Shopify vs Squarespace: Which is the Best eCommerce Platform?
at first glance shopify and squarespace look like they're very similar tools they're both website builders and they both let you sell products but historically they were actually created for completely different purposes so if you're not sure whether you want to go with shopify or whether you want to go with squarespace today we're going to be going over the main differences and the pros and cons of each the point of this video is to give you the information that you need in order to make a decision on which ecommerce platform is best for you so if you are looking for a short answer squarespace was originally designed as a solution to build content like websites like portfolios and blogs that kind of a thing so their original focus was on publishing content not on selling things on the other hand shopify started out as an ecommerce product and was specifically designed to make an online store so all of its features are made for selling products but squarespace has recently added some ecommerce features and shopify has added some content creation apps so they are meeting somewhere in the middle knowing this shopify is going to be your best choice if you're trying to get into e-commerce and squarespace is going to be best if you want to build a content-focused website that doesn't involve selling at all so that's pretty much the bottom line but there always is grey areas like for example if you're a blogger and you want to sell merch that's kind of a gray area if you're an artist and you want to feature your portfolio and sell prints as well also a gray area so in these scenarios you could technically go with either that's why we're going to do a super in-depth analysis i'm going to compare everything from pricing features and templates and we're also going to be looking at which option would be better for you if you are a drop shipper i know a lot of you guys are drop shippers so choosing the right platform it's a pretty big decision you want to make sure that you like it before investing time into building it so hang tight with me until the end of this video so that you can make the most informed decision [Music] all right so first off let's compare pricing starting with shopify so shopify has got three tiers you've got basic shopify you've got shopify and advanced shopify most of you are probably just going to need the basic plan which is 29 us dollars a month and that includes features like ecommerce integrations you got 24 7 customer support you can upload and sell unlimited amount of products and you also get shipping discounts which is a huge reason why people love shopify and if you have a physical store you can use a shopify pos which allows you to accept payments in person you can sell in 133 different currencies and you can set up your store in 20 different languages so there's a ton of other features but those are the main ones that are standouts so let's look at squarespace now so if you don't need the ecommerce feature it's going to be 16 bucks so that's super affordable but this plan is only going to give you a place to show off your content it's not a website for shopping so if you want a website for customers to be able to shop with you and check out then you'd be looking at the commerce plan that's 35 bucks a month so that's a little bit more expensive than shopify but just like shopify you get 24 7 customer support and you can upload an unlimited amount of products now there are no shipping discounts but like shopify there is a pos available so you know give and take there a little bit however in order to use that pos you would have to be in the u.s so if you want the pos if you need that for your business and you have to sell in person then you would have to be in the us you can have multiple languages on your website with squarespace but it is an extremely manual process which is a little bit annoying a little bit time consuming so as of now things are looking pretty comparable but since squarespace is a little bit more expensive i'm gonna give the pricing category to shopify all right so next up is templates so let's start with squarespace's time so squarespace they have 110 options for free templates and they are really beautifully designed now only a few of these templates are actually dedicated to online store themes so that means that most of the themes are going to be geared towards content presentation so if you want to showcase your art or your music portfolio then squarespace is going to be a really great choice now these themes are also responsive that means that your website will automatically resize itself to suit the device that it's being viewed on so it's always going to look great on mobile it's always going to look great on tablet or your desktop computer no matter what if you want to make a custom change to your template like maybe basic color tweaks and typefaces then it's going to be really easy to do with squarespace now the one thing that i want to mention is that you don't always get full access to your site's code in case you wanted to make any custom changes that might be a little bit more difficult one really nice thing about squarespace is that it has a built-in integration with unsplash and getty images so you can really easily add stock images to your website this is super helpful if you are a blogger and you need to find images really quickly to accompany your blog posts alright so now let's look at shopify's option so the shopify theme store includes over 80 free and premium professionally designed ecommerce website templates and you can use any of these for your own online store there are some really clean cut ones that i love and then as of recently we're getting into some really nice new edgy designs as well so the designs are all responsive just like squarespace and you can edit the code for custom changes so shopify actually used to be a little bit more tricky to edit the way that your site would look but they've recently dropped a new version called the online store 2.0 and when i heard this i was like hallelujah because now sections are modular they're extremely customizable and you just have a lot more flexibility when designing your online store it also makes it way easier to integrate apps into your theme right from the theme editor without ever having to touch any code at all so this point may actually would have gone to squarespace without the 2.0 but now that shopify's templates are just as easy to play with squarespace it's definitely a tight one here so things are looking really comparable right now but i think the one thing that is very important is that shopify has themes that have been proven to drive sales um so that's really important i mean squarespace they have beautiful looking themes but shopify has themes that have been designed for conversions there is actually a pretty huge science behind where things are placed and how things look that's really going to influence people's buying decisions so selling products is the main purpose of building your website using a theme that is optimized for that is going to be so important so the bottom line is both squarespace and shopify have a lot of templates and they're all beautiful options both are extremely easy to use so the question that you want to ask yourself is is are you trying to build a website or are you trying to build an online store all right so let's take a look at which platform is