This or That: Shopify vs Squarespace

If you want to open an online store to offer products or services, you will hunt for the top eCommerce platform that meets your requirements. Shopify and Squarespace are the largest, most appealing, most famous, and fastest-growing websites or online store builders available. They enable company owners to put up online shops or websites even though they don’t understand a single line of code.

Squarespace focuses on website design and easy-to-use pricing features, making it ideal for small enterprises. Shopify is an eCommerce-first tool that provides a streamlined design and a variety of add-ons to help you grow your brand. Both are excellent platforms but created with diverse users in mind.

Isn’t it surprising that both companies started in 2004? Shopify now employs almost 7,000 people and generated almost $3 billion in revenue in 2020. COVID-19, of course, boosted Shopify greatly as everyone placed their businesses online. Shopify is a firm that focuses on e-commerce.

Squarespace began as a platform for bloggers and creators. They didn’t launch their e-commerce option in 2013. In May 2021, they also went public. In 2020, they recorded a bit more than $620 million in revenue for their 1,000+ workers. 

Each platform has a distinct history. And knowing where they come from should give you an excellent notion of what they represent. Though claiming that one is better than the other just because they exist is incorrect. 

In this article, we’ll compare and contrast Shopify vs Squarespace, looking at what each offers. Then you may choose which is best for your company’s requirements.

Shopify: A Quick Overview

Shopify is a cloud-based e-commerce software that makes it simple for entrepreneurs to set up and manage online businesses. It’s most known for its packed and flexible e-commerce website solutions. It helps to create online stores that seamlessly link with social media. It also helps to post items, create a shopping cart, handle orders, and accept payments.

Shopify is without a doubt the dominant player in the website builder space: the Ottawa, Canada-based system has generated $100 billion in total transactions through its hosted sites, and it presently powers 600,000 businesses globally.

This includes major brands like Red Bull, Nestle, and Kylie Cosmetics. Shopify reached 1 million users in October 2019 thanks to its professional design and user-friendly interface. 

Shopify offers a large range of templates that may be customized to fit your branding needs. This platform allows you to sell both physical and online goods.

Squarespace: A Quick Overview

Compared to Shopify, Squarespace is the old kid on the block. They do, however, have one feature in common: they both assist consumers in setting up their internet stores with no coding experience. In the year 2003, the Squarespace platform was launched in the United States. It began as a blog hosting service, but it has now evolved into a well-known platform. 

Squarespace tech created a site builder that is not only SEO-friendly but also helps your online business look more professional. Squarespace is a web content management system (CMS) that lets you create and manage blogs,  websites, portfolios, and online stores. It employs a drag-and-drop interface to enable organizations of all sizes to build responsive designs. It now has about 2,608,015 active websites around the globe.

Shopify and Squarespace have quite distinct aims in mind. Shopify was built largely to increase sales for online enterprises, while Squarespace was developed to support content-based websites. Thus, these two titans have many differences. Let’s have a look at the features of Shopify vs Squarespace before we get into the big differences.

Unique Features of Shopify

Shopify provides several services to its customers, including the ability to develop appealing eCommerce websites and keep track of their business’s success. It also comes with many analytics tools to help users make informed business decisions, increase sales and improve website efficiency. A few Shopify features are listed below:

1. Abandoned Cart Retrieval

As stated in the report, the typical cart abandonment rate is 69.82%. In summary, 7 out of 10 buyers add items to their shopping carts but do not finish the transaction. It’s a significant amount of sales you might pass on. To confirm, go to your Shopify dashboard and click on orders. Next, go to Abandoned Checkouts. 

There, you’ll get a list of all the consumers that placed products in their cart but didn’t complete the transaction. How about if you remind them by sending them an email? Here, on basic Shopify accounts, your sole option is to send each client an email to notify them of their shopping.

The abandoned carts checkout email function identifies consumers who have items in their carts and sends them emails to remind them of those purchases. 

Businesses may leverage this method by subscribing to a Shopify price plan, which helps them to save time and earn more money.

2. Shopify POS

Shopify has a tool called “Point of Sale” that allows businesses to sell their goods in reality. Companies can, for example, set up actual pop-up stores to offer their items and receive payments from customers using a credit card machine. The payments are linked to the company’s Shopify stock, which keeps records of all sales as well. 

The Shopify POS function provides a unified dashboard, which eliminates the need to split in-store and online sales. Users may edit orders, view customer purchase history, and add special discounts via the app, which is available on Apple devices (iPhone and iPad). The online shop can also reward consumers if it has a functioning rewards program. 

