Squarespace is a relatively new commercially hosted CMS that takes a non-technical approach to creating and editing sites. Click the link above to visit their site and TRY it for FREE TODAY.

Squarespace is blog software that is actually hosted "on the cloud". It's an easy way to set up a blog, or even a full website that can all be managed remotely. Squarespace has one of the finest interfaces for designing, customizing and personalizing your blog without knowing programming language or finding third party templates.

Standout Features:

• Fully hosted
• Unique, modular site components and widgets
• Templates by brand-name designers
• Expandable into a full website

Squarespace prizes design and reliability over cheapness, which is why Squarespace is one of only two services in this review to charge money to host a blog. However, that same value of design and reliability are what make Squarespace worth every penny, and it’s why Squarespace ranks higher than all but one of the free blog services. You really can do more with your blog on Squarespace than with any other service.

Blog Design Tools:  
No other service offers the level of customization in blog design that Squarespace does. In order to get the same level of control over your blog design in other services, you need to know how to alter the code yourself. While it’s possible to customize your Squarespace blog design by altering the CSS code, that will be unnecessary for all but the pickiest users.

The basic Squarespace template allows you to change just about every aspect of your blog page, from the fonts, headers and backgrounds all the way down to just how wide you want your columns to be and in what order. Each module is movable so you can change the configuration of the widgets and plug-ins that display on your blog as well as add and delete them at will. The number of widgets and plug-ins are your disposal are more than the average user will need and include all the most common ones, like blogrolls, link lists, calendars and polls.

The Squarespace interface is completely modular and customizable, both when you set it up and at any time thereafter that you feel you need to make a change. You have more freedom to move widgets, columns and plug-ins around than you find in other services and it’s much easier too.

Ease of Use:
Posting blogs in the Squarespace interface is pleasant and easy. A text box allows you to format your text with all the basic word processing tools. If you prefer to alter your text and formatting at the HTML level, there is an option to view the code. Adding content is super easy – text, images, video and code are all assimilated into your blog in the blink of an eye.

The creation process is extremely simple in Squarespace, and the interface for uploading blogs and pictures is simple enough. It’s fairly similar to other services. The most obvious feature that makes Squarespace more useful is the tracking tools mentioned. It’s very easy to identify which stats you are looking for and the charts are easy to read.

Software/Hosting:
They describe their hosting as having “nothing to set up, nothing to tweak, nothing to install, nothing to scale, nothing to optimize (SEO).” This is a completely hosted and managed program. They take care of the details, which means no software to install, nothing to upgrade and your site will stay online through the most massive traffic storms (because it’s hosted on the cloud). Further, the SEO is built in – they have already implemented every trick in the SEO book to ensure your blog/site gets noticed by search engines.

Squarespace is an excellent option for a beginning, non-technical blogger who wants to create a slick, beautiful-looking blog with reliable hosting infrastructure. Even though it costs more than free blog software, the appearance, features, support and hosting options are well worth the money. Squarespace is the full blog software-that-isn’t-really-software package.