Shopify vs. Squarespace

Shopify

630 Reviews and Ratings

Squarespace

318 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Shopify	Score9.1 out of 10	N/A	Shopify is a commerce platform designed for both online stores and retail locations. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales.	$39 per month
Squarespace	Score8.6 out of 10	N/A	Squarespace is a CMS platform that allows users to create a DIY blog, eCommerce store, and/or portfolio (visual art or music). Some Squarespace website and shop templates are industry or use case-specific, such as menu builders for restaurant sites.	$25 per month

Pricing

Shopify

Squarespace

Basic Shopify: $39
per month
Grow: $105
per month
Advanced: $399
per month
Shopify Plus: 2,000
per month
Shopify Plus: 2,300
per month

Basic: $25
per month
Core: $36
per month
Plus: $56
per month
Advanced: $139
per month

Pricing Offerings
Shopify	Squarespace
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

No setup fee

No setup fee

A 25% discount is offered for annual billing.

28% to 36% discount available for annual pricing.

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Shopify	Squarespace
Considered Both Products	Shopify Shawn Dehner Shawn at Small House Catalog (Architecture & Planning, 1-10 employees) Chose Shopify Shopify is not as user-friendly or attractive as Squarespace. Also, the interface is much more challenging due to the way the digital download variants system has been designed (requiring third party app). I find Shopify to be slightly superior to Wix for product selling - … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Shopify With Wix and Squarespace, we really like the extended customization options for our store, but they both lacked the "commerce theme." Shopify, like BigCommerce is essentially designed to cater right to ecommerce and thus has more tools and features to support that effort. BigCom… Incentivized Helpful? Tracy Arrington Owner in Manufacturing at Tracy Arrington Studios (Luxury Goods & Jewelry, 1-10 employees) Chose Shopify I considered using the Squarespace platform but it wasn't going to be able to keep a hidden shop for my retailers without a significant amount of work. I also considered a WordPress website but I was looking for something I could do a lot of on my own without needing coding … Incentivized Helpful? Travis Brown Account Manager and Tactical Projects Leader in Marketing at Rokusek Design (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose Shopify Squarespace doesn't provide the seamless e-commerce that Shopify does. For selling direct to consumer, shopify is a no-brainer. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Shopify I looked at both Wix and Squarespace. I felt Wix was a little too complicated for me to use as I only have a fairly basic knowledge of web development. And while Squarespace was easy to use and looked better than Shopify, its pricing was a little bit on the higher side. I felt … Incentivized Helpful? Mandy Cramer Graphic Designer at Miss Mandible Designs (Graphic Design, 1-10 employees) Chose Shopify I use Squarespace for my personal services website. I do not feel like the shop options for Squarespace are very valuable when compared to Shopify. Shopify is created ultimately for vendors to sell their product. It doesn't worry too much about being beautiful and puts most of … Incentivized Helpful? Brian Chung Graphic Designer in Marketing at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (Sports, 1-10 employees) Chose Shopify We used Volusion for a while, but switched over because Shopify was a lot easier to use. It has an easier check-out process, better templates, easier management of products, and is user-friendly. Squarespace on the other hand, we still use because we think it's better when we … Incentivized Helpful? Hanson Grant CEO and Founder in Information Technology at Think Board (Consumer Goods, 1-10 employees) Chose Shopify They have more analytics, better designs, more apps to create a more robust system to run a business on. Their system is very intuitive, and they are heavily investing in constantly making their platform better. The biggest selling point years ago was the ability to track with … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Shopify Shopify has been a great solution! In my opinion it is the perfect balance between ease of use and customizable. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Shopify Shopify is way easier to set up. No coding needed. All the tools to create your eCommerce are there and are easy to use. You can literally set up a working site in minutes. Most of the initial work is more focused on us making sure we had proper images and product descriptions, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Shopify Shopify easily holds its own against some of the top eCommerce and web design sites on the market today. It's affordable and definitely worth the price. Set up is straight forward and easy to understand. Incentivized Helpful? Steven Duran Director of Business Development in Sales at 5 Stones (Media Production, 51-200 employees) Chose Shopify Shopify as a business is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce solutions in the world. And for good reason, because it's core functionality is set up in such a way that you can literally start an online business in a couple of hours. They have a massive suite of applications … Incentivized Helpful? Horacio Carcamo Product Development Asst. in Marketing at Myron Manufacturing (Marketing and Advertising, 201-500 employees) Chose Shopify Shopify performs a great marketing influence by having ads and different kinds of branding on various social media. Also, their utilities promotion creates a great impact on the people's mind, and after executing action on the platform, in my experience I liked it how … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Shopify We continue to integrate with all platforms. As far as Shopify goes, we've found them to be the easiest to work with and integrate with. Everything on their platform is set up for 3P expansion; you can tell they're serious about it and that it isn't just an afterthought to … Incentivized Helpful?	