For in-store customers, they use Shopify POS to create and prepare customized Marketing Strategies. This tool is available in Shopify POS Pro and Shopify POS Lite. The Pro edition includes features such as in-store analytics, Omnichannel selling, and much more.

3. Create Customer Profiles to find your Best Buyers

You can track and monitor your customers’ data and purchase history when you tell them to register an account before buying from you. This may sound weird, but it’s quite helpful. If they have a customer account, you can tell who your greatest customers are. 

In addition, you can send targeted sales emails using this information. Let’s assume you own an e-library and have sold over 300 copies of a well-known novel. You can monitor purchase history using customer accounts to find out who bought the first book and email them. Then, inform them of the next sale of your new book.

To activate it, go to Settings and choose Checkout. Next, make the client accounts section “required” or “optional.” Customers will now receive a prompt to sign in or establish an account before buying.

4. Dropshipping with Shopify

Dropshipping is a business concept where an eCommerce company buys things from a third party and ships them straight to customers. This business model eliminates the need for operational warehousing to hold listed items.

Companies must pay suppliers the wholesale cost while maintaining control over the pricing that buyers see on their websites.

Shopify has several apps that allow businesses to connect with thousands of wholesale suppliers all over the world. Oberlo is one such tool, which allows businesses to import items straight from AliExpress and offer them on their Shopify online store.

As a result, firms do not have to be concerned about product storage space for things displayed on their websites.

5. Shopify Analytics

Shopify offers a wide range of analytics tools to help users evaluate the effectiveness of their online business. It provides actionable insights into customer activities, marketing, revenue, and many others. It helps businesses improve their operations and make strategic decisions to boost income.

Shopify’s comprehensive dashboard gives critical information such as live view, product statistics, visitor demography, overall purchase, and others.

You can always combine Shopify analytics with Google Analytics to expand its possibilities. Marketing, inventory, acquisition, order, sales, profit, and other reporting functions are also available on the platform.

6. Unique SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial method in the achievement of online businesses. SEO improves a website’s position in search engines. Thus, effective SEO tactics assist businesses in increasing their online presence by reaching a larger audience, which increases sales. Shopify has several SEO tools ‌users may employ to achieve their objectives.

It also supports a variety of third-party tool integrations to aid in optimizing their websites. Smart SEO, for example, is a Shopify App Store software that includes several features, such as automatic data entry, delivering structured data to multiple search engines such as Google, multi-language support, and many more.

To improve traffic from Google image search, another tool called Booster Image and SEO Optimizer may be used. The program optimizes JSON-LD, Meta Tags, Site Maps, Alt Text, and other elements automatically.

Unique Features of Squarespace

Squarespace also provides many features that make it great for eCommerce firms. Integrated SEO tools and site analytics assist you in optimizing the website performance. Some of these features are; 

1. Squarespace Editor

Squarespace’s UI is sleek and basic, even though it might seem a bit too neat at first. It takes a few seconds to discover the items you’re searching for. That being said, after you’ve figured out what you’re doing, editing becomes quick and straightforward, and you’ll like the clean interfaces!

The Squarespace website builder displays the website just as it will appear once published, and you can observe any modifications as they happen. The interesting thing is that you don’t need to know a piece of code to achieve this. You may use code if you wish, but one of Squarespace’s major features is that it allows anybody to design a professional website. This is a pretty simple feature of the website since you can see what changes you’re making. 

2. Social Media Integration

Squarespace allows you to link your accounts from over 20 social media networks, making it simple to raise awareness. Such platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. You may also synchronize with Dropbox for quick access to image samples or import content directly from Instagram, Twitter, and other social platforms. You can even create your podcast and broadcast it to Spotify and Apple Podcasts using Squarespace.

In addition, you can add news feeds to your website. It makes it simple for visitors to keep abreast of their activities in one spot.

3. Email Marketing Campaign

You may use Squarespace’s all-in-one Email Campaigns platform or integrate Mailchimp to manage email campaigns. This in-built system is an excellent way to organize your brand across your entire website. When you integrate this with SEO tools and social media, the internet will have to take note.

4. SEO & Marketing

Squarespace’s SEO is strong, and all its pages adhere to the best SEO standards. It comprises various features, such as managing titles, adding keywords, and alt text. All of these help search engines find your website more easily. If you’ve never dealt with SEO before, you’ll know that Squarespace isn’t the most beginner-friendly platform. 

