Shopify vs Squarespace for an online store: how to choose

Shopify and Squarespace both let a non-developer open an online store without writing code, and both can take real orders. They come from opposite directions. Squarespace started as a website builder and added commerce. Shopify started as commerce and added website tools. That origin explains most of the differences below.

Prices, plan names and limits change often. Everything here was checked against the official sites at the time of writing; check current pricing before you commit.

Shopify vs Squarespace at a glance

The short version: pick Squarespace when the site is the product and the store is a section of it. Pick Shopify when the store is the business.

Plan prices are not in the table on purpose. Shopify shows prices in your local currency and varies trial offers by region, and Squarespace shows different prices for monthly and annual billing. The live pricing pages are the only reliable source.

Who each platform suits

Squarespace suits you if most of these are true:

• You sell tens of products, not thousands.
• Your brand, photography and page layouts matter more than checkout features.
• You want one place for a blog, portfolio, bookings and a small shop.
• You prefer fewer decisions and fewer moving parts.

Shopify suits you if most of these are true:

• You expect to list hundreds or thousands of products, or heavy variants such as size and colour matrices.
• You plan to sell on more than your own site: marketplaces, social channels, point of sale.
• You want to add functions (subscriptions, bundles, reviews, returns) by installing apps.
• You will hire an agency, a freelancer or a catalog team at some point. Shopify has a far larger pool of people who know it.

A craft maker with 30 products and a strong visual identity will often be happier on Squarespace. A fashion label with 400 styles in six sizes will hit friction there. Neither is a wrong platform; they are tools for different jobs.

Catalog size and variants

Both platforms advertise unlimited products, so catalog size is rarely the hard limit. Variants are where you feel it.

Shopify raised its variant limit to 2,048 per product, announced in its developer changelog in October 2025. The cap of three options (for example Size, Colour, Material) still applies. If your product needs four dimensions, you either combine two into one option or split the product. Some older apps and themes were built around the earlier 100-variant limit, so test anything you rely on.

Squarespace's help centre states up to six options and 250 variant combinations per product, and the same cap applies to its CSV importer. Six options is more room on the option count than Shopify offers. 250 combinations is the tighter number: a product with eight sizes, ten colours and three fits is 240, and you are close to the ceiling.

Practical advice: count your largest product's combinations before you choose. If you have a few products near 250, Squarespace will hold them, barely. If you have many, or expect more, Shopify gives you more headroom. If your products need four or five independent options, Squarespace's option count helps and Shopify will need a workaround.

For bulk catalog work, Shopify's product CSV is a well-documented format that many tools read and write. Squarespace has its own CSV import with its own columns. If you will be loading hundreds of products, see our guide to Shopify bulk product upload.

Payments and fees

Your real cost on either platform is the plan plus payment processing plus any transaction fee. Compare all three, not only the plan price.

On Shopify, the platform charges an additional fee on each order if you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments. At the time of writing the Basic plan lists 2%, Grow 1%, Advanced 0.6% and Plus 0.2%. The processor still charges its own card fees on top. Shopify Payments is not available in every country, so check whether you can use it where you sell. If you cannot, the third-party fee is part of your cost model.

On Squarespace, the entry commerce plan lists a 2% fee on online store sales, and the Core and Advanced plans list 0%, at the time of writing. Digital content and memberships carry different fees. The Core and Advanced plans also include features Basic does not, such as shipping labels and discounts on its listed feature comparison. Processor fees from the card network or gateway apply separately.

Run the numbers on your expected monthly revenue. A store doing small volumes may find the platform fee irrelevant. A store doing serious volume will find that the difference between plan tiers is mostly about the fee line, not the feature list.

Apps, themes and customisation

Shopify's app store is its largest advantage. If you need subscriptions, product bundles, a loyalty scheme, advanced filtering or a returns portal, an app probably exists, usually several. The trade-off is that apps add monthly costs, can slow the storefront and sometimes conflict. Many stores end up paying for more apps than they use.

Squarespace builds more into the platform and offers a smaller extension catalogue. For a small shop that is a benefit: fewer subscriptions to manage and fewer things to break. For a store with unusual needs it can be a wall.

On design, Squarespace templates are admired for their polish, and the editor gives a lot of layout control without code. Shopify themes are also good and the theme editor has improved, but you are more likely to need a developer for custom product pages or complex layouts. Both allow custom code if you want it.

SEO basics

Both platforms cover the fundamentals: editable page titles and meta descriptions, clean URLs you can edit, automatic sitemaps, image alt text and SSL. Neither platform will rank your store on its own. Titles, descriptions, internal links and content quality matter far more than the choice between them.

Differences worth knowing:

• URL structure is fixed by platform. Shopify uses prefixes such as /products/ and /collections/. Squarespace uses its own store and page paths. This matters when you migrate, because the old URLs will change and need redirects.
• Shopify's catalog tools make it easier to keep titles and descriptions consistent across a large range, especially in bulk.
• Squarespace's blog and page tools are strong, so content-led stores can do well there.

If you are choosing between them for SEO reasons alone, you are probably over-weighting it. Choose on catalog and operations; do the SEO work well on either.

If you outgrow Squarespace: the migration path

Moving from Squarespace to Shopify is common and not especially hard for a small store. Shopify's help centre documents a CSV route: export products from Squarespace, reshape the file to Shopify's product template (for example, Squarespace's product URL becomes the Shopify Handle, and stock becomes Variant Inventory Qty), then import. Customers export separately. Order history needs a third-party migration app, since the CSV route does not carry it.

The risks are the usual ones:

1. URLs change. Every old product, collection and blog URL needs a 301 redirect to its new home, or you lose the rankings those pages earned.
2. Variants need checking. Option names and value order often need tidying after import, and products with unusual structures can import wrongly.
3. Images need to be reachable at import time and are worth spot-checking.
4. Content outside the catalog, such as blog posts and pages, moves separately.

Plan the redirect map before you switch DNS, not after. If you want help, our Squarespace to Shopify migration service covers products, variants, images, collections and redirects.

Going the other way, from Shopify to Squarespace, is rarer and usually driven by a catalog that shrank or a decision to simplify.

When to do it yourself and when to hand it off

If you are choosing a platform for a small, clean catalog, make the decision yourself. Open a trial on both, add five representative products including your most complicated one, and see which editor you can stand working in every week. That test is worth more than any comparison table.

If you are already on Squarespace and moving to Shopify, a few dozen products with simple variants is a reasonable DIY job with the CSV route. Hand it off when volume, variant structure or deadlines make errors expensive: hundreds of products, messy supplier data, or a launch date tied to a campaign. We do this work with an AI engine for the volume and a person reviewing every output, and you approve before anything goes live. Turnaround starts from 48 hours for eligible projects; turnaround depends on scope, catalog complexity and the quality of the data and access we receive. We never ask for store passwords and work through a staff account you can remove. See pricing, or send a free 10-product sample request and we will tell you honestly whether the project is a fit.

How to decide in ten minutes

Answer these in order and stop at the first that settles it:

1. Will you ever have more than a few hundred products or heavily varied sizes and colours? If yes, choose Shopify.
2. Do you need to sell on marketplaces, social channels or in person from one inventory? If yes, choose Shopify.
3. Is the store a small part of a content or portfolio site? If yes, Squarespace is a good fit.
4. Do you want the fewest tools and subscriptions to manage? Squarespace.
5. Still undecided? Start a trial on each and build your hardest product page.