Halo vs Squarespace
Halo and Squarespace are both blogging and static sites software. Halo is open source under GPL-3.0, with 40k GitHub stars. Squarespace is a commercial product from Squarespace.
Which to pick
- Pick Halo when
- You want a WordPress-style site builder with a strong Chinese community and plugin market.
- Pick Squarespace when
- A small business, creative or freelancer wants a good-looking site quickly and does not need custom code.
Side by side
A Java website builder and CMS for blogs, knowledge bases, company sites and small shops, with themes and plugins.
Hosted website builder with designer templates, blogging, online store, bookings and domains.
Documentation and plugins are mostly Chinese, and some plugins and themes are paid.
Limited flexibility and extensions, and content does not move cleanly to another platform.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server
Cloud service
Java, Spring Boot, TypeScript and Vue
Not published
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Squarespace
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
40k GitHub stars
1.4k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 8 years ago, latest release v2.27.2.
Not known
Other comparisons
More blogging platforms and static site generators
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.