Interesting web hosting and design site I came upon here, Squarespace. I watched the intro video and a couple of recreation of mock sites they did to show the flexibility of their service. Overall, I was pretty impressed of the way they elegantly presented all of these features and examples they had. Their commitment to simplicity and usability is what really drew me in. It sort of reminds me of how we used Dreamweaver back in high school, where we didn’t touch the code, but rather worked within the design tab. Although of course, you’ll be able to touch and manipulate the code any way you please with this level of web hosting service. It embedded that sort of architecture into the service. You unfortunately can’t download the program to update and edit your website, but from what they say,
“Squarespace is a hosted web service. We do not have plans to make a downloadable version, partially because our unique hosting architecture is such a strong point of our service. To put Squarespace on a shared web host would be to ruin it.”
The prices are a bit more than typical web hosting services ranging from a basic 8$ service with 1gb storage, 75 gb per month bandwidth, to a 50$ for 5gb storage, 400gb per month bandwidth. That rate is per month, they don’t do contracts, but again, here’s what they said.
“Why don’t you offer 10,000TB of bandwidth for $2.99?
Because our service is reliable. With a shared web host, they’re able to offer massive amounts of storage and bandwidth because it’s literally impossible to use it. Your site would crash on a shared host if you sent that much data from your site. Seriously — go try it.”
Now, from the way their site is designed, presented, and the clearly professional level examples how their service works. I’d say this is a pretty good catch for someone who is pursuing a more professional market for what they do, but that does not limit what kind of website you can make. Even Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, hosts his web blog from this service. But nobody has to dive in right away! They offer a 14 day trial for anyone who wants to try it out.
Needless to say, I’ve got my eye on this web hosting platform, and looking forward to using that 14 day trial.
