What is an online Course?

A Course is a structured way to offer your expertise or skills online.
A Courses can be a single lesson/demonstration or a series of lessons/demonstrations.
Offer your knowledge for free, via a one-off payment or subscription model.
Content can be open access to all or require account creation and login.

Why offer a Course?

If you possess unique expertise or skills, developing and marketing an online course presents an excellent avenue to share your knowledge, establish your brand, and generate revenue. Courses can also enhance your reputation as a specialist in your field, fostering connections with individuals who share similar interests and potentially unlocking further professional prospects or building upon existing relationships.

Are Squarespace Courses for you?

Where Squarespace rank very highly, over the competition, is with the possibility to make each course look beautiful and engaging - all the functionality and design capability offered with Squarespace website pages, are available for courses.
But, the competition may score higher for specific functionalities such as certification and built-in email automations.
So, it’s important to decide what is important to you - is your focus aesthetics and beautiful design first or specific functionality first?

We explore what Squarespace Courses have to offer and highlight some wonderful features and some potentially concerning limitations

Features & Limitations

Features at-a-glance

Courses landing page - accessible and aesthetically aligned with your website.
Simple client account set-up - clients set-up an account to access content or login if already a member.
Unlimited Courses.
Up to 250 lessons/modules per course.
Secure video storage and delivery. Meaning you don’t have to manage or pay for a third party account such as Vimeo (note - Squarespace fees may increase for more video storage).
Course tracker for clients to monitor progress (note - you cannot see this data).
Option to seamlessly link email automations if using Squarespace Emails.

Standout features

Beautifully designed and fully on-brand course collateral.
Ease of managing your business in one place - many users of other course platforms have a website in a second platform to achieve a more stylish selling and marketing experience.
Course content flexibility - as much flexibility as building any web page in Squarespace. Lessons can include any content - such as text, images, video, audio and downloads. Re-use content from your website.
Option to link other Squarespace services (at a cost) for a fully integrated experience for you to manage and customers to access -
- Email automations - automatically manage your members/subscribers and create beautifully branded marketing emails
- Scheduling - for booking your time for appointments, consultations, classes etc
- Ecommerce - like courses, squarespace ecommerce is easy to manage and looks beautiful. It does have limitations if selling overseas.

Limitations

No Certification or Quiz option at the completion of the course.
No Community - although many users of Thinkable and Kajabi don’t rate these in-built features and choose to use dedicated community platforms such as Discord or Circle.
Payment Processor Limitation, only Stripe and Paypal available. That said Isoblue are fans of Stripe and would recommend if suitable for your business.
No Advanced Analytics - you are not able to monitor personalised tracking of course progress
No in-built Automations - only available if using Squarespace Emails which incurs extra fees.
Pricing model - this is not very clear or easy to compare (see ‘pricing plans for using Squarespace Courses’, below). It depends on what features are important to you.
When comparing with other platforms, consider if that platform gives you everything you need, so you are comparing like for like.

Your pricing strategy - offer your courses for free or charge a fee

With Squarespace Courses, there are 4 pricing options.
By adding a pricing option, you are creating private content, requiring your clients to login. If you don’t need this feature then don’t add a pricing option, the courses are accessible via the url or via any link you may choose to add within your website.

Free. Content is gated and asks customers to create an account where content is then free to access.
Fixed-price. Single, one-time fee
Tiered pricing. Offers different packages at different price points.
Subscription-based model. Commitment to a repeat fee.

Costs - pricing plans for using Squarespace Courses

Courses are available within Squarespace website plans, Business level and above, at no extra cost. BUT…
There is a 9% transaction fee on course sales (on top of any processor fees such as Stripe). There is also a 30 minute limit to your video storage (combined video times).If offering free courses and just starting out, this is a great way to test your business model.

If you are charging a fee for access to your courses, it is unlikely you will want to give away 9%, plus processor fees. So consider ‘Digital Add-ons’ see below.
Note these fees are in addition to your website fee.

As Squarespace Circle Members we can pass on a 20% reduction off an annual plan for the first year.
Get in touch if you would like to know more

Digital Product Add-ons - Monthly Fee (see below for reduced fee if paid annually)

Digital Product Add-ons - Annual Fee
Below are the equivalent monthly cost

Getting Started - the initial steps

Add a course section to your website.
Create a layout/page structure that reflects your brand and your website design.
Customise the page settings, such as URL and featured image (used to direct visitors).
Start to upload your course content.
- Create a separate ‘chapter/lesson’ for each stage of your course.
- Add ‘lessons’ to each chapter.
- Customize each lesson by adding the relevant videos and lesson materials.
- Name each lesson and chapter.
Create a nice landing page for your courses so visitors can learn what to expect and are encouraged to start the course.
Link to this landing page from your website navigation, the home page or any other relevant page within your website.

Offer Online Courses with your existing Squarespace website