Shopify vs Squarespace for Your Ecommerce Store: 2025 Edition

If you're reading this, you're probably standing at a crossroads that every serious ecommerce entrepreneur faces: Should I build my store on Shopify or Squarespace?

Maybe you've already started on one platform and you're wondering if the grass is greener elsewhere. Maybe you're launching a new product line and questioning your current setup.

If you’re on this platform wondering about a switch, it’s probably because a) your current platform isn’t necessarily serving you in all the ways, b) you’ve hit a growth platform and wondering what to do next, or c) everyone has a damn opinion about what you should do!

Product-based business owners don’t have to follow the same prescription–but you do need a website platform that allows you to forge your own path.

I've been on both sides of this decision – as a copywriter for major ecommerce brands and now as a Shopify designer helping businesses optimize for growth. Here's the strategic breakdown you won't find in generic platform comparisons.

The real question isn't "Which is better?"

The real question is: Which platform aligns with your business model and growth trajectory?

After working with brands doing everything from $10K to millions in annual revenue, I've learned that platform choice is more about business strategy than platform features.

In the “Big 25” as my teenager says, all the website platforms are competing with each other to launch the best features, the fastest. 

Squarespace, for example, has made a concentrated effort in the last year to focus on commerce so it can compete with *ehm* Shopify (and probably Wix). Are they there yet? Is Shopify still the best option for those who want a beautiful, full-featured store? Let’s find out.

Shopify: Built for commerce, designed for growth

You’re probably aware that Shopify is purpose-built for ecommerce. While some service providers have migrated there (especially if they sell digital products), Shopify has long dominated the ecommerce online marketplace. Not only do they constantly update their own product, they’ve allowed a robust ecommerce ecosystem to grow and support merchant stores. Here's what Shopify does best:

Commerce-First Architecture

Shopify was built specifically for selling. Every feature, every update, every integration is designed with one goal: helping you sell more. This isn't just a website builder that added ecommerce features. 

Once your site is built, you will be spending a lot of time in the back-end, so having immediate access to your products, inventory management, etc. without having to click through a million links becomes a huge time-saver.

Inventory Management

Squarespace has significantly improved their inventory system in 2024-2025, adding bulk updates and better variant management. However, when you're managing complex product catalogs with multiple variants (size, color, material, fit) across multiple locations, Shopify's system becomes invaluable.

For example, a clothing brand with 50 products, each in 8 colors and 6 sizes, creates 2,400 SKUs to track. Add two retail locations plus a warehouse, and you need inventory tracking across 7,200 data points. Shopify handles this automatically; Squarespace requires workarounds and manual management.

Payment Processing

I’m talking a lot about payments now because getting someone to buy is obviously such an important piece of the puzzle. Easier payment integrations and better conversion rates means less frustration for both you and your customers… and more money for you!

Here's where Shopify's business strategy becomes apparent: they heavily push Shopify Payments and their native POS system. This has been a sticky point for many smaller businesses who sell in-person, too. Shopify POS works OK, but it costs a lot more than Square. They have monthly subscription costs, plus something called POS Pro cost for every retail location. BUT, it integrates perfectly with your online store.

While you can integrate Square with Shopify, it requires third-party apps ($29.99/month for Square Integration & Sync) and doesn't provide the seamless experience Shopify offers with their own ecosystem. Shopify doesn't natively support Square because they're competitors in the POS space.

This creates a real challenge for businesses already using Square POS at markets, craft fairs, or retail locations. You'll need to choose between Shopify's integrated experience or pay monthly fees for workaround integrations that often have sync issues.

Squarespace takes a different approach: they've partnered directly with Square for their POS solution. If you sell in-person, you can use the Squarespace app with Square card readers, and your inventory automatically syncs between online and in-person sales. However, you must use Square for in-person payments (not just any processor), and this integration is separate from any existing Square inventory you might have.

I know, it’s definitely headache-inducing. So think about not only how you sell now, but your long-term growth strategy when making the decision on what’s right for you.

Online Checkout Experience: Shop Pay Dominates

This is where Shopify's investment in commerce infrastructure really shows. Shop Pay, Shopify's one-click checkout system, leverages a network of 150+ million users to deliver conversion rates up to 50% higher than guest checkout and outperforms all other accelerated checkouts by at least 10%.

When a customer has used Shop Pay anywhere in Shopify's ecosystem, their information is pre-saved across all Shopify stores. They can complete purchases 4x faster than traditional checkout. The familiar interface reduces potential friction and speeds up purchases, meaning fewer buyers are likely to bounce. Hello CRO!

Squarespace offers standard checkout with Apple Pay, PayPal, and Afterpay integration, but doesn’t have a similar system to Shop Pay. While its checkout process is clean and professional, it doesn't have the same conversion optimization stats.

