Squarespace recently announced a new add-on feature called Squarespace courses, which is now available for everyone with a Squarespace website. This feature lets you program online lessons into your website, with tools to let users track their progress through each course. The course tool lets you upload video lectures, text lessons, images, and any other tools you need to educate your audience.

Since this is a new feature, we wanted to break down everything you need to know about it and how you can work Squarespace courses into your website.

As of 2024, Squarespace has altered its approach for selling Member Areas and Courses and is now selling them as part of an all-inclusive subscription which covers "digital products" including Courses, Member Areas, and Monetized Blogs. Read here to learn more about how Digital Products on Squarespace work.

1. Squarespace Courses Pricing Plans

Like most Squarespace packages, the cost to add digital courses to your website will depend on how many features you want to access in the new course tool, as well as whether you opt for monthly or annual payments.

Squarespace does offer a free version of its course tool to everyone with a ‘Business Plan’ website, but it’s hard to recommend this variant as anything more than a way to test the new feature. With the free plan you can upload 30 minutes of video course content, with Squarespace charging you a 9% transaction fee on all your course sales. 

This should give you a sense of whether your audience is interested in course content, and if you believe they are, we recommend upgrading to any of the three premium packages detailed below. 

Starter 

This is the most basic cost-for-service course package on Squarespace, but it’s a massive upgrade over the free version. In addition to getting more storage for video uploads, Squarespace also charges a lower transaction fee for each sale with this package. 

We recommend this plan to business owners who had some success with the free version of Squarespace courses but aren’t yet comfortable committing to a higher-priced, higher-volume plan.

Key Features:

• 7% Fee on All Course Transactions/Sales

• 10 Hours of Video Storage for Courses

• $9 a month when you bill annually or $12 a month when you bill monthly

Core 

Squarespace lists its ‘Core’ package as the best value of its course add-ons. With it, you’ll get five times as much video storage as you would with the starter package. Additionally, the ‘Core’ package offers a much lower transaction fee than the free version or ‘Starter’ plan.

We recommend this plan to business owners confident that they will have a small to medium-sized audience interested in their courses.

Key Features:

• 3% Fee on All Course Transactions/Sales

• 50 Hours of Video Storage for Courses

• $34 a month when you bill annually or $44 a month when you bill monthly

Professional 

This is the most expensive course add-on Squarespace offers, but it also comes with a 0% transaction fee on all your sales. So even though you’re paying much more every month than you would for the ‘Starter’ or ‘Core’ plans, you’ll be able to deliver more courses to your audience with this package.

We recommend this plan to business owners with a large audience and/or budget and a generous offering of course content. 

Key Features:

• Zero Transaction/Sales Fees

• Unlimited Video Storage for Courses

• $119 a month when you bill annually or $149 a month when you bill monthly

2. How Squarespace Courses Differ From Standard Video Content

In a way, you could already upload course content to your Squarespace website by recording video lessons and housing them on a dedicated lessons page. That begs the question, “What makes the course add-on so special, and how do Squarespace courses differ from standard video content?”

For starters, with courses, you don’t have to cram every element of your lesson into a video. You can put images, text, and downloadable files into a Squarespace course chapter. Speaking of chapters, the other big highlight of Squarespace courses is that you can break your video content into specific sections, organized in sequential order with tools that let users track their progress through a lesson.

The progress-tracking capability is the biggest difference between a course and a stand-alone video tutorial. It will keep your audience on a path to learn at a reasonable pace rather than consuming everything all at once or out of order.

3. Building a Squarespace Course 101

The first step to building a successful Squarespace course is to determine what lesson format will be the most effective. If your services require a more educational approach like language lessons, you’ll want to plan a course with multiple chapters ranging in difficulty, each building off the lesson before it. And if you’re a workout instructor, you might only need a series of standalone lessons, each with a different type or intensity of exercise.

While your courses don’t need to be a big-budget spectacle, you should put at least some thought into how you want them to look and the quality of your production equipment. For many of them, you might not need more than a camera and audio tools to record lectures or lessons.

Courses should be informative, but they also have to match your brand. So if you don’t want your business to be associated with stuffy lectures or boring lessons, find a way to make your video lessons more interesting and on-brand!

4. What Kind of Content Makes For a Good Squarespace Course?

The new Squarespace course add-on will be a game-changer for some business owners and a non-factor for others. It all depends on whether or not you work in an industry where lessons and courses make sense. You don’t want to force yourself to include courses if they don’t provide any value, otherwise, they’ll just be a waste of time and money.

Below are a few examples of common online courses to inspire you:

• Music Lessons

• Second-Language Courses

• Painting Classes 

• Workout Plans

Essentially, any skill or trade people enter with varying degrees of expertise are perfect topics for Squarespace courses. You can help guide your beginner, intermediate, and advanced audience members through lessons that will help them improve their basic abilities and refine their higher skills.

5. Why Squarespace Courses Can Help Your Business  

As long as your courses are engaging, informative, and make sense for your brand, they can be a great source of passive income that you rarely have to think about. For example, if you’re a musician and come up with the perfect batch of beginner-friendly guitar lessons, you won’t have to update that content to keep people coming back. People’s interest in learning how to play the guitar will continue and beginner musicians will continue finding and using your lessons, but you won’t need to change anything to keep up with the traffic influx.

A well-built Squarespace course can also help you build a positive brand image. Educating your audience about your trade rather than shutting them out shows that you care about your craft and followers.

There are plenty of reasons why Squarespace courses can grow your business, and now, you can bring those benefits to your website, starting with a free, easy-to-use trial.