Shopify and Squarespace are two of the most popular options for creating a user-friendly ecommerce website.
If you want to expand your business, Shopify is your best bet. It has more ecommerce tools to help you sell, whereas Squarespace is more focused on building your website and getting started with content creation.
Still, both have numerous advantages, and which one you choose will be determined by your business’s requirements.
Shopify vs Squarespace
The best platform for setting up an online store is Shopify. It has tools for managing businesses and marketing. While its branding and business management tools make it simple for you to keep track of your shop, its fast speeds and built-in SEO features encourage more visitors to stay on your site and purchase your products. Try Shopify for three days for free.
Squarespace’s easy-to-use content management system (CMS) makes it ideal for producing content for your marketing efforts, such as blog posts. To assist you in creating a profitable business website, it offers a large selection of website templates. Although some of the platform’s marketing features require a fee, it makes it simple to sell both goods and services. Utilize your free trial of Squarespace to begin creating your website.
Pros and cons of Shopify vs Squarespace
To show you everything that each web hosting platform has to offer, we dug deep into Shopify and Squarespace. Compare their advantages and disadvantages so you can choose which is best for your business.
Pros of Shopify
- Specific business resources: Shopify provides specialized assistance for a wide range of product types so that you can take the necessary steps to market your products. It includes all the resources you need to grow your business, including free ones, paid tools, targeted advertising, and dedicated support. Everything from pricing to the most effective marketing strategies for you are displayed.
- Branding tools: You can easily develop a consistent image for your company using Shopify’s brand-building resources. You have an advantage over other platforms thanks to its free logo-creation tools and business name generator. Additionally, it offers resources to help you market to your target audience as well as stock photos you can use for your website and themes for various business models.
- Speed and SEO: Shopify makes sure you have speed because it is a component of SEO. With its integrated SEO features, it generates titles and product descriptions for you so you don’t have to do that work yourself. Additionally, it will automatically create a 301 redirect if your URL changes, ensuring that customers can always find your store.
- Sales channels: With Shopify, you can promote everything from a single location and broaden your audience across various platforms. By syncing your product catalog with your company’s social media accounts, you can sell on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more. Even through social media, customers can make purchases.
- Support most of the payment options: Shopify accepts all payment methods, including credit cards, PayPal, and local currencies, unlike the majority of ecommerce platforms that only support a few. It is encrypted, PCI-compliant, and 3D Secure. While giving you a complete picture of your finances, the information about your customers is kept secure.
- Custom storefront tools: Shopify enables you to market and run your company in a way that makes you stand out from the competition. You can sell on custom channels, create custom websites, and even use gamification to draw in customers. Shopify creates a platform where you have control over your sales with a distinctive shopping experience and flexibility, including commerce on its mobile app.
- Organized business management: Through a single system for order management, Shopify assists you in keeping track of orders, finances, and insight. It enables you to manage fulfillment, inventory, shipping, and returns all in one location. It also makes it simple to manage your shop on a mobile device and accept payments.
Areas of Shopify need to be improved(Cons)
- Not built for content: Although Shopify instructs you on how to create content, there isn’t really anywhere for it in your store. While you can create blogs and other content areas on other platforms, Shopify makes it a little more difficult to take advantage of onsite marketing. It’s great for increasing your social media presence, though.
- More focus on product and less on services: Although you can use Shopify to sell services, its main objective is to help you sell products. Even its free resources are primarily geared toward selling products, and the platform offers fewer features for doing so. If you sell services, Squarespace might be a better option.
Pros of Squarespace
- User friendly: Award-winning templates from Squarespace can be altered and customized. A website can be made quickly, and if you rebrand, it only requires one click to change its appearance. Additionally, every template has already been mobile-optimized.
- Intuitive CMS: The first CMS solution is Squarespace. It allows for drag-and-drop creation and prioritizes content. For store owners and anyone else who wants to quickly build a website, it is the simplest CMS.
- Easy to sell products and services: Squarespace allows you to book your services online in addition to just selling products. To make everything convenient for both you and your clients, you can set your schedule and send reminders. Additionally, it has functions specifically for the sale of subscriptions and gift cards.
- Comprehensive marketing tools: With the help of the Squarespace Video Studio app, you can use video marketing to expand on text-based advertising. You can create an email funnel or newsletter with Squarespace Email Campaigns, and its social media integrations let you interact with your online followers. With the help of its marketing tools, you can easily manage your advertising and connect with your target market.
- Great content platform: Squarespace is the best platform for it if you have or want onsite content for your business. It is better suited for hosting blogs than Shopify and actively encourages content creation. If you have art, music, photographs, or other visual or auditory media available for customers to browse, it’s also great for showcasing your portfolio.
- Built in SEO: Squarespace makes sure you appear in search results by using sophisticated SEO tools and Google Search Console to verify your business. Although you can write your own titles and product descriptions, it generates default ones. It also comes with a site map, so you don’t need to make one. It makes your company visible online with SSL security, mobile optimization, and ecommerce-specific SEO.