App Ecosystem for Serious Growth

Squarespace's Commerce Extensions has grown to around 75 integrations (up from ~20 in 2023), but it's still dwarfed by Shopify's 8,000+ apps. More importantly, Squarespace extensions are mostly basic integrations (email tools, review widgets, simple analytics), while Shopify's ecosystem includes enterprise-grade solutions for complex wholesale management, advanced shipping scenarios, multi-channel inventory sync, and sophisticated marketing automation.

Need advanced subscription billing? Limited choices. Want sophisticated abandoned cart recovery with behavioral triggers? Not available. Planning international expansion with multi-currency and localized checkout flows? You'll hit walls quickly. The gap becomes more apparent as your business grows beyond basic ecommerce needs.

For example, the email marketing tool Klaviyo (gold standard for ecommerce) directly integrates with Shopify–not Squarespace. Yes, you can use Squarespace’s mail, but for anyone that’s spent time running email for ecommerce accounts, there’s no comparison between the tools.

Where Shopify Requires Investment

Now we’ve looked at several areas where Shopify shines in its focus on helping ecommerce businesses. However, there are a few areas where you may find yourself investing more to get these benefits.

Design Customization

Shopify themes are powerful, but customizing them requires either technical skills or a designer who understands Liquid (Shopify's templating language). This is where many DIY entrepreneurs get stuck. The new Horizon themes and AI integration promise to make this easier, but the editor is still more clunky than Squarespace’s drag and drop interface.

However–and this is a HUGE plus–pagebuilders like Replo and Instant integrate seamlessly to help you create high-converting landing pages for your ads and campaigns. This is a time-saving shortcut to making updates on your own.

Branding Consistency 

Shopify's strength lies in commerce optimization, but achieving the same visual consistency requires more work. Interior pages are created within Shopify's admin and limited by your theme's capabilities. URLs aren't as clean as Squarespace (you can't remove "/products/" from product pages), and maintaining brand consistency across all touchpoints often requires custom development.

Monthly Costs Add Up

Operating expenses will be a large part of your budget (but that’s the life of an ecommerce seller, right?) Between the platform fee ($29-$299/month), apps ($10-$100/month), and transaction fees (0.5-2.9%), your monthly investment can reach $200-$500 for a growing business. However, I believe the revenue potential far outweighs the costs, for those who can afford it.

Learning Curve

Shopify's backend is designed for merchants, not beginners. There are more settings, more options, and more ways to optimize. While this can feel overwhelming initially, you’ll soon get used to managing your site and knowing how to run all those powerful reports.

Squarespace: Design-first with growing commerce capabilities

Squarespace is a favorite for small sellers (and all kinds of small businesses) for a reason: it’s *relatively easy* to build a beautiful, on-brand website on your own. Or, to manage a build on your own. I ran my studio site and blogged on Squarespace for years, until its tools just didn’t keep up with the pixel-perfection I was seeking (especially in responsive mode). Also, my focus on ecommerce meant I needed to look at all options.

But, let’s talk about what Squarespace does best, and why some thriving ecommerce businesses I’ve worked with continue to host their sites there.

What Squarespace does best

Easy to Keep Manage and Visual Brand Consistency
I think there are two reasons people use Squarespace, and they’re both interrelated. First of all, you have probably heard that Squarespace is easy to design on. It’s easy to get the look that you want (often starting from their stunning templates), and you can easily manage your brand’s fonts, colors, and button styles to make sure everything’s cohesive. In theory, this helps make sure you won’t get derailed by an unprofessional-looking site, but it does become hard to change some specific styling without code.

Squarespace's design system ensures everything looks cohesive – from your product pages to your blog to your checkout. For brand-focused businesses, this consistency is valuable.

With a renewed focus on ecommerce in 2025, Products V2 infrastructure (rolling out through August 2025) makes significant updates to code to improve page load speed, and offers greater customization of things like product blocks and sections, quantity selectors, and more.

However, complex product page modifications remain challenging. For brands needing extensive product page flexibility – custom layouts, unique variant displays, or complex interactive elements – these improvements still fall short of what's possible with Shopify. If you want your product pages to look completely different from every other online store, Shopify gives you the tools to make that happen.

All-in-One Simplicity

Squarespace lets you manage your domain, hosting, analytics, email marketing, and ecommerce in one platform. For solopreneurs managing everything themselves, this simplicity has real value. No contest.

Content Integration

If you’re in ecommerce, you should be running a blog. It’s just not going to be your main focus. But if your business model includes content marketing, blogging, or storytelling, Squarespace's content management is superior. Your blog posts, product pages, and brand story flow together seamlessly. However, most Shopify themes include blogs, and you can still add shoppable sections in both platforms.

