Shopify vs Squarespace: Which Platform Suits Your Business?

Shopify vs Squarespace is a choice between a store platform and a website builder that also sells. Shopify is built around selling; Squarespace is built around designing a site, with commerce tools included. For some businesses that is exactly the right balance. For others it is a limit they hit after a year.

This guide compares plan prices, fees and features from both companies' own pages, read in October 2026.

Shopify vs Squarespace at a glance

Plans, fees and trials

The card rates match tier by tier, so the difference is the plan price, not processing. At the top self-serve tier Squarespace costs $99 a month on yearly billing against $299 for Shopify Advanced. What the extra Shopify spend buys is a much larger ecosystem, deeper inventory and channel tools, and a Plus tier when you outgrow self-serve.

Shopify also charges a separate fee when you use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments, starting at 2% on Basic and falling on higher plans. Squarespace's own 2% store fee applies only on its Basic plan. Prices here are US dollar list prices as shown in October 2026; check your region for local pricing and taxes.

Store features

Squarespace's commerce tools cover more than the "light selling" description suggests. Its pages list unlimited products on every plan, subscriptions, digital downloads, flat-rate, weight-based and real-time shipping, automatic sales tax, product reviews and customer accounts. Abandoned cart recovery is listed from the Core plan.

Shopify adds depth in operations. Its inventory tools cover stock across multiple locations, transfers between them and purchase orders, and it syncs stock across sales channels. If you hold stock in one place and sell a few hundred products, Squarespace's tools can be enough. If you have several locations or marketplaces to keep in step, Shopify's inventory model fits better.

Design and customisation

Squarespace's strength is design. It offers professionally designed templates and a drag-and-drop editor that lets you change layouts, fonts, colours and images without code. Custom code is limited by plan: basic HTML, CSS and markdown on Basic, and CSS, HTML, iFrames and JavaScript from Core.

Shopify's themes can be edited in a theme editor or at code level with Liquid, so a developer can change page structure, build custom sections and add logic that a template editor cannot. Checkout branding is available on every plan; advanced checkout changes need Plus.

If your site is mostly content, with a catalogue as one section, Squarespace's editor is quicker. If conversion work, product pages and custom features drive revenue, Shopify gives you more to work with.

Apps and integrations

Squarespace connects to outside tools through Extensions. Its help centre calls them a collection of third-party tools for things like sales tax, dropshipping, SEO and social marketing, and says they are not official integrations and fall outside Squarespace support. Shopify's App Store lists over 16,000 apps. The practical effect: with Squarespace you choose from a curated list of connectors, and with Shopify you will usually find an app for a niche need, though you must vet quality and monthly costs.

SEO

Both platforms cover the fundamentals. Squarespace lets you set page titles, SEO descriptions and URL slugs, creates and updates a sitemap automatically, generates structured data, redirects connected domains to your primary one and includes a free SSL certificate. It also has an SEO report tool that flags missing alt text and descriptions.

Shopify generates sitemap.xml, robots.txt and canonical tags automatically and lets you edit titles, meta descriptions, URLs and image alt text and set 301 redirects. Neither platform will fix weak content or slow pages; the useful question is which one your team will actually keep updated.

In-person selling and services

Squarespace's POS runs inside its app and is available in the US and the UK. In the US you can use Quick Pay, Tap to Pay, Pay Links or a Square Reader; in the UK, Square Reader is not supported. Shopify has its own POS product for physical retail.

For appointment-based businesses, Squarespace Scheduling (the Acuity product) is a separate subscription with its own Starter, Standard and Premium tiers rather than part of a website plan, and it does not require a Squarespace site.

Pros and cons

Squarespace

• Pros: lower price at the top self-serve tier, strong templates and editor, unlimited products, a 14-day trial, and scheduling for service businesses.
• Cons: payouts in a single store currency, third-party Extensions outside Squarespace's support, a ceiling of 250 variant combinations per product, and no multi-location inventory tools listed.

Shopify

• Pros: far larger app ecosystem, multi-location inventory, Markets for selling by country, code-level theme control and a Plus tier.
• Cons: higher monthly price once you move past the entry plan, app costs that accumulate, a short 3-day free trial and a third-party gateway fee when you skip Shopify Payments.

Which should you choose?

Choose Squarespace if the site matters more than the store: a studio, consultancy or maker with a modest catalogue, a blog and perhaps bookings, and no plan to run several sales channels.

Choose Shopify if selling is the business: you expect hundreds of products, several channels, custom integrations or a larger team working in the store.

If you are unsure, start a trial on both with real products. Squarespace's 14-day trial is longer than Shopify's 3 days, so prepare product data, images and shipping rules first so that you can evaluate properly. Comparing more options? Read GoDaddy vs Shopify and WooCommerce vs Shopify.

How Mindrops works on this

Mindrops builds and migrates Shopify stores. If you are outgrowing Squarespace, we can plan the move: product and customer data, a Shopify theme that matches your existing design, and redirects from your current URLs. Shopify notes that reviews cannot be exported from Squarespace, so we plan an app-based route for them. See Shopify development, ecommerce development or request a quote.

Conclusion

Squarespace and Shopify now cost the same at the entry tier and charge the same card rates, so the decision comes down to what you are building. Squarespace gives a polished, design-led site with solid basic commerce. Shopify gives a deeper selling platform with more tools, channels and room to grow. Pick on the catalogue, channels and integrations you expect in two years, not just on what you need on launch day.