About Shopify
Shopify is a business platform that provides a way to easily start your desired business and begin selling to your clients, anywhere they are situated. It is a subscription-based program that enables anyone to create an online store and sell their goods. Shopify App Store and APIs will help you build your own store according to your own preference and taste.
About Squarespace
Squarespace is a site builder created to enable creative people to develop their own sites and advertise their work with their technical strength. It is a good site for anybody who is passionate about design, such as photographers and artists and wants their sites to look appealing as the content they are advertising.
Squarespace and Shopify are both known, very good tools for creating a site, but they literally have huge differences. Squarespace started with content-based sites as an idea, while Shopify is key for online stores. Avowedly, with the current inclusion of e-commerce in Squarespace, the two platforms are alike; for that reason, practically, you could use any of them to create an online store. But which platform is the best fit for a business? In this article, let’s have a look at the Squarespace vs Shopify differences.
What’s the Difference Between These Two Platforms?
1. Ease of Usage
Squarespace creates its own market as a platform that can be of use by any person. What makes it a smooth, convincing and manageable way to set up a site is the drag and drop layout with a choice of minimalist templates to pitch on.
Shopify is easy to set up, update and manage. If you are new to e-commerce, you don’t have to worry, as the single dashboard implies you can run everything in one location. You can design your store to suit your brand; you can arrange your products, receive payments and make a response to orders all inside the Shopify interface. Shopify encompasses web-hosting, which makes everything neat at a monthly cost.
2. Tools and Features
There are paid-for and free templates that will both give your site immediate professionalism. There is customer support through email using their support page and a Help page that offers Videos, Guides, webinars, and forums. Also, there are E-commerce Analytics, Integrations with platforms like PayPal, and a G-Suite.
Shopify customer care is available through email, phone and live chat with experts, E-commerce university, discussion forums and Shopify Help Centre. They also have Smartphone App, Multichannel integration, App store, Abandon Cart, Reporting, Mobile Responsive and over 100 proficient and free store themes.
3. Pricing
There is a basic plan at $30 per month, and an advanced plan at $46 per month and a 3% transaction fee at Squarespace.
When it comes to Shopify, there is a range of pricing packages, with the most known being Shopify Basic at $29 per month and at $79 per month. There is no transaction fee on Shopify Payments. It integrates with other payment gateways like PayPal, which will cost a maximum of 2% transaction fee according to the package. Some Apps are free while others have a fee.
4. Shipping Option
Squarespace has been operating with UPS to sum up carrier shipping costs.
Shopify offers a variety of shipping options from printable shipping labels to built-in integrations with services such as drop shipping, NHL or UPS, which makes sure the shipping experience is good.
5. Selling off the grid
Squarespace partnered with Square to come up with a Point of Sale.
Shopify came up with its own Point of Sale that can be found in each Shopify plan and will be in line with your online stores.
6. Product Model
You can sell any product on Squarespace apart from physical and digital products. On the other hand, you will be required to install an application to sell digital products on Shopify, like Digital downloads. It also lets you sell physical products.
Verdict
Most sites are created on Shopify for product-based businesses and Squarespace for service businesses. If you have an upcoming inventory or a bricks-and-mortar store and would love to load and set a release date and time for products, then you might want to choose Shopify. On standard, 88%of people would suggest Shopify to an individual looking to begin selling on the grid.
In summary, both Shopify and Squarespace are very good eCommerce website builders. Squarespace is more fit for blogging and showing stunning images, while Shopify has the best sales characteristics. Therefore, it all comes to your preferences and demands when choosing between both.