The Squarespace alternative that has already started
Squarespace gives you a beautiful template and an empty page. Clay gives you a finished site built out of your Google listing, then lets you change all of it.
A real Clay site, built from a Google listing
Squarespace is a genuinely lovely product. The reason people go looking for an alternative is almost never the design, it is the evening. You pick a template, and then you are looking at somebody else's photographs of somebody else's restaurant, with your own opening hours sitting in a browser tab you have not got to yet.
Clay starts at the other end. Type your business name, and the site is built from the listing you already keep up to date: your photographs, your hours, your reviews, your map, your phone number. What you get in the first minute is not a template, it is your site, with your things in it, that you then push around until it is right.
Clay vs Squarespace, honestly
Two of these rows go to Squarespace. It is a better tool for a designer with a week; this is a better tool for an owner with an evening.
The blank page is the work
Every website builder is fast once the content is in. Getting the content in is the job: forty photographs to choose between, opening hours typed twice, a menu retyped out of a PDF, the map embedded, the reviews copied across.
Clay does that part before you arrive. Your Google listing already holds most of it, and the site is generated from it, so the first thing you edit is a real page about your real business.
You can keep your domain
Nothing about switching touches the name people already know. Point the domain at Clay when you are happy with what you see, the old site stays up until the moment you do.
If you never had a domain, the free clay.site address works for a QR code on the door and a link in your bio from the first minute.
Your photographs, already sorted
Clay reads the pictures on your Google listing, grades them, crops them for the shape each band needs and puts the best one at the top. Nothing to upload, nothing to resize.
What it looks like when it is live
Drawn rather than described, the page, the address, and what it can switch on.
What you get
- A real site, built from your Google listing, before you type anything
- Menu, booking, shop, gallery and reviews without a plugin store
- Editing IS the live page, tap the thing you want to change
- Free on your own name.clay.site, custom domain when you want one
How it works
Search your business
Type your name, Clay pulls your photos, hours, reviews and contact details straight from your Google listing.
Pick a style
Choose a look and Clay builds a full site around your content. Change anything with a tap, no code, no templates to wrestle.
You're online
Publish to your own name.clay.site in minutes. Add a custom domain and connect your own tools whenever you're ready.
Real sites, made with Clay
Open one. It is the live site in a frame, not a screenshot, so what you see is what it looks like right now.
Questions
Is Clay as flexible as Squarespace?
No, and it is not trying to be. Squarespace lets you move any element anywhere, which is why it is the right tool for a designer building a client's site. Clay gives you a set of well-made blocks and the colours, type and photographs behind them, enough to make it clearly yours, not enough to make it look broken at 2am.
Can I move my Squarespace content over?
Most of it comes across on its own, because most of it is also on your Google listing. Anything else, an about page you like, a set of prices, is copy and paste into the block it belongs in. There is no import tool and for a business site there is rarely anything to import.
What about my blog?
Clay has no blog. If you publish regularly, keep the blog where it is and use Clay for the site people land on when they search your name, they are different jobs and the second one is the one that gets you bookings.
Does Clay do e-commerce?
It does a shop: products, options, a basket, checkout. It is built for a business selling twenty things, not two thousand, if you are running a real online store, Shopify is the honest answer.
Is it actually free?
The site is live, on your own name.clay.site, with a small "Made with Clay" badge at the bottom. Paid removes the badge and connects your own domain. There is no trial clock.
Can I keep my Squarespace domain?
Yes. Point it at Clay when you are happy with what you see; the old site stays up until you do, and nothing about the name people already know has to change: how domains work.
Does it handle bookings?
Appointments, tables and rentals, with no commission per booking, which on Squarespace is an add-on. A deposit can be stated on the booking and is paid to you in person; no card is charged on the site: how booking works.
Try it with your business
Search your business and see your site in seconds, free, no signup.