Squarespace vs Shopify for Selling Digital Products

So! You’re ready to sell digital products but can’t decide where to host your store?

Well today we’re going to dive into 2 of the most popular options for e-commerce:

Shopify and Squarespace

to help you make the best decision.

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Hey guys - welcome or welcome back!

If you don’t know me, my name is Ranita - I’m a website designer who loves teaching people about Squarespace!

And I’m the creator behind Gold Standard Design.

If you're a creator, blogger, podcaster, or solopreneur looking to dive into the world of Squarespace - I’ve got you covered. 😉

Ok, to more easily compare these 2 platforms we’re going to look at some standard categories which are:

Features
3rd party app integrations
Ease of use
Pricing

Squarespace Features

Let’s start with Squarespace.

Squarespace is a website builder with ecommerce capabilities.

That means it has many capabilities and functionalities, but isn’t a specialist in any single one. It's kind of a jack of all trades when it comes to website hosting platforms.

Squarespace has 174 templates to choose from, with 42 being specially optimized for “online stores.”

But if you’ve watched my video on how to pick a Squarespace template, you’ll know that doesn’t really matter.

And if you haven’t watched it check it out right here!

Now, Squarespace 7.1 fluid engine also has an efficient drag and drop, no-code-needed design that lets you pull elements into a grid.

That makes it super easy to build your website pages quickly.

If you’re wondering what the “7.1 fluid engine” stuff is about - that’s just Squarespace’s latest version of their platform.

The old version was called 7.0 but if you’re building a brand new website you won’t have to worry about this, as you’ll just be directed to 7.1.

Squarespace integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and Square as payment processing options for your store, and they also offer their native payment processor: Squarespace payments.

Something to note is that Squarespace gives you a free 2 week trial to build your website before having to start a billing plan.

But you can usually get this extended by letting your free trial run out, and then declining to sign up for a billing plan.

In most cases this will trigger Squarespace to ask if you need more time and give you another 2 weeks for free.

Shopify Features

Moving on to Shopify, it’s a bit different than Squarespace in that it’s a dedicated online store builder.

That means they’ve niched down to cater to ONLY online stores instead of trying to do EVERYTHING.

Shopify currently has 197 themes (or templates) to choose from including free and premium options. Since Shopify only builds online stores - all 197 of these are catered to selling products.

I found 13 templates listed as free, with the rest having a price tag ranging from $140 - $400.

When choosing your Shopify theme it’s important to think about what features, functionality, and design options will be most important to you.

Free themes have more limited options, while paid themes will of course offer more.

Similar to Squarespace, Shopify also offers drag and drop, no-code-needed functionality for building out your site.

AND just like Squarespace, Shopify gives you a free trial to try out their platform, but this one is only 3 days long.

During your free trial you can use their free stock photos library to help design your site, but you WILL have to use a free theme to do this.

But if you end up liking it you can always upgrade to a paid theme later.

Features Recap

Templates

So to recap, Squarespace has 174 templates to choose from, while Shopify has 197.

BUUUTT all of Squarespace’s templates are free while the majority of themes on Shopify cost money.

So I’m giving the win to Squarespace on this one.

Design

Both Squarespace and Shopify have drag and drop, no-code-needed design tools, so…

this one’s a tie.

Payment Processors

As for payment processors, Squarespace offers a total of 4, while Shopify offers something like 106 or 107.

Shopify definitely wins that one.

Free Trial

And for free trial periods, Squarespace offers 2 weeks with a likely 2 week extension, while Shopify offers 3 days.

Squarespace takes this round.

So for features, Squarespace beats out Shopify by just a bit.

Third Party Integrations

Squarespace offers a total of 46 app integrations, about 31 of which are useful or relevant to an ecommerce store.

Shopify, on the other hand offers over 8000 app integrations - all of which are useful or relevant to an ecommerce store.

Now, I’ll be honest - I didn’t go through all 8000, but because Shopify is specifically built for online stores, it’s a safe bet to say all their apps are targeted toward online store needs and goals.

Shopify wins this round by a landslide.

Ease of Use

I’ll be honest, this category is a little tougher to quantify. There aren’t really numbers or data for me to show you, so I’ll just talk about my experience.

If you’ve never used a website builder before, both platforms will take a minute to get the hang of, but neither is impossible to learn - even for beginners.

As we’ve talked about, they both offer simple, drag and drop design functionality that will be intuitive for most people.

Where things start to diverge in the experience - at least for me - is when it comes to the app integrations.

Shopify offers soooo many integrations that it feels really overwhelming trying to figure out which ones I need for my store.

Their list is quite comprehensive, so much so that they’ve broken out their apps into categories like “Finding Products”, “Marketing and Conversion”, and “Store Management” to name a few.

Then within those categories you’ve got thousands of choices.

For someone like me, I would feel the need to do research on each of these to see what’s best for my goals and priorities.

That can take up a significant amount of time, or at the very least lead to analysis paralysis.

Meaning your store will stay in the editing phase for longer, meaning it’s not out there selling your products and making you money.

Something else that’s different is the checkout experience.

Squarespace’s checkout leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion, while Shopify’s experience is much smoother and quicker and just what we’ve come to expect when making an online purchase.

To put it simply, I think of Squarespace more like Apple and Shopify more like Android.

Sure, the options and functionality may be more limited with Apple products, but it’s simple, easy to use, intuitive, and it just WORKS.

Android has much more to offer in terms of customization, but with all those options come the possibility of breaking your store.

At which point, it’s on YOU to figure out and fix.

It’s tough to say, and I can see arguments on both sides, but I’m going to say

Squarespace narrowly wins this round.

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Squarespace Pricing

Now at the time of writing, Squarespace charges different payment processing fees based on which plan you have.

For the Commerce Basic and Advanced they charge 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction for downloadable products, which I would consider part of ecommerce.

If you have the Website Business plan they add an additional 3% fee on top of that.

But they have a separate fee schedule for courses, video pages, and member sites, which they call “digital products.”

They still charge the 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, but depending on your digital products billing plan you’ll be charged anywhere from 0% - 9% on top of those fees.

As far as what you’ll pay to host your site on Squarespace, they have plans ranging from $16 - $52 a month if you pay annually, or $25 - $72 a month paid monthly.

But it should be noted if you’re trying to sell things you’ll need to be on the Business plan at the very least, which will cost you $23 - $36 a month paid annually or monthly.

Shopify Pricing

As for payment processing, Shopify offers its own integrated solution called Shopify Payments.

This allows anyone with a credit or debit card containing a 3 digit CVV code to buy things from your store.

Additionally, Shopify integrates with over 100 other payment processors in the US alone including Stripe and Paypal.

It’s a bit unclear as to how much Shopify charges for payment processing, as they state “the fee amount depends on the type of credit card that is used.”

But they do list rates ranging between 2.5% - 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction depending on your billing plan.

It should be noted that if you choose to use any payment provider other than Shopify payments you will be charged an additional third-party transaction fee.

You will also be charged a conversion rate and fee when you accept payments in a currency different from your payout currency - so any international payments.

As for what you’ll pay to host your site on Shopify, they have plans ranging from $29 - $2300 a month paid annually or $39 - $2300 a month if you pay monthly.

Pricing Recap

So the transaction fees are pretty much the same from what I can see, but Squarespace offers the cheaper hosting plan at $23 a month.

Winner: Squarespace.

Conclusion

So, it looks like Squarespace is our official winner.

But my real advice is if you’re just starting out with your online store - yes, go with Squarespace.

Once you’re a bit more established and comfortable and growing your sales, I would then switch to Shopify to take advantage of those many app integrations that can save you time and increase what you’re able to do.