When evaluating Shopify vs Squarespace, Shopify offers all of the instruments you might want to begin and develop your on-line enterprise at an reasonably priced value.
Whereas Squarespace has intuitive web site builder instruments and means that you can promote on-line, you solely unlock its ecommerce options at a better pricing plan, and they don’t seem to be as sturdy as Shopify’s.
Nonetheless, Squarespace is one in all our picks for the greatest web site builder for small companies, so if web site content material is extra of a precedence than on-line retailer performance, Squarespace is the higher choice.
Based mostly on our analysis, we suggest:
- Finest general and greatest for ecommerce: Shopify
- Finest for content material administration options: Squarespace
Squarespace vs Shopify Fast Comparability
When to Use Shopify
Shopify
Execs
- Person-friendly interface
- Scalable platform
- Intensive app market for third-party integrations
Cons
- Superior options like experiences, fraud evaluation, present playing cards, and real-time transport charges solely out there for higher-tier plans
- Transaction charges if not utilizing Shopify Funds
- Transport calculator requires an annual plan
The place Shopify Beats Squarespace:
- Native POS: Shopify POS
- One-click checkout choice: Store Pay
- Social Media Checkout Hyperlink: Shopify Starter ($5 per thirty days)
- Transport reductions: Shopify Transport and companion couriers
- Advertising instruments: Deserted cart restoration even on first-level entry plan
- Constructed-in electronic mail advertising and marketing device: Shopify electronic mail
- Intensive app market: Shopify App Retailer
If you’re a small enterprise with on-line gross sales as a main revenue driver or have plans to develop your on-line retailer, Shopify is a better option. It’s suited to startups and rising companies with its beginner-friendly interface, intuitive dashboard, and scalable administration and gross sales options, together with 1000’s of third-party integrations. Nonetheless, it’s ideally suited for individuals who are critically diving into ecommerce or dropshipping.
Furthermore, Shopify allows you to promote on social media, akin to Fb, Instagram, and TikTok, and affords a POS system that may join seamlessly along with your on-line retailer for omnichannel gross sales like purchase on-line, pickup in-store (BOPIS), and browse in-store, purchase on-line.
When to Use Squarespace
Squarespace
Execs
- Extremely rated web site templates
- A number of running a blog options
- Customized fields for merchandise
Cons
- Restricted fee choices
- Transaction charges with a plan improve
- Primary ecommerce features, akin to deserted cart restoration and social media promoting, can be found solely in greater plans
The place Squarespace Beats Shopify
- Extra aesthetically pleasing web site templates: Drag-and-drop performance for 80 of its templates that look totally different from each other
- Higher search engine optimization instruments: Can edit product URLs, a number of running a blog options
- Product administration: Native instruments for promoting bodily, digital, and repair merchandise
If you’re a small enterprise that’s extra targeted on producing net content material than working a web based retailer, Squarespace is a greater match than Shopify. You need to use Squarespace to showcase your content material portfolios, akin to weblog posts and picture galleries, and promote bodily, digital, and service-based merchandise. These may be achieved rapidly utilizing the platform’s drag-and-drop web site builders.
It additionally has wonderful built-in running a blog options, akin to analytics, archive performance, and a search characteristic. For those who plan to promote just some merchandise as a part of your primary web site and branding is a precedence, Squarespace is for you.
When to Use an Various
Shopify vs Squarespace: Pricing & Funds
Each Shopify and Squarespace supply free trials and reductions when subscribing to annual plans. They’ve tiered pricing buildings and customized plans for enterprises which are kind of the identical.
Once you examine plan inclusions, you’ll discover Shopify’s plans ship extra worth.
Suppose you have been to unpack each platforms’ ecommerce starter plans, Primary Shopify and Squarespace Enterprise. Primary Shopify offers extra sturdy options, particularly:
- Further gross sales channels akin to on-line marketplaces and social media
- A number of stock areas
- Deserted cart restoration
Shopify vs Squarespace: Website Builder & Upkeep
Shopify beats Squarespace on this class due to its out there integrations even when Squarespace has higher web site templates. Shopify wins over Squarespace by a mile in out there apps, providing greater than 7,000 in comparison with Squarespace’s fewer than 30.
