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| BEST FOR Best range of apps and extensions | BEST FOR Best for ease of use and great design |
| Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8 | Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.7 |
| Pricing £19 – £259 per month, billed annually | Pricing £17-£35 per month, billed annually Use code “SU10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans |
| Try Shopify | Try Squarespace |
Shopify and Squarespace are two of the most closely matched ecommerce platforms and online store builders out there. Our own expert ecommerce research team gave both platforms the same overall score of 4.6 out of 5 in our latest round of testing, based on six key metrics including value for money and sales features. So how do they differ?
We think Shopify is better for small retailers that are serious about selling. Its powerful feature set is built for those with large sales volumes, such as dropshipping firms, and its price plans offer great value. On the other hand, Squarespace’s beautiful array of templates means it offers more attractive pages. Squarespace is a strong choice for SMEs that mostly sell offline, but still want a website for brand building and customer engagement purposes.
The below guide will go through the unique traits of these two ecommerce giants, so read on to see how each one can help you to build an online store and start selling (we won’t be looking at the Squarespace main website builder, only its ecommerce offering). Or, if you’re short on time, we’ve come up with a snapshot view of the best small business ecommerce builders based on our own expert research. Why not give it a try? It’s entirely free to use, and only takes one minute to complete.
This article will cover:
Shopify vs Squarespace: head to head
The main differences between Shopify and Squarespace are:
- Shopify is more expensive than Squarespace
- Squarespace does not offer as many sales features as Shopify
- Squarespace is easier to use than Shopify
- Shopify has better help and support tools
To boil it down, the main difference between these two platforms is that Shopify is more powerful than Squarespace, and therefore more scalable. However, the latter is better for branding and design.
For this reason, we recommend using Squarespace if you want to build a website that sells, and Shopify if you’re looking to build a large-scale, dedicated online store.
Shopify for small businesses
- FREE TRIAL 3-day free trial
- PRICE FROM £19 per month
- AI site theme builder is able to create a bespoke site in seconds
- Great range of apps and extensions
- Perfect for dropshipping
Shopify began in 2006 when three Canadians were inspired by their poor experience selling snowboarding equipment online.
Since then, it has ballooned into an unstoppable giant of the online retail sector. According to research from Cloudways, almost one in five UK ecommerce websites that were live in 2021 were built using Shopify.
Our most recent round of testing found that Shopify comes in first for customer satisfaction, and gets the second-highest score for sales features. But its more expensive price point means it doesn’t get a great result for value for money.
We’d recommend Shopify over Squarespace for firms that need a website capable of carrying out high-volume sales – like dropshippers or manufacturers.
Read more about what the platform can offer your small business in our expert Shopify review
Squarespace for small businesses
Squarespace began as a content publisher, which means it has only recently added ecommerce functionality. But, from these humble beginnings, Squarespace has grown to become a high-performing, all-in-one website builder that promises its users beautifully designed websites compatible with both mobile and desktop browsers.
Priced at £17 per month for its cheapest ecommerce plan, Squarespace is slightly more affordable than Shopify.
However, while our researchers gave it the best score for ease of use, the software did not perform well for sales features, which will be the deciding factor for small businesses that operate primarily online.
We recommend this platform to SMEs that want to build a professional-looking online store that prioritises branding. It offers lots of nice ways to display content – including blog posts and images – but not a lot in terms of sales features.
Read our full Squarespace review to find out more about the pros and cons.
Best value: Squarespace
In some ways, Squarespace and Shopify are evenly matched when it comes to value for money. Only Squarespace offers a 14-day free trials, although both have competitive costs at their lower tiers (Squarespace Business plan is priced at £17 per month, while Shopify costs £19 per month). Shopify offers a 3-day free trial.
But the story quickly changes when we move to the next rung of the ladder. Shopify’s costs increase by £30, while Squarespace’s go up by just £6.
Still, affordability does not necessarily equal better value for money – we wanted to see how both builders performed when we ranked their features against this cost.
Shopify scored an impressive seven out of 10 for quality of features versus average pricing plan. But it was Squarespace that emerged victorious, achieving full marks across the board.
Managing resources is particularly important for small businesses. If budget is important to you, use our specialist online comparison tool. It’ll get you quotes from the top builders on the market, and match you with the ecommerce solution with the most value for your money.
Shopify pricing
| GET FIRST MONTH FOR £1 | GET FIRST MONTH FOR £1 | GET FIRST MONTH FOR £1 |
| Basic | Grow | Advanced |
| Price
| Price
| Price
|
| Features
| Features
| Features
|
| Online card processing fees 2% + 25p for online purchases | Online card processing fees 1.7% + 25p for online purchases | Online card processing fees 1.5% + 25p for online purchases |
Basic Shopify
Yearly: £19 per month
Monthly: £25 per month
It might be called ‘Basic’, but this plan doesn’t scrimp when it comes to features. Users get multiple sales channels, along with the ability to sell on online marketplaces and social media – all crucial for maximising revenue streams and driving sales.
