How To Create A Course On Squarespace

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Squarespace is an awesome all-in one platform, it's a one-stop-shop when it comes to creating a great website and everything else that goes with it. With online courses and memberships becoming so popular recently, it's only natural to ask, can I host my course with Squarespace, too?

While I recommend Squarespace for almost any business, there are a few areas that it falls short.

It definitely used to really fall short when it came to hosting courses or memberships, but with the new release of Member Areas for Squarespace, there's definitely some improvements.

So, today I'm going to do my best to break down the different ways you can host a course on Squarespace, the pros and cons of each, and the alternative platforms I recommend!

I will say, I only recommend hosting a course on Squarespace if your website is already on Squarespace! If you don't have a website yet, and all you need is a course platform, I'd maybe skip over Squarespace and go with a course specific platform! I'm going to talk about which course specific platforms I recommend at the end of this post, so scroll to the bottom for that!

Pros of Hosting your Course on Squarespace

It's nice to have everything all under one roof.
You don't have to learn another platform.
You can save money by just having one platform subscription.
Your course site will have the same look and feel as your website, this keeps everything really on-brand and cohesive.
The pages are easy to build out, like regular Squarespace pages you can add anything you want to with blocks.
It keeps people on your site, they will stay at the same URL address and don't have to navigate to a different URL.

Cons of Hosting your Course on Squarespace

If you're planning to use Member Areas to host your course on Squarespace, the thee main cons I see for this are:

It's actually quite pricey, and I'll break down the costs for your soon.
There's no video hosting, meaning if you want to add videos you would need to upload them to YouTube or Vimeo first which might again be an extra cost.
You can only have up to 10 courses, for most people this is fine but it really depends what you're selling, this wouldn't work for our business because we have almost 30 templates and they each need their own course page and login.

If you want to host your course on Squarespace but not use the Member Areas add on, you would need to use a password protected page. This means that everyone has to login to the course with the same password via a simple password protected page.

The cons of this are:

There are no usernames or customer account details.
Having the same password for everyone decreases security, it's very easy to share the password.
If the password got out, or you needed to change the password for some reason, you would have to change everyone's password/update everyone on the new password (lots of admin!)

How would you set up a Password Protected page as a course?

If you have a low-end product, or even a free course, using Squarespace and this 1 Password method is fine, it can definitely work!

It's a great place to start if you can't invest in other software right now (I used this method in my business for over a year and it was great!)

You may be worried about the security using 1 password, but at the end of the day, no digital product, even with a unique password, is safe from sharing. Any passwords can easily be shared with others. I've found that generally this isn't something to be too worried about, especially because there's nothing you can do to really stop it.

Password protect a page:

You can easily password protect any page on your site by going to Pages, clicking the little cog/wheel icon next to the Page name (this opens Page Settings) and adding a custom Password where it says Password.

Now that page is behind a password protected wall. Simple, right?

You can add any course content like videos, text or workbooks on this password protected page, and when someone signs up to the course, you would give them the password.

Password protect a blog page:

This method is really similar, but instead of just 1 regular page, you can actually password protect a whole blog page. If your course is reasonably large, you could separate your "modules" or "lessons" into different blog posts. So then on the main blog/course page they would see all of the different modules/lessons (aka blog posts), then click into them to see the content.

Once your customer enters in their password to the blog/course page once, they can then navigate through all of the modules/lessons without having to reenter the password.

(If you spread your course out between multiple regular pages, they would have to enter the password going into each new page, so this blog method is better if you want to split it up into different modules/lessons.)

How to sell the course / get payments / send the password:

Squarespace makes this really easy. Any Squarespace site has the ability to have a built-in e-commerce store. Just navigate to your Pages panel and add (+) a Shop.
Because you are planning to sell your course, I recommend adding a new "Digital Product".
Fill out the basic details of your course product.
Where it tells you to 'upload your product', I recommend uploading a basic PDF or document of some kind that gives them the URL to your course and the password to login.
Then, when they purchase this item via your new shop, they will be sent this document immediately via email, and they will open up the document and read your instructions to access the course!

What about Squarespace Member Areas?

Ok, so let's talk about Squarespace Member Areas! Something we've all been waiting for, a way to actually add your course to Squarespace and create unique customer accounts and passwords.

It seems like the perfect solution, and to many people it will be!

Adding a Members Area with Squarespace is just as easy as adding a regular page, so this is a huge benefit if you already know how you use Squarespace.

