For example, if you're using one of the standard free Shopify templates (i.e., the ones developed by the company itself), you can expect fairly comprehensive customer support if it's not behaving as it should. Shopify vs Squarespace What’s the best ecommerce platform for you? Shopify, however, has features that make it the undisputed king of eCommerce. A note of caution is worth sounding regarding the customer support offered with both Shopify and Squarespace — the quality of support you'll get often depends on what you're doing with your template. There are limitations to watch out for when it comes to products however. The Unsplash integration is particularly welcome, given that the quality of its free images is in most cases pretty high. Answering this question starts, helpfully, with another question…. Shopify has more marketing tools to help grow your online store than Squarespace does. The real reason why you’re here. You can use Printful to sell printed products on demand, but that’s about it. Squarespace has an intuitive, powerful page editor that lets you design and style beautiful pages. Squarespace is all about building beautiful websites— while Shopify is purely focussed on powering ecommerce. If your focus is on building an informative website, then design and content management functionality are going to be a priority — and this being the case, it's fair to say that Squarespace is the more obvious choice out of the two products discussed here for that purpose. Shopify has the edge over Squarespace when it comes to customer support. Also, if you've found this post useful, it'd be wonderful if you could consider sharing it on social media or creating a link to it on your blog / website. With Squarespace, you can edit the CSS and certain bits of HTML (you can insert code blocks onto pages, or inject HTML into the header of your site). Squarespace’s email marketing tool is a bit more advanced than the Shopify equivalent. Squarespace was initially conceived as a solution for building and maintaining content-based websites, whereas Shopify was specifically created as a solution for making an online store. The third restriction is possibly the most serious, because it rules out design customisations that can't be made using the standard Squarespace controls. However, Shopify is by no means a slouch in the template / visuals department. And right by the blue corner, we have Squarespace. With Shopify the only way to do that is to edit CSS code— there’s no other way. In all honesty, both of them are excellent website builders. US and Canadian tax rates can be automatically calculated and applied to your products’ prices. Perhaps in a bid not to be outdone by Squarespace, Shopify has also recently introduced an email marketing tool, ‘Shopify Email’. Only physical products can be exported, and you can only export up to 10,000 products (with each variant counting as a product). And in fairness, you get a lot for $12. Ultimately however, if POS is important to you, Shopify is currently the better option (especially if you live outside the US). But Shopify caters to merchants who sell in person, Squarespace is better suited … And delivered with élan. It’s easy enough to get content and products into Squarespace. A few things to note about navigating the pricing plans of Squarespace and Shopify: I’ve been building websites for over 20 years and websites have been featured in Wired, The Next Web, Smashing Magazine, The Huffington Post and Forbes. And, because you can only sell goods using Stripe from certain countries, Paypal is left as the sole payment processing option for a lot of Squarespace users. Many people who dip their toes into the waters of online retailing do so because they want to start dropshipping products. Hopefully this comparison review has helped somewhat, but if you are still agonising over your decision it is definitely worth availing of a free trial of both products, having a play, and seeing which one you prefer: And finally, a reminder that we can help you build both Shopify and Squarespace websites! There are more template variations available in Shopify (but you will have to pay a premium to use many of them). There’s not a huge amount in it, but Shopify’s SEO functionality is arguably a bit better than Squarespace’s. What’s nice about Shopify is that you can use its ‘Buy Button’ feature to embed products on any sort of online presence that permits you to add a snippet of code to it. Shopify vs Squarespace, 10 Factors to Help You Decide 1. As things stand, there are also more free templates to choose from in Squarespace: you can choose from around 120 bundled templates to Shopify's 9. Now, meeting the first three requirements with either Squarespace or Shopify is fairly straightforward (although you will have a bit of legwork to do in terms of creating GDPR compliant privacy policies and data capture forms).Meeting the fourth requirement however is harder, and in my view Squarespace and Shopify should be doing more to assist their customers to meet this GDPR obligation (particularly Squarespace).Basically, whenever you use non-essential third party cookies on a website — for example a Facebook Ads pixel or a Google Analytics tag — you are legally obliged to give EU visitors to your website the option to switch these off BEFORE they continue to browse your site (even if your site is based outside of the EU). Shopify’s new email marketing tool, ‘Shopify Email’. Squarespace on the other hand has a powerful and intuitive theme editor. Neither allows you to create truly ‘clean’ URLs — something that Google prefers — because they stick prefixes into some URLs which can't be removed (for example, /blog/, /products/ and so on). To avail of several important e-commerce features, including abandoned cart recovery, real time carrier shipping, advanced discounts and gift cards, you will