Squarespace Don Stone Freelance Web Developer, SEO and Social Media Specialist in Marketing at OneZen Media (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Squarespace We use Squarespace to create small to medium informational websites for clients that want an easy-to-maintain site. Most sites we design use WordPress due to its extreme flexibility and countless templates and plug-ins. While we have used Wix and Shopify to create sites, we … Incentivized Helpful? Courtney Birnbaum Distribution Producer in Social Media at Club Swim Show (Motion Pictures & Film, 11-50 employees) Chose Squarespace Each website or webstore backend that I've used has different purposes, so do not let me mislead you. Squarespace provides the best balance of website, blog and storefront for my purposes, and outright beats Weebly for a better appearance in your final product. Tumblr and WordPr… Incentivized Helpful? Robbin Block Creative Marketing Strategist, Instructor, Moderator, Author in Marketing at BLOCKbETA Marketing (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose Squarespace As they say, form follows function. After that, it’s about finding the template that’s the best fit for your brand. If that’s all you need, Weebly will satisfy. You can custom visualize your brand with logo, fonts, colors and more. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Squarespace I select Squarespace only when my client is on an extremely short budget, otherwise I'm going with WordPress. Wix is basically the same animal as Squarespace and I do not really see the benefit of one over the other. Shopify is one of the most useful DIY builders when it comes … Incentivized Helpful? Sean Pomory Digital Media Specialist in Marketing at Chesapeake Regional Healthcare (Hospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Squarespace Again, Squarespace is the best option for small businesses seeking an e-commerce solution. If you need more robust features, look to Drupal or WordPress, depending on site size. Weebly or Wix are solid options for basic sites, but I personally have had significant issues with … Incentivized Helpful? Dave Becker Content Manager in Marketing at The Next Street (Education Management, 51-200 employees) Chose Squarespace We use Shopify for a retail venture we are trying and I find it more difficult to use than SquareSpace. The features are more complicated and require more knowledge than simply typing what you want and publishing it. Squarespace is more intuitive and is easier and faster to … Incentivized Helpful? Brian Chung Graphic Designer in Marketing at Shopary (Retail, 1-10 employees) Chose Squarespace Squarespace is a great starter website, however once your business grows and you need your website more, I would switch over to Shopify. As mentioned before Squarespace makes it hard to manage multiple pages or products. It's easier than Shopify when you first start out, but … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Squarespace We picked Squarespace for a specific use case because it was easy to spin up the promotional content we needed. Incentivized Helpful? Jeff Montgomery CTO in Manufacturing at Animal Necessity (Veterinary, 11-50 employees) Chose Squarespace Squarespace was quicker to set up and more accessible to manipulate the theme, pictures, and content. The page layouts are more versatile and fluid. With WordPress, more time-consuming efforts go into making a template work the way you want it to (because of the lack of the … Incentivized Helpful? Darcy Knapp, MBA Owner/President in Corporate at SEO Web Mechanics (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose Squarespace Squarespace offers better SEO options and ease of use than Wix/Weebly site builders. Squarespace is easy to manage and easy to track inventory and sales. For companies with lower skill sets in-house, it is also very easy to train staff to manage the platform. Incentivized Helpful? Megan Murray Owner in Corporate at Project M Productions LLC (Wine and Spirits, 1-10 employees) Chose Squarespace Ultimately Squarespace was the easiest for us to use for our needs and allowed us to tie in our other ecommerce third party provider. It is competitive in costs and has good customer service. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Squarespace The ease of use was a massive plus in Squarespace's side. I have limited knowledge of HTML and web development. Squarespace won simply because of its user-friendliness and the low barrier to entry when it comes to creating a good looking website. Every alternative that I looked … Incentivized Helpful? Daniel Shatzkes CEO Entrepreneur, Manufacturer, Musician Founder/CEO in Manufacturing at Gig Gear LLC (Music, 1-10 employees) Chose Squarespace It's hard for me to say how Squarespace stacks up against these other options as I've only recently just begun to look into other options. I selected Squarespace initially due to good marketing on their part to get me to look at them first, and also because we initially only … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

