Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix: A Comprehensive Comparison for E-commerce Entrepreneurs

This article will compare Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix – three popular platforms to help you make an informed choice for your online presence.

Key Takeaways

• Shopify is the ideal choice for businesses focused on international sales, and seeking a comprehensive and robust ecommerce solution. It offers advanced inventory management tools to handle extensive inventories efficiently, perfect for dropshipping and print-on-demand businesses.
• Squarespace and Wix are ideal choices for creatives, artists, photographers, and designers aiming to display their work through visually stunning websites.

Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix: Quick Comparison

The key differences between Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace lie in their primary focus and core functionalities. 

Shopify stands out as a dedicated e-commerce platform designed specifically for creating and managing online stores. It offers a wide range of robust features tailored to support businesses of all sizes in e-commerce. 

With a strong emphasis on online selling, Shopify provides various tools for inventory management, payment processing, shipping, and order fulfillment. Its extensive app ecosystem allows users to extend their store’s functionalities further with thousands of third-party integrations. Shopify is ideal for businesses focused primarily on selling products online and seeking a seamless, all-in-one e-commerce solution.

Wix and Squarespace started as website builders, focusing on providing visually appealing and easy-to-use tools for creating professional websites. Over time, they incorporated e-commerce functionalities to allow users to sell products and services directly from their websites. 

While they offer e-commerce features, they may not match the extensive e-commerce-specific functionalities of Shopify. However, Wix and Squarespace are excellent choices for businesses or individuals looking to combine a visually stunning website with the ability to sell products or services without needing a dedicated e-commerce focus.

Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix: Pros and Cons

Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix: Detailed Comparison

Pricing 

Shopify

To create an ecommerce store, you need to create a Shopify account and subscribe to a Shopify subscription plan, with prices ranging from $39 to $2000 per month.

You can subscribe annually to save 25% of the upfront fees. Please note that the mentioned pricing is for Shopify subscriptions in the US, and fees may differ in other countries or regions. Refer to the Shopify pricing page for precise and detailed pricing information specific to your location.

Squarespace

Squarespace provides pricing plans for business and e-commerce starting from $33 to $65 per month. They offer three plans catering to different business sizes and needs.

Wix

Wix offers five plans, four of which include e-commerce features. The prices range from $27 per month to custom pricing, depending on the specific plan and features you choose.

The Verdict

Shopify may have a higher price tag but it provides many specialized ecommerce features. 

When we compare the basic plans, Shopify stands out with its support for multiple currencies, dropshipping (which Wix basic lacks), shipping discounts, and abandoned cart recovery (unavailable in Squarespace basic). These features are tailor-made to enhance your ecommerce experience, making Shopify a powerful choice for online businesses.

Transaction fees & credit card processing fees

Shopify

Online credit card rates: 

• Basic plan: 2.9% + 30¢ USD per transaction
• Standard plan: 2.6% + 30¢ USD per transaction
• Advanced plan: 2.4% + 30¢ USD per transaction
• Plus plan: 2.15% + 30¢ USD per transaction

In-person credit/debit card rates:

• Basic plan: 2.7% + 0¢ USD per transaction
• Standard plan: 2.5% + 0¢ USD per transaction
• Advanced plan: 2.4% + 0¢ USD per transaction
• Plus plan: 2.4% + 0¢ USD per transaction

Third-party transaction fees are waived if Shopify Payments are not used: 

• Basic plan: 2.0% USD per transaction
• Standard plan: 1% USD per transaction
• Advanced plan: 0.5% USD per transaction

Squarespace

• Website Business: 3% final order total per transaction
• Commerce Basic: 0% final order total per transaction
• Commerce Advanced: 0% final order total per transaction

Wix

• Wix Payments Point of Sale (POS): 2.6% + 0 USD per transaction
• Other Wix Payments: 2.9% + 0.30 USD per transaction

The Verdict

Shopify stands out as the most budget-friendly option regarding transaction fees.

Squarespace provides several free plans, but opting for the more advanced plans may not be the most cost-effective choice for transaction fees. Both Shopify and Wix have comparable transaction fees, but Shopify offers even lower transaction fees with their advanced plans. 

Free trials and special deals

Shopify

Shopify offers a fantastic deal to get started with its platform. You can try it out for free for three days, which allows you to explore and test its features. Once the trial period ends, you can subscribe to Shopify for a meager price of just $1 per month for the first three months. You can use Shopify for over 90 days and pay almost nothing during that initial period. 

Additionally, if you choose to pay for your subscription annually, Shopify gives you a fantastic 25% discount. You can save even more money by opting for the annual billing option.

Squarespace

Squarespace offers a standard 14-day trial period for trying out their product. If you need more time to build your website, they also provide extensions to extend the trial. Additionally, if you choose to pay for your subscription annually, you can enjoy a generous 25% discount.

Wix

Wix offers a completely free plan for you to experiment with. While it’s a primary option and displays noticeable Wix ads, it’s an excellent way to test the platform.

