Both Shopify and Squarespace have functionalities enabling you to build your online store without making it from scratch. Therefore, many aspiring online entrepreneurs turn to them, especially those building an e commerce site for the first time.
But here’s the catch: which is more suited for ecommerce websites?
Shopify is an ecommerce platform integrated with the functionalities of a website builder. On the other hand, Squarespace is a website builder equipped with ecommerce functionality. Are they the same? Which platform is better for online stores?
This guide will attempt to answer your questions about Shopify vs Squarespace as suitable options for an ecommerce website. Don’t set up your online store without reading this guide!
Article Overview:
Shopify vs Squarespace Overview
What is Shopify?
What is Squarespace?
Shopify vs Squarespace Comparison: Overview
Pricing
Transaction Fees
Payment Processing
Online Marketplace Integrations
Interface
Themes
Inventory Management
Shipping
SEO Tools
Final Thoughts on Shopify vs Squarespace
Shopify vs Squarespace Overview
So, before deciding between Shopify vs Squarespace for your online store business, you must know each platform more closely. Let’s start off with the Shopify basic information.
When you look at both websites, they might seem similar, but there are as many distinctions between them, which is why this Squarespace and Shopify comparison is a must. Shopify and Squarespace enable you to create an ecommerce website with their website builder functionalities. They are also equipped with ecommerce features that allow you to sell online.
But if you dig deeper into Shopify vs Squarespace, you’ll discover that the entire platform differs since it is built for different purposes.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is an ecommerce platform built for aspiring online business owners and those who want to build a business that allows them to sell online.
The ecommerce platform was founded in 2004 and is ideal for aspiring online store owners with limited web development skills and knowledge. Currently, over 4.5 million websites worldwide are built using the Shopify platform.
Shopify is extremely popular for its ecommerce functionality, making it a top choice even for major businesses.
What is Squarespace?
Squarespace offers users the chance to build and maintain content-based websites. Over time, it developed to incorporate Squarespace ecommerce tools.
The addition of Squarespace ecommerce features has expanded its use to include Squarespace themes for an online store. In addition to giving users access to free Squarespace themes, the Squarespace editor is user- and beginner-friendly. It also includes various ecommerce functionality, such as Squarespace analytics, giving Squarespace website owners more control over their online stores.
Over the years, Shopify has integrated various content-building features into its platform while Squarespace ecommerce tools have expanded. Therefore, it’s easy to see the confusion between both platforms.
To help you discern, you must analyze it according to your website goals: do you want to create a ‘website’ or set up an online store? When you ask yourself this question, you arm yourself with the context in which you will base your decision.
There’s a suitable platform, whether you are trying to provide information or sell online.
Shopify vs Squarespace Comparison: Overview
Let’s look closely into the similarities and distinct features between Shopify and Squarespace to decide the ideal platform to use if you want to sell digital products or promote services from your online business.
There are many deciding factors to help you pick between Shopify vs Square, so let’s get started.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Pricing
When starting your Shopify or Squarespace store, pricing is a practical factor to consider first. You must know how much you need to set up your online business!
First, Shopify and Squarespace offer free trials for users. Shopify offers a free trial for three days and a trial period of $1 per month for three months. Meanwhile, Squarespace offers a free trial for 14 days. Both platforms allow you to pay monthly or annually (which could offer savings for your monthly subscription fees).
Essentially, the amount of ecommerce features you can access for each site depends on how much you pay. The higher the pricing plans, the more advanced and comprehensive the tools and features you can access.
You can choose from five Shopify plans when building an ecommerce website. Here is an overview of the Shopify plans:
1. Starter
The Starter plan is the cheapest plan available on Shopify. It allows you to ‘create a simple store in minutes.’ There is no set-up required and you can sell online via social and messaging apps.
With Starter, you can start to sell digital products right away. All you need is an image, product description, and price. It’s that easy!
The price for the Starter plan is $5 per month (with a free trial version of $1 per month for three months).
2. Basic
The Shopify Basic plan is available at $25 per month (or $19 per month on an annual subscription).
The Shopify Basic plan gives you access to Shopify’s robust ecommerce functionality with the option to list unlimited products. You can also set up two staff accounts and access 24/7 support. Promote and market your product through various sales channels, including online marketplaces and social media.
