GoDaddy vs Squarespace: year-1 cost, what each plan includes, and what we have not checked
GoDaddy is best known for domains. Its website builder is now sold as Airo AI Builder: you describe a site and it generates it. Squarespace is a template-and-editor builder with a long history in design. Both bill yearly, both include a free domain for the first year, and both sell to the same small-business buyer. This page lines them up on what their own US pages say, read on November 9, 2026.
We have not bought, built or cancelled anything on either platform yet. The part of this comparison we care most about, what happens at the GoDaddy checkout, has not been tested. We say what buyers report and we put that test first in the list at the bottom. See how we test.
The short version
| GoDaddy Airo AI Builder | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan, billed yearly | Starter, $9.99/mo ($119.88 a year) | Basic, $19/mo ($228 a year) |
| Plan most small businesses will look at | Professional, $24.99/mo ($299.88 a year) | Core, $29/mo ($348 a year) |
| Year-2 price shown on the plan page? | No | No |
| Free domain | First year, on annual plans | First year, on annual plans, standard-priced domains only. Renews at the standard rate |
| Refund | 30 days on annual plans, but not once any AI credits are used | 14 days on a first annual plan, minus the free domain’s cost. None on renewals |
| Leaving | Page says you can download your code anytime | Partial export: no store pages |
| Best at | Getting a site generated fast, bookings on the mid plan | Design, templates, no store transaction fee from Core |
Prices come from our renewal price tracker, which records each official page and its read date. Year 1 is the only year we total, because neither company shows a renewal price. Details below.
What each plan costs in year 1
| Plan | Billed yearly | Year 1 total | Year 2 and later |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy Airo Starter | $9.99/mo | $119.88 | Not shown on the plan page |
| GoDaddy Airo Professional | $24.99/mo | $299.88 | Not shown on the plan page |
| Squarespace Basic | $19/mo | $228 | Not shown. Squarespace shows one list price |
| Squarespace Core | $29/mo | $348 | Not shown. Squarespace shows one list price |
Sources: GoDaddy website builder page and Squarespace pricing, read November 9, 2026 (GoDaddy’s price row was also logged November 8 in the tracker).
Why there are no 3-year totals here: GoDaddy publishes no renewal price for Airo AI Builder. Its terms, as logged in our tracker, say prices can change at any time and renewals bill at the then-current rate. Squarespace shows no separate renewal price either. Its terms say plans renew for an equal period and fees can change. Multiplying today’s price by three would be a guess, so we do not do it. If you want multi-year totals for hosts that do publish renewal prices, see the renewal price tracker.
GoDaddy’s page also says: “Airo AI Builder costs less than Wix, Squarespace, Lovable, and Base44.” On year-1 list prices, Starter ($119.88) is below Squarespace Basic ($228). That is GoDaddy’s claim about itself, and the plans differ, so read the next section before you treat it as a like-for-like saving.
Monthly billing exists on both. We did not record GoDaddy’s month-to-month prices, so this page compares yearly billing only. Squarespace’s monthly prices are $25 (Basic) and $39 (Core).
What each plan includes
Only what each company’s page lists. A feature that is not listed is “not listed”, not “not included”.
| GoDaddy Starter | GoDaddy Professional | Squarespace Basic | Squarespace Core | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI | 150 AI credits a month | 300 AI credits a month | 10 AI credits, one time | 20 AI credits a month |
| Sites you can publish | 1 | Up to 10 | Not listed | Not listed |
| Online payments | Pay by link or QR code | Online payments and deposits | Yes, through Squarespace Payments | Yes |
| Store transaction fee | Not listed | Not listed | 2% | 0% |
| Appointment bookings | Not listed | Listed | Not listed in the plan table | Not listed in the plan table |
| Email marketing | Not listed (marketing campaigns and posts are) | Mailchimp and other connectors | Newsletter blocks, contacts panel | Adds a Mailchimp integration |
| Free professional email inbox | Not listed on the plan page | Not listed on the plan page | No | Free first year of Google Workspace |
| Support | “24/7 expert support” | Same | “24/7 customer support” | Same |
Sources: GoDaddy website builder page and Squarespace pricing page, read November 9, 2026.