If you want to try Wix’s selling features without a long-term commitment, the best approach is to begin a free trial, upgrade to a paid plan, and cancel it within the first 14 days if the platform isn’t the right fit. This way, you’ll be eligible for a full refund and can explore the selling capabilities risk-free.

The Verdict

Shopify stands out with its highly valuable and extensive special trial offering. For just $1/month, users can take advantage of a generous 3-month trial period to thoroughly test and explore the platform’s features and capabilities. This special trial period allows businesses and entrepreneurs ample time to familiarize themselves with Shopify’s powerful e-commerce tools and website-building functionalities. In contrast, Wix and Squarespace provide only 14 days of free trial experience. 

Web design

Shopify

Shopify’s web design features offer a user-friendly experience through a drag-and-drop interface, eliminating the need for coding. Its responsive themes ensure seamless display across devices. 

The platform provides unlimited bandwidth, product listings, and storage space, accommodating high-resolution images and 3D videos. This makes it easy for businesses to create visually appealing online stores without technical expertise. Additionally, Shopify’s excellent customer support ensures a smooth and successful experience for users of all levels.

Squarespace

Squarespace’s web design capabilities are centered around simplicity and accessibility. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, creating a stunning website becomes a breeze, and there’s no need for any coding knowledge. This empowers users of all levels, even those without technical expertise, to easily design and customize their websites. The platform offers a wide range of beautifully designed themes that automatically adjust to various screen sizes, ensuring a responsive and seamless browsing experience across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.

Regarding resources, Squarespace provides unlimited bandwidth, which ensures your website can handle high levels of traffic without any performance issues. This is especially beneficial for businesses that expect a large number of visitors. Additionally, Squarespace offers 30 minutes of video storage, allowing you to upload and showcase high-quality videos on your website. 

Wix

Wix’s web design features revolve around its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, making website creation accessible without requiring coding skills. The platform offers a diverse selection of themes that can be easily personalized to suit individual preferences and business requirements. While these themes are responsive, ensuring adaptability across different devices, it’s important to note that they might not be optimized for the best performance. 

Additionally, Wix provides users unlimited bandwidth, ensuring smooth website operation even with significant traffic. However, it’s essential to be aware that the unlimited storage feature is exclusive to the VIP plan, and users on other plans may have storage limitations. 

The Verdict

Shopify stands out as the top choice for web design, primarily due to its unmatched offering of unlimited features across all plans.

Ecommerce features

Payment processors

Shopify

Shopify offers a wide range of payment options, including their in-house payment gateways – Shopify Payments, and integration with over 100 other payment providers. Additionally, it supports loyalty points, gift cards, or custom payments like bank transfers as payment methods,  ensuring businesses have versatile payment solutions to cater to a global audience.

Merchants using Shopify Payments will not incur any transaction fees. However, it’s essential to note that Shopify Payments is only available in 23 countries.

Also, Shopify offers the added benefit of accepting Google Pay as a payment option, allowing customers to make payments quickly and conveniently using their Google Pay accounts.

Squarespace

Squarespace does not have its own payment gateways and offers fewer than 10 options. Merchants can connect to payment gateways, like PayPal and Stripe, to process transactions on its platform. Squarespace does not charge transaction fees if you are on one of its higher-tier ‘Commerce’ plans.

Wix

With Wix, you can quickly start accepting online payments. You can connect with Wix Payments, their native payment gateway, or choose from over 70 other payment gateways available.

Wix does not impose transaction fees, whether you use Wix Payments or opt for a third-party payment provider.

The Verdict 

Shopify offers a greater variety of payment gateways than Squarespace and Wix, providing merchants with more options for processing transactions. Additionally, Shopify stands out by allowing you to accept payments through Google Pay, which is unavailable on either Wix or Squarespace.

Point of sale

Shopify

Shopify POS is available worldwide and is included with every Shopify plan, making it a suitable choice for businesses of all sizes and types. Its seamless integration caters to both online and offline selling, ensuring smooth data synchronization across all selling channels.

The flexibility of payment options is impressive, supporting cards, cash, contactless payments, mobile wallets, and gift cards. Moreover, Shopify offers a convenient mobile POS app, empowering businesses to conduct transactions on the go and enhancing the overall shopping experience for customers.

Squarespace

Squarespace POS exclusively accepts payments through credit cards, mobile payments, and cash. On the other hand, Squarespace POS is limited to the United States.

Wix

Similar to Squarespace, Wix POS solely accepts payments via credit cards, mobile payments, and cash. Additionally, Wix POS is currently available only in the United States and Canada.

The Verdict

When comparing points of sale, Shopify POS surpasses the other two platforms in every aspect. Unlike the others, Shopify POS is not restricted to any specific country or territory, making it accessible globally. Moreover, Shopify POS offers a broader range of payment options, surpassing both Wix and Squarespace in versatility and convenience.

Dropshipping

Shopify

Shopify provides robust features to bolster your dropshipping business. Partnering with well-known dropshipping providers like DSers-AliExpress Dropshipping and Spocket, Shopify ensures seamless integration with these platforms, streamlining your dropshipping operations. With Shopify, you can enjoy unlimited dropship products, giving you the freedom to expand your product offerings and grow your business without constraints.

