Squarespace vs. Shopify

Squarespace vs. Shopify: which platform is best for your online shop?

Deciding which platform to choose for your new website can be overwhelming. You’re looking over at Squarespace and seeing stunning designs, and you’re glancing around at Shopify and catching sight of outstanding shops, but which one will actually work for your business? We’ve compiled the main differences between Squarespace and Shopify to help you decide which is the best website hosting platform for you.

First, let us give you a quick overview of Squarespace and Shopify!

Squarespace is an all-in-one website hosting platform that allows anyone to create a visually stunning website. It comes with hosting, ready-made design templates, various tools for template customization, marketing tools, and the ability to build fully custom website designs. It is the best platform to easily create websites for a variety of needs, such as a personal brand website, a blog, a professional services website, a members area, or a small to a large scaled online store.

KEY FEATURES

• Customizable templates and ready-made page layouts

• In-built blogging, e-commerce, subscription, membership & scheduling tools

• Comes with hosting, SSL certificate, analytics, SEO tools and mobile app

• Easily integrates with other platforms for extended functionality

• 24/7 customer support

KEY BENEFITS

• Super easy to use drag and drop website design builder

• A Website platform for a variety of business models

• Ability to assign multiple contributor access levels

• Easily accessible and intuitive SEO tools to help you rank on Google

Shopify is the most powerful e-commerce website hosting platform on the market that allows you to sell, market, and manage your online store of any size, all in one place, providing you with everything from customizable templates, a variety of web design options, and e-commerce tools, through a variety of unique apps and payment processors, to blogging, reporting, and marketing tools.

KEY FEATURES

• Advanced e-commerce tools with a variety of apps

• Dashboard highlighting key analytics such as sales, orders, and online store visits

• Multi-channel selling across physical, pop-up, online and social media stores

• Unlimited products, bandwidth and online storage

• 24/7 customer support

KEY BENEFITS

• The most powerful e-commerce tools in the marketplace

• Easy to start, set up, manage and grow an online store

• Access to a pool of suppliers with products ready to ship

• Social media stores for easy social selling

As you can see from what we’ve outlined above, Shopify and Squarespace are two very different platforms, so let's take a look at the key differences between them!

Web Design

Squarespace is a great choice to create a personal brand or professional services website effortlessly. The platform offers hosting, ready-made and pro-designer-level templates, custom web design possibilities, easy editing, and various tools and integrations that allow you to expand its functionality with further features.

Shopify is perfect to set up an advanced e-commerce shop. It's self-hosted and comes with a whole range of integrations that can allow to achieve advanced functionality that a large e-commerce store might need. It offers free and paid templates, custom design options and expansion possibilities.

E-commerce Features

Squarespace has extended its e-commerce possibilities to allow up to 200 product displays while the limit used to be 20. The platform also offers brilliant inventory and analytical tools for easy management of your shop. You’ll have basic filter capabilities within the platform, however, if you are looking to include aspects such as advanced search, wish list, or waitlist, you’ll integrate various add-ons in order to achieve the hoped functionality.

Shopify stands out as a leader in the e-commerce space today allowing unlimited product displays. Its features are super advanced, allowing it to build complex stores with thousands of products that can be filtered through a multitude of criteria. Shopify easily extends its functionality through its in-built tincturations, however, you need to be careful as some of them cost quite a lot extra.

Design Editor

Squarespace has the most intuitive, easy-to-use, and user-friendly design editor. There is a huge range of design features available, and you can easily add and move design blocks around, drop images, videos, quotes, or edit text. If you’re a more advanced user, you can access template customization tools that will allow you to input custom colours and fonts, and also manipulate the thickness, length, size, and positioning of design elements such as header menu, text blocks, picture cards, and so on.

Shopify’s design editor is rather limited. The design templates that come as standard are only a few, and in most cases are lacking features. Shopify offers upgrades to its design templates, which allow for more customization options as described in the Squarespace example, however, we’ve found that those add-ons come at costly monthly subscriptions which is a disadvantage for an early-stage business owner.

Payment Providers

Squarespace only has two payment provider options; Paypal and Stripe. With Stripe, you can accept payments through credit and debit cards, Afterpay, Apple Pay, and more. Paypal and Stripe are both very safe and globally recognized processors; however, we’ve found that they don’t operate in selected countries (check this page for Stripe and this page for Paypal). Also, these options have some limitations for what can be sold through the payment providers, i.e. CBD products are not supported by Paypal.

Shopify offers a massive range of payment providers, so you’ll be able to sell anything, in any geographical location, at any time. For an up-to-date list of payment providers, visit this page. Perfect for a seamless customer journey, no matter what your business offering is.

In conclusion, Squarespace is an overall great option for a number of business models, even for e-commerce shops. The platform allows stunning visuals, great and easy design possibilities and effortless website management. For advanced e-commerce businesses, Shopify offers more. It allows you to grow eternally, and you don’t have to worry about changing platforms and building new websites when you grow out of the previous website - which can be costly. Overall, Shopify’s sole focus is on e-commerce websites rather than positioning as a website platform for all purposes.

Looking for a new website for your business?

If you’re still unsure which platform to choose - Squarespace or Shopify, schedule a FREE 20-min consultation with our team and we’ll help you decide!

Related Blogs