Shopify affords free and paid templates (beginning at $150). The free choices are totally different in design and cater to numerous industries, permitting you to have quite a lot of designs even with fewer templates. The paid ones are comparable in high quality to Squarespace’s themes, having trendy design options akin to full-bleed content material, picture animation, and video backgrounds. You even have entry to a library of royalty-free inventory photos.
Shopify’s new web site builder, On-line Retailer 2.0 (OS 2.0), affords extra customization choices than the earlier model (which has the WYSIWYG editor). OS 2.0 introduces sections and blocks that present modularity, flexibility, and—to some extent—drag-and-drop capabilities.
With the OS 2.0 replace in Shopify themes, you may anticipate a extra user-friendly setup with drag-and-drop constructing blocks. (Supply: Shopify)
As talked about, one in all Shopify’s strengths is its App Retailer—if there’s something your retailer wants, it’s a close to certainty that you simply’ll discover it there.
Since our final replace: Squarespace launched new web site builder instruments, particularly:
- Fluid Engine, Squarespace’s new web site builder, which options higher drag-and-drop performance and a wise design grid that makes it simpler to customise exactly.
- Instruments to design and launch merch utilizing your small business emblem and automatic print-on-demand dropshipping.
- Options to create, handle, host, show, and monetize video content material.
Relating to web site templates, Squarespace wins as a result of it offers a whole bunch of free, superbly designed templates and has a drag-and-drop builder that means that you can see real-time adjustments. You possibly can customise your web site simply—from fonts, colours, and headers to customized coding. Briefly, Squarespace hits the best spot between ease of use and a design-forward mentality.
You possibly can add visible results simply to your photos and textual content, akin to fade-in/out, tilt, zoom, and pan out. It additionally has built-in integrations with Unsplash and Getty Pictures (inventory picture websites providing free and premium images), making including photos to your web site simple.
Moreover, you may craft inventive video backgrounds by both importing your video or a YouTube or Vimeo URL. A spread of video playback velocity choices and shade filters allow you to customise your video background additional.
Add animation results simply to web site parts in Squarespace by configuring kinds in your Design dashboard.
One factor to notice is that Squarespace’s newest model (7.1) doesn’t help you change templates and carry over all of the setup you’ve already achieved—design and commerce-wise. We encountered this difficulty after we arrange our demo retailer. Once we switched templates, we needed to arrange the Commerce portion of the web site once more.
Nonetheless, suppose you continue to need to change your on-line retailer’s design. In that case, you don’t have to modify templates since Squarespace templates are very customizable—you may add loads of sections and parts in numerous layouts to your pages.
Once we constructed our demo retailer and realized altering templates would imply dropping our present work’s progress, we simply added the sections we preferred from different templates with out switching—and we may accomplish this simply.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Gross sales & Product Options
Shopify and Squarespace help you promote limitless merchandise and digital items and companies, though Shopify would require the usage of a third-party app. Whereas Squarespace affords higher product choices (extra variants and built-in customized work order instruments), Shopify wins on this class due to its real-time transport calculators and out there transport reductions. No matter Shopify lacks built-in options may be solved by integrating third-party apps, which it’s identified for.
Relating to gross sales options, each platforms understand how necessary ecommerce advertising and marketing is for on-line shops, so each their platforms replace their advertising and marketing instruments to assist get your web site observed. Whereas Squarespace has higher running a blog instruments and affords the identical advertising and marketing options as Shopify, it solely makes it out there on higher-priced plans. Shopify has most of its advertising and marketing instruments (akin to Shopify electronic mail and deserted cart saver options) accessible even on its starter plan.
Product classes: Squarespace has good tags enabled however is extra delicate in formatting. You can’t enter tags utilizing totally different instances because it leads to completely totally different classes, akin to “pants,” “Pants,” and “PANTS” are three classes. Nonetheless, Squarespace permits for limitless tags.
Product choices: Squarespace allows you to configure as much as six product choices and has a 250-limit on product variants. It could additionally auto-generate inventory retaining items (SKUs) for all of the totally different mixtures of variants.
Customized product or work order instruments: For those who supply product customization (akin to engraving and particular supply directions), you may simply do customized types in Squarespace.
