Shopify vs Squarespace: Key Costs, Sales Features, and More

To get straight to the point, here are the key differences between Shopify and Squarespace:

Squarespace’s pricing is more affordable, with the cheapest ecommerce plan costing $23 per month (billed annually). To get your money’s worth, there’s also a 14-day free trial which will give you enough time to test out the waters first – no credit card details required! To save additional cash, you can also use the code “WBE10” at checkout for 10% off your plan.

If your goal is to sell products, we recommend Squarespace’s Commerce Basic or Commerce Advanced Plan.

The Commerce Basic Plan is $27 per month (billed annually) and comes with in-person sales, 0% transaction fees, and product reviews. Meanwhile, the Commerce Advanced plan is $49 per month (billed annually), providing advanced sales features like abandoned cart recovery.

On a budget? The Business Plan will be enough for your needs. For $23 per month (billed annually), you’ll receive basic ecommerce functionalities. This includes a checkout on your domain and advanced Squarespace analytics to track your sales. 

In comparison, Shopify’s pricing will set you back. Its three main plans cost between $29-$299 per month (billed annually), showcasing a steep price increase. On top of that, the cost of additional paid templates, apps, and fees can add up, leaving you with extra expenses to consider.

With that said, Shopify’s high price point is worthwhile if you’re scaling up to sell a high volume of products. All plans come with top sales features like shipping discounts (starting from 77% off on the cheapest plan), localized selling across global markets, and in-person sales.

To give Shopify a spin, you can get your first month for $1 – an inexpensive way to see if it’s the right fit for you. Or, if you need an inexpensive alternative for selling, you can buy the Starter Plan for $5 per month (billed annually) which allows you to sell a few products via your social media accounts.

What About Selling Fees?

On Squarespace’s Business Plan, you’ll encounter a 3% transaction fee for each sale. If you’re selling a large volume of products, then this fee will be costly over time, so we recommend upgrading to the Commerce Basic or Commerce Advanced Plan to avoid the fee altogether.

With Shopify, you can avoid transaction fees by signing up to Shopify Payments. It’s easy to sign up to – head to your dashboard, click on payments, and submit the required details about your business.

However, be aware that you can’t escape processing fees if you accept payments online. For instance, if a customer were to make a payment through Mastercard on your Shopify store, then Mastercard would charge you a small fee for processing your transaction.

The Winner

Squarespace is the best value for money

Combining inexpensive monthly plans with a solid range of features, Squarespace has the best pricing out of the two.

Our research shows that Squarespace is the easiest website builder to use, so we recommend this platform if you need to set up shop fast. The drag-and-drop editor offers an intuitive user experience, while the tools you need are found all in one place.

When we started building an online store with Squarespace, we were impressed by the onboarding process. Before diving into its editor, we could follow a few on-screen tutorials to help us get started. Afterward, we felt confident adding new pages, sections, and product listings to our website.

Squarespace might be the easiest builder to pick up, but you also don’t need to be a rocket scientist to get set up with Shopify.

After signing up with Shopify, we had to answer a few key questions on our store before being sent to the dashboard for our tailored setup guide. We appreciated this guide since it gave us a clear idea of exactly what we’d need to do to build our store. Even if you’re a beginner, you won’t feel overwhelmed by this process since everything is broken down for you.

Unlike Squarespace, Shopify encourages you to upload your products first. We noticed that you could import pre-existing products from another website, such as Etsy, or set up inventory syncing if you’re transitioning from a brick-and-mortar store to a digital storefront.

It makes sense that Shopify prioritizes products since it’s primarily a dedicated ecommerce builder. Because of this, we recommend Shopify if you’re uploading a large inventory of goods.

The Winner

Setting up your online store is simple with Squarespace

Thanks to its straightforward interface, onboarding tutorials, and drag-and-drop editor, Squarespace will help you create an online store in no time.