need to go for the most expensive 'Advanced Commerce' plan. 10% and 20% discounts on the above prices are available if you pay upfront for an annual or two-year plan respectively. There is a negative aspect of Shopify's reporting offering which is worth pointing out however: it's only available on their more expensive plans. Thanks to the fact that EU VAT is automatically calculated for you on digital goods, Shopify also makes selling downloads to EU customers a lot more straightforward. Shopify vs. Squarespace: Which Platform to Choose? Shopify’s cheapest plan starts at $29 per month, which is pretty much exactly the same as Squarespace’s Basic Commerce plan. Feel free to post them in the comments section below! You just enter the relevant URL into your page settings and Squarespace will use it as the background. Wix comes as the easiest and would be great for beginners. Shopify powers many large, unique ecommerce stores— for example All Birds, Kylie’s Cosmetics and MVMT. Squarespace’s built-in email marketing feature is called ‘Squarespace Email Campaigns’ — you have to pay extra to use it, and there are four plans available: Starter — $7 per month to send up to 3 e-newsletters to a maximum of 500 subscribers per month, Core — $14 per month for 5 e-newsletters / 5,000 subscribers, Pro — $34 per month for 20 e-newsletters / 50,000 subscribers, Max — $68 per month for an unlimited number of newsletters / 250,000 subscribers. How many users you can have on your account varies quite a lot by plan. This is in addition to whatever transaction charges are made by that gateway. There is a huge library of third party apps that work with Shopify and extend its functionality significantly — although some integrations are available for Squarespace, you won't find a similar catalogue of apps to beef up your site / store. Read more ». In a previous post, we identified Wix as as the winner in Wix vs Squarespace, but the platforms are very similar in terms of their e … 2. It’s why the first scene of The Dark Knight is so amazing. I would much prefer it both website builders took followed the example of BigCommerce and offered cookie consent tools as a built-in feature. To be fair to Squarespace, the company has improved its SEO setup quite a bit bit recently, making it easier to enter SEO titles and meta descriptions, but further improvements are still needed, particularly when it comes to adding alt text to images. See our BigCommerce review and our BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison for more details. This plan comes in a bit cheaper than Shopify’s cheapest ‘full e-commerce’ plan (i.e., the plans which allow you to build a complete, standalone online store): you pay $26 per month for the Squarespace 'Business' plan versus $29 per month for the 'Basic Shopify' plan. With Squarespace, transaction fees are only applied to its 'Business' plan — the rate is 3%. When deciding which one is better overall, I would choose Shopify. However, when you consider that Squarespace charges 3% transaction fees on its 'Business' plan, and offers a very limited range of payment processing options with it, it's hard not to conclude that the Basic Shopify plan represents better value as far as e-commerce is concerned, even if the monthly fee is a little bit higher. You can view a full list of the products we receive commission on here. However, the Shopify apps allows you to display ALL your site content (including, crucially, product pages) in AMP format. There are 64 paid Shopify themes to choose from, most of which contain several variations. Note: My work is supported by affiliate commissions. It comes with more built-in email marketing tools, and gives you access to many marketing apps. There are also pre-designed sections that let you get up and running quickly. This means new Shopify users can start taking payments immediately— no need to figure out how to integrate with a 3rd party payment processor. Bottom line on GDPR: you can make a Shopify or Squarespace site GDPR-compliant, but it will involve some work (and ongoing fees, if you're using a third party cookie banner solution), with Shopify providing you with more options to solve the problem. Laying out content in Squarespace is really easy, and the options for doing so are extensive. Let me give two examples: 1. Both Shopify and Squarespace include a 14-day free trial with. Squarespace’s has the best theme customization tool of any website builder. If you have limited products or services to offer, your online store is more in the ‘boutique’ sector, and particularly for those who are in the artistic design arena then Squarespace is a solid choice. Well, both products let you sell physical goods, digital goods and subscriptions. Of the other Shopify mobile apps, 'Ping' is probably the most useful. Its e-commerce features are also arguably slightly easier to use — but that said, this is probably because there are fewer available. But which is best suited for your business? Shopify and Squarespace are born for different purposes. (Outside these countries, supported hardware is available from authorized resellers). So, when it comes to sales taxes, it’s a big win for Shopify. I'd argue that this is particularly the case if you're working with images — Squarespace is particularly good for creating online photography portfolios — or are a musician / band. On the whole, though, we think most business owners will prefer Squarespace. The key difference is that Shopify was built as an ecommerce platform from the start. Both Shopify and Squarespace let you create 100 variants of your products based on the options you’ve created. Squarespace provides a better approach: you pick an aspect ratio for your product images and the system will automatically crop all your pictures to that ratio. So, for example, if you’re reaching out to bloggers about a product, you