You’ll also be able to accept in-person payments instantly at pop-ups, markets, fairs, and more using Shopify’s POS system, Shopify Lite. Just note that you’ll be charged a fee of 2% + 25p on any transactions.
Here’s what else is included:
- Optional discount codes
- Free SSL certificate
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Gift cards
In addition to the above, you’ll get 24/7 support from Shopify’s customer service team – so if anything goes wrong with your site it can be fixed at any time, reducing the risk of lost revenue.
Shopify
Yearly: £49 per month
Monthly: £65 per month
If you’re thinking of upgrading to the Shopify plan from Shopify Basic, the main incentive is the former’s larger user account limits. Shopify Basic only lets you have two users attached to your account, whereas the Shopify plan permits up to 5.
Using the Shopify plan, you can also customise your product prices for different global regions. This makes the Shopify plan a great option for growing businesses that are looking to sell internationally, though it’s probably not worth the added cost for those operating domestically.
Is there a free plan?
Shopify has a 3-day free trial available for those that want to test out the platform before subscribing. You can also get three months for just £1 per month.
See the full picture of Shopify’s costs and hidden fees in our guide to Shopify pricing.
Squarespace pricing
| BEST VALUE  | | |
| Squarespace Business | Basic Commerce | Advanced Commerce |
| Price £17 per month | Price £23 per month | Price £35 per month |
| Features Fully integrated ecommerce | Features No commerce transaction fees | Features Abandoned cart recovery |
Squarespace Commerce Basic
Yearly: £23 per month
Monthly: £28 per month
Squarespace Business is the best-value deal among the Squarespace plans for SMEs. In addition to the standard website builder traits available on most plans (such as unlimited bandwidth and storage, built-in mobile responsive design, and 24/7 customer care access), you’ll also get:
- Unlimited contributors – useful for third-party experts or consultants working on your site
- Promotional pop-ups and banners
- Gift cards
- POS system
- Ecommerce analytics
- Merchandising tools
- Ability to sell on Instagram
Unlike Shopify, Squarespace has a 0% transaction fee on your ecommerce site, meaning there’s low hidden costs if you go for Squarespace.
Squarespace Commerce Advanced
Yearly: £35 per month
Monthly: £43 per month
The difference between the Squarespace Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced plans is minimal – it largely boils down to a few added perks.
For this reason, this upgrade is better suited to larger businesses that can afford to invest in a more expensive premium plan.
You’ll get the ability to offer discounts and sell subscriptions, as well as abandoned cart recovery. It’s worth noting that all of these features are also available with the Shopify plan – although for considerably more money.
Is there a free plan?
Like Shopify, Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial to those that want to test out the platform before subscribing.
For a comprehensive overview of the platform and its pros, cons and discounts, read our full review of Squarespace pricing.
As well as being an outstanding small business ecommerce option for those looking to sell online, Squarespace is also our second-highest rated website builder. Visit the Squarespace website to find out more.
Best for website features: Squarespace
Shopify and Squarespace have similarities in their website features, although Squarespace squeezes over the line first to score 4.3 out of 5, versus Shopify’s 4.2 out of 5.
You’ll get unlimited storage across both providers’ plans, and similar performance speeds. However, Squarespace provides the better deal for your website domain as you’ll get this free for the first year of your website being live.
Marketing
In a move that’s becoming increasingly expected of ecommerce builders, both Squarespace and Shopify support all of the main social media platforms: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram.
Squarespace has three built-in marketing apps which are useful for sending out emails and generating new leads, including MailChimp, a popular email marketing tool for small businesses.
But Shopify blows this out of the water thanks to its wider array of marketing extensions (13, to be exact). Through these apps, you’ll be able to automate your marketing process and grow your user base organically.
SEO
Squarespace’s heritage as a content publisher means it has lots of useful SEO tools already woven into the platform, so you’ll get access to every function including:
- Custom URLs for redirects
- Meta descriptions and titles
- Google analytics
- Keyword support
- SEO best practice prompts
You’ll also get most of these features with Shopify, except for keyword support. This is important because, according to HubSpot’s State of Marketing report 2021, over 50% of marketers cite keyword rankings and organic traffic as their top ways of measuring success.
We’d argue that Squarespace is also better for SEO, as it provides more blogging tools than Shopify. Squarespace lets you add an internal search bar, archive, and SEO-specific analytics, whereas you’d need third-party apps to do this with Shopify.
