Shopify VS Squarespace
This is my personal comparison between the two online shop building platforms on four key areas -templates, design usability, content management systems and most importantly - sales.
Templates
So many templates, so little time. Shopify has 17 free templates, Squarespace has 110. In fact, every one of Squarespace’s templates are free! Wowzeroonie!
But stop right there.
Shopify also offers paid templates, and there are over 1,600 of them available to choose from. When shopping fora Shopify template, you can filter by features required, which is nifty. Many of these have been designed by developers and designers, and they can look damnnn slick.
How do Squarespaces templates look? I’ll be honest, very… Squarespace-y. If I could sum them up in three words I’d say “Clean, minimalist and beautiful”. If you’re working with a designer (hello!)who has loads of Squarespace experience, they can manipulate the templates enough to create a truly unique design that you would have no idea was based on a template.
NOTE: As of Squarespace’s 7.1 release, once you’ve picked a template you can no longer switch to another one without starting from scratch.
Overall: Squarespace wins on cost, but Shopify on sheer range available
Shopify - 1
Squarespace - 1
Design Usability
Shopify and Squarespace both have top-level editing areas where you can decide things like colours, typography and button styles with ease. If you want to tweak your site further than this, each site offers different options.
With Shopify you have access to all the background code that makes up your website. This is pretty awesome, but also fairly useless unless you have background knowledge of HTML and CSS. Within each page you can add new sections and switch up the layout of things with ease.
On Squarespace you don’t have access to all the background coding, but you can still customise and install your own code within the heading of each page, or in the Custom CSS editor.
Squarespace’s Liquid engine platform (ooh) gives the edge here overall though - it’s completely intuitive drag and drop system allows you to move about all content elements on the page, giving users unfamiliar with coding amazing freedom to design.
Overall: Squarespace is the clear winner.
Shopify – 1
Squarespace – 2
Content Management System
An easy-to-use product management system is essential to avoid screaming at your computer. Unless you enjoy that, in which case - you do you.
Shopify lets you import and export products with anExcel CSV file, and a number of app plug-ins are supported if you want to do anything a bit fancier.
Squarespace also lets you import/export using anExcel CSV file, but it is more limiting in the amount of variety it supports per product, and also by how many products you can export in total. Squarespace wins in how it handles images however, making the best attempt at displaying them all neatly at reasonably the same size.
Overall: Squarespace is the clear winner.
Shopify – 2
Squarespace – 2
Sales
And finally, perhaps the most important aspect of all for an e-commerce site. How will it handle bringin’ in the moneyyyy?
This is the area in which Shopify is pretty much incomparable, offering the following over Squarespace:
Supporting of multiple different currencies
Has a significantly larger range of POS options
Has a much larger range of payment gateways available – over 100
Incorporates a free email marketing tool
Overall: Shopify wins by a long shot.
Shopify – 3
Squarespace – 2
Conclusion
If you’re mostly after an easy to use, content driven website with additional sales functionality, go with Squarespace. If you’re looking for a full capability online shop with sales at the forefront, in my opinion Shopify is the way to go.
Need a smart ‘n’ sassy website designer to build your site? Then get in touch!