Thus, newcomers should take a practical learning approach to their site’s rating. However, Squarespace’s support sites have guidelines to help you. The instructions give a very detailed explanation of SEO. For novices, this may appear to be stressful, so take your time and read it all.

5. Backups and Restores

Squarespace’s editor does not support autosave. This puts the burden on the user to recall to hit save regularly. It appears to be a simple feature to include in its editor, but we don’t know why Squarespace doesn’t autosave for you.

You don’t have to worry, though, because Squarespace allows you to restore trashed pages and blog articles for up to 30 days. Squarespace creates backups of your web pages and saves them on direct and indirect servers, including physical and off-site memory disks.

And if you’re making changes with your mobile device, you won’t lose your work when the internet goes down!

Detailed Comparison Between Shopify vs Squarespace

In comparing Shopify vs Squarespace, we’ll examine pricing plans, eCommerce features, template styles, marketing choices, and general ease of use. 

1. Pricing

Shopify Pricing Plans

Shopify pricing plans are available in only three options: Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. All Shopify pricing plans have a monthly charge of $29 to $299, as shown below.

You can also sign up for a 14-day free trial of Shopify when you sign in with your email address. As regards third-party payment processors, Shopify has its own payment gateway, named Shopify Payments. Concerning transaction costs, you must pay online credit card rates or in-person credit card rates. If you choose Shopify Payments, there’ll be no extra charge on transactions between 0.5% and 2%. Anyway, it depends on the plan you select.

You may need to invest money in other aspects of your Shopify business, such as a domain name, theme design, add-ons, and integrations. We recommend ‌you look into Shopify pricing plans or estimates before starting a business on this platform.

Squarespace Pricing Plans

As a Squarespace customer, you can choose to select one of four monthly price plans. Square space pricing plans are; Personal, Basic Commerce, Business, or Advanced Commerce. The prices are between $16 and $54. The higher you upgrade, the more functional your online business will be.

You may also take advantage of its 14-day free trial to test the platform before judging whether it will meet your company’s needs. Remember that the Squarespace pricing personal plan does not offer eCommerce or marketing functions.

Thus, if you wish to build a store with Squarespace, you must purchase one of the remaining three alternatives. Also, the business plan has an extra transaction cost of 3%, while the other two do not. This may cause an increase in the price. 

Shopify vs Squarespace pricing plan feature – Our Judgment

Judging from Shopify vs Squarespace pricing, we can see that Squarespace is more economical. With just $54 per month, you can access Squarespace’s most premium features. Besides, you must spend at least $299 to receive unique features from Shopify, including various applications and add-ons for expanding your business. 

2. eCommerce Features

Product Category

You can sell both physical and virtual items using Shopify and Squarespace. To sell digital things, such as digital content on Shopify, you must install an app. At the same time, you can sell any item on Squarespace. 

Each web builder has an infinite number of products, including the flexibility to add single or bulk items. It also has in-house revenue reporting and direct email warnings for low stock levels.

Payment Options

Shopify accepts over 100 payment channels, including PayPal, Amazon Pay, Square, and cryptocurrencies. Shopify continues to provide payment solutions, particularly from local suppliers. The reason for this is to assist business owners in boosting conversion rates.

With this, Shopify Payments users will not receive any additional transaction fees, which vary from 0.5% to 2% per transaction for all other payment methods. Shopify Payments are accessible in 17 countries, including Australia, Belgium, and others. If you live in certain countries, use Shopify payment to avoid this additional expense.

In contrast, Squarespace accepts PayPal, Square, and Stripe as payment methods. Look below for the features of each payment processor;

i. Stripe

Connect to Stripe to accept the following payment methods:

• Visa (credit and debit cards)
• Cleary or Afterpay
• MasterCard Inc. (credit and debit cards)
• Apple Pay
• Investigate (US merchants only)
• The Diner’s Club
• The American Express Company
• JCB

ii. PayPal

Accept PayPal and Venmo by connecting a PayPal Business account.

iii. Square

If you sell things in person, activate the Squarespace POS system in the iOS Squarespace app to receive cash and card payments integrated with your retail website. Square accepts multiple payment options and performs point-of-sale operations.

Dropshipping

Shopify has all you desire. From printable shipping information to built-in connection with shipping services like NHL or UPS and dropshipping. Shopify makes sure that the shipping process goes as smoothly as possible.