App marketplace
Shopify has a much larger marketplace for third-party add-ons. The ecommerce tycoon has over 6,000 extensions to help you build a bespoke solution that fits your selling strategy – that’s much larger than Squarespace’s offering of 29.
Shopify gives you more options for sales, shipping, and marketing apps. Shopify also has a ton of dropshipping integrations, including Oberlo and Modalyst – two key platforms that can automate your dropshipping strategy and save you both time and money.
Shopify is one of our top-rated ecommerce platforms, and it’s also a perfectly designed dropshipping solution for small business retailers to take advantage of. Read our full guide to Shopify dropshipping to learn more.
Best for sales features: Shopify
As we’ve hinted at numerous times in this article, Shopify has much more to offer than Squarespace in terms of sales features. Its extensive list of functions means it beats not just Squarespace, but most of its other ecommerce rivals, too.
We ranked Shopify as our second-best online store builder for sales features overall, beating big industry names like Wix and WooCommerce to the crown with a 4.5 out of 5. Squarespace trails behind in comparison with a 4.3 out of 5, mostly due to its limited number of supported gateways.
Sales types and payment options
While Squarespace gives users four main payment options (PayPal, Amazon, Square, and Stripe), Shopify offers a much wider range. You can use Google Pay, the bespoke Shopify payments channel, or even cryptocurrency.
You can also offer users a Buy Now, Pay Later option, which has become enormously popular in recent years.
Other benefits offered by Shopify but not Squarespace are: more sophisticated inventory management tools, a more advanced POS system, and a broader range of payment gateways (over 100, in fact).
This package of handy tools will be hugely beneficial as you try to grow your shop and attract wider online audiences.
Security
Neither Squarespace or Shopify is lacking in backend safety. Stores built with either platform will have an SSL certificate and a customer login area, so the core security measures are in place.
However, Shopify does a more thorough security job when it comes to fraud detection. While Squarespace requires users to rely on third-party payment gateways for this, Shopify has it built into both its Basic and Shopify plans.
Multi-channel integration
Omnichannel sales approaches are being constantly discussed by ecommerce experts. This strategy involves using multiple platforms to sell your products in order to create a diverse, and therefore stronger, consumer base.
Unfortunately, Squarespace is limited in this area. Users are only able to sell on Instagram, whereas Shopify sellers can flog their products and services on Facebook (and Facebook Messenger), Instagram, Pinterest, and even BuzzFeed.
Accounting options
Both builders offer invoices, which are an important way for customers to receive both information on their purchase and communication from your business. With Shopify, these can be customised to your brand, but not with Squarespace.
Other than that, neither of these builders really excel when it comes to accounting tools. Revenue analytics are available, but that’s about it.
The good news is that both builders do have third-party accountancy apps available, so whatever functions you need performed – such as cash flow management or inventory taking – can still be done, just not within the builders themselves.
Best for design functionality: Squarespace
Templates
Squarespace offers around 110 templates. In comparison, Shopify offers 10 free templates, with an additional 50 that you can buy for a one-off cost of between £100 and £130.
In terms of industry specialisms, Squarespace and Shopify offer near-identical template ranges. Shopify only performs poorly for DIY-based templates. Meanwhile, Squarespace’s achilles heel is electrical and gadget themes – a potential turn-off for tech companies.
Both brands also demonstrate impressive flexibility should you decide you want to change your templates around. You’ll be able to swap templates out fairly easily with both, although it might require some reformatting/edits to the layout.
UX, brand and design
Squarespace is the easy champion here. We ranked its interface for clarity, consistency, and ‘freshness’ (whether or not its websites look modern and up to date). Similarly, we looked at both builders’ capabilities across mobile as well as desktop devices.
In all of the above categories, Squarespace scored an unrivalled 100%. In comparison, Shopify scored 69%.
Squarespace is clearly the better online store builder for small ecommerce businesses that want to focus on high-quality branding and design to wow users. Shopify, meanwhile, has similar functionality and performs well, but doesn’t stand out aesthetically.
Mobile editor
There’s not much to shout about here for either of these builders. Both Squarespace and Shopify let you adapt the desktop version of your site to a mobile or tablet screen.
However, any changes you make will also be automatically configured to the desktop site, which means you can’t design a device-specific interface.
Best for help and support: Shopify
Knowledge centre
Both the Shopify and Squarespace knowledge bases are laid out simply, with each potential issue categorised into various goals. Shopify, for example, files its guides under ‘Sell’, ‘Manage’, ‘Expand’, ‘Market’ or ‘Start’.
Squarespace has a wider range of categories, but they aren’t organised as intuitively. For example, it has both ‘Design’ and ‘Image’ options, which can be confusing if your issue is about something concerning both.