Areas of Squarespace need to be improved
- Limited social media platform: Squarespace does not offer extensions for other platforms, so you can only sell through Instagram. It can get pricey because you do have to pay for those extensions.
- More expensive to sell: Although the Squarespace Email Campaign is a fantastic tool, using it costs more money. If you don’t have a more expensive package, it caps the number of subscribers and restricts the number of newsletters you can send. Although it doesn’t cost a lot more, the fact that it’s not a standard feature with every package can be a hassle.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify offers three different packages:
- Basic: $39 per month or $29 per month when billed annually
- Shopify: $105 per month or $79 per month when billed annually
- Advanced: $399 per month or $299 per month when billed annually
Shopify is also available for a three-day free trial.
You begin with an online store, an unlimited number of products, and two staff accounts with the Basic package. Additionally, you have access to support at all times.
With manual order creation, discount codes, and abandoned cart recovery, it grants you access to sales channels and up to 1000 inventory locations. At this level, gift cards may also be sold. Shopify’s fraud analysis safeguards your company, and its free SSL certificate lets customers know that your website is secure. Additionally, fundamental reports inform you of the state of your website and audience.
Utilizing your limitless contacts and customer segmentation, you can market to the appropriate customers. Checkout is quick and simple with Shopify POS Lite, and Shopify Basic provides shipping labels and carrier discounts of up to 77%.
You even get access to features for international commerce, such as local payment options, market domains and subfolders, translation, and currency conversion. All Basic tier features are included in the Shopify package, but you also get access to five staff accounts and 1,000 inventory locations. You can learn more about your website and marketing with standard reports. With shipping specials and USPS Priority Mail Cubic pricing, you can save up to 88%. In comparison to the Basic plan, this package offers you better credit card rates and lower transaction fees.
All Shopify tier features are included in the Advanced plan, in addition to a significant increase to 15 staff accounts and the same 1000 inventory locations. In order to ensure that you don’t miss a beat with your sales, its advanced reports give you more insights than its other plans.
Ecommerce automations simplify running your store. In order to avoid unpleasant surprises for your customers, the Advances package calculates duties and import taxes during the checkout process. Even better, you can create unique prices based on your market. Shopify is cutting-edge in almost all ecommerce-related fields. Any of its plans won’t pose a challenge to you in terms of setting up shop and managing your company.
Squarespace Pricing
As a CMS and e-commerce platform, Squarespace has excellent features. Nevertheless, despite its useful marketing and management features, it functions better as a CMS. It’s the simplest way to create a website thanks to its user-friendly tools, and it outperforms Shopify in terms of content.
Squarespace has four plans to choose from:
- Personal: $14 per month billed annually
- Business: $23 per month billed annually
- Basic Commerce: $27 per month billed annually
- Advanced Commerce: $49 per month billed annually
The Personal plan comes with a free custom domain, SSL security, and unlimited bandwidth, but it probably won’t be enough for most businesses. It still provides you with tools to market outside of a blog, despite having 30 minutes of video storage and restricted access to the Squarespace Video Studio app.
Building your site is simple thanks to its integrated SEO features and award-winning templates. This plan allows for the inclusion of two contributors and comes with a mobile-friendly website by default.
You receive basic website metrics, round-the-clock customer service, and Squarespace extensions with this package.
You receive all Personal features at the Business tier in addition to enough to market and operate your store. You gain unrestricted access to the Video Studio app and contributors.
You have everything you need to create a one-of-a-kind ecommerce site, including a professional Google email, premium integrations from Blocks, and customization with JavaScript and CSS. To access any marketing or e-commerce features, you also need this plan.
Advanced website analytics, Google Ads credits, pop-ups, and banners are provided to help you promote your brand. Squarespace lets you sell an unlimited number of products thanks to its fully integrated ecommerce. Additionally, you can give away gift cards and accept donations. Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee.
You receive all Business features, a 0% transaction fee, and additional e-commerce features with Basic Commerce. This plan makes selling even more convenient for you and your customers by including Point of Sale, customer accounts, and checkout on your domain.
With the help of its ecommerce analytics and merchandising tools, you can learn how customers interact with your goods and how to enhance their shopping experiences. You can sell your goods on Instagram using this tier, and you can restrict product availability.
All features of the Basic Commerce package are included in the Advanced Commerce package, which also has more e-commerce functionality. You can sell subscriptions and recover abandoned carts. You can provide the best deals with advanced shipping and discounts, and commerce APIs assist you in optimizing your marketing.
Bottom Line
Both Squarespace and Shopify provide a wealth of e-commerce features. Shopify has more features to support you if you want to put more of an emphasis on your products.
If you want to run a blog in addition to your e-commerce website, Squarespace works better. Additionally, it has more templates and tools for starting from scratch with your website. Its ecommerce features are a little less robust than Shopify’s, but depending on your other resources and how quickly you want to expand your business, it still provides enough to work with.