Squarespace vs Shopify: Which Platform Is Better for Your Online Store?

Choose Squarespace if your website is mainly a portfolio, a service business or a content brand that sells a small catalog on the side. Choose Shopify if selling products is the business itself, especially if you plan to sell in person, in several countries, to wholesale buyers or through AI shopping assistants.

Squarespace is a website builder with solid commerce tools added. Shopify is a commerce system with a website on top. We checked every price, fee and limit below on the vendors' own pricing pages and help centers on 24 October 2026. Prices are in US dollars for US-based businesses. Both companies price differently in other countries, so check the page for your own billing country.

Squarespace vs Shopify: how do they compare at a glance?

How much do Squarespace and Shopify cost in 2026?

Squarespace has four website plans, and all of them can sell:

• Basic: $19 per month billed annually, or $25 month to month.
• Core: $29 annually, or $39 monthly.
• Plus: $49 annually, or $65 monthly.
• Advanced: $99 annually, or $139 monthly.

Basic leaves out discounts, shipping labels and carrier-calculated shipping, so most stores start on Core. Squarespace also prices per billing country. When we opened the same page from Serbia, it showed three plans at lower prices.

Shopify's main plans:

• Basic: $39 per month, or $29 per month billed yearly.
• Grow: $105 per month.
• Advanced: $399 per month.
• Plus: from $2,300 per month.

Yearly billing also lowers Grow and Advanced, but in October 2026 Shopify showed different yearly prices to different visitors, so we quote the monthly prices, which stayed fixed.

Squarespace costs less at the bottom and at the top. Its Core plan, the closest match to Shopify Basic, costs the same: $29 a month billed yearly or $39 monthly. But Squarespace Advanced is $99 a month, against $399 for Shopify Advanced. Still, the plan is only part of the bill. Apps, themes, payment fees and the build itself all count. Our pricing page lists what we charge for that work.

Which platform charges higher transaction fees?

Squarespace takes a commerce transaction fee only on Basic: 2% of each sale of physical products, services or donations. Core, Plus and Advanced charge 0%. The fee depends on your plan, not your processor, so it is the same with Squarespace Payments, Stripe or PayPal. Digital content such as courses and memberships has its own fee: 7% on Basic, 5% on Core, 1% on Plus and 0% on Advanced.

Shopify charges no extra fee with Shopify Payments. With a third-party payment provider, it adds a fee on top of what that provider charges:

• Basic: 2%
• Grow: 1%
• Advanced: 0.6%
• Plus: 0.2%

An example: a store sells $10,000 a month through a third-party card processor. On Squarespace Core it pays no platform fee. On Shopify Grow it pays $100 a month extra, and on Shopify Basic $200. Switch that Shopify store to Shopify Payments and the fee disappears. So Squarespace is friendlier if you want to keep Stripe or PayPal, and Shopify is cheapest on its own payments.

How do payments work on each platform?

Squarespace Payments accepts major cards, Apple Pay, Klarna, Afterpay and ACH. It is available in the US, Canada, the UK, a group of EU countries, Australia and New Zealand. Elsewhere, you connect Stripe or PayPal. US card rates are 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic and Core, 2.7% + 30¢ on Plus and 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced, plus 1.5% for international cards.

Shopify Payments also gets cheaper on higher plans. US online rates are 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow, 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced and 2.25% + 30¢ on Plus, plus 1% for international cards. It is offered only in certain countries. Elsewhere, you use a third-party provider and pay the fee above.

On comparable tiers, US card rates are almost identical. The real difference is what happens when you skip the native processor.

How many products can you sell?

Squarespace advertises unlimited products, but its help center sets a limit of 10,000 products on a version 7.1 site, with up to six options and 250 variants per product. Stock is one count per variant.

Shopify allows unlimited products, up to 2,048 variants and three options per product, and inventory across 10 locations (200 on Plus).

For a few hundred products, both work, and Squarespace even allows more options per product. Shopify pulls ahead with thousands of SKUs, stock in several places, or a catalog that syncs with an ERP or marketplaces.