For dazzling designs, Squarespace’s templates come out on top. As of writing, the platform has 200+ stylish ecommerce designs in total that are completely free to use.

If you need something more specific, you can also use Squarespace Blueprint to design your website. Introduced in 2023, the tool takes you through a five-step process and asks specific questions about your website. Once you’re done, you’ll be left with an original design based on your needs.

The main strength of Squarespace’s templates is how customizable they are. When designing our site, we could change fonts and colors via the site’s style tab and drag-and-drop elements like photos and videos, while the gray grid overlay ensured that everything stayed in place.

If you want more creative control over your online store, Squarespace is your best option. These design features ensure that your brand personality is consistent, so you can keep tweaking your website until you’re happy with its unique look.

Shopify also has professional templates, but they aren’t so impressive. First off, there are only 12 free templates available (at the time of writing), with the rest requiring a one-off payment to use. The best designs will set you back between $140-$400. 

Also, Shopify’s templates have fewer customization options. When using Shopify’s editor, we couldn’t find many ways to change our template. Shopify doesn’t have a drag-and-drop editor like Squarespace, so we had limited ways of ordering our sections. The most drastic changes we could make were tweaking our store’s font and color scheme or adding a logo.

Despite these creative limitations, Shopify’s templates are best optimized for selling. All of the templates included useful ecommerce features. For instance, some have mega menus used to display multiple product categories, or stock counters used to show shoppers when a certain item is almost out of stock.

The Winner

Squarespace’s stunning templates will help you make your website your own

Squarespace’s free professional templates and varied customization options will leave your store with a unique look that visitors will remember.

Whether you choose Squarespace or Shopify, you’ll have these key sales features at your disposal:

• Unlimited products letting you upload as many products as you need
• Point of Sale (POS) that lets you sell in person – both platforms offer hardware for purchase, an app to manage your sales, and the ability to offer discounts
• Multiple shipping carriers such as DHL Express and USPS give buyers more choice

However, what are the key differences between Squarespace and Shopify’s sales features? Find out below:

Inventory Management

If you need to scale your online store, Shopify’s inventory management tools are the most powerful. In fact, the ecommerce platform comes with these key inventory features:

• Product data that gives you detailed insights into your stock, such as sell-through rates and ABC product analysis
• Up to 2,000 product variations best fit for large inventories (a change featured in Shopify Editions Winter ‘24)
• Inventory filters so you can easily search for specific products
• Inventory movement that can transition between multiple locations

Squarespace’s offering is not too shabby either. Though its inventory management tools aren’t suitable for large inventories, you can access its content manager to organize your products by name, price, and stock levels. This is the most you’ll need if you’re selling a few items here or there.

Payment Options

Whether they’re spending from a digital wallet or putting down a credit card payment, it’s good practice to provide buyers with a variety of payment methods.

Out of the two platforms, Shopify provides the most ways to pay. We found that Shopify offers over 100 payment options, ranging from PayPal and Afterpay to Klarna and Stripe. In comparison, Squarespace fails to keep up with only ten payment options available.

However, both Shopify and Squarespace have native payment solutions designed to keep all payment methods in one place. Though they’re free to set up, you’ll incur processing fees based on the third-party payment providers used, so keep that in mind.

Scheduling

If selling services is your goal, we recommend using Squarespace for Acuity Scheduling. This powerful tool lets you book and manage appointments for your website, helping you set up consultations with clients or classes with students.

Using the tool does come at a cost. You’ll need to purchase a plan first, with prices starting from $16 per month, billed annually. However, all plans come with calendar syncing, video conferencing, and the ability to accept payments and invoices – a worthwhile investment if you intend to set up services online.

Shopify doesn’t have a built-in scheduling system, so you’ll need an app to add this functionality to your website. You’ll find a mixture of free and paid apps from Shopify’s app store – some five-star scheduling apps include Meety, Appointly, and the Appointment Booking Cowlendar.

