Shopify and Squarespace are two of the most popular e-commerce platforms on the market right now. Both are well-known in the online business world because they make it easy for small business owners to set up an online store or website without having to know how to code. But how do you know if Shopify and Squarespace are the right online store platforms for your business?
First of all, you should know that Shopify and Squarespace were made for different reasons. Shopify was made to help online stores get more customers and make more sales, while Squarespace was made to support the content-based websites of bloggers and influencers. This has caused them to have many different ideas about how to run their businesses.
Do a qualitative analysis of what each platform offers before committing to one as the foundation for your online store. When you compare these platforms side by side, you can see which ones offer the best value for your company’s digital needs.
Learn the Differences Between Shopify and Squarespace
Before we dive into a side-by-side comparison of Shopify and Squarespace, let’s take a moment to familiarise ourselves with the fundamentals of each.
Shopify
The Shopify e-commerce platform is hosted in the cloud, making it simple for business owners to set up and manage their own online stores. While the company’s expertise lies in providing retailers with turnkey e-commerce platforms, the Shopify POS (Point of Sale) system, along with a variety of physical POS hardware, allows stores to handle payment processing in-house.
Shopify, headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, is without rival in the network builder space, with annual sales of $100 billion processed through its hosting platform. 600,000 businesses rely on Shopify’s services at the moment, including industry leaders like Kylie Cosmetics, Red Bull, and Nestle.
Squarespace
Several well-known actors, including John Malkovich, Keanu Reeves, and Idris Elba, are Squarespace customers. Squarespace is another industry leader that serves the needs of successful online merchants.
Squarespace is a hosted content management system (CMS) that allows users to easily build and manage websites, blogs, portfolios, and e-commerce stores. It provides a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface for businesses of all sizes to develop polished websites. Squarespace is a good option for e-commerce businesses that need to create a basic online store from the ground up, despite the fact that its e-commerce store isn’t as feature-rich as Shopify’s.
A Comparison of the E-Commerce Platforms Shopify and Squarespace
Now that you know the fundamentals of these two behemoths, it’s time to dig deeper into their individual strengths and weaknesses.
Shopify Features Introduction
Basic and unique features of Shopify:
Major Ideas
Shopify has a good selection of themes. You have your pick of 9 free templates and 64 premium, high-priced ones (ranging from $150 to $180). Shopify themes cover a wide range of industries, including electronics, apparel, sports, and cosmetics.
All of Shopify’s themes are elegant, engaging, and mobile responsive. Since all Shopify themes are developed by UI-UX (user interface and user experience) experts, you can rest assured that your selection will run smoothly. You can pick out a storefront template that you like and then change it whenever you see fit.
The developers showed us a number of updates they’d made to the theme since October 2020, many of which were inspired by feedback from retailers. Colors have been modernised, illustrations have been slimmed down, and overall presentation has been sharpened. Shopify’s latest update, the Theme Editor, is yet another attempt to speed up theme loading times.
Simple Operation
Due to its hosted nature, Shopify’s dashboard is incredibly intuitive. It also employs a drag-and-drop interface, so you can modify the structure with minimal effort. In addition, Shopify has a clean interface with visual cues and shortcuts for adding products, customising themes, and adding domains right from the home page. So, you won’t have to worry about getting lost or confused as you create your online shop.
Shopify has been successful since its inception due to its ease of use. With Shopify, you don’t need to spend time learning how to set up a storefront before you can begin selling. Learn the ropes of opening a Shopify store with this helpful video guide.
Shopping Basket
Shopify Payments makes it easy to safely accept all major credit cards and debit cards, and you also have the option of integrating your site with more than a hundred additional payment processors. Shopify’s in-store shopping cart includes a number of features that allow you to personalise and streamline the checkout process for your customers, such as automatic tax calculations, flexible shipping fee setup, and notification emails in the event a customer abandons their cart.
As a result of Shopify’s partnerships with the industry’s top shipping providers, you can provide your customers with the most affordable shipping options possible through Shopify Shipping. This in-house service provides business owners with other advantages, such as bulk order fulfilment, the ability to print labels from a phone or computer, and shipping calculation.
Internet Promotion and Search Engine Optimization
You can be confident that your site will attract visitors from Google, Bing, and any other search engine that people have recently used to find content, thanks to Shopify’s excellent search engine optimization (SEO) tools. They even provide best practise tips when you add items to your inventory, and there are many applications that can help improve your SEO and get your products in front of people who want to buy them.
Shopify’s search engine optimization (SEO) tools will help you improve your online store’s visibility. First, Shopify creates titles, descriptions, specification tags, and your site map based on your content.
Furthermore, Shopify correctly labels SEO factors (specifically, page titles, meta-descriptions, and images instead of text). If you ever need to change the URL of your site, Shopify will save you a tonne of time by creating 301 redirects for you automatically.
A Brief History of Dropshipping
You should consider dropshipping if you want to open an online store but are concerned about keeping stock and fulfilling customer orders. You can avoid the hassle and cost of shipping products to customers all over the world by using a dropshipping service.