TrustRadius Insights
	Shopify	Squarespace
Highlights	Research Team Insight Published July 10, 2024 Users have utilized Shopify primarily for robust e-commerce solutions, particularly for selling a large volume of consumer goods. The platform is especially favored by companies with a strong focus on e-commerce metrics and integrations with other sales and marketing platforms. Customers have consistently highlighted Shopify’s adaptability to scaling operations and providing a comprehensive dashboard for managing large product inventories and sales data efficiently. Many small to medium businesses find it incredibly useful for its ease of use and the integration facilities it offers, ensuring that even less tech-savvy users can manage complex operations like split shipments and inventory tracking. On the other hand, Squarespace has been particularly popular among users needing to set up elegant, design-focused websites with less emphasis on complex e-commerce functionality. It excels in providing tools and templates that allow users to quickly establish an online presence with aesthetically pleasing layouts and straightforward content management systems. Squarespace is often chosen for its superior design capabilities which include wide-format imagery and designer fonts, making it a preferred choice for artists, designers, and other creative professionals who wish to showcase their portfolios. Moreover, small organizations and individual users appreciate the platform’s simplicity and the low learning curve, allowing them to focus on content rather than technical details. These distinct use cases underline the core competencies of each platform: Shopify as a comprehensive e-commerce system designed for extensive product handling and customer management, and Squarespace as a user-friendly, design-centric platform ideal for creative showcases and simple web presence.

Features

Shopify

Squarespace

Comparison of Online Storefront features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify 8.7 136 Ratings	Squarespace - Ratings
Product catalog & listings	9.5136 Ratings	00 Ratings
Product management	8.7134 Ratings	00 Ratings
Bulk product upload	8.6115 Ratings	00 Ratings
Branding	8.8134 Ratings	00 Ratings
Mobile storefront	8.9130 Ratings	00 Ratings
Product variations	9.0127 Ratings	00 Ratings
Website integration	8.6127 Ratings	00 Ratings
Visual customization	8.0133 Ratings	00 Ratings
CMS	8.1109 Ratings	00 Ratings

Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify 7.9 129 Ratings	Squarespace - Ratings
Abandoned cart recovery	7.9120 Ratings	00 Ratings
Checkout user experience	7.8127 Ratings	00 Ratings

Comparison of Online Payment System features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify 9.6 131 Ratings	Squarespace - Ratings
eCommerce security	9.6131 Ratings	00 Ratings

Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify 8.4 133 Ratings	Squarespace - Ratings
Promotions & discounts	9.2128 Ratings	00 Ratings
Personalized recommendations	8.432 Ratings	00 Ratings
SEO	7.6124 Ratings	00 Ratings

Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify 8.2 134 Ratings	Squarespace - Ratings
Multi-site management	6.719 Ratings	00 Ratings
Order processing	9.8132 Ratings	00 Ratings
Inventory management	7.8131 Ratings	00 Ratings
Shipping	7.8124 Ratings	00 Ratings
Custom functionality	8.6124 Ratings	00 Ratings

Comparison of Security features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify - Ratings	Squarespace 8.5 59 Ratings
Role-based user permissions	00 Ratings	8.559 Ratings

Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify - Ratings	Squarespace 4.2 52 Ratings
API	00 Ratings	4.945 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language	00 Ratings	3.434 Ratings

Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify - Ratings	Squarespace 7.1 90 Ratings
WYSIWYG editor	00 Ratings	8.178 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness	00 Ratings	8.071 Ratings
Admin section	00 Ratings	6.089 Ratings
Page templates	00 Ratings	7.090 Ratings
Library of website themes	00 Ratings	7.087 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design	00 Ratings	7.386 Ratings
Publishing workflow	00 Ratings	6.278 Ratings
Form generator	00 Ratings	7.171 Ratings

Comparison of Web Content Management features of Shopify and Squarespace
Feature	Shopify - Ratings	Squarespace 7.0 80 Ratings
Content taxonomy	00 Ratings	6.768 Ratings
SEO support	00 Ratings	7.973 Ratings
Bulk management	00 Ratings	8.045 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions	00 Ratings	5.760 Ratings
Community / comment management	00 Ratings	6.760 Ratings

User Ratings
	Shopify	Squarespace
Likelihood to Recommend	8.2 (149 ratings)	9.4 (90 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.2 (15 ratings)	10.0 (4 ratings)
Usability	10.0 (3 ratings)	10.0 (4 ratings)
Availability	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	10.0 (2 ratings)	10.0 (2 ratings)
Implementation Rating	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)