It's actually really simple. But it's also quite scaled back. The no fancy features makes it really easy to use and get setup with, but it also may be missing some features that you need.

The Member Area add-on works with ANY Squarespace plan, which is great. But the pricing is a little steep, for what it offers, in my opinion.

Pricing:

The Starter plan is $9 per month, which doesn't sound so bad, but that comes with a 7% transaction fee.
The Core plan is $18 per month with a 3% transaction fee.
The Pro plan is $35 per month with a 1% transaction fee.

These all include unlimited members, no ads or Squarespace branding and you can offer discounts and promotion. But aside from that, they don't offer much more. It's really just like adding a simple Squarespace page and paid customer accounts — that's basically all you're paying for.

The biggest problems I see here is

The transaction fees! 7%? That's very steep. And even on the Pro plan you still have a transaction fee, when with other course providers, on the top tier plans there is no transaction fee. You would really have to calculate your pricing and see if it's going to be worth it.

Make sure to check out the most up to date pricing via Squarespace, I've linked it below, as the information I just stated could have been updated since I filmed this.

Another potentially huge problem is that they limit your Member areas per plan, with the max being 10

On the Starter plan you only get 1 member area, Core plan you only get 3 member areas, and the Pro plan you only get 10.

So what happens if you want more than 10? There's just no option for you.

Another con is that you can't host your videos directly to Squarespace.

You need to upload them to another video service (like Youtube or Vimeo) first, then embed them. Most other course platforms have internal video hosting, which is really handy.

Uploading to another video service first may also present an extra cost, so I recommend looking into this too.

Aside form those few cons, Squarespace Member Areas may be perfect for those of you who have (under 10) courses and are already using a Squarespace website. Combining everything into one might be a big time and money-saver.

Again, I wouldn't recommend this unless you already have, or plan to have, your main website on Squarespace. If you're just looking for a course platform, I would still recommend something else (see the bottom of this post!)

So I'm not going to walk you through how to use Member Areas today, we'll save that for another day. But Squarespace has this awesome tutorial and video series that walks you through settings up everything so definitely check that out if you're looking for some guidance there.

What other course platforms do you suggest?

There are a ton of options out there when it comes to creating an online course or membership site. Most of them are DIY friendly, and some of them are really affordable!

If you have a higher-end product, or a large and complicated course, I recommend investing in a course specific platform.

Like I said above, these platforms are specifically built for the purpose of hosting a course or membership, so they are well equipped! Though they vary in what they offer, and if you still want a regular website alongside your course, I always recommend Squarespace for that!

They generally have a ton of other features that you don't realise you need or want until you get in there, too. Like: email marketing, landing/sales pages and advanced payment plans. These platforms are built specifically for courses and membership sites, so are generally equipped with everything that you need.

Here's a breakdown of my favorites/the most popular DIY course platforms:

Podia

An awesome, super simple, easy DIY course platform. Great customer service. Super affordable with plans for $39 a month! What we use to host our Squarespace Template Kit tutorials. Love it!
Teachable

One of the most popular online course platforms right now, trusted by some of the biggest names in courses! Medium price point with plans starting at $29 a month (with a 5% transaction fee) or $79 (with no transaction fee). From my experience this is kind of an expensive version of Podia, they are very similar.
Thinkific

Similar again to the two above, another trusted course platform! Pricing starts at $49 per month.
Kartra
I've recently been hearing a lot of awesome things about Kartra, it seems to have a really good reputation and lots included with the price. It is more expensive starting at $99 per month but it includes a lot (similar to Kajabi).
Kajabi

Kajabi is taking over the online entrepreneur world by storm. It is great if you don't already have any website, as you can set EVERYTHING up with Kajabi. If you already have your website on Squarespace, or somewhere else, I actually wouldn't recommend Kajabi as it has a higher price point (starts at $119 per month). The higher price point is reasonable if you are running your whole website, landing/sales pages and email marketing through it, but it's not worth it if all you're looking for is a basic course platform.
Memberspace
This one's only for if you have a Squarespace website already. It's actually a course plugin that works with Squarespace! This deserves an honourable mention because it was really great before Squarespace had Member Areas, but I would just use Member areas instead now, as it's essentially the same. It deserves a mention in case it comes up in your searches.

So, it's not a simple answer, whether you should host your course on Squarespace or any of the other platforms, it really comes down to your course and your budget, and weighing up all of the options. I hope this post was helpful in making a decision!

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