Shopify or Squarespace - What Should You Choose to Build Your Website?

by Pear Digital

Shopify and Squarespace - the two popular platforms that have revolutionised the way websites are built.

Every business owner that begins their online venture looks forward to creating a website. When it comes to DIY website development, they often get stuck on one question

Shopify or Squarespace - which is the best website development platform?

Both the options have a fair share of votes but for their respective purposes. They seem to be similar platforms providing excellent usability to their users in terms of developing custom websites. But, history speaks of their different objectives.

While Shopify emerged as an online store development platform, Squarespace was meant to develop content-based websites. Take a closer look at their differences.

Shopify vs Squarespace - Which is better to build your websit

Overview 

Shopify is an intuitive platform for developing eCommerce websites. Right from its launch, it was a renowned eCommerce hosting space. It triumphs over Squarespace when it comes to creating advanced online stores.

Squarespace, on the other hand, powers intriguing content-driven websites with its easy-to-use content management system (CMS). It is indeed giving a fair competition to Shopify as Squarespace Commerce.

Pricing 

Shopify has 5 monthly plans for its customers.

  1. Shopify Lite - $9 per mont
  2. Basic Shopify - $29 per mont
  3. Shopify - $79 per mont
  4. Advanced Shopify - $299 per mont
  5. Shopify Plus - starts at $2000 per month (for large enterprises with extra features

Shopify also qualifies you for 10% and 20% discount if you purchase a subscription for 12 and 24 months respectively

Squarespace categorises its plans into two broad plans - Online Stores and Websites.

Online Store

  1. Basic - $26 per month (charged annually) or $30 per month (charged monthly
  2. Advanced - $40 per month (charged annually) or $46 per month (charged monthly

Websites

  1. Personal -$12 per month (charged annually) or $16 per month (charged monthly
  2. Business -$18 per month (charged annually), or $26 per month (charged monthly

Features

As a major difference, Shopify is for merchants and retailers, while Squarespace is about designing and visuals. Let’s seeShopify vs Squarespace concerning eCommerce websites.

Setting up an eCommerce store

Shopify provides drag-and-drop features.

  • Create a layout component and move to the preferred position.
  • Straightforward editing proces
  • Edit HTML/CSS to design virtually anythin
  • Free and paid templates to choose fro
  • Not provision for simultaneous working on content and desig

Squarespace is more for designers.

  • Gorgeous and contemporary templates
  • Numerous pre-created themes
  • Can work on the content and design simultaneously
  • High-quality images
  • More templates and designs to choose from

Payment - Shopify offers countless payment options like PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, and many more. You can be exempted from paying the transaction fees if you use Shopify Payments, the company’s payment method

Squarespace has only two payment gateways available - Stripe and PayPal

Dropshipping - Shopify opens up its own app store to choose the best dropshipping app for you.

Squarespace has no such provisions. Moreover, it requires a Shopify Lite plan and a dropshipping app to dropship on Squarespace.

Ease of Use - Creating and designing pages with Shopify takes time but the pages are responsive and better than Squarespace

Squarespace provides a faster approach towards products and page creation with a sleek interface. But the pages are less responsive and more prone to bugs.

Squarespace or Shopify, the discussion is endless. But when it comes to implementation, it can be intimidating. At Pear Shop, the website development team is well-versed with creating all types of websites ranging from blogs to eCommerce stores. We particularly specialise in Shopify -get in touch with our expertsto discuss your next project.

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