You possibly can customise your merchandise by using customized types in Squarespace. Customized types are perfect for gathering personalised data for a product, akin to customized engraving or lettering directions. (Supply: Squarespace)
Shopify vs Squarespace: Ease of Use
Once we in contrast Squarespace vs Shopify, we discovered each to be intuitive and user-friendly. They supply easy-to-follow setup wizards—almost anybody with minimal pc abilities can choose it up instantly. Their dashboards are comparable, with navigation management panels on the left and a assist wizard simply seen as assist bubbles or prompts. Nonetheless, Shopify nonetheless wins on this class due to the extent of buyer help they supply.
Shopify vs Squarespace: Professional Rating
Once we in contrast Shopify and Squarespace in ecommerce options, Shopify wins in each class—pricing, web site builder, gross sales and product options, and ease of use. Shopify can be extraordinarily standard amongst ecommerce consultants and most people.
Shopify vs Squarespace Regularly Requested Questions (FAQs)
Ought to I change to Shopify from Squarespace?
If you’re critical about on-line promoting, Shopify provides higher ecommerce instruments (akin to an deserted cart saver, electronic mail advertising and marketing instruments, and higher stock and transport choices) than Squarespace.
Which is dearer, Shopify or Squarespace?
If you’re utilizing your web site as a web based retailer, subscribing to Squarespace’s ecommerce plan will likely be extra expensive at $33 a month in comparison with Shopify’s entry-level plan at $29 a month.
What can Shopify try this Squarespace can’t?
In our analysis of Shopify vs Squarespace, Shopify wins in each class—value, ease of use, web site builder options, and gross sales instruments. Shopify has extra built-in advertising and marketing instruments to assist promote your on-line retailer, and should you want a characteristic not but out there with Shopify, it has greater than 7,000 integrations in its app retailer. Shopify additionally has a built-in POS for in-person promoting.
How We Evaluated Squarespace vs Shopify
That can assist you resolve which ecommerce platform is greatest on your retailer, we in contrast Squarespace and Shopify on value, ease of use, retailer builder and design instruments, stock administration, and gross sales instruments. We additionally added our knowledgeable opinion based mostly on years of expertise testing totally different ecommerce platforms.
15%
Pricing and fee integrations
20%
Retailer builder and design options
25%
Stock and gross sales options
15% of Total Rating
We thought-about the value level of every base plan that provides an entire on-line retailer, what plan choices can be found as your small business grows, and fee processing choices—together with charges, flexibility, and one-click checkout choices. Shopify is a transparent winner on this class. It affords a greater general worth with its Lite Plan at $9/month, a free related POS app, and Store Pay (its one-click checkout choice). Compared, Squarespace unlocks restricted ecommerce features at its second plan, Enterprise at $33/month.
20% of Total Rating
We thought-about how simple it’s to construct and keep knowledgeable and enticing on-line retailer, together with out there templates, customization choices, free area and SSL certificates, limitless storage and bandwidth choices, and built-in search engine optimization instruments and web site analytics. Squarespace affords higher web site templates and offers a greater drag-and-drop web site enhancing device with extra flexibility than Shopify’s WYSIWYG editor. Each platforms, nevertheless, make it simple to handle a web based retailer when including merchandise and organising backend instruments.
25% of Total Rating
We checked out what sort of product assortments Shopify and Squarespace can accommodate and instruments for in-store and cellular, built-in social media and market promoting, and advertising and marketing. We additionally consolidated transport choices and PCI compliance. Shopify wins this class by a mile, because it affords built-in instruments for promoting in-person and on-line, has a number of integrations with social media channels and marketplaces, and offers a one-click checkout choice by way of Store Pay.
20% of Total Rating
As a result of on-line shops function 24/7, we prioritized platforms that supply 24/7 buyer help and have a number of buyer touchpoints, akin to telephone, electronic mail, and chat. Whereas each present a complete assist heart, Shopify offers 24/7 buyer help by dwell chat, electronic mail, and telephone. Squarespace has restricted help on weekends and doesn’t present telephone help. Nonetheless, each platforms are simple to make use of and supply beginner-friendly instruments.
20% of Total Rating
*Percentages of general rating
Backside Line
We suggest Shopify for anybody launching an ecommerce platform. Companies that promote or plan to promote primarily on-line will probably profit from its on-line retailer creation instruments, quite a few integrations, and transport reductions. It additionally offers you with social promoting and in-store POS options. It’s simple to promote your merchandise as early as the primary day of your free trial, so begin yours as we speak.