can give them the option to add a ‘product card’ (pictured below) to their posts which allows their readers to purchase it immediately. It offers a nice, modern, and clean interface. If you don't opt for one of these plans, you'll just get access to a rather basic 'dashboard' report containing topline figures only. For bespoke functionality, you can code something yourself, or buy some third-party code snippets (these are increasingly referred to as ‘Squarespace plugins.’). We’ll do our best to answer any queries you may have on either website builder. So if designing beautiful static pages is important to you, you might want to choose Squarespace. Most store builders like Squarespace integrate with a 3rd party processor like Stripe or Paypal. SSL — secure socket layer — is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between web servers and browser, and using it ensures that all data passed between a web server and browser remains private. Tip: for a rundown of how to optimize a Shopify or Squarespace site for search engines, you might want to check out our Shopify SEO and Squarespace SEO guides. I recently started this ecommerce website and used Squarespace to design this unique product page with a product 'trailer' front and center. (It’s important to note that you have to be based in the USA to use it.). Both Shopify and Squarespace allow you to buy apps — or avail of free ones — which add functionality to your site. 10232963Quick links: E-commerce Reviews | WordPress Web Design | Squarespace Web Design | Squarespace Plugins, Advice, Tutorials, SEO, Advice - SEO, Advice - Squarespace, sell goods using Stripe from certain countries, add a GDPR-compliant cookie banner to your Squarespace site, use quality content (blog posts) to drive up traffic, spat between the two companies over data protection, embed a Mailchimp form on your site or use a third-party integration, how to add a GDPR-compliant cookie banner to a Squarespace site, A free trial of Shopify is available here, A free trial of Squarespace is available here, view a full list of the products we receive commission on here. Shopify vs Squarespace: Overview In the red corner is Shopify. There's definitely a 'wow' factor with certain Squarespace templates that sets them apart from similar website builders and e-commerce platforms. I’ll go through all the above in depth later on in the comparison. Ease of Use. If you pay upfront for a year's service (on any plan), you can get a free custom domain (i.e., yoursitename.com). Squarespace templates can be further enhanced, thanks to built-integrations with Unsplash and Getty images (stock photo sites that offer free and paid-for images respectively). If you’re using another template, you can add a currency selector to it through the addition of some code. Shopify has an edge when it comes to real time carrier shipping options — not only does it provide discounted real-time carrier shipping rates on all plans (depending on territory), but it also lets you offer calculated rates from a wider range of providers and in more countries. Squarespace is a better option for websites without stores and bloggers with small online stores. Tip: if you want a better page editor within Shopify, you can try some of the page builders apps in the Shopify app store that add drag-and-drop page editing. Notice how Squarespace elevates the website above the interface? Shopify’s automatic tax calculation feature is particularly useful for merchants selling digital goods in the EU. Because I was only selling one product and I wanted to design a long, unique product page. You also get a few video playback speed options and colour filters to play with. Shopify offers the most robust e-commerce tools while Squarespace is a good way for those who want to start selling at a lower cost Shopify is the most popular e-commerce platform for a reason There’s no argument that between Squarespace, Shopify, and Wix, Shopify dominates the other two, especially if you’re selling physical products. You can — albeit with the use of a third-party app — create AMP versions of product pages in Shopify; this is not the case with Squarespace. Squarespace by contrast provides you with a drag-and-drop editor that lets you place or move content where you please. Squarespace by contrast provides you with a drag-and-drop editor that lets you place or move content where you please. (One thing to note however is that if you sign up for Google Workspace via Squarespace, you won’t be able to use its Google Voice ‘smart voice calling’ services — so if that functionality is important to you, it’s better to sign up for Google Workspace separately). This means that if you buy a product or service after clicking on a link to a product featured in one of our reviews, we may receive a commission on the sale. You can also buy domain names separately through Squarespace too, if you like. With Shopify you get very extensive control over the coding of your site — you get full control over the HTML and CSS of your website (on all plans except the 'Lite' one). Shopify will calculate these automatically for you (when you use its free ‘Digital Downloads’ app). These plans are pretty cheap by comparison to the plans available from dedicated email marketing solutions (especially at the top end of the pricing scale) — and allow you to dip your toes into the world of online direct marketing without a significant outlay being involved. Compare Squarespace vs Sharetribe vs Shopify vs Yelo in Website Builder Software category based on 722 reviews and features, pricing, support and more You can also add both categories and tags to posts in Squarespace; Shopify just permits tags. If you're looking for a website builder with professional reporting functionality, then Shopify is a much better option than Squarespace. 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