Squarespace vs Shopify
Squarespace vs Shopify
Ecommerce is becoming an increasingly attractive suggestion every bit consumer ownership habits shift to the digital infinite. Many of the best website builders come with excellent online store creation tools that are designed to assist y'all create your ain ecommerce store with a minimum amount of fuss.
In our Squarespace vs Shopify comparison, we take a closer look at these two popular online shop builders. Both are designed for beginners creating their first store, but both also come with advanced tools for more experienced users.
Squarespace is the more versatile platform, offering solutions for everything from small personal blogs to big stores. Shopify, on the other hand, is designed specifically for online store creation. To help you decide which of these two industry giants is best for your adjacent projection, we've done the legwork and reviewed their main features, performance, support, and prices.
Squarespace vs Shopify: Features
Both Squarespace and Shopify boast a huge range of features. Since both focus on ecommerce, we've compared some of the most of import tools for ongoing store management and success.
Ecommerce
Both these platforms are ecommerce manufacture leaders, and both avowal an fantabulous range of tools to assist you lot become the virtually out of your store. For case, both Squarespace and Shopify enable you to sell digital goods, create abandoned cart recovery campaigns, offering gift cards, and add custom aircraft rules. Basically, you lot volition accept everything you demand to run a successful store with either option.
Still, Shopify goes slightly further, calculation some advanced features that Squarespace simply can't compete with. These include the power to create product collections, automatic inventory tracking, and advanced analytics and reporting.
Marketing
On the marketing front, Shopify conspicuously stands out in a higher place Squarespace. Both platforms come with built-in email marketing tools, and with Squarespace, you will be able to create basic email campaigns, schedule them, and track basic metrics such as in-email link clicks and visitor numbers.
Simply with Shopify, you volition be able to do much, much more. Forth with email marketing, the platform too boasts tools to help yous create social media campaigns on most of the major platforms, including Snapchat, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. Y'all can even create SMS marketing campaigns.
And the best affair? Shopify comes with advanced entrada-tracking tools. With these, you can advisedly monitor campaigns, analyze their effectiveness, and ensure you're getting the all-time ROI. On its marketing dashboard you volition too find neat insights into your most successful products and how yous could improve your marketing efforts.
Plugins and extensions
You'll be able to access various apps and extensions through the Squarespace Extensions library or the Shopify App Store. If you use Shopify, you will have access to more than 4,000 apps that can add functionality to your website.
Many of these are premium apps, but there are plenty of gratuitous options for those on a budget. You will find add-ons covering everything from dropshipping and electronic mail marketing to popup cosmos and social media integration.
Unfortunately, Squarespace just can't compare. Its market contains merely 28 extensions from a very select group of third-political party platforms. Most of these bargain with shipping, accounting, and dropshipping, and you shouldn't look to observe annihilation too advanced here.
Security
When y'all're operating an online store, you lot volition exist dealing with big amounts of sensitive personal and payment information. Security is therefore 1 of the most important things to remember about when selecting a store builder.
Fortunately, both Squarespace and Shopify excel here. Both offer the security basics, including SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates that facilitate secure encrypted data transfer. At the same time, both platforms use PCI-compliant (Payment Menu Industry) payment gateways. This ways that their security measures have been audited and certified as adequate past a third-political party regulatory trunk.
The bottom line: Both Squarespace and Shopify offering splendid security, and it'due south hard to split the two here.
Squarespace vs Shopify: Operation
To test the performance of Squarespace and Shopify, nosotros signed up for a trial with each platform and created ii basic stores. We took various factors into account, including the ease of use and functionality of each editor, their analytics and reporting tools, and their main dashboards.
Creating your online shop
The differences between Squarespace'due south and Shopify'south store builders became immediately evident when we began to test them. Squarespace's drag-and-drop builder is rather powerful, while Shopify'south beginner-friendly platform leaves a lot to be desired.
If you utilize Squarespace, you will have free access to more 110 high-quality templates, including 77 that include built-in ecommerce features. Its section-based drag-and-drop editor is a little disruptive to get started with, but at that place are loads of customization options on offering.
For example, you can change the entire layout of your template past adding and removing elements and reordering them equally required. CSS coding is fifty-fifty supported, enabling y'all to go a little fancy and fine-tune your design if you have the required noesis.
On the other hand, there are roughly 100 templates in the Shopify theme library. Just only a handful of these are gratuitous. You can also add together custom templates or buy one from a third-party vendor.
But the Shopify editor really lets it down. It's beginner friendly and easy to use, every bit it's designed to be, but it's also rather limited. You will be very confined by the pre-coded layout of the template you utilize, and there are no drag-and-drop editing tools.
Squarespace clearly wins here.
Analytics and reporting
When it comes to analytics and reporting, nosotros expected Shopify to excel. And nosotros weren't allow down.
Both Squarespace and Shopify offer the basic analytics and reporting tools that come with virtually every website builder. For case, you can keep tabs on visitor numbers, acquisition streams, product views, and sales.
Just Shopify goes 1 pace further, with numerous filters and other tools to help you analyze your audience. Custom reports can exist created based on a huge range of data, and yous tin even import data from various third-party sales platforms.
Squarespace does let you connect Google Analytics, simply Shopify does that likewise, and with then much additional functionality, it conspicuously takes the points here.