A few things worth knowing:
- Bookings are the clearest gap. GoDaddy lists “Appointment bookings” on Professional and above. Squarespace’s plan table, as we read it, lists restaurant bookings through an OpenTable block but no appointment scheduling. We did not look for a separate Squarespace scheduling product, so check before you rule it out.
- Selling online. GoDaddy’s store page says GoDaddy Payments costs “2.7% + 30¢ per transaction” (GoDaddy online store page). Squarespace charges 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic and Core, 3.2% + 30¢ on American Express and some business cards, and a 2% store transaction fee on Basic only. We did not find a GoDaddy transaction fee on its plan page, and we did not check GoDaddy’s terms for one. For order-by-order math on Squarespace, see Shopify vs Squarespace.
- AI credits are not the same thing on both sides. On GoDaddy they power the whole build, and they decide your refund (next section). On Squarespace they cover its AI features, and Basic gets 10 once, not monthly.
- GoDaddy says editing is free of credits. Its page: “Edit text and images without using credits.”
- Branding. GoDaddy lists “Remove Airo branding” under “Coming soon” on Professional and Ultimate. Today that means Airo branding stays.
Refunds and the free domain
GoDaddy’s refund policy (last revised September 14, 2026) says annual plans that include AI credits “are refundable within 30 days (720 hours) of the date of transaction as long as no AI Credits given as part of the plan have been consumed and no AI-generated content has been downloaded or exported, otherwise the subscription becomes non-refundable.” The policy says this applies to “Airo AI Builder”. Since a builder that works by credits uses them as soon as you build, the 30 days may be shorter in practice. Read: GoDaddy refund policy, November 9, 2026.
The same policy has a rule that matters for the “free” domain: if a purchased product includes a free domain and you cancel the product, “the list price for the domain name will be deducted from the refund amount”. So a refund on a plan with a free domain comes back smaller by the domain’s list price.
Squarespace’s refund policy (updated May 21, 2026) gives a full refund on an annual plan cancelled within 14 days of purchase, with the cost of the domain deducted. Monthly plans and renewal payments are not refunded. Its pricing page offers a 14-day free trial (“Free for 14 days”) and says domains registered through the free-domain offer “will renew at our standard rate, plus applicable taxes, after the first year.”
We did not find GoDaddy’s renewal price for a free domain on the pages we read, so we leave it out.
Checkout add-ons: what buyers report
This is the part we want to test ourselves, and have not. Our spec for this page was GoDaddy’s pre-ticked extras at checkout. Here is what we have, and how thin it is.
Our review sample (1,341 posts and reviews from Reddit, App Store and Trustpilot, collected November 8, 2026) contains 5 GoDaddy rows that mention add-ons, upsells, extras, checkout or a cart. None clearly describes a pre-ticked box at checkout. The closest are these buyer reports, which are one person’s account each, not our measurement:
- A Reddit user wrote: “So yesterday I get a notification of a large charge made to my credit card. This morning I check and it seems to be a 3 year plan for Office 365 I didn’t ask for.” (r/webhosting, January 14, 2026; the same post also appears on r/godaddy.) The text we kept does not say how the plan got on the account.
- Another post: “GoDaddy focuses entirely on sales and upselling rather than delivering functional services.” It is about security and migration services bought later, not checkout (r/webhosting, August 15, 2026).
These show buyers feel upsold and sometimes find charges they did not expect. They do not show that a checkout box is pre-ticked, and none is about Airo AI Builder specifically. For Squarespace, our sample’s loudest complaint is about price changes, not add-ons. One Squarespace user wrote: “My site went from $192 to $348. This is the biggest slap in the face ever.” (r/squarespace, July 18, 2026). Treat it as one report. It is not evidence of what Squarespace charges every customer.
What to do before we have our own result: at any checkout, scroll the whole cart, untick anything you did not choose, and read the total and the term before paying.