Here, Squarespace cannot contend with Shopify. They’ve been collaborating with a unique selling proposition to compute carrier shipping charges. UPS also lets you adjust shipping prices based on the nation you’re sending to or the weight of your shipment.

Point-of-Sale

Shopify created its Point-of-Sale system for mobile and brick-and-mortar sales (Shopify POS Lite) (Shopify POS Pro). It’s a feature in all Shopify pricing plans and works with your online businesses. In addition, there’s an extra charge for each physical sale. 2.7% for the basic plan, 2.5% for the Shopify plan, and 2.4% for the Advanced plan.

Meanwhile, Squarespace collaborated with Square to create a “Point of Sale”. To get started, you’ll need the eCommerce app and a Square card reader for $49. Note that POS is available if you have a Commerce Basic or Advanced package. Squarespace does not request any extra transaction fees.

Shopify vs Squarespace eCommerce feature – Our Judgment

In Shopify vs Squarespace for eCommerce, we’ll declare Shopify as the winner because it considers eCommerce business owners. Albeit, integrating POS functions into Shopify stores is very pricey, making it unsuitable for businesses on a tight budget.

3. User-Friendliness

Shopify User-friendliness

Shopify provides an incredibly user-friendly interface owing to its hosted nature. It has a drag-and-drop interface, which means you can easily add, delete, or switch components with just a few clicks. The homepage also offers a simplified layout with graphical hints and shortcuts for adding goods, customizing themes, and placing a domain. As a result, you’ll never get confused when creating your online business.

Squarespace User-friendliness

Despite Squarespace being a hosted cart, it is a little more challenging to master than its opponent. Squarespace’s drag-and-drop segments with certain content blocks make it simple for newcomers. The editor’s webpage remains tricky to browse, lacking visual signals. Those new to developing online stores need some patience to understand Squarespace’s method. 

Shopify vs Squarespace user-friendliness feature – Our Judgment

Both Shopify vs Squarespace is easy to use. But Shopify is a little easier to operate. It strikes a good mix between basic design elements and advanced business tools.

4. Customized Template and Design

Shopify Template

Shopify provides an excellent selection of layouts. There are ten free templates available, including over 50 premium layouts ranging in price from $140 to $180. Themes from Shopify contain a wide range of sectors. Examples are; electronics, clothes, sports, makeup, and so on.

Most of Shopify’s themes provide business functionality to aid in the improvement of your website. Some designs, though, do not have control bars that scroll down with you, which is inconvenient to fix. 

Squarespace Template

Compared to Shopify, Squarespace is a design pioneer in the sector. Squarespace’s layouts are all contemporary and clean. They all express a simple message with readily recognized main action buttons. They’re also all smartphone sensitive, so they look great on any screen resolution.

Contrary to Shopify, Squarespace has unique templates designed especially for the artistic profession. It features themes for practically any other industry, such as DIY, food & beverage, and kids.

Shopify vs Squarespace template designs – Our Judgment

Squarespace is the most professional-looking platform for creating websites, making it the apparent winner. It makes your items stand out by providing sleek and sophisticated themes for various industries. Shopify has ten free and over 50 paid themes, but they’re not as appealing.

5. SEO

Shopify SEO

Shopify’s SEO built-in tools provide efficiency in enhancing your eCommerce website. First, Shopify will produce titles and descriptions for all goods and webpages, plus relevant tags and your sitemap, based on the information on your site.

When addressing the key SEO aspects, such as title tags, meta descriptions, and picture alt text, Shopify uses the correct term. It helps in saving you time by generating 301 redirects when you update your web URLs.

Squarespace SEO

Squarespace also offers SEO services to help you optimize your site for search engines. This technology also aids optimization by producing title tags, meta tags, and sitemaps. Unlike Shopify, you’ll have to deal with “captions” and “descriptions” in Squarespace. Plus, if you update the URL of your page, you’ll have to construct the 301 redirects manually. And this makes it unpleasant and time-consuming.

Shopify vs Squarespace SEO feature – Our Judgment

Shopify vs Squarespace basic SEO functions are available to help your e-commerce site rank higher in SERPs. Since we’re comparing Shopify vs Squarespace, Shopify offers superior SEO tools. This is because of its top site performance and stability. 

6. Affiliate Program: Shopify vs Squarespace

The Shopify Affiliate Program is for brand influencers and content creators who want to educate their audiences about entrepreneurship with Shopify while earning commission on referrals. But before joining the Shopify affiliate program, you’ll need to apply and wait for the approval. In this case, approval takes up to 15 working days. 

