Squarespace vs. Shopify: Which Is Best for Your Business?
Need to create an online store? Squarespace and Shopify are both great options—find out which one fits your business the best.

Squarespace and Shopify are two popular drag-and-drop website builders. These user-friendly website providers make it possible to create e-commerce stores without writing code or using host websites like Etsy that take a portion of your profit. Both of these platforms use “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editing to show users what a web page will look like to visitors in real-time use.
You can use either platform to create a fully functional e-commerce store. Let’s take a closer look at Squarespace vs. Shopify and go over the essential information you’ll need to know when deciding which platform can best help you grow your e-commerce business.
Table of contents
- Squarespace and Shopify: Who are they for?
- Squarespace overview
- Shopify overview
- Squarespace vs. Shopify
- Which is best for you: Squarespace or Shopify?
Squarespace and Shopify: Who are they for?
Squarespace is a multi-functional website-building platform. You can use it to build a business website, a sales landing page, an online store, a blog, a membership portal, or a personal portfolio. If you aren’t sure what kind of website you need, Squarespace is a great all-around place to start.
Shopify’s focus, on the other hand, is commerce. While it is not quite as versatile as Squarespace when it comes to the sheer breadth of possible applications, it offers a lot of e-commerce-specific capabilities. If you know you need to sell digital or physical products online, you should definitely take a look at Shopify to see if it could be right for you.
If you’re looking to build an online presence for your business without the cost of building a website, these providers are designed for ease of use. Keep reading to find the website builder with the best features that meet your needs.
Squarespace overview
Squarespace boasts nearly 3.8 million subscribers. When choosing Squarespace as your e-commerce website builder, you can:
- Sell physical products, digital downloads, classes, and services
- Book in-person and online appointments with clients
- Offer products and services through a subscription
- Sell memberships and create members-only exclusive content
- Sell products or services in person using a Square point of sale (POS) system or card reader
- Collect sales tax
- Manage shipments
- Offer discounts and coupons
- Track inventory sold across digital and in-person sales channels
- Leverage marketing features like email campaigns and social media content
- Create intake forms and professional invoicing
- Automate sales tax calculation and tax filing and reporting
Squarespace offers a range of e-commerce and business integrations, including:
- FedEx, USPS, and UPS shipping
- Paypal, ApplePay, and Stripe payment processing
- Printful, Printify, and Art of Where print-on-demand merchandise
- Mailchimp, EZ texting, and Progressier promotional campaigns
In addition to these e-commerce features, every Squarespace website includes:
- Mobile-responsive design
- Over 160 customizable templates
- Built-in search engine optimization (SEO) features
- Blog features for content marketing
- Easy connection to social media accounts
- Access to a free logo-maker tool
Note that while Squarespace offers email marketing, video editing, social media, and SEO tools, these features may require an additional fee depending on your Squarespace plan.
Squarespace commerce and business plans start at $33 per month. If you want more time to explore Squarespace’s offerings beyond their free 14-day trial, their most affordable pricing is the Personal plan at $23 per month. However, the Personal plan doesn’t have e-commerce integrations.
Pricing
You can choose from three Squarespace pricing plans for your online store.
Squarespace Business plans cost $33 per month or $23 per month when billed annually. This plan gives you access to premium integrations and blocks, which increases your design options when building a new site. If you choose to run an e-commerce store on your Squarespace Business site, you’ll pay Squarespace a 3% fee on every transaction.
Squarespace Basic Commerce plans cost $36 per month or $27 per month when billed annually, and give you every feature in the Business plans—plus some extras! As this plan is intended for use by e-commerce businesses, your website can:
- Load shopping carts on your own domain
- Let customers create accounts
- Sync e-commerce and in-store Square POS transactions
- Integrate merchandising features like low-stock alerts
There are no transaction fees for Basic Commerce plan users, though you may still incur a fee charged by your payment processor.
Squarespace Advanced Commerce plans cost $65 per month or $49 per month when billed annually. The Advanced Commerce plan builds on top of the Basic Commerce plan features. With the Advanced plan, you can:
- Sell subscription products
- Access abandoned cart recovery tools
- Build or use custom integrations to connect third-party tools
You can upgrade your Squarespace plan at any time. If you start with the Business plan and find that you’re spending more in fees than the $3 per month it would cost to upgrade to Basic Commerce, you can make that change. Plus, Squarespace users can save up to 30% off the monthly price by opting for annual billing.