The Winner

Shopify is the top choice for powerful sales features

Shopify’s unmatched ecommerce features, like its product management tools and numerous shipping options, give it the edge over Squarespace.

Investing in your marketing efforts is key if you want to grow your online store. Though Shopify and Squarespace offer great marketing tools, there are key differences to consider.

Email Marketing

For professional email marketing, we’d recommend opting for Squarespace. Its email marketing tool lets you create sophisticated campaigns straight from your dashboard and comes with numerous templates to choose from.

When testing out the tool, we noticed that, much like Squarespace’s website editor, it had a drag-and-drop interface that made it easy for us to tweak our design. Adding new elements like photos or buttons was simple, and arranging them on the page was also straightforward.

To access the tool, pricing ranges from $5-$48 per month (billed annually) based on the plan you’re on. Each plan comes with sleek templates, a drag-and-drop editor, ways to build your email list, and useful automations.

Shopify also has an email marketing tool, Shopify Email, but we didn’t find it as impressive. When testing, the templates weren’t as visually appealing, and there were fewer ways to customize them. We found different template types to choose from, including newsletters and product highlights, but there wasn’t much variation between each one.

However, Shopify Email will save you some dollars. The Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Shopify Plus Plans all let you send 10,000 emails for free every calendar month. More than enough to get you started!

Social Media Integration

With 35% of online consumers likely to use social media to make a purchase, it’s wise to invest in your social media strategy.

As it stands, Shopify has the most social media integrations. Thanks to its expansive app store, you’ll find free and paid extensions that allow you to share products across social media platforms. Some of the key integrations we saw include:

• Facebook 
• Instagram
• Pinterest 
• TikTok
• Twitter

Though these apps are free to install, you’ll need to allocate a budget if you’d like to create ad campaigns. For instance, the Facebook & Instagram app will let you set a campaign budget which is then billed to your Facebook ad account.

Squarespace’s offering might not be as thorough, but Squarespace does cover key social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The editor also comes with built-in social media icons, so you can add them across your website and keep visitors connected.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For maximum visibility on search engines, you cannot ignore SEO. To help people find your products via Google or Bing, you’ll need to pay attention to meta titles, meta tags, product descriptions, and other technical essentials. But does Squarespace or Shopify provide adequate SEO?

Between the two, Shopify has the most comprehensive SEO offering for online stores. Here are the key SEO features it offers:

• Canonical tag generation to prevent duplicate pages on search engines
• Sitemaps that provide Google with key information about your website
• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• SEO-friendly URLs
• Alternative text that describes what your photos depict, typically to make your website more accessible for visually impaired readers

On top of Shopify’s built-in features, you can also boost your SEO with extensions from the app store. You could download TINY SEO to optimize your photos and speed up page loading speeds, or install Judge.me to improve your SEO through optimized product reviews.

Squarespace’s SEO may lag behind in comparison, but it does provide you with important SEO features like the ability to edit meta titles and descriptions. However, we still recommend Shopify for its SEO which covers all bases.

The Winner

Shopify’s powerful marketing features help your store stand out online

With its email marketing tools, foolproof SEO, and social media integrations, Shopify will help you grow you online presence.

If creating an online store is new territory for you, then you’ll need an ecommerce platform with in-depth resources and quick customer response times.

Between Squarespace and Shopify, Shopify’s help and support is the most foolproof. When we encountered a problem with inventory management, there were various steps we could take to find a solution.

For starters, we could ask Shopify’s Virtual Help Center assistant which gave us a speedy response in under 10 seconds. Alternatively, we could ask for human support via phone or email.

Shopify’s Help Center was also useful. Shopify’s resources cover every topic under the sun like domain names, Point of Sale, analytics, website migration, and more. From beginning to end, we felt supported by Shopify.