But if your content marketing relies heavily on including native UGC, which is easier to manage through apps, Shopify still dominates. In Squarespace you might need to manually customize and upkeep video blocks. You can still get great effects, it’s just more work.

Template Quality

Squarespace templates are genuinely beautiful. They're designed by actual designers and optimized for modern web standards. Many small businesses can launch with minimal customization. However, as mentioned before, their ecommerce designs are pretty blocky and don’t have as many customization options. This makes Squarespace templates more ideal for young brands and businesses who want to set up a great-looking site and not have to bother managing managing their branded look. It’s more set it and forget it. 

Also worth noting that on both platforms you can’t change templates without changing your whole store. On Shopify, this is a problem because you’ll have to create a whole new development store and load the new template into that. It’s possible, but there’s definitely some change management that needs to happen.

Squarespace bases all its websites on a single template–you just change around features and styling to get new looks – actually, kind of like Shopify is going with the new Horizon themes. Well, I guess this makes the point mute.

Where Squarespace shows its limits

Commerce Feature Gaps

While Squarespace added some requested features in 2024-2025 (like bulk inventory updates, improved low stock alerts, and abandoned cart recovery across multiple plans), significant gaps remain: limited to 3 variant types per product, no subscription billing options on basic plans, no advanced shipping rules with conditional logic, and limited automation capabilities. For growing businesses, these aren't just missing features – they're missing revenue opportunities.

App Marketplace

Squarespace has around 50 extensions compared to Shopify's 8,000+. When you need specific functionality (advanced shipping rules, loyalty programs, wholesale pricing), your options are limited.

Transaction Fees

Squarespace's fee structure has become more competitive in 2025: 0% transaction fees on Commerce Advanced plans when using supported payment processors. However, you're still locked into their payment processor options (Stripe, PayPal, Square), while Shopify offers 100+ payment gateway integrations including region-specific options crucial for international expansion.

Customization Constraints

While templates are beautiful, customizing beyond their intended design requires significant CSS knowledge. Many businesses outgrow their template's limitations.

Shopify or Squarespace: Decision framework

Choose Shopify if:

• Your primary business is selling products (not services with some products on the side)

• You're planning to scale beyond $100K annual revenue

• You need advanced features like product variants, inventory tracking, or multi-location selling

• You're willing to invest in proper setup (either learning the platform or hiring expertise)

• You sell in multiple channels (online, in-person, social media, marketplaces)

Choose Squarespace if:

• You're a service-based business with some product offerings

• Brand aesthetics are your primary differentiator

• You're just starting and need to test market demand

• You manage everything yourself and want minimal complexity

• Your revenue is under $50K annually and likely to stay there

How hard is it to migrate from Squarespace to Shopify?

Here's what I tell clients considering a platform switch:

From Squarespace to Shopify is relatively straightforward but requires design investment to maintain your brand aesthetic. Most businesses see improved conversion rates within 60 days due to better checkout flow and commerce features.

From Shopify to Squarespace is technically possible but rarely strategic for growing ecommerce businesses. You'll lose functionality that's difficult to replace.

Should you switch to Shopify? (The tldr;)

I get it, this is a long blog post. I’m sure you’ve heard the pros and cons before. That’s why I developed a really quick litmus test to see if switching from Squarespace to Shopify is right for you. Here’s what you’ll gauge yourself on:

• Revenue Test: If you're doing (or planning for) $50K+ annually in product sales, Shopify's features justify the investment.

• Growth Test: If you plan to add team members, multiple sales channels, or complex product offerings, choose the platform that won't limit your growth.

• Resource Test: Squarespace works if you want to manage everything yourself with minimal learning curve. Shopify works if you're willing to invest time or money in proper setup.

• Business Model Test: Product-focused businesses thrive on Shopify. Brand-focused businesses with light ecommerce can succeed on either platform.

The bottom line (depends on your bottom line ;)

Most businesses I work with who start on Squarespace eventually migrate to Shopify when they're ready to scale. There's no shame in this progression – it's actually a smart strategy. 

If you're currently on Squarespace and experiencing any of these scenarios:

• Losing sales due to platform limitations

• Spending more time managing workarounds than growing your business

• Feeling constrained by customization options

• Ready to invest in professional growth

It might be time to consider Shopify.

If you're happy with your current platform and it's serving your business model well, there's no need to switch just because "Shopify is better." The best platform is the one that helps you achieve your specific business goals.

Need help evaluating your current setup or planning a strategic migration? I offer platform audits where we analyze your specific business model, growth goals, and technical requirements to determine your best path forward. Get your audit here.

Have questions about your specific situation? Drop them in the comments – I read and respond to every one.