On the other hand, the Squarespace affiliate program offers a commission when you refer customers to join the affiliate program. There are no charges linked to this program, but you’ll have to apply and be accepted before becoming an affiliate. As an affiliate, you can receive insights to track your commissions and referrals. Not just that, Squarespace offers trackable links to make referring people easy. 

Affiliate Program: Shopify vs Squarespace – Our Judgement

As much as Shopify and Squarespace offer affiliate programs with simplified features, these features do not beat those of Metricks. Unlike Shopify and Squarespace, Metricks is meant for businesses, content creators, eCommerce, etc. It allows you to create an affiliate program within one to five minutes. That said, you’ll be able to manage and automate affiliate payments while tracking your multi-affiliate campaigns. 

Metricks gives you room to interact with your affiliates using its in-app messaging features. It even provides you with the opportunity to drive traffic to your business. As you can see, Shopify vs Squarespace affiliate programs does not stand out like Metricks. There are still more USPs for Metrick’s affiliate programs. So, take hold of our easy-to-use tools and user-friendly platform to establish quick and effective affiliate marketing campaigns today! 

FAQs: Shopify vs Squarespace

Can I use Squarespace or Shopify?

Shopify is an e-commerce website builder with the most extensive sales tools and functions available, making it ideal for practically any online business. Squarespace, on the other hand, is ideal for selling a limited number of things while using the most beautiful designs accessible.

How much is Shopify?

Shopify platform provides a 14-day free trial without requiring credit card details. Neither site provides a completely free plan, but both allow you to test drive their services before making a purchase. But you’ll have to upgrade to a premium account after that. Basic Shopify ($29 per month), Shopify ($79 per month), and Advanced Shopify ($299 per month) are the three options available, with each having additional sales tools according to the pricing plan you pick. 

What payment options are available with Squarespace?

After establishing your Squarespace site, you may link it to PayPal or Stripe. This allows you to use Visa, MasterCard, Discover (US Merchants only), American Express, Diner’s Club, JCB, and Apple Pay as payment methods. It’s worth mentioning that the number of apps you can connect with Shopify is limited.

Should I build my blog using Squarespace?

Sure! You can be sure of a lovely blog that will wow your visitors with Squarespace. Also, it comprises all of the blog-specific features you’ll need to manage your content, including archiving and built-in search. When it comes to blogging, Shopify performs poorly.

What are the key benefits of Shopify over Squarespace?

The most significant benefit of Shopify over Squarespace is that its major e-commerce functionalities are far more robust. One can use more payment methods and reach a wider choice of e-commerce applications. including features like multi-currency and multilingual selling that aren’t available with Squarespace.

What are the key benefits of Squarespace Over Shopify?

The most significant benefit of using Squarespace over Shopify is that it is far better for creating content-driven sites. For example, if you want to develop a blog, brochure, or portfolio site that also allows you to sell on the side, Squarespace’s theme selection is much more suitable for this. Squarespace makes it easier to layout and alters text and graphics than Shopify.

Shopify vs Squarespace: Which is more scalable?

This is a no-brainer: Shopify. Shopify makes it simple to expand your business thanks to its extensive sales and marketing features. Squarespace is fine for some websites (creative industries, for example), but if you want to go from selling 100 products per week to 1,000, or 10,000, Shopify is the way to go.

Wrapping up: Shopify vs Squarespace

In our comparison between Shopify vs Squarespace, Squarespace ranked higher. Yet, Shopify is the unquestioned champion of e-commerce since that’s what they’ve been for so long and still excels at it.

i. Select Shopify

If you’re running an online business, especially one growing fast, Shopify is a good option for you. The reason is that it was designed primarily for creating and maintaining online stores. 

ii. Select Squarespace

Squarespace is ideal for small stores or new enterprises with minimal features or those in need of a digital content manager.

You can develop a website using either of the platforms because they provide trial version periods. However, before subscribing to a pricing plan, consider if you’re comfortable with the system. Check if it has the features you want and its pricing plans fit your business budget.

Finally, if you run an affiliate marketing program on either Squarespace or Shopify, tracking your affiliate program might be highly incommodious. Thus, you might want to integrate the best affiliate marketing program tracking software to make life easier for you and your eCommerce business. Reach out to Metricks; let’s direct you on the right path.