Other advanced features available with the Basic plan are up to 1,000 inventory locations, discount codes, manual order creation, free SSL certificate, abandoned cart recovery, customer segmentation, marketing automation, and international ecommerce features.
3. Shopify
This Shopify plan is available at $65 per month (or $49 per month on an annual subscription). It offers the same features and functionalities as the Basic plan but is enhanced to five staff accounts and some additional features. For example, you can access standard reporting on your online store and ecommerce automation.
4. Advanced
The Advanced Shopify plan is available at $399 monthly (or $299 monthly on an annual subscription). The Advanced Shopify plan allows you to set up 15 staff accounts, third-party calculated shipping rates, and international commerce features.
The Advanced Shopify plan is best suited for major ecommerce businesses.
5. Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus is the ultimate solution for businesses with high-volume orders. It is an all-in-one solution for your business that enables you to scale fast. The Shopify Plus plan starts at $2,000 per month.
Regardless of which Shopify plans you choose, you can set up an online store with a one-click checkout feature. You will also access multiple sales channels, 24/7 support, and the Shopify POS.
Next up is the Squarespace pricing plan, which gives you four options.
1. Personal
The Personal plan is the foundational plan available at Squarespace, which enables you to access multiple Squarespace themes to create mobile-optimized websites. You can create a website that fits every need with many templates available. These templates are fully customizable, so you can create the website’s vision and make it a reality.
The Personal plan on Squarespace is available at $23 per month (or $16 per month on an annual subscription).
2. Business
With the Squarespace Business plan, you will pay $33 per month (or $23 annually). It’s the best plan for online business owners that want to set up an online store and integrate major payment gateways for order processing. It is also recommended if you want to grow your store and reach more audience.
In addition to having many templates available for your Squarespace site, you can access advanced business tools, such as Shopify analytics, checkout, and a fully integrated ecommerce solution.
3. Commerce Basic
The next plan for Squarespace site subscribers is the Commerce Basic. You have access to tools that grow your business at $36 per month (or $27 per month annually). The transaction fees are also waived in this plan. Among the inclusions under this pricing plan are mobile-optimized websites, advanced website analytics, full ecommerce integration, and powerful merchandising solutions.
4. Commerce Advanced
The final plan at Squarespace is the Commerce Advanced, which is available at $65 per month (or $49 annually). It provides access to the same features and functionalities as the Commerce Basic plan, but you can enjoy Advanced Shipping and discounting offers for your online store. You can take advantage of these tools to optimize your sales performance.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Transaction Fees
The fees are another area to consider in your Shopify vs Squarespace comparison. This one is crucial for online store owners because you want to maximize the amount of dollars that go into your account for each sale made.
Shopify Payments take 2.9% and 30 cents for each transaction on your Shopify store. Shopify Basic subscribers must pay an extra 2% if they use other payment gateways besides Shopify Payments. But if you opt for the two higher pricing plans, you can reduce that fee from 1% to 0.5%.
Meanwhile, Squarespace does not have its own payment processing gateway like Shopify Payments. Instead, Squarespace site customers can use Stripe and Paypal for their transactions. With Paypal, there is a charge of 3.49% plus 49 cents for each transaction. On the other hand, Stripe charges 2.9% and 30 cents for every transaction. Squarespace will have an additional 3% charge for customers with the Business plan.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Payment Processing
Access to major payment gateways is important for an ecommerce business because you want to simplify the payment process during customer checkout. Providing several payment gateways and solutions for them increase your chances of getting a sale. Shopify is available in almost all countries worldwide, with over 100 payment gateways. This means your Shopify store can accept payments from various payment processing solutions and in multiple currencies. Some available payment solutions with Shopify are Google Pay, Apple Pay, and major credit cards.
Unlike Shopify, Squarespace only offers two: Stripe and Paypal. While it is possible to pay via major credit card using both Paypal and Stripe, even Afterpay, it is worth noting that Squarespace sites do not currently accept Google Pay.
Overall, Shopify wins when it comes to offering better payment processing solutions for online businesses, as it enables you to cater to available payment options to your customers.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Online Marketplace Integrations
Native integrations are important as you choose between Shopify vs Squarespace for your ecommerce business. Shopify and Squarespace allow easy integration with Google, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Unlike Squarespace, Shopify allows integration with Walmart and TikTok.
