Shopify vs Squarespace: Which is Better for Your Business?
Shopify and Squarespace are both highly popular e-commerce platforms. Each platform has its strengths and is suited for different types of businesses. Let’s analyze their features to help you find the one that best fits your needs.
Shopify
Shopify is a powerful and scalable online store platform, particularly suitable for businesses that sell physical products. If you need advanced inventory management and omnichannel sales capabilities, Shopify is definitely the choice for you.
Advantages of Shopify
Shopify offers an advanced inventory management system that helps you track and manage stock. You can even move products between multiple warehouses and sales points.
Once an order is placed, you can view the status of each order on the dashboard and make edits before shipping.
Shopify’s shipping features are also robust. You can benefit from discounted shipping rates, print shipping labels, and purchase shipping insurance. If you have a physical store, Shopify also supports local delivery and in-store pickup.
Shopify allows you to list products on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Google, and manage payments, shipping, and returns across all platforms from a single dashboard.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify offers three membership tiers:
Basic: $29 per month, providing access to all essential features.
Shopify: $79 per month, offering additional employee accounts and discounted shipping rates.
Advanced: $299 per month, suitable for larger enterprises needing more advanced features.
Payment Processing
Using Shopify Payments, each transaction incurs a 2.9% plus $0.30 fee. If you use other payment processors, Basic customers will face an additional 2% fee.
Summary
Overall, Shopify is an excellent choice for selling physical products. Its inventory management, shipping capabilities, and multi-platform integration make business operations more efficient.
Squarespace
Squarespace is more suited for businesses selling services and digital products. If your business requires appointment scheduling and member areas, Squarespace is definitely your best bet.
Advantages of Squarespace
It provides online appointment scheduling, allowing you to publish a calendar for clients to book times. You can also sync the website calendar with other digital calendars and set up reminder emails.
Additionally, Squarespace allows you to create member-only areas to publish premium content or exclusive online courses. If you need to offer group coaching or exclusive content, this feature is very suitable.
Squarespace’s drag-and-drop website builder makes it very user-friendly, especially for those without a technical background. It also offers a wide range of design templates, ideal for creative businesses.
Squarespace Pricing
Squarespace offers several pricing plans:
Business Plan: $23 per month, with an additional 3% transaction fee.
Commerce Basic Plan: $27 per month, eliminating the 3% transaction fee and offering more features.
Commerce Advanced Plan: $49 per month, providing advanced features such as cart recovery, subscriptions, and free shipping.
Payment Processing
Using Stripe or PayPal, each transaction incurs a 2.9% plus $0.30 fee. For the Business Plan, an additional 3% transaction fee applies.
Summary
Squarespace is a beautifully designed and easy-to-use platform, perfect for businesses selling services and digital content. Its online appointment and member area features allow for better client and content management.
So, how do you decide between the two?
Choose Shopify if you sell and ship physical products, frequently list products on social media and third-party markets, and your revenue justifies the advanced pricing tiers of Shopify's payment processing and shipping discounts.
Choose Shopify if you sell and ship physical products, frequently list products on social media and third-party markets, and your revenue justifies the advanced pricing tiers of Shopify's payment processing and shipping discounts.
Of course, no matter which platform you choose, you can take advantage of their trial periods (Shopify offers three days, Squarespace two weeks) to experience them. You can try setting up your e-commerce site on both platforms to see which one better fits your intuition and needs.