Squarespace’s help and support does fall short in comparison. Squarespace doesn’t offer phone support if that’s your preferred method of communication, while our research shows that its live chat support (open Monday to Friday, from 4am-7pm EST) has slower response times overall. Despite this, we do recommend Squarespace’s bustling community forums which are home to an active community of users.

Despite having no phone line, Squarespace does offer email and social media contact, as well as its own Help Center that’s well-organized and updated regularly.

The Winner

Shopify’s help and support covers all bases

No matter what part of your website-building journey you’re on, Shopify will offer you support. You can access its Help Center, speak to the live chat, or contact its staff via phone, email, or social media.

If customers are buying from you daily, then you must protect them by keeping their customer card data secure. Thankfully, both Shopify and Square implement key website security measures to protect you and your visitors from nasty data breaches:

• PCI compliance is a marker that each platform offers a secure environment for data
• 2-step authentication to stop hackers from gaining access to customer accounts
• SSL certificates ensure your website runs on a secure server – this means sensitive information like credit card details are protected
• Customer login areas create a protected space for website users

The key difference between Shopify and Squarespace is their approach to fraud detection. Shopify offers a myriad of ways to protect users against fraud, most notably through Shopify Payments. If you’re signed up for this free payment solution, you’ll receive in-depth fraud analysis tools that analyze key insights and risk levels for you.

Alternatively, Shopify Flow, the platform’s automation platform, lets you set up automations that spot fraudulent activity for you. For instance, you can use a template to automatically cancel any orders that are marked as high-risk. It’s another great way to protect your user’s data.

Squarespace’s fraud protection measures aren’t so secure. Unlike Shopify, it relies on its third-party payment gateways to pick up on fraudulent transactions. Because Squarespace doesn’t have a built-in system, it’s less likely to pick on threats.

Overall, we recommended Shopify for its top security measures, especially if you’re selling a high volume of products. You’ll want to reassure your users that they can shop without worry.

The Winner

Choose Shopify if you want maximum security for your store

Offering various ways to tackle fraud, such as Shopify Payments and Shopify Flow, Shopify will protect your online store 24/7.

Still unsure if Squarespace or Shopify better suits your ecommerce needs? To help you decide, here are some key features to look out for:

Do you want to scale over time? Look for: 

• Great product tools that make it easy to manage a large inventory
• Multiple shipping options
• Multiple postage options
• Support for international selling
• Detailed analytics for insights on your website impressions, clicks, and conversions

Are you managing a tight budget? Look for:

• Free templates
• Free apps
• Low transaction costs
• Good value price plans
• A strong number of features per plan

Do you need multiple ways to grow your store’s online presence? Look for:

• Email marketing
• Strong SEO
• Enough social media integrations
• Analytic tools to see where users are visiting your website from

Are you working under strict deadlines? Look for:

• Pre-made templates
• Easy-to-use editor
• Built-in sales and marketing features
• Prompt customer response times

Curious about our ecommerce website builder research? To provide you with accurate information, our in-house insights team has put Shopify and Squarespace to the test.

Both platforms have been measured in terms of seven key criteria, which are then weighted based on their importance to users:

• Sales Features: 40%
• Website Features: 15%
• Help & Support: 12%
• User Experience: 10%
• Design Functionality: 10%
• Customer Score: 8%
• Value for Money: 5%

For instance, since sales features are important to users looking to sell online, we’ve made sure to cover key features like POS, payment options, and inventory management tools in this article. Thanks to over 200 hours of research, we’re able to provide you with the information you need to make your final decision.

Now that the ecommerce battle is over, we can draw a clear winner: Shopify. Combining high-quality sales features with multichannel selling and strong help and support lines, making an online store has never been easier.

However, this isn’t to say that Squarespace won’t be a good fit for you. If you want your store to have a strong visual identity or are keen to offer services to your users, then it’s well worth considering this platform too.

Need more information before making a decision? Don’t hesitate to read our detailed Shopify review or Squarespace review to get a detailed look at each website builder.