There is also a Squarespace Enterprise program for larger companies and agencies with more advanced e-commerce needs.
Shopify overview
Shopify powers over 1.75 million merchants’ e-commerce stores—from solo and small businesses all the way through large companies like Heinz. While you can add image galleries and blogs to a Shopify site, the platform primarily focuses on e-commerce store features, including:
- Over 8,000 Shopify apps that add more e-commerce functionality and connect to various third-party business tools
- The ability to sell digital or physical products
- Easy drop shipping setup and fulfillment
- Print-on-demand integrations
- Robust store searching and filtering, both on the front and back end
- User generated content (UGC) capabilities, including reviews
- Multiple checkout payment options, including Shop Pay
- Integration with Shopify POS for in-person sales
- Unlimited product listings
- Discount codes, coupon codes, and gift cards
- Abandoned cart recovery tools
- Inventory management across multiple channels
- Discounts on various shipping options
- Up to 1,000 inventory locations for capturing in-person sales
- Reports for tracking your store’s performance
- Marketing features and ecommerce automations
- Free SSL certificates
In addition to selling products, Shopify users can also enjoy access to the following benefits:
- A content management system (CMS) for blogging
- Mobile-responsive website design
- Customizable templates
- Content translation and currency conversion tools
- Royalty-free stock images through Burst
- Staff accounts for managing your website
- 24/7 customer support on all plans
Customers on higher-tier Shopify plans can also get discounted rates up to 88% on a variety of shipping methods, as well as up to $200 in shipping insurance for purchases made with Shopify Payments.
Pricing
Shopify offers six different pricing plans:
Shopify Starter plans cost $1 per month for three months. This plan has lightweight e-commerce tools for individual users who want to sell products through a link on social media or in email or messaging apps. Users can also sell in person through Shopify POS.
Shopify Basic plans cost $39 per month and offer basic reporting, up to 1,000 inventory locations, and access to Shopify POS lite. It allows two staff accounts on every site and provides up to a 77% discount on shipping rates.
Shopify Retail plans cost $89 per month and let businesses sell everywhere—online, in-person, and through social media. This plan has advanced features for managing staff, inventory, and customer service. It also offers unlimited POS logins, one POS pro location, and two admin accounts.
Shopify plans—the company’s standard offering—cost $105 per month. Designed for small businesses, these plans allow five staff accounts access to the site and provide everything included in the Shopify Basic plan. This tier also includes:
- Professional reporting features
- Reduced third-party transaction fees
- Up to an 88% discount on shipping rates
- E-commerce automations
- Shipping insurance
Shopify Advanced plans cost $399 per month and include 15 staff accounts. This tier offers access to everything in the standard Shopify plan as well as:
- Advanced custom reporting
- Further reductions on third-party transaction fees
- Duty and import tax estimation and collection
- Third-party calculated shipping rates
Shopify Plus is an enterprise tier for large businesses. Access to the Shopify Plus platform starts at $2,000 per month—the total cost varies based on business needs. When using Shopify Plus, you get access to features like augmented reality (AR) and 3D product page features, as well as migration support.
Small- to medium-sized businesses often find that one of Shopify’s core plans suits their needs, while businesses with advanced Shopify requirements may want to get a quote for a Plus account.
Shopify users who subscribe to a Basic, Shopify, or Advanced plan can get up to a 25% discount by opting for annual billing.
Squarespace vs. Shopify
If you’re considering Squarespace for e-commerce, consider these pros and cons that may impact your experience.
Pros of Squarespace for e-commerce
Squarespace is a versatile website builder for many applications—including online stores.
- Squarespace is a straightforward and beginner-friendly way to make a website. Its back end is free of visual clutter and is easy to navigate.
- You can turn nearly any Squarespace template into a viable store, though some templates are specifically intended for e-commerce use. There’s no need to know any website code when customizing your Squarespace site. The editor applies set color themes (that you can customize) across your page elements, and you can preview your webpage to understand your visitor experience.
- Once your store is set up, you can manage multiple marketing tools through the same back end, including running email campaigns.
- You can sell digital and physical products as well as create members-only portals with Squarespace Member Areas.