Apps and extensions: how far can each platform go?

Squarespace keeps its ecosystem small. Its help center lists about 50 Squarespace Extensions for accounting, print on demand, shipping, inventory sync and marketing. Core and above add Commerce APIs, code injection, Mailchimp and Zapier.

The Shopify App Store has over 16,000 apps, covering subscriptions, reviews, loyalty, bundles, ERP and warehouse connections, product feeds and more. Custom apps get full API data access from Grow up.

A small ecosystem is easier to manage. A large one means you rarely hit a wall.

Can you sell in person with Squarespace and Shopify?

Yes, at different depths. Squarespace turns its mobile app into a point of sale in the US and the UK. You can take payments with Tap to Pay, Pay Links and Quick Pay, and in the US also with a Square Reader. That suits markets, pop-ups and studio sales.

Shopify includes basic in-person selling on every paid plan. For a permanent shop, POS Pro adds staff roles and permissions, in-store inventory management and in-store pickup for $89 per location per month. Shopify Plus includes 20 POS Pro locations. Online and in-store stock and customer data sit in one admin.

Which platform is better for selling internationally?

A Squarespace store has one primary currency. With Squarespace Payments or Stripe, multi-currency checkout turns on automatically, so international shoppers can see prices and pay in their own currency while you are paid in yours. Translation runs through the Weglot integration, which is free for one extra language up to 2,000 words and paid beyond that.

Shopify Markets is included on every plan. You can show local currencies, accept local payment methods, assign local domains, translate the storefront and checkout, and estimate duties and taxes. Several of these need Shopify Payments. Advanced and Plus can also tailor the store by region. If you plan to sell seriously in two or more countries, Shopify gives you much more control.

Do Squarespace and Shopify support B2B and wholesale?

Squarespace has no native B2B features such as company accounts or wholesale price lists. You can send invoices to wholesale clients, and an extension such as Candid Wholesale adds a wholesale ordering flow.

Shopify B2B runs on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. All of them get company profiles, net payment terms, quantity rules, volume price breaks and easy reorders. Basic, Grow and Advanced can use up to 3 active B2B catalogs. Plus removes that limit and adds company-specific catalogs, deposits and partial payments. If wholesale is part of your plan, this alone often decides it.

Which is better for SEO and AI search?

Both cover the basics: editable titles and descriptions, clean URLs, redirects, alt text and mobile-friendly templates.

Squarespace has easy AI search tools. Its AI Visibility tool checks whether ChatGPT and Gemini mention your business for prompts you choose, using AI credits from your plan (10 one-time on Basic, 20 to 120 per month above). On version 7.1 you can also edit an llms.txt file and decide whether to block known AI crawlers.

Shopify generates your sitemap, robots.txt and structured data automatically. Its main SEO limit is fixed URL paths such as /products/ and /collections/. On the AI side, Shopify Catalog structures your product data for AI tools, and Agentic Storefronts is switched on automatically for eligible stores, so products can be shown and bought inside AI chats such as ChatGPT and Gemini. Sidekick, Shopify's AI assistant, comes with every plan.

Our view: SEO alone is no longer enough, because shoppers now ask ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity what to buy. No platform can guarantee a place in those answers, and we never promise one. Clean, complete product data helps most, and for a product catalog Shopify gives you more to work with.

When is Squarespace the better choice?

Squarespace wins when the website matters more than the store:

• photographers, artists and designers selling prints or a small product line next to a portfolio;
• service businesses that need bookings, invoices and a few products;
• creators selling courses, memberships or digital content alongside a blog;
• brands with a small catalog where design and content carry the sale;
• owners who want to keep Stripe or PayPal without platform fees (Core and up).

For these businesses, Squarespace's templates and editor are a real strength, and Shopify can be more system than they need.

When is Shopify the better choice?

Shopify wins when commerce is the core of the business:

• thousands of products or many variants;
• stock across several warehouses or shops;
• a physical store that needs a full POS;
• several countries, currencies and languages;
• wholesale buyers alongside retail customers;
• apps for subscriptions, loyalty, reviews or ERP;
• marketplaces, social channels and AI chats run from one admin.

