Yes, on WordPress and Squarespace you can log in and edit pages yourself, within the roles and permissions you set up at launch. On a hand-coded static site hosted on Netlify, edits normally go through the builder, which trades self-service for speed, security and low upkeep. The better question is which edits you expect to make, and who should be allowed to make them.
Owners usually ask this after a bad experience with a previous site. Sometimes changing a phone number meant a support ticket and a long wait. Sometimes the site was so open that a well-meaning employee broke the homepage layout on a Friday. Both problems are about access, and both can be planned for before launch.
This page is for owners and marketing leads planning a build or rebuild. It describes how editing works on the three platforms Hudson South builds on, not how to use any particular editor. For the wider build approach, see Hudson South's website build service.
Sort the edits you will actually make
Before comparing editors, list the changes your business made to its site last year and the ones you expect next year. Write down who makes each type of change today, even if the honest answer is whoever notices first. Most changes fall into a few types, and each type carries a different level of risk.
| Type of change | How often, typically | Who should make it | What goes wrong if it is rushed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hours, phone number, holiday closures | Several times a year | Owner or office manager | Stale facts send people to a closed door |
| New article or blog post | Weekly to monthly | Marketing lead or writer, with review | A page with no clear title, links or sign-off |
| Staff bio added or removed | A few times a year | Marketing lead, with the person's approval | A departed employee still listed as your contact |
| New service page | Rarely | Marketing lead and builder together | Menus, internal links and structured data fall out of step |
| Layout or design change | Rarely | Builder | Every page shifts, including on phones |
Most of what a business changes is text on existing pages. Editing text is not editing a template, and nearly all of the risk sits in the second category. An arrangement that makes text easy to change and layout deliberate to change is usually the safest one for a small team.
WordPress: editing with roles and revisions
WordPress is built for teams that want to edit. Its documentation describes the block editor this way: "You can add blocks for paragraphs, images, headings, lists, videos, galleries, and more." Access is controlled through roles. An Editor can publish and manage posts, including other users' posts; an Author can publish and manage their own; a Contributor can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them. A sensible rule for any team is to give each person only the access their tasks require.
Revisions are the other safety net. WordPress says its revisions system "stores a record of each saved draft or published update," and an earlier version can be restored from the revisions screen. Hudson South's WordPress builds use a custom theme rather than a marketplace theme with tweaks, which makes it easier to decide which parts of a page staff should edit and which belong to the design. The cost of all this freedom is upkeep, covered in how many WordPress plugins is too many.
Squarespace: one editor, set permissions
Squarespace suits owners who want a simple editor they manage themselves. According to its help center, only owners and administrators can invite contributors, and each contributor gets the permissions switched on for them. A website editor "can add products, blocks, and other content to existing pages," while administrators "can do almost everything the owner can do, except change ownership."
Those permission levels are worth settling at launch rather than after a mistake. A short conversation does it: "Who on our team needs administrator access, and who only needs to change content?" Squarespace also says code-based customizations fall outside the scope of its support. Hudson South designs Squarespace sites within Squarespace's own editor, so the owner keeps a site that the editor, and Squarespace's own help center, can support. Settle billing access at the same time, since Squarespace treats it as its own permission: accounts with billing permission can change or cancel subscriptions and view invoices.
Netlify: edits by request, published as a whole
A hand-coded static site has no editing screen for staff. Changes are made in the site's files and published as a new version. Netlify calls its publishing atomic: no changes reach the public address before all of them have uploaded, so visitors never see a half-finished update. Its preview feature lets people "test and review changes before launching your updates to your production web project."
Hudson South's guidance is that this suits businesses that want speed, security and low upkeep and are happy to have Hudson South make edits. It fits best when changes are occasional and the business would rather describe an edit than make it. It also means nobody at the business has to remember a login, apply an update, or relearn an editor used twice a year. It fits poorly when someone on staff wants to publish every week.
A fictional example, and where new content comes from
Here is a fictional example. A physical therapy clinic in Arizona with three locations is rebuilding its site. The front desk wants to change holiday hours without asking anyone. The marketing lead wants to publish an article each month. Two clinicians want to write occasional pieces, and the owner wants nobody touching the layout.
The clinic chooses WordPress. The marketing lead gets the Editor role, so she can publish and review others' work. The two clinicians become Contributors, so their drafts wait for her review before going live. Hours sit in one place the office manager can update, and layout lives in the custom theme. When the clinic later adds a page about a new service, the person writing it should not have to invent what the clinic knows; the facts come from records the clinicians have already approved.
That is the reason Hudson South runs every build in the same order, on every platform. Authority Asset gathers approved business knowledge and evidence. Hudson Twenty-One records how the business communicates across 21 dimensions, so the pages sound like the people who answer the phone. Market Intelligence researches the questions buyers ask and how the market answers them. AEO Creation turns those inputs into answer-first pages. An editor makes later changes easy. The approved record makes them accurate. For the platform decision itself, see choosing between Netlify, WordPress and Squarespace, and for deciding whether a change belongs on an existing page, read update existing pages or publish new content.
Plan the editing before the design
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- WordPress Block Editor. WordPress.org Documentation. Read 2026-10-17.
- Roles and Capabilities. WordPress.org Documentation. Read 2026-10-17.
- Revisions. WordPress.org Documentation. Read 2026-10-17.
- Squarespace permissions explained. Squarespace Help Center. Read 2026-10-17.
- Invite a contributor. Squarespace Help Center. Read 2026-10-17.
- Code-based customizations. Squarespace Help Center. Read 2026-10-17.
- Deploy overview. Netlify Docs. Read 2026-10-17.