How to Add Reviews to Squarespace: Check Your Plan First

Squarespace installs are genuinely a sixty-second job, and there is exactly one thing worth checking before you start, because if it applies to you nothing else in this guide will help. Code Blocks exist on every Squarespace plan, but JavaScript and iframes only render on Core, Plus, Advanced, Business and Commerce. On the Personal plan a script-based review widget will not run at all. Most guides on this subject say Code Blocks work on Personal, which is true of the block and false of the thing you want to put in it. Once you are past that, the rest is paste and save, plus two Squarespace behaviours that make a working widget look broken: the editor hides it while you are logged in, and 7.0 templates can stop it running on internal navigation.

Which Squarespace Plans Can Actually Run the Widget?

Core, Plus, Advanced, Business and Commerce. Those plans render JavaScript and iframes inside a Code Block. The Personal plan gives you the Code Block and will happily accept plain text, HTML, Markdown and CSS in style tags, but it does not execute JavaScript or embed iframes.

A review widget is a script. So on Personal the block sits there doing nothing, and because the failure is silent rather than an error message, people usually conclude the widget is broken and contact the widget vendor. It is not broken; the plan does not run scripts.

If you are on Personal and reviews matter to your site, the options are to upgrade, or to hand-write your reviews as static HTML in the Code Block. Static HTML does render on Personal. It will not update, and you should not add review structured data to text you cannot substantiate, but it puts something real on the page.

Where Does the Code Block Go?

Edit the page, add a block where you want the reviews, and choose Code from the block menu. Paste the snippet into it and save. The block sits in the page flow like any other, so you position it by dragging rather than by any code of your own.

Leave the block's mode as HTML rather than Markdown. Markdown mode will not run a script tag, and it is a quiet way to reproduce the Personal-plan symptom on a plan that would otherwise work.

There is also a site-wide Code Injection panel under Settings for headers and footers. Do not put the review widget there. Code Injection is for things that belong on every page, like analytics; a review block belongs in the page flow where you can see and position it.

Why Does the Block Look Empty in the Editor?

Because Squarespace often does not render custom code while you are logged in, even when visitors can see it perfectly. This is expected behaviour and it is the second most common reason people think a Squarespace embed has failed.

Use the Preview in Safe Mode button to view the embedded content while editing. Better still, save, then open the live URL in a private browser window with no session. That is the visitor's view and it is the only one that settles the question.

Get into this habit before you start debugging. A great deal of time gets spent re-pasting a snippet that was working the whole time.

It Works on Refresh and Disappears When I Click Through. Why?

Ajax loading, and it affects 7.0 templates. With Ajax on, navigating from one page to another swaps the content in without a full page load, and custom code that ran on a direct load does not necessarily run again. The symptom is exact: hard refresh the page and the widget is there; arrive from your own navigation and it is gone.

The fix on 7.0 is to disable Ajax loading in the site styles for that template. Where the template offers it, the setting is usually labelled Enable Ajax Loading and turning it off makes every page a real page load.

This does not apply to 7.1, which does not use the same Ajax mechanism. If you are unsure which version you are on, the template families and the style editor differ noticeably, and Squarespace shows the version in your site settings.

How Do You Make It Look Like Part of a Squarespace Site?

Squarespace sites are bought for their design, so a widget that looks generic stands out more here than on almost any other builder. Match three things and it disappears into the page: the background colour of the section it sits in, the body font, and the corner radius your template uses on other cards.

Keep the widget's own borders and shadows off unless your template uses them. Most Squarespace templates are flat and generous with whitespace, and a bordered box with a drop shadow reads as foreign immediately.

Give the block room. The most common visual mistake is dropping a review widget tight against the section above it, which no other element on a Squarespace page does. Add spacing so it breathes the way the rest of the layout does.

What Are the Steps?

Check your plan first. If you are on Personal, a script widget will not run, and everything below is moot until you upgrade.

Build the widget, match the colours and font to your template, and copy the embed code. Then edit the page, add a Code Block where you want the reviews, confirm it is in HTML mode rather than Markdown, paste and save.

Then check it properly: Preview in Safe Mode, or open the live URL in a private window. If you are on 7.0 and it vanishes on internal navigation, turn off Ajax loading in your site styles.