Shopify vs Squarespace: Which is on top of eCommerce platforms?

Shopify vs Squarespace are two of the most prominent website builders on the market. While Shopify is an entire platform dedicated to assisting customers in selling online, Squarespace is a general platform with eCommerce functionalities. Each of them has distinct features for specific purposes, along with both some advantages and drawbacks.

Shopify stands out as a powerful and scalable online store solution, making it an excellent choice for businesses looking to sell products or services online. It offers a range of advanced features specifically tailored to facilitate online transactions and manage inventory effectively. With its robust backend infrastructure, extensive app ecosystem, and reliable customer support, Shopify provides the necessary tools for businesses to establish and run successful online stores.

On the other hand, Squarespace is known for its elegant design capabilities and intuitive user interface. While it also offers eCommerce functionality, Squarespace is particularly favored by service-based businesses or those seeking to showcase portfolios or create dynamic websites. The platform excels in providing visually appealing templates and flexible design options, allowing users to create stunning websites without coding knowledge.

In this detailed comparison, we’ll take an in-depth look at Shopify vs Squarespace comparison to see which of these leading website builders is right for your project.

Shopify vs Squarespace Explanation

Before jumping into details, let’s define in short what Shopify and Squarespace are.

What Is Shopify? 

Shopify seems to be the most prominent eCommerce platform with approximately 4 million currently live websites. 

With Shopify, you can easily build a business from scratch. This eCommerce website includes powerful tools to help you find customers, increase sales, and manage your day-to-day operations. 

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is best known for its professional-looking templates and simple section-based editors which make site creation quick and easy. It gives you access to a collection of tools for your own site with a subscription fee. 

Don’t worry if you’re a beginner because no coding or web development knowledge is necessary. 

If you are intending to migrate from cart to cart, LitExtension will help you transfer your data from Squarespace to Shopify or the reverse accurately, painlessly and securely. 

Shopify vs Squarespace- Highlights

Let’s take a look at the highlights of Shopify vs Squarespace in a tabular view:

Features	Shopify	Squarespace
Best for	Creating professional-looking eCommerce and dropshipping stores.	Managing website content and offering tons of CMS features to create any type of website.
eCommerce Capabilities	The extensive features offered in the Basic plan allow sellers to operate for the long term; the mid-range plan provides enhanced reporting capabilities and automated workflows.	The basic commerce plan contains only the most essential eCommerce capabilities; customers must upgrade to the standard plan to have access to a more extensive range of tools.
Themes and Templates	Shopify has plenty of professionally designed themes available in the market. Those themes are based on various types of stores.	Squarespace also has a plethora of free and premium readily-designed templates for different types of websites.
Sales Channels	Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Etsy, and more	Facebook and Instagram
Design Capabilities	Abundant resources for creating a professional store and website, but fewer templates than Squarespace.	An extensive template collection, advanced product display options and other tools for producing high-quality visual content are all available.
Support	24/7 email, live chat, and phone	24/5 live chat (weekdays) and 24/7 email
Pricing	Pricing starts at 25$/month	Pricing starts at $23/month

Shopify vs Squarespace: Comprehensive Comparison

Now that we’ve got a brief idea about Shopify and Squarespace let’s have a look at feature-wise comparisons between the two robust CMS platforms.

Ease of Use

Both Shopify and Squarespace have a certain degree of usability. Let’s see how much flexibility each of them provides.

Shopify- Ease of Use 

Shopify is effortless to use by dint of the nature of a hosted platform. Both tech-savvy and non-technical users will have little difficulty creating their stores on Shopify. 

It offers a user-friendly dashboard and drag-and-drop design. This means you can easily customize the design of your shop with a few mouse clicks. No design experience or programming skills are required in this process.

Then you just add your products to the store, set up payments and start selling. 

Squarespace- Ease of Use 

Like Shopify, Squarespace uses drag-and-drop sections and content blocks, making it simple for beginners. The editing system is quite simple, you can add texts, images, and logos. The appearance of your front store will then be the same as when you publish. 

