All About Courses on Squarespace
Squarespace’s latest update completely revamps digital products and adds a new feature: the ability to add course content right on your own Squarespace website! If you’ve been toying with the idea of augmenting your eCommerce lineup with a course or other digital product - I think you’re going to be so excited by this. If you haven’t yet thought about adding a course or digital bundle to your online shop, I think that once you’ll see how easy and beautiful it is your mind is going to start thinking of things (or at least that was just me 🤣)!
Crash Course on Squarespace Courses?
It’s as simple as it sounds and as pretty as you’d expect a feature from Squarespace to be! Squarespace Courses allows you to build online courses, offer them for sale in whatever way works for you and have everything live right online next to the rest of your content. Here’s the features in a nutshell:
Keep your students & customers on your site with everything you sell in one place.
Create a standalone course or bundle digital products together.
Offer pricing that works for you: one-time payments that offer lifetime access, monthly access with recurring payments, or free!
Courses can feature video, text or whatever content fits your needs & industry.
Offer discounts & promotions on digital products.
Customers are all managed in one place - the same as customers buying other products types from you.
Most importantly, it's easy to make your content look good because it's Squarespace! Built-in project tracking, clean course navigation, simple chapters & lessons and a beautiful course overview page are just the latest.
What’s the difference between Courses and Member Areas?
Good Q. Courses allow you to create sequential lessons (organized into chapters, if you’d like) where your customers aka students can visually track their progress. Even though both require paid access this differs from a Member Area in that it has that traditional course structure in place. So, for example: if you were an expert in making pies and wanted to offer student access to your paid video library of pie-making videos, creating gated content through a Member Area would be perfect for you. However, if you wanted to organize those videos into an order that helps give more structure to the lessons (first you talk about ingredients, then prep, then actually making the dough and rolling it out before moving on to fillings, etc.) then Courses is what you want.
What about bundles of content?
Want to bundle together your beginner’s guide to pie making and your advanced pie making tips into one mega pie making super class? DONE. New digital product pricing plans allow you to do just that so that granting access to multiple things can happen in one fell swoop.
What does Squarespace Courses cost?
Ok, let’s break this down because at first glance I’ll admit that it’s a lot to take in!
First, keep in mind that the pricing info below is on top of your regular Squarespace subscription. (Check out this post if you want my breakdown on those options. Hint: I always recommend at least Basic Commerce to all my clients to avoid transaction fees and score a ton of other perks.) Now this is also a benefit because if you’re on a Commerce Plan already, technically you don’t need to add anything else in order to start selling a Course or other digital product such as a Member Area. There are some
SELLING W/O ADD-ON
Any Commerce Plan
9% Transaction Fees on Digital Products
(still 0% fee for physical products)
Digital Products Add-On Pricing
Starter
7% Transaction Fees
10 Hours of Video Storage
$9/mo
Core
3% Transaction Fees
50 Hours of Video Storage
$34/mo
Professional
0% Transaction Fees
Unlimited Video Storage
$119/mo
So, as you can see the only thing that’s different about the options above are the transaction fees and the # of hours of allowed video storage. All other features including the ability to sell unlimited courses & memberships, have unlimited students, offer multiple pricing plans including bundled options, and access to customer analytics & insights are all included on ALL plans.
How does this pricing compare to other learning management platforms?
Things range quite a bit in this space so it can be tough to compare apples to apples. For example, my favorite course platform up to this point has been Podia and it’s most expensive plan tops out at $75/mo.
Comparatively speaking that does make Squarespace the more expensive option however, I think there’s something to having everything in one place and I’ll tell you what: for all the years I’ve promoted Podia, I’ve never truly felt compelled to create my own content to sell there. And, yet, as a beta tester for Squarespace Courses I was inspired to get to it and have already added three new courses to my shop with another in the works. At some point, the ease of use - and just how GOOD it looks - were just never there for me on Podia. And since I can now sell access to gated content alongside other digital products right where I’m also promoting my services it just makes sense to keep everything under one roof. (You know I love a streamlined tech stack! Worth a million dollars in this minimalist’s mind!)
Here’s how similar plans on other platforms compare to Squarespace’s top-of-the-line Professional Digital Products Add-On:
Kajabi - $399/mo
Teachable - $199/mo
Thinkific - $199/mo
Podia - $75/mo
Other alternative checkout methods with even more pared down features are available for less.
Bottom Line
This new feature is a really powerful addition to Squarespace’s Commerce lineup and if you’re anything like me, it should inspire you to start thinking of what knowledge you have that you might be able to start sharing with your audience. Even if you only offer a free class to start to try it out, I think you’ll find that brand fans are always eager for new ways to engage with you. Adding Squarespace Courses or new digital products can be a great way to augment your existing product lineup - or even offer a way to stick your pinky toe into the pool! Give it a try!
