Shopify vs. Squarespace: Which eCommerce Platform Is Right For You?

Shopify and Squarespace are two of the biggest eCommerce platforms out there, and it is clear why. Both of these platforms enable new shop owners to build and open their digital store without any previous coding experience. But which eCommerce platform is right for you?

What Is Shopify?

Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms because it allows you to easily create and build everything you need for an online store. Through Shopify, you can accept payments, market your business on social media, and manage your online inventory. It also has an easy-to-use dashboard where you can monitor everything you need to manage and run your business.

What Is Squarespace?

Squarespace is another website that helps you create your eCommerce store. Even if you don’t know any coding experience, it enables you to design a flawless and professional site. There is a monthly fee to use Squarespace, but in return, the company manages everything, including template designs, a content management system, hosting, support, and a domain. Squarespace is well-known for its minimalist design that allows you to showcase your product line.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: Ease of Use

Shopify has made a considerable effort to bring together all the tools you need to build an online store. While the interface might seem hard to use at first, it doesn’t take more than a couple of hours to get used to the platform. Shopify utilizes a drag-and-drop feature so you can edit pages easily. Or, if you have more experience with coding, you can choose to work within the platform’s CSS or with its custom Liquid coding language.

On the other hand, Squarespace is a little easier to understand from the beginning. It has a very similar interface and a dashboard that allows you to access all the editing tools you need. Squarespace also features drag-and-drop building tools that enable you to remove and reorder pages and elements easily. It also has a tool that gives you the ability to customize various aspects of the page.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: Both of these platforms are easy to use once you get used to the interface. Shopify does have a slight advantage here because you can customize your online store more efficiently.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: Feature Set

Shopify has an extensive feature set that includes everything you might need to design and run your online store. It has plenty of handy tools to manage your product line, process payments, market effectively, promote products, and more. Through the product management tools, the Shopify system allows you to add new products, create product images, descriptions, and prices, as well as organize all the products in different categories.

Through the Shopify app store, you can find a wide range of add-ons and widgets for your eCommerce site. In the app store, there are apps for payment processing, loyalty programs, social media marketing, analyzing, reporting, and more. Shopify also can integrate with various third-party services like Zoho, Zendesk, QuickBooks, and more. This feature helps you to get the most out of Shopify.

Squarespace is more of a content-based website builder, which means that its features are more engineered towards making a portfolio and blog. However, it still is capable of running an eCommerce store very effectively. It doesn’t have its own app store and it has more limited integration functionality than Shopify.

Squarespace also has a more basic collection of widgets, with the ability to add galleries, social media buttons, and contact forms and more. The site does come with the ability to integrate Google Analytics and a built-in Metrics App.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: Shopify is likely the better option if you want to customize your website more, and have specific eCommerce needs. Because Squarespace is a content-based website builder, it might not be ideal for a big online shop with extensions.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: Design

Shopify is the perfect tool for building professional and streamlined eCommerce sites. You can choose to use between paid or free templates. The free templates are more limited, with roughly ten options to choose from, but they still look gorgeous and are easy to use. If you opt for paid templates, you can choose between 60 themes. All the themes are mobile-friendly.

Squarespace also has beautiful themes that will add to the professionalism of your website. The platform has more than 90 options to choose from, but most of these templates are related to content-based sites like blogs or portfolios.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: Squarespace and Shopify both have beautiful templates, but the paid templates on both platforms might be a better option.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: Pricing

Shopify has four different plans to choose from ranging in cost from $9 a month to $299 a month. The plan that you select depends on how big your future digital store will be.

Squarespace has four different packages as well, with pricing ranging from $12 a month to $40 a month. The smallest plan, at $12, is probably not going to be good enough for eCommerce stores. Unless you have a very tiny online shop, you should opt for the $26 or $40 a month plan.

Shopify vs. Squarespace: While Shopify is more expensive, you do get more features to build your ideal digital store. The plans can scale with your business, making it a good option for new online stores.