- You can set up a two-week free trial without providing any credit card information—it’s truly a no-obligation way to experiment with drag-and-drop website design.
- Squarespace’s commerce plans don’t collect any transaction fees on e-commerce sales (though you may still have to pay a transaction fee to a payment gateway like Square, Stripe, or PayPal).
- The platform offers unlimited bandwidth and storage, which means there’s no cap on how much traffic your store can get!
- If you eventually decide that Squarespace isn’t right for you, you can export your site data to an XML file and upload it to another platform like WordPress.
Cons of Squarespace for e-commerce
Because Squarespace can be used for so many different applications, some business owners may find that it’s not the right fit for their e-commerce operations.
While Squarespace can be used for so many different applications, it (paradoxically) may lack the advanced features some e-commerce businesses need.
- Because Squarespace isn’t fully dedicated to e-commerce, you may find that you pay for some features you don’t use.
- Squarespace has a smaller library of integrations and plugins compared to some of its competitors.
- If you’d like to manage e-commerce and retail sales inventory through your Squarespace back end, you’ll have to use a Square POS in your store.
- While Squarespace developers can build a custom theme for you, the platform does not support complete full-stack development.
- In the past, Squarespace has released upgrades to its platform without migrating users to the new version. This means that some users may be forced to rebuild their storefronts in the future when older versions of Squarespace are no longer supported.
- Squarespace does not connect directly to as many drop shipping suppliers as Wix and Shopify.
- While Squarespace’s templates make it easy to build a website, its lack of customization can mean users can’t create exactly the layouts or features they need.
Pros of Shopify for e-commerce
Shopify is focused on e-commerce, which makes it a great choice for many companies that sell physical or digital products.
- With Shopify’s $1 per month starter plan, users can get a feel for e-commerce and start building their business without a large financial investment.
- The Shopify app store contains 500 add-ons that support drop shipping and print-on-demand sales.
- Shopify offers a broader array of pricing plans than some of its competitors.
- All Shopify themes and features are geared toward making e-commerce easy for sellers.
- Shopify offers its own POS hardware for in-person sales.
- You can push your Shopify inventory out to multiple channels, including selling on social media and through marketplaces like eBay or Amazon.
- You can manage your online and in-store inventory across multiple channels, all from the Shopify back end.
- Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans all include marketing automation and cart-recovery tools.
- The Shopify Fulfillment Network offers a warehousing and distribution alternative to Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
- Shopify’s Retail plan offers more advanced features for businesses with an in-person shopping experience.
- You can attend virtual and in-person networking events hosted by Shopify.
Cons of Shopify for e-commerce
No website builder is perfect—even though Shopify is fully focused on digital commerce, there are a few drawbacks that may cause e-commerce entrepreneurs to look elsewhere.
- Full POS support requires an additional fee every month.
- Shopify always collects a fee on transactions, regardless of your plan tier or payment processor.
- Starter and Basic plan users do not receive shipping discounts on all available shipping methods.
- Many third-party apps in the Shopify App Store require an additional subscription fee.
- Shopify’s free trial is typically limited to three days.
- There is no native membership portal option for sellers who would like to offer gated access to digital content—a third-party plug-in is required.
- Staff accounts are limited under each plan, meaning you’ll have to find other ways to manage your e-commerce platform if you have a larger team.
Which is best for you: Squarespace or Shopify?
Still not sure whether Squarespace or Shopify is the best website builder for your e-commerce needs? Both Squarespace and Shopify offer some form of a free trial, so you can test out the basics of both e-commerce sites and get a feel for what you might like best.
You can also check out our guide to Wix vs. Shopify and learn about another option used by many e-commerce businesses!
If you have more questions about Squarespace, visit their forums or customer support page. For Shopify, turn to their help center or other users on the community forum.
Get help from e-commerce experts
You don’t have to find (or set up) an e-commerce platform all by yourself, either. There are great Squarespace developers and Shopify developers working on Upwork—create or log into your account to begin connecting with them today.
Are you an e-commerce professional working with clients on Squarespace and Shopify? Start connecting with more clients through Upwork! Getting started is easy—just create an account or log in to browse available Squarespace jobs and Shopify jobs, or go to Project Catalog™ to list your services.
Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.
Prices are current at the time of writing and may change over time based on each service’s offerings.