If you wish to integrate Amazon into your Shopify site, it will require a Shopify app to do so. With Squarespace, you need a third-party extension to integrate eBay into your Squarespace site successfully. For Amazon users, you must list your products to sell online individually.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Interface
The ease of use is another important point of comparison whether to build a Squarespace or Shopify site. These two platforms offer a somewhat similar layout.
Shopify wins in terms of ease of use, although by a very slim margin. There are more visual cues on the Shopify site that enables beginners to navigate its many tools and features easily.
But unlike Shopify, Squarespace is more elegant in layout, which isn’t surprising since it is a website builder. But once you are familiar with the Squarespace themes and editor, it should be easy to navigate from there, as most website builder tools involve simple drag-and-drop action.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Themes
Speaking of building a website, let’s look into the various Shopify themes and Squarespace templates that enable you to build fully customizable websites.
Squarespace wins this one, hands down. The templates are elegant and professional-looking, like a professional website developer and designer created them. The designs of the Squarespace themes are more contemporary, making it easier to build a professional or ecommerce website from the website builder platform.
Unlike Squarespace, the free templates from Shopify are not as professional and contemporary. Currently, there are only 12 free Shopify themes at Shopify, which pales compared to the 155 themes available at Squarespace.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Inventory Management
Inventory and order management is a crucial factor to consider when choosing between Shopify vs Squarespace.
With Shopify, you have more advanced inventory management solutions. It makes monitoring and managing orders easier, such as transparency with committed and incoming stocks. Once a customer places an order on your Shopify store, you can easily see the status of each order from the Shopify dashboard. You can edit and manage each order before they are shipped to customers.
On the other hand, Squarespace offers a basic inventory management solution. You can assign SKUs for each product, making inventory easier. Squarespace can also set up alerts for certain products once they are low in stock.
However, since Squarespace’s ecommerce features are more limited than Shopify’s, you might need to use third-party apps for inventory management.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Shipping
Shipping is also crucial when you are choosing between Shopify and Squarespace.
Shopify offers sophisticated shipping solutions, ideal for businesses that want to offer more shipping options to their customers. For example, you can access additional tools and features, such as shipping label printing and shipping insurance. You can enable local pick-up delivery for orders if you have a local storefront with your Shopify store.
With Squarespace, you can also facilitate local pickup and delivery. But Squarespace shipping features are only available with US Postal Service. You will need a third-party app for other shipping couriers.
Shopify vs Squarespace: SEO Tools
The marketing features and SEO tools are reliable, giving you maximum marketing potential for your online store. For example, both platforms offer the following SEO tools and features to boost on-page optimization:
- Page URL optimization
- Page title optimization
- Meta descriptions
- Alt text on images
- 301 redirects
However, Shopify gets an edge since it is an ecommerce platform. It integrates more marketing features and SEO tools, providing your products with more opportunities to be seen by your target customers.
As a bonus, Shopify also offers advanced analytics and reporting so you can continually monitor your ecommerce performance and develop a business plan to improve your sales.
Final Thoughts on Shopify vs Squarespace
In conclusion, Shopify and Squarespace have merits for an e commerce site. However, depending on your specific goals, they offer specific advantages that would make them better suited to your online store.
Choose Shopify for your online business for its complex business tools since it is primarily an ecommerce platform. Therefore, it is suitable for an online business as it offers various Shopify ecommerce features unavailable on Squarespace. The Shopify dashboard includes complex business tools for an online business, especially those involved in dropshipping online. Some Shopify ecommerce tools for running an online store include Shopify POS, international commerce, and tax calculation.
On the other hand, you can build a Squarespace site for your online business if you want to build a compelling ecommerce website. The selection of the Squarespace themes is impressive, allowing you to build and manage the content for your ecommerce website to make it look professionally done. Squarespace sites provide you with an opportunity to build an attractive ecommerce website but are limited in ecommerce features, especially versus Shopify. But since some Squarespace templates are free with a simple drag-and-drop editor, it has a low barrier of entry suitable for beginners.
Using this information, you are more confident to decide between Shopify vs Squarespace for your online business. Hopefully, we’ve provided the information you need to make that choice!
Want to review our other Shopify comparison articles?
Check out our comparisons of Shopify vs:
- 3dcart
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- BigCommerce
- ecwid
- Magento
- Neto
- OpenCart
- osCommerce
- PrestaShop
- PrestaShop
- shopify plus
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- Weebly
- Wix