Though Squarespace is reasonably simple to use, it will take you a little longer to completely learn everything when compared to Shopify. This is because you can’t just drag and drop anything on anywhere you want. Instead, it’s more section-based, helping your website be more structured and tidy. 

Themes

Both Shopify and Squarespace provide a wide range of themes to enhance the visual appeal of your website. These themes play a crucial role in creating an attractive and engaging online presence. Let’s explore the offerings of each platform in more detail.

Shopify Themes

The Shopify Theme Store features numerous premium and free eCommerce templates. 

You can choose from high converting Shopify themes for clothing and fashion, jewelry, electronics, art and photography, and other types of eCommerce sites. 

Each template includes its own theme settings. These options allow you to customize the design of your eCommerce website without learning HTML or CSS. You can also change the layout of your homepage,  add banners, and slideshows, and avail of other features. Check out The Best Paid Shopify Themes 2024: Exclusive Look at the Top 10 NOW to find the greatest theme for your Shopify business!

Squarespace Themes

Most of Squarespace themes are sleek, stylish, and contemporary. Moreover, they are professionally designed to meet the standards of great design, usability, performance, and mobile responsiveness. 

In fact, Squarespace is primarily a blog-hosting service. Many Squarespace themes are specifically created for users who want to blog or showcase an art, photography, or music portfolio.

If you want to further personalize your website, you can use code to make changes. Squarespace allows you to add HTML via a Code Block and CSS via their CSS Editor.

eCommerce Features

Let’s have a look at the eCommerce features of each of these platforms.

Shopify Payments 

Shopify accepts all major payment gateways, including PayPal, Amazon Pay, Square, and cryptocurrency, as well as over 100 other options. Also, Shopify now adds more payment methods, particularly from local providers, to help store owners maximize conversion rates. 

Shopify Payments users will not be charged any additional transaction fees, which range from 0.5% to 2% transaction for all other payment methods.

Squarespace Payments 

Whereas, Squarespace only accepts PayPal, Square, and Stripe as payment methods.

Squarespace has collaborated with Square to enable you to accept credit cards, mobile payments, and cash. To begin selling, simply link your Square account and pair a reader with an iPhone or iPad device.

Though this payment option is available in both the Commerce Basic and Advanced Plan, it’s restricted in the United States. 

Shopify Point of Sale 

Shopify POS is available on all pricing plans, including Shopify Lite. Shopify truly supports in-person transactions with Shopify POS Lite (included in your Shopify plan) and Shopify POS Pro ($89/month). It provides an infinite number of benefits, as well as extensive reporting and analytics.

Squarespace Point of Sale 

Squarespace’s POS in the Squarespace app makes it simple to keep your inventory and customer data in sync, whether you sell online or in person. However, to get started, you’ll need the Squarespace Commerce app and a $49.00 Square card reader. 

Aside from Shopify surpassing the POS features of Squarespace, there are a number of other platforms that offer similar features as well. Check 7 Best Squarespace Alternatives for Your Business to find a more suitable platform for your online business. 

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Reviews 

Let’s have a look at what people think about different Shopify platforms as well as Squarespace.

Shopify Reviews

Shopify has so far got 4407 reviews in G2 Reviews, one of the prominent websites for software reviews, where it scored 4.4 out of 5. Check out Shopify reviews at G2.

Also, note that the different other platforms of Shopify, such as Shopify Plus and Shopify POS, also scored 4.4 out of 5 in G2 reviews.

Squarespace Reviews

In G2 reviews, Squarespace scored the same as Shopify since it also attained 4.4 out of 5 in 1036 reviews. Check out Squarespace reviews at G2.

Pricing

Now, let’s learn more about the pricing of these two famous platforms:

Shopify Pricing 

For the first time experiencing Shopify, you can sign up for a 14-day free trial of Shopify by simply entering your email address. Then Shopify will charge you with three pricing plans: Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify, ranging from $25 to $399/month if you choose to pay monthly, while if you pay yearly, the pricing will range from $19/month to $299/month.