If that sounds like your business, our Shopify store build service takes you from plan to launch. We have been a Shopify Plus Partner since 2017 and have delivered more than 500 projects.

Moving from Squarespace to Shopify: what migrates and what doesn't?

First, a common surprise: Shopify's own Store Migration app (formerly Store Importer) does not support Squarespace. Its listing names Square, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed. Squarespace stores move through CSV files, third-party migration apps or the API, which is the route Shopify's own Squarespace guide describes.

What moves, and how

1. Products. Export products from Squarespace to CSV (up to 10,000). Rename the columns to Shopify's format: Product URL becomes Handle, Stock becomes Variant Inventory Qty, and weight goes from pounds to grams. Then import the file under Products in Shopify.
2. Customers. Export all contacts from Squarespace, map the columns to Shopify's customer CSV, add the country code (the export lacks it) and import under Customers. Passwords are not in the export, so customers with accounts set them up again.
3. Orders. Download fulfilled orders from Squarespace as a CSV. Shopify has no built-in order import, so order history moves through a migration app (Shopify's guide names EZ Importer and Migration Pro) or the Admin API.
4. Blog posts and pages. Squarespace exports layout pages and one blog to a WordPress-format XML file. A migration app or a short script moves them into Shopify. Small sites can copy and paste.
5. Redirects. Squarespace product URLs look like /shop/p/product-name. On Shopify they become /products/product-name. Map every old URL to its new one and import the list as a redirect CSV before you switch the domain.

What does not move

• Design. Templates, style settings and custom CSS stay behind. The store is rebuilt on a Shopify theme.
• Some product details. The product CSV leaves out featured images, variant images, image alt text and additional product information.
• Reviews. Squarespace reviews cannot be exported. Shopify points to apps such as Judge.me, Loox and Yotpo to add them back manually.
• Digital products and memberships. The product export covers physical and service products only. Courses and member areas need a new setup with Shopify apps.
• Store pages and extra blogs. The XML export skips store pages, product blocks, video blocks and any blog after the first.

Most of the risk sits in URLs, images and search traffic, not in the data itself. Our Shopify migration service covers the export, data mapping, redirects and a post-launch check of rankings and tracking.

Final verdict: Squarespace or Shopify?

Pick Squarespace if the site is a showcase first and a shop second. It is cheaper, pleasant to design with, and free of commerce fees from Core up, even with Stripe or PayPal. Pick Shopify if the shop is the business. It costs more at the top, but gives you deeper inventory, POS, international, B2B and app options, plus a direct route into AI shopping channels.

Still comparing? Read our guides to Wix vs Shopify, Shopify vs WooCommerce and Magento vs Shopify.

FAQ

Is Squarespace cheaper than Shopify?

Mostly, yes. In the US, Squarespace costs $19 to $99 a month on annual billing. Shopify Basic costs $29 a month billed yearly, the same as Squarespace Core, but Shopify Advanced is $399 a month and Plus starts at $2,300. On payment fees, Shopify gets cheaper when you use Shopify Payments.

Does Squarespace charge transaction fees?

Only on Basic, which takes 2% of product, service and donation sales. Core, Plus and Advanced charge 0%. Digital content and memberships carry separate fees of 7%, 5%, 1% and 0% by plan. Card processing fees apply on top.

Can I use Shopify's Store Migration app to move from Squarespace?

No. As of October 2026 the app supports Square, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed, but not Squarespace. Products and customers move by CSV, and order history moves with a third-party app or the API.

Can Squarespace handle a large catalog?

Up to a point. A version 7.1 site holds 10,000 products with up to 250 variants each, and stock is one count per variant. Bigger catalogs, several warehouses or an ERP connection usually fit Shopify better.

Will I lose Google rankings if I move from Squarespace to Shopify?

Not if the move is planned. Rankings usually drop because old URLs stop working. Map every Squarespace URL to its Shopify URL with 301 redirects, keep your titles and content, and watch Google Search Console after launch.