Leaving
- GoDaddy: the Airo plan page says “Download your code anytime” and “export your code anytime”. We have not looked at what a download contains or how a domain moves out.
- Squarespace: the site export includes layout pages, one blog page (with posts and up to 1,000 comments per post) and, on version 7.0, gallery pages. Store pages, product blocks and extra blog pages are not exported (Squarespace help, updated October 9, 2026, read November 9, 2026).
What AI assistants say
We have no “GoDaddy vs Squarespace” question in our November 8, 2026 scan of 4 engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity), so we have no AI answer to this comparison. Two nearby prompts exist. Each was run once per engine, so treat the results as a snapshot.
“What is the best website builder for a small business in 2026?”
- Squarespace was named by all 4 engines. Claude: “Squarespace is the best overall website builder in 2026 for many small businesses, creators, and service providers”.
- GoDaddy was named by 1 engine, ChatGPT: “GoDaddy offers a user-friendly website builder with AI-assisted setup, enabling quick site creation.”
- ChatGPT’s prices differed from the official pages we read: it said GoDaddy plans start at $6.99 a month and Squarespace plans range “from $16 to $99”. The official pages show $9.99 and $19 to $99 for yearly billing (Squarespace Basic to Advanced) as of November 9, 2026.
“What are the best alternatives to GoDaddy for hosting?” (GoDaddy is in the question, so its name appearing says nothing.)
- Squarespace was named as an alternative by 1 engine, Gemini: “Wix & Squarespace: These platforms are excellent alternatives if your priority is an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder that includes hosting”.
- ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity listed hosting companies, not builders. Perplexity’s table named Hostinger, DreamHost, SiteGround, InMotion Hosting and Bluehost.
None of this answers the vs question. It does show that AI engines treat Squarespace as a default pick for small-business sites and rarely name GoDaddy’s builder unprompted. Full scan: What AI assistants recommend. For a wider look at builders, see our best website builder for a small business page.
Who each fits
Pick GoDaddy Airo Professional if: you want a site generated from a description, you need appointment bookings on the plan, and you accept that the year-2 price is unknown. Check the refund rule first.
Avoid GoDaddy Airo if: you need to know your renewal price before you pay, you want a refund window you can count on after you start building, or you want a hand-built layout rather than an AI-generated one.
Pick Squarespace (Core) if: design and templates matter, you may sell online with no store transaction fee, and you want a free first year of professional email.
Avoid Squarespace if: you want a refund window longer than 14 days, you need to move a store out later (store pages do not export), or you cannot live with a renewal price that is not shown in advance.
What we have not tested yet
These checks are on our list. None of the GoDaddy ones has started. On Squarespace we have since paid for one month of Core and cancelled it, while building a bakery site in November 2026, but we did not log the cart items this list asks for.
- The GoDaddy checkout: buy Airo Starter and Professional with our own money, record every item in the cart, whether any is pre-ticked, the order total, the term, and whether each add-on can be removed before paying. Do the same for Squarespace.
- Reading the first renewal notice and the year-2 charge on both
- Cancelling each plan, step by step, and logging what is refunded (including the domain list-price deduction at GoDaddy)
- Seeing how fast AI credits drain on GoDaddy during a normal build, and when the refund window closes in practice
- Contacting support on both with a billing question and logging the first human reply time
- Exporting a finished site from each and checking what moves
- A booking page on GoDaddy Professional against Squarespace’s closest scheduling option
Sources and dates
All read on November 9, 2026, unless a date is given.
- GoDaddy: website builder page (plan prices, features, FAQ), online store page (payment rate), refund policy (last revised September 14, 2026)
- Squarespace: pricing (plans, fees, free-domain terms), export your site (updated October 9, 2026)
- Prices, renewal notes and refund terms for both: our renewal price tracker (GoDaddy and Squarespace rows, checked November 8, 2026)
- Buyer reports: our review sample of November 8, 2026 (Reddit links above). Reports are one person’s account and are not verified by us
- AI answers: our scan of November 8, 2026, method here