Customer support
Below are the different tools that you’ll get for customer support from Shopify vs Squarespace. As you can see, Shopify just pips Squarespace as it offers 24/7 phone support, unlike the latter.
| Shopify | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Phone support | Y | N |
| Social media support | Y | Y |
| Live chat | Y | Y |
| Y | Y | |
| Onsite editor help | Y | Y |
| Community forum | Y | Y |
Before you can start selling, you’ll need to figure out what other digital infrastructure you need to set up an online store, such as web hosting. Find out more in our full guide to how to start an online shop.
Best for customer score: Shopify
To calculate the customer score for each platform, we looked at popular customer review websites like Trustpilot, as well as carrying out extensive user testing.
Squarespace achieved an overall score of 4.3 out of 5 for this category, thanks to strong feedback on its user experience (UX). 90% of users said they would recommend the platform to others. 100% of testers said they would describe it as easy to use, compared to 80% of Shopify users.
But Shopify comes out as the stronger platform overall for this category. Its status within the market means it has much better brand recognition than Squarespace, and also a higher average review score across the main online forums we looked at.
Our market analysis also shows that around 1.4 million more sites have been built using Shopify compared to Squarespace – strong evidence of its success amongst users.
Best for ease of use: Squarespace
Squarespace is much easier to use than Shopify, because its templates are more flexible and it boasts a much cleaner, more minimalist user interface.
Stores built using Squarespace are also easier to manage, as the builder’s reduced functionality means there is a lot less to get wrong.
That’s not to say Shopify is hard to grasp, though. You don’t need any coding skills to use it, and you can make use of the huge Shopify marketplace to find apps that need to automate more complex tasks. Certainly, with time and experience, you will be able to master the platform quite easily.
That being said, if you’re looking for a product that can get you selling straight away – and something that’s low maintenance in the long term – it’s best to invest in Squarespace.
It’s super easy to get selling online with builders like Squarespace. Find out more about how to start an ecommerce business with our full guide.
Shopify and Squarespace alternatives
| | |  |  |  |  |
| Square Online | |||||
| Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8 | Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.7 | Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.8 | Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.7 | Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 4.0 | Overall Score Based on our in-depth research and user testing 3.7 |
| Pricing £19 – £259 per month, billed annually | Pricing £17-£35 per month, billed annually Use code “SU10” to receive a 10% discount on all Squarespace plans | Pricing
| Pricing £0-£64 per month, billed annually | Pricing £13.99 per month (first term savings available) | Pricing $29-$299 (around £22-£229 per month), billed annually |
| Key features Fantastic in-built sales features 80 themes to choose from 100 payment gateways No transaction fees with Shopify payments | Key features
| Key features Easy to use drag-and-drop builder Extensive app market Inbuilt SEO and CRM products | Key features
| Key features Flexible payments Flexible shipping options Discounts and promotions | Key features
|
- Free plan Yes
- Price from £0 per month
- Start selling for free
- Excellent analytics
- Supports dozens of payment types
- FREE TRIAL 14 day money back guarantee
- PRICE FROM £16 per month, billed annually
- Flexible pricing plans
- AI chatbot builder
- Great additional features that support everything any up and coming merchant needs
- Free trial 7-days
- Price from £13.99
- Built-in social media calendar and post planner
- Simple to use builder
- Simple pricing
- Free trial 15-day
- Price from $29 per month
- Quality in-built inventory management features
- 0% payment processing fees
- Great for scaling businesses
Verdict
Small businesses that sell online as their main source of revenue – as explained in our handy guide to using Shopify for dropshipping – should use Shopify as their online store builder.
It’s the ideal tool for designing an online shop that is both endlessly functional and very scalable. Yes, there is a higher price point to consider, but if you have the budget for this platform then you’ll benefit from some of the market’s most sophisticated sales tools.
We think Shopify’s biggest pull factor, however, is its huge app marketplace where you can pick and choose from literally thousands of handy perks, automations, and add-ons to optimise your website’s UX. Squarespace is much more limited in this area.
Still, Squarespace is the ideal ecommerce partner if you’re looking for a website that will give your business a professional, attractive online presence quickly and easily.
Squarespace also offers much better value for money than Shopify. Its average pricing plan is around £60 per month less than the latter’s, so you’ll have extra money for the other aspects of your retail business that might be more important to you.
We recommend it for small businesses that are predominantly based offline. For example, if you’re a hairdressing salon with a high street premises, and you want to market your business online as well as sell a few branded products.
But the ecommerce software market is highly competitive, and there are more options to consider. Perhaps you want a platform with Squarespace’s beautiful templates, but also Shopify’s functionality?
In that case, Startups’ expert research team has designed a simple, online comparison page that outlines the benefits and drawbacks of Squarespace and Shopify’s top competitors.
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