going to be better if you want to create a website for your drop shipping business and your print on demand business so just really quick guys if you're not already familiar with what drop shipping is drop shipping is a method of online selling where you do not keep any inventory at all so instead you would take the order then you would send it to a supplier and then they send that order to the customer so it's a low risk business model that's become very popular so for all you creatives out there print on demand is another cut it's similar it's basically an alternative way to bypass the investment and risk associated with managing inventory it's a process where you would work with the supplier to customize white label products like maybe a baseball hat or maybe a tote bag and you would put your own designs on them and then you would sell them on a per order basis under your own brand so this lets you create selling custom products at a fraction of the cost if you're interested and you want more information on drop shipping or print on demand then i will leave a link for you guys right up here in the info card and you can watch a video on each of these subjects now for drop shipping and print on demand shopify for sure is going to be the way that you're going to want to go it's a lot better than squarespace now with shopify you get hundreds of drop shipping apps available to find and to sell products you can use oberlo you can use sprocket and for print on demand there's also a huge range of options like printful printify and guten so with squarespace your options are pretty limited i mean the squarespace has gotten a lot better in recent years i think they have about five to choose from they have printful spocket some other ones but honestly it just doesn't compare to shopify especially when you consider the lack of ecommerce features on the platform it's just it's no contest so shopify is gonna take the cake in this category so like we talked about earlier you're gonna have to pay for running the site itself but there's also going to be extra fees on any of the sales you make so let's see which is cheaper when it comes to fees so with squarespace you're going to pay 3 transaction fees on sales if you are on the business plan you're also going to have to pay credit card processing fees so it's a little bit more added there and if you want to avoid these feeds you're actually going to have to bump up to a higher plan which is going to be 54 bucks a month so this raises the cost of running your online store by a lot now with shopify you can expect a 2 to point five percent transaction fee and it's just going to vary depending on how your customers paying like if they're paying with amex or debit for example that's going to determine what that fee is you also generally aren't charged transaction fees on orders done through a pos so if you are selling in person keep that in mind now that being said it's not worlds apart but it's it's going to be slightly cheaper to go with shopify so this point is again going to go to shopify apps okay so apps are going to be really important when it comes to building managing and growing your online store they can help you increase sales they can help you add custom features to your site they can be really powerful so for example um apps can help you with seo enhancements or they can help you add drop shipping functionality and maybe you can use an app to add some currencies to your store so you can see they can really help you make your store and build sales so let's look at squarespace so squarespace has its own version of an app store and it's called squarespace extensions now from what i can see there's 28 apps available but you can expect that they're going to grow over time now to me i think that's pretty limited in comparison to shopify's 6000 plus apps that are available so i mean if you don't need anything too wild then squarespace might have what you need but shopify apps are going to have like loyalty programs and pop-up windows the kind of stuff that's actually going to help you make those sales so for this one i'm going to give the point to shopify so when it comes to bonuses and fun little freebies squarespace is going to win this one they have cool stuff so they offer a free domain name with a purchase of an annual plan and you also get google workspace for free on certain plans so you can get a custom email for example which i think is a really great way to appear professional so overall if you're looking to create an online store with a really strong set of e-commerce features like if you're looking for multi-currency support payment gateway options point of sales professional reporting a large amount of inventory that you can upload then shopify is definitely going to be the best choice but don't get me wrong squarespace is an amazing platform and i have used them for years to run my blog so if you're selling things shopify if you're just sharing content then go with squarespace so hopefully that helped you choose the best website builder for you if you are looking for more comparisons of popular ecommerce platforms we actually just did a video on shopify versus wix if you want to see that i will link that right up here and if you want to see another video on shopify versus woocommerce we're going to be publishing that real soon so realistically at this point we've done two ecommerce platform showdown videos and shopify has come out on top for both that was a spoiler alert so i mean i don't make the rules shopify is just good if you want to try shopify out i'm going to leave a link for you guys uh right up here and i'm going to leave that in the description box for you guys as well and that's gonna give you a free 14-day trial with no credit card required um squarespace also offers a free trial too so i would say try both out see what you like better and actually we have an entire video that walks you through the process of setting up your shopify store so once you make your decision and if you choose shopify then we've got you covered all right so it's comment time so let's go through some of the viewer comments and i'm going to answer a few of you so first comment is from dede and she's saying she's asking is if she uses a free template with shopify can she switch to a paid one later so the answer is yes you can switch templates as many times as you want you can switch from free to paid paid to paid pay to free like whatever you like i recommend that you run it as a draft and then take 10 to 20 minutes just to like go over everything make sure everything is showing up how you want it to and i did this with my store and it worked out perfectly fine all right so next question is from chariots8x and they're wondering if you can do both print on demand and drop shipping in one store and so the answer is yes you can so you would just want to download a print on demand app and you're also going to want to download a drop shipping app and then after that you're good to go all right guys thank you so much for watching um if you haven't already subscribed hit that subscribe button especially if you are an online entrepreneur if you're aspiring to be one and also hit that notification bell so that you don't miss out on any future videos and of course give this video a thumbs up because that really helps our channel and it helps our videos do well other than that my name is michelle and i'll see you in the next one bye [Music] foreign