If you are an entrepreneur and want to expand your business, you can take Shopify Plus into consideration. Here is the detailed comparison between Shopify vs Shopify Plus, check out now to see if it’s suitable for you. 

Besides, you may need to spend money on other aspects of your Shopify store, such as a domain name, theme design, add-ons, integrations, and so on. You should take all prices of appearance, functions, monthly subscription and transaction fees into account before opening a store on this platform.

Squarespace Pricing 

Squarespace users can select one of four monthly pricing plans:  Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, or Advanced Commerce, ranging from $23 to $65/month.

By registering annually, you will save 25% fee for each Squarespace plan – a big number for those who wanna go a long way. 

You can also take advantage of a 14-day free trial to test Squarespace before deciding whether it meets your business needs. 

Please keep in mind that the Squarespace Personal Plan does not include eCommerce or Marketing features. As a result, if you want to open a store with Squarespace, you must purchase one of the other three options. 

There are no Squarespace transaction fees for Squarespace Commerce plans (Basic and Advanced). Squarespace only charges a transaction fee of 3% on sales in the Business plan.  

Apps and Plugins

Shopify and Squarespace both have a large selection of apps and plugins. Let’s find out more about it.

Shopify apps and plugins 

With over 2000 robust apps in its marketplace, Shopify is regarded as one of the leading eCommerce platforms. You can pick and choose from a variety of free and premium apps starting at $15 per month. 

Squarespace apps and plugins

A Squarespace extension is the equivalent of a plugin, add-on, or app. Instead of going to the App Store, you can use Squarespace Extensions to find and install third-party tools.

Prices for Squarespace extensions vary. Some of them charge a monthly or per-use fee. Others may provide a free trial period or a free plan. 

About 30 extensions are intended to assist you in managing, optimizing, and expanding your site. You can filter by category and select from four divisions: Shipping and Fulfillment, Finance, Inventory and Products, Sales, and Marketing.

Click here to learn more about Squarespace extensions! 

Support 

When it comes to unwanted issues, both Shopify and Squarespace provide excellent customer service. If you need assistance, you can contact them via email, phone, live chat, or their community forum. You can also get assistance from their FAQs. 

Squarespace Help Center is available to help you find almost any information about this platform as well as how to create your own websites. Whereas, Shopify offers 24/7 phone support to help store owners solve their problems fast and effectively.

Security 

Both Squarespace and Shopify have a high level of security when you start building a store from scratch with self-hosted solutions. 

Shopify vs Squarespace are PCI compliant, which means they adhere to security standards when processing payment information. Also, SSL Certificates encrypt all data transferred between the store owners of these platforms and their clients. This greatly improves the trustworthiness of your online business by ensuring the security of sensitive information such as credit card data. 

Shopify vs Squarespace: Pros & Cons

Let’s summarize the pros and cons of Shopify and Squarespace.

Shopify Pros & Cons 

Shopify deserves the position of leading eCommerce platform thanks to its: 

• Clear and easy-to-use online dashboard
• Excellent POS system tracks in-store sales
• Robust App Store 
• Great customer support 

However, there are some drawbacks that Shopify can improve to enhance users’ experiences: 

• Limited blogging functionality
• Additional transaction fees

Squarespace Pros & Cons 

Here are some features that you can take advantage of Squarespace:

• Beautiful and elegant themes
• Affordable pricing plans

Nevertheless, Squarespace still lacks of:

• Various apps available on App Store
• Some other Payment options to promote sales 
• eCommerce features for online store

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrap Up 

Based on this in-depth comparison of Shopify vs Squarespace, it’s now easier for you to decide which eCommerce platform is suitable for your purposes. 

If you have an online business, especially if it is large or growing quickly, you should consider Shopify. This is because Shopify is designed specifically for building and managing online stores. Squarespace, on the other hand, is ideal for very small or new businesses with limited digital store functionality or those in need of a digital content manager. 

Don’t miss the entire review of Shopify by reading Shopify Review: Is Shopify The Crown Jewel of The eCommerce World? [June 2024]. 

Hope you find it useful in some ways!