcoming new subscribers.
That said, even with the expanded library, automation stays fairly basic. You can’t A/B test automated emails unless you do it manually, and there’s no option to run multi-trigger workflows (like branching based on behavior or timing).
You also can’t start an automation from scratch. Instead, everything runs through pre-built templates. It’s quick to set up, but not ideal if you’re looking for flexibility or customization.
Forms and pop-ups: Some wins, some hidden costs
Adding forms to your Squarespace website is refreshingly simple. You can drag and drop a form onto your website builder, then tweak the content, design, and storage settings to fit your needs.
It’s also easy to connect each form to a specific mailing list, set up an automatic confirmation email, and enable Google reCAPTCHA to help keep bots out of your inbox. Quick, clean, and very beginner-friendly.
Pop-ups, however, are a different story.
While you can create promotional pop-ups to collect emails or highlight offers, they’re only available if you're on a paid Business plan, which costs $23/month, separate from your email campaign subscription.
It’s an extra cost that might catch some users off guard, especially if they assumed pop-ups came standard with email marketing features.
Segments and groups: Smart labels, basic insights
Squarespace makes it easy to organize your audience with smart segments. These are pre-built categories like new subscribers, repeat customers, potential customers, and more. These show up right inside the “Lists & Segments” panel, so you can quickly target specific types of contacts without needing to create custom rules from scratch.
You can also create your own mailing lists or filter contacts using tags, which gives you some flexibility. This is great if you're new to email marketing, but potentially limiting if you want deep segmentation based on behavior or engagement.
On the analytics side, the Contacts dashboard gives you a snapshot of your audience with basic insights: total contacts, number of subscribers, customer count, and weekly growth.
It’s a nice at-a-glance view, but if you're after more detailed reporting (like engagement by segment, or subscriber lifetime value), you won’t find it here.
Summary: Squarespace email marketing pros and cons
Here’s a quick overview of how Squarespace’s email campaign features stack up.
| ✅ Pros | ❌ Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy to use, clean interface | No smart send time or timezone-based delivery |
| Built-in integration with Squarespace sites | No A/B testing available to refine campaigns |
| Templates match your website branding | Lacks interactive content blocks (no quizzes, timers, etc.) |
| Includes abandoned cart and review request automation | Limited automation options (no multi-trigger workflows or custom setup) |
| Hidden costs: For example, pop-ups are only available with a separate Business plan |
Ultimately, Squarespace Email Campaigns do a fine job for simple, good-looking newsletters, especially if you're already using a Squarespace website.
But if you're ready to grow your list, boost engagement, and fine-tune your strategy, you might start feeling boxed in.
That’s where MailerLite stands out.
If you want to:
Avoid surprise add-ons or plan stacking, then you’ll find MailerLite’s pricing is transparent, with its Free plan alone offering 12,000 monthly emails
Run built-in A/B tests for subject lines, content, and timing
Use interactive design blocks like countdown timers, surveys, and quizzes to keep subscribers engaged
Then MailerLite could be the upgrade your email marketing deserves (and yes, you can still connect it with your Squarespace site). Or, if you want to simplify your marketing campaigns, you can also design your own websites and landing pages right within MailerLite.
How MailerLite goes further
Squarespace covers the basics, but if you’re serious about email marketing, MailerLite gives you the tools to go from “good enough” to actually getting results.
A/B and multivariate testing
With MailerLite, A/B testing isn’t a manual workaround. It’s built right in. You can test subject lines, content, automations, landing pages, and more, then let the platform automatically send the winning version. It’s a simple way to improve conversions with every campaign. And you can use AI to automatically generate multiple versions before you, so that fine-tuning is simpler than ever.
Advanced automation and large templates
MailerLite’s automation features go beyond basic campaigns. You can start from scratch, use advanced triggers, branch workflows, and send emails based on behavior, anniversaries, time delays, or subscriber activity. There’s also a big library of pre-built automation templates to help you get started fast.
Large newsletter template gallery
Want more design variety? MailerLite has you covered with a wide selection of email templates for every occasion, from Black Friday to product launches, announcements, and beyond. They're modern, mobile-friendly, and fully customizable.
Integrations (including website builders and e-commerce) + API
MailerLite plays nicely with your other tools. It has integrations with platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, WordPress, and of course, Squarespace:
Squarespace Forms: Collect subscribers from your Squarespace site and send them to MailerLite
Squarespace e-commerce: Connect your Squarespace online store with MailerLite
You’ll also find integrations for CRMs, payment tools, and Zapier. Prefer to build your own setup? MailerLite offers a powerful API, too.
Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes look at MailerLite’s Squarespace integration.
Advanced builder with dynamic content
Beyond drag-and-drop basics, MailerLite’s newsletter builder includes dynamic content blocks. That means you can show different content to different subscribers (all in the same email) based on tags, segments, or behavior. It’s a smart way to stay relevant without sending multiple newsletters. Plus, you can add interactive elements like quizzes, surveys, and countdown timers, no third party tools needed.
Advanced segmentation
MailerLite gives you advanced segmentation options, letting you group your audience by sign-up source, email behavior, purchase history, location, and more. You can stack multiple rules and filters to target exactly who you need.
Auto resend, deliver by time zones, schedule emails
These handy features help you optimize your send times without the guesswork. You can auto-resend to non-openers, schedule emails based on your subscribers’ time zones, or simply pick the best time in advance. Advanced plan users can also try smart sending, which lets you send campaigns at the time when readers are most likely to open.
Performance analytics
MailerLite gives you detailed email performance reports. You’ll see opens, clicks, unsubscribes, link activity, device breakdowns, and more, all presented in a clean, easy-to-understand dashboard. You can also create websites and landing pages and track their conversion rates, too.
Pricing
MailerLite’s pricing is not only more affordable (especially at higher volumes), but it also includes websites and landing pages in every plan, even the free one.
| Squarespace email pricing (added to main plan) | MailerLite pricing (for up to 500 subscribers) |
|---|---|
| Starter (+$7/ month) Up to 500 emails | Free ($0/ month) Up to 12,000 emails |
| Core (+$14/ month) Up to 5000 emails | Growing Business ($9/ month) Unlimited monthly emails |
| Pro (+$34/ month) Up to 50,000 emails | Advanced ($18/ month) Unlimited monthly emails |
| Max (+$68/ month) Up to 250,000 emails |
Ready to go further?
If you’ve outgrown the basics or want more control over your email marketing, MailerLite is ready when you are. Start with the free plan—no credit card, no pressure—and see what it can do for your business.
Hi! I'm Megan, and I'm a freelance writer based in the heart of Paris (and never too far from a good croissant). I started my career at MailerLite, where I discovered the power of great email marketing, and it's a tool I still use for my own business today!
