🛶 a real pain in the ass

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Squarespace raised their prices 25% last week, and the internet lost its mind.

I was annoyed too, for the record. (25%?? In this economy???)

Posts turned into a pile-on almost immediately.

People came out of the woodwork about every Squarespace thing that has ever personally wronged them, which got the Showit people going, which got the WordPress people going, and once the WordPress people get going, honestly, you just gotta log off.

Here’s the part I didn’t post (well, the part I typed out then deleted immediately 😎)

Squarespace can be a real pain in the ass – if you don’t know it well.

And noooobody has time to learn an entire platform.

So – as a business owner with a bajillion other things to do – you sit down to change one small thing and three hours later you’re deep in a tutorial from 2021 where the interface doesn’t even match what’s on your screen anymore and the guy keeps saying “as you can see here,” and actually no, sir, you cannot see it here.

Which is true of every other platform on earth.

Wix, WordPress, Webflow, Showit…pick your poison.

Every one of them has a learning curve, strong opinions about how you should do things, and a time cost nobody mentions in the sales copy.

WordPress looks cheaper right up until you need it to actually do something, and then it’s plugins plus your weekends.

Host it yourself or vibe-code it with AI and congrats, you now have a website – AND an intern named Claude who needs more supervision than your cousin’s kid did the summer she ran your Instagram.

Plus the time and money of actually moving 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m staying put. (This is something I’m always revisiting for you, TBH.)

For coaches, consultants, and service pros without an IT department, Squarespace still gives me the most room to build the thing you actually want, with enough guardrails that you can run it after I’m gone. Anything cheaper charges you in hours instead of dollars.

And hours are the thing you have least of.

So the platform isn’t what’s in your way.

Going it alone is 👀

Which is the same thing I said a few weeks ago, just coming at it from the side.

The actual shortcut is having somebody who already knows this stuff in your corner.

That’s it.

It’s really that simple.

And it truly does not have to be me. There are a lot of very good people doing this work and I’ll happily introduce you to some I vouch for. Maybe you need a different platform, area of expertise, or you just vibe with them better.

A few years ago, deciding to do it yourself was the right call.

You had more time than money. That scrappiness is a big part of why you have a business at all.

You’re not that person anymore, Reader.

You’re booked, referrals keep landing... your calendar is the constraint now.

Nobody sends you a memo when that flips.

So you keep reaching for the answer that used to be right, and it eats another Saturday, and you close the laptop at 6pm having successfully changed exactly one signup section.

Now: hand the whole thing to me and I’ll build you something gooooorgeous.

I do that all the time, ofc, and i love that work. Love it.

BUT some of you don’t want that, and I know exactly why: you want your hands in it.

It’s your name, your words, your ethos, your face on the homepage – and nobody gets you like you do.

You want to make the calls yourself and understand what you built, so that next winter you can add that new offer you’ve worked your ass off on.

That’s a completely legitimate thing to want.

It’s also what keeps people stuck, because the two obvious options are do it alone or hand it over, and neither one is the thing you’re after.

There’s no obvious way through.

​Website Wayfinder is that path.

I built it because nothing else out there was doing this.

And if you’re the person I just described, I KNOW it’s right for you.

You build your site. I’m right there the whole time, with the strategy already worked out and the hard calls already made, so you’re deciding the what instead of googling the how or why.

By December, you have a gorgeously aligned live site you’re actually excited to send people to.

And!

And and and: Enough understanding of it to keep it that way without me.

The waitlist gets first crack at spots on August 7, before anyone else sees the doors open. Enroll from the waitlist and I’ll also send you a Loom review of your current site and my Trail Mix prep kit, so you’re not starting cold.

​Get on the Website Wayfinder waitlist →​

Catch ya on the flippity flip,

P.S. Squarespace walked part of that increase back, which I have decided was entirely the result of the pile-on. Let no one tell you that complaining on the internet accomplishes nothing!

P.P.S. Wherever he is, I hope somebody finally told the 2021 tutorial guy about the redesign.