Professional insight – purchasing pre-built site templates

There is a thriving ecosystem of pre-made Squarespace templates available for purchase outside of the Squarespace platform.

Professional designer Justin Mabee, however, thinks they can be more harmful than helpful for beginner designers. “I think if you’re a beginner, you shouldn’t buy templates. It prevents you from learning what can be done. I feel like templates are for DIYers who don’t really care about design, and for seasoned designers who need a little help getting a leg up.” Justin explains that as a designer, he’s purchased templates, but often spends more time trying to make the template not look pre-built than it would take to build a more custom design, using Squarespace’s built-in tools.

In the simplest cases, if you do choose to purchase a template from a designer, your site template will be created for you and then ownership of the site will be transferred...