Ongoing management
The Shopify management dashboard is first-class, boasting a articulate menu and excellent functionality. On the left of the screen, you will find options to manage customers, orders, products, and more. There are diverse marketing and analytics tools, and you tin integrate third-political party apps for automatic club fulfillment or to streamline other tasks.
Squarespace's management panel is fully functional, but it'south much more than basic than Shopify's. Let'due south just say that yous will find everything y'all need to run and manage your store, just that there aren't any bells and whistles attached.
Support
Unless you're an skilful web developer, chances are that you will run into some sort of problem during your ecommerce journey. When this happens, information technology's of import to accept access to reliable support to help y'all solve problems promptly.
If you decide to become with Squarespace, you may exist a little limited on the support side. Telephone support is completely absent-minded. Live chat is bachelor, but only during business organisation hours. And it can take a number of hours to receive an answer if you use the 24/vii email helpline.
Shopify's live support doesn't fare a whole lot better. It does offering 24/7 support via email, telephone, and live conversation, but we've constitute all three options to be rather slow and unreliable. If you're desperate, you can also attempt reaching out via the Shopify Twitter folio for a potentially faster response.
Luckily, both of these website builders offering decent self-help libraries. The Shopify Help Center contains a huge pick of guides and tutorials designed to help everyone, regardless of their skill level. Since it's such a pop platform, you can also find loads of helpful resources across the web.
With Squarespace, yous may have luck finding answers to your question in the popular community forum. There'due south also a big number of videos, webinars, and user guides to help you familiarize yourself with the platform.
There's little to separate the two platforms hither, only Shopify'due south phone back up places it simply ahead of Squarespace.
Squarespace vs Shopify: Pricing and plans
Shopify offers three standard ecommerce subscription options, along with a Lite and a Plus plan. Squarespace has 4 plans enabling everything from simple website cosmos to advanced online store building. Neither visitor has a free-forever plan, only both offer xiv-mean solar day free trials. With Squarespace, you don't have to add together payment information to access the trial, while with Shopify yous do.
Squarespace's plans range from $16 to $54 a calendar month with monthly payments and $12 to $40 with an annual subscription. The cheapest personal plan has no east-commerce features and is really only good for building unproblematic websites.
Upgrading to a Business plan adds basic selling tools. Just you will need to pay at least $26 a month for a Basic Commerce subscription if y'all desire to access annihilation other than the most basic features.
| Price per month (monthly payments) | Cost per month (almanac payment) | Ecommerce support | Analytics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal | $16 | $12 | None | Basic |
| Business | $26 | $18 | Basic | Basic |
| Basic Commerce | $35 | $26 | Good | Advanced |
| Advanced Commerce | $54 | $twoscore | Advanced | Advanced |
Unlike Squarespace, all of Shopify's plans are designed for online selling. Prices range from $9 to $299 a calendar month for the 4 paid plans, making it significantly more expensive than Squarespace. In that location are no discounts for longer subscription terms.
Now, the Shopify Calorie-free plan needs some explaining. Basically, it enables you to add a buy push to an existing website. Yet, information technology doesn't come with any store-building or other infrastructure. Upgrading to the Bones Shopify plan opens up these features, providing access to an excellent management dashboard and a beginner-friendly store architect.
The Shopify and Avant-garde Shopify plans are similar to the Basic Shopify pick, but add lower transaction fees and more advanced marketing and management tools. Shopify Plus offers custom solutions designed specifically for enterprise-level stores—an choice that Squarespace just doesn't have.
| Price per month | Store architect | Reporting | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Lite | $9 | ✖ | ✖ |
| Basic Shopify | $29 | ✔ | ✖ |
| Shopify | $79 | ✔ | Standard |
| Advanced Shopify | $299 | ✔ | Advanced |
| Shopify Plus | Custom pricing | ✔ | Custom reporting |
Squarespace vs Shopify: Verdict
Other builder comparisons
Squarespace and Shopify are two clear industry leaders in the online-store-creation world, only the truth is that they're far from equal. Both enable you lot to create a highly functional store with excellent security, merely the similarities stop at that place.
For one, Shopify offers many more avant-garde ecommerce features. Its marketing tools are bang-up, and in that location are endless templates for you to get started with. However, it is quite expensive, and you will exist stuck with an inflexible builder that tin get frustrating.
Squarespace is a less specialized platform, with options for both ecommerce and normal business websites. Its editor is a trivial confusing to go the hang of, but it's much more powerful than Shopify'south. And it's significantly more affordable, which will be a major consideration for many.
At the end of the day, both can be great options. We'd recommend Shopify if you're looking for a powerful withal piece of cake-to-utilise platform to create a sizable store. On the other hand, try Squarespace if you're looking for a cheaper option to create a highly customizable, content-based site with a small-scale ecommerce component.
Further reading on website builders
If you elect to get forrad with one of these two options, make certain to read our step-by-pace guides outlining how to build a website with Squarespace and how to build a website with Shopify. It'south also worth looking at our guide to the best ecommerce website builders, to see where both companies featured.
For those with more than feel, some other option is WordPress, via the best website builders for WordPress in tandem with an ecommerce plugin like WooCommerce. Yous'll besides require the best WordPress hosting from one of the best web hosting services.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/features/squarespace-vs-shopify
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