When it comes to picking a good ecommerce platform to suit your needs, choosing between Shopify or Squarespace could be a tricky decision. Both ecommerce platforms have a lot to offer in the way of scalability, flexibility, and design options.
Here’s a breakdown of what each has to offer.
Shopify
Shopify is one of - if not the - most popular ecommerce website-building tools currently available. It offers a very user-friendly experience and a vast arsenal of powerful ecommerce tools and functions. It makes adding products and the general setup of your ecommerce store an absolute breeze!
When it comes to the design aspect of things, Shopify has a ton of themes to choose from, a large number of which are also mobile responsive. On top of a library of templates for you to choose from, they’re all extremely customizable. With some coding knowhow, you can hop in and fine-tune everything to fit your individual needs.
Shopify also offers a ton of powerful sales features for you to use. Not only does it accept over 100 forms of payment, it also allows for flexibility when it comes to shipping as well as a massive library of apps to add-on even more features to your store.
One of Shopify’s key and killer features is its easy social media integration. We have a whole other blog post detailing the kind of punch social media brings to ecommerce stores, and Shopify makes it easy to bring that punch to the table. It allows for easy pairing with 10 major social media outlets.
Squarespace
Where Shopify places functionality ahead of design, Squarespace puts design ahead of functionality, and does so in a way that makes it hard to compete with on that plane.
While Shopify offers some great design choices and can give you a beautiful looking website in a relatively short amount of time, Squarespace’s design takes it to the next level and can give you a thoroughly professional-looking website.
When it comes to pricing, Squarespace has Shopify beat. Shopify’s plans fall in the range of $29-$299 per month, whereas Squarespace hits the much cheaper zone of $12-$40 per month.
However, that affordability does come with a cost. Squarespace lacks a large portion of Shopify’s features. Squarespace has no app store, meaning that if a feature isn’t built in initially, then you can’t use it. Shopify also has better SEO tools, email campaigns, and social media integration than Squarespace does.
However, Squarespace’s blog feature beats out Shopify’s.
The presentation of your product is something that Squarespace outshines Shopify on. From the get-go, Squarespace allows for you to sell digital products without any add-ons - something Shopify doesn’t offer. Squarespace allows for tons of options when it comes to your products, including a zoom feature, the ability to turn your photos into videos, and more.
Final Thoughts
While Shopify is the top ecommerce website development platform on the market today, that doesn’t mean that Squarespace should be so quickly discarded.
Squarespace throws itself into the design of your store and allows your products to take center stage in a rather unique way. Its blog features, Instagram integration, and Shopify-rivaling inventory-management capabilities certainly make it a force to be reckoned with.
To summarize:
Shopify works best for the serious seller, aimed at forging an expanding business with an emphasis on such, with design taking a still-very-important backseat.
Squarespace works best for businesses where presentation is king and the functionality behind your site isn’t necessarily the priority.
So which one is best for you?