If you don’t keep a large stock on hand, you can pass orders off to your supplier and let them handle shipping and delivery to your customers. This makes your online store more of a “middleman” in the transaction. It also means you can avoid the hassle of maintaining a sizable stock on your own.
Unlike other business models, this one requires little in the way of initial capital. Shopify is far superior to Squarespace when it comes to dropshipping.
There are many specialised dropshipping apps available in Shopify’s app store, which has over 3,000 apps, that will facilitate the collection and sale of inventory. dropshipcorporation is a well-liked option for those looking to start a drop-shipping business. For someone just starting out in the world of e-commerce, this platform’s Supplier finder, Bulk Orders, Variant Mapping, and other helpful tools can make the order fulfilment process a breeze.
Brief Squarespace Overview
Squarespace’s bare bones and special sauce:
Major Ideas
True, Squarespace is primarily a platform for hosting blogs. Squarespace may not always be as fully optimised for e-commerce as Shopify, since many of its themes are designed for users who want to blog or showcase art, photography, or music portfolios.
In contrast, Squarespace’s monthly subscription fee includes the ability to preview and make changes to any of the available themes so that they serve your business’s needs.
Simple Operation
Even though Squarespace has a shopping cart, it is a bit more complicated to use than those offered by other platforms. Squarespace’s drag-and-drop content block section is great for newcomers. However, the editor’s front page is not very user-friendly because it lacks visual indicators.
It may take some time for those who are just starting out to learn how to use Squarespace for an online store.
The Transport Industry
Although Squarespace makes shipping easy, it cannot compare to Shopify when it comes to e-commerce fulfilment. Obviously, Squarespace has recently made great strides in expanding its network of fulfilment partner companies like UPS. However, Shopify is ahead of the curve because of its more mature online business model.
You can adjust shipping costs in Squarespace based on factors like package weight and destination country.
Furthermore, Squarespace excels at inventory management. When compared to similar services, such as Weebly and Wix, it is both superior and more user-friendly when it comes to managing stock. This may come as a shock, given that Squarespace is essentially just a website builder with integrated e-commerce features.
Internet Promotion and Search Engine Optimization
To help business owners better understand their customers and improve their marketing strategies, Squarespace provides a suite of online marketing tools. Squarespace incorporates search engine optimization (SEO) best practises directly into the content creation field, and your site will sync with your social media accounts to ensure that all of your content is always up to date.
Squarespace also has excellent email marketing tools, including the ability to easily import site content into unsent emails as a draught. The analytics tools allow you to track engagement, and the email marketing tools themselves let you tweak layouts, content, colours, and fonts for optimal results. Be aware that Squarespace’s five email campaign plans come at a monthly cost of between $5 and $48.
Expand Your Site With These Add-Ons for Squarespace
With the advent of 2019 came the release of Squarespace’s Extension Market. Twenty-four add-ons are currently provided solely by external vendors. You should check the extension’s detailed page before adding it to your site, as some of them are only available in select countries.
Despite the small number, all of the available add-ons are made to facilitate site administration, enhancement, and growth. shipping and fulfilment, finance, inventory and products, and sales and marketing are the four divisions you can select from when using the filtering options.
Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of Shopify and Squarespace.
Advantages of Shopify include: Unique pre-installed tools. Shopify comes equipped with a robust suite of features. All of your technical issues will be resolved, and you’ll have access to most of the tools necessary to run an e-commerce site.
Server space for rent. If you choose Shopify as your e-commerce platform, you’ll also have access to a robust hosted service. This also means you won’t have to worry about maintaining the server or fixing any issues it may have.
Enjoy a straightforward interface. Shopify’s user interface (UI) is well-designed and intuitive.
Over 3,000 available apps in the App Store. Shopify also has a fantastic App Store stocked with a wide variety of plugins that can be used to increase your site’s usefulness. A lot of them are completely free, but there are also a few that require a one-time payment or recurring membership.
Shopify’s price tag is a drawback. In order to use the service, you must pay the monthly fee.
PROS:
- The benefits of Squarespace include: a plethora of visually appealing templates due to the platform’s emphasis on design.
- You can see how well your store is doing with the help of the analytics system.
- Excellent blogging software for your content advertising campaign.
CONS:
- The number of available add-ons in the online marketplace or app store is small.
- Squarespace has restricted payment options.
- While similar to Shopify, it lacks Shopify’s breadth of e-commerce features.
Disclosing Statement
E-commerce website builders don’t get much better than Squarespace and Shopify. In terms of functionality, Shopify is clearly ahead of Squarespace, while the latter is better suited to blogging and showcasing impressive visuals. Which is better, Shopify or Squarespace? The answer is based on your specific needs and preferences.
There’s no denying that Shopify is the best option for serious merchants. If you have a bigger operation, Shopify could be a game-changer. Most e-commerce platforms care more about making a profit than they do about making the site look good. They don’t seem to put much emphasis on aesthetics, which is great if you don’t need a flashy layout for your website.