Squarespace

Squarespace’s unique characteristics make it less potent in the realm of eCommerce, and as a result, it may not be the top choice for dropshipping ventures. Nevertheless, you can connect your Squarespace site to fulfillment extensions like Printful or Syncee if you wish to pursue dropshipping on Squarespace. 

However, it’s essential to note that Squarespace may not provide direct support if these extensions encounter issues. In such cases, you’ll need to contact the third-party services, Printful and Spocket, for additional assistance and information.

Wix

Wix collaborates with various popular dropshipping companies such as Modalyst. However, the number of products available for dropshipping is limited to 250.

The Verdict 

Shopify comes out as the winner in dropshipping, surpassing Wix and Squarespace with its more extensive solutions. Shopify offers an unlimited number of products and collaborates with numerous trusted dropshipping partners, providing merchants with a robust platform for successful dropshipping businesses.

Inventory Management

Shopify

Inventory management is a crucial aspect of any e-commerce business, and Shopify offers robust features to handle inventory operations effectively, all from the admin dashboard.

• Multi-Location Management: Shopify allows businesses with multiple physical locations, such as warehouses or retail stores, to manage their inventory seamlessly. Merchants can track and update stock levels across different locations, ensuring accurate stock availability and fulfillment.
• Multi-Channel Management: Shopify enables businesses to sell through various channels, such as online stores, social media platforms, and marketplaces. The inventory is synchronized across all these channels, preventing overselling and maintaining consistent stock data.
• Low Stock Alert: Shopify provides low stock alert notifications, alerting merchants when a product’s inventory falls below a predetermined threshold. This feature helps businesses proactively restock items to avoid stockouts and ensure smooth order fulfillment.
• Demand Forecasting: With Shopify’s inventory management tools, merchants can analyze sales trends and historical data to make informed decisions about inventory restocking and purchasing. This data-driven approach aids in accurate demand forecasting and inventory planning.
• Inventory Reports: Shopify offers detailed inventory reports, providing insights into stock levels, sales performance, and product demand. These reports help merchants make data-driven decisions to optimize inventory management and control costs effectively.
• Barcode and SKU Support: Shopify supports barcodes and SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) codes, making tracking and managing individual products easier. Merchants can use barcode scanners to update inventory and streamline fulfillment processes efficiently.
• Product Bundling: Shopify allows businesses to create product bundles or kits by combining multiple items into a single SKU. This feature simplifies inventory tracking for bundled products and ensures accurate stock levels.

Squarespace

Squarespace’s eCommerce functions are relatively simple, which impacts its inventory management capabilities, offering only limited features. Users may access and manage product inventory from a single location via the inventory panel and Squarespace Commerce mobile applications.

Squarespace lets users view, organize, search, and edit their inventory. However, due to its focus on small and medium-sized online stores, the inventory management capabilities are somewhat restricted, necessitating the integration of additional apps for those seeking more comprehensive and streamlined inventory management solutions.

Wix

Wix empowers users to manage and update their inventory easily. Specifically, you have the flexibility to automatically track the stock levels of specific products and also manually set the inventory status for each item. However, it’s important to note that Wix provides limited fields for tracking store inventory, as users can only input information related to inventory, SKU, and weight.

The Verdict 

Shopify emerges as the winner in the battle between Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace regarding inventory management. It clearly highlights Shopify’s powerful inventory management solution, offering a complete inventory package that enables users to stay organized, avoid costly errors, and easily track all inventory activities. 

With Shopify, users can efficiently set up and organize products, manage product variations, and assign barcodes, allowing for seamless tracking of stock counts and much more.

On the other hand, Wix offers some inventory management capabilities, such as automatic tracking of product stock and manual inventory status adjustments. However, it lacks Shopify’s comprehensive range of features, as users can only fill in information related to inventory, SKU, and weight.

Squarespace’s inventory management functions are relatively basic, and the platform’s eCommerce capabilities are limited, especially compared to Shopify’s full inventory package.

Apps and integrations

Shopify

Shopify takes the lead in the number of apps available, boasting an impressive selection of over 8,000 apps on the Shopify App Store. This is no surprise, considering Shopify’s specialization in e-commerce and online stores. With such a vast array of apps, users can effortlessly customize their stores in numerous ways, harnessing the power of 8,000+ apps to tailor their online businesses to meet their specific needs and preferences.

Squarespace

Squarespace only offers a total of 32 extensions to enhance your website’s capabilities.

Wix

Wix offers its users access to the Wix App Market, a diverse and thriving ecosystem comprising over 300 popular web apps.

The Verdict 

In the grand scheme of things, Shopify remains the clear winner due to its vast array of additional features and integrations available through its app store. With over 8,000 apps in the Shopify app store, the app offerings of Wix and Squarespace appear comparatively modest, with 300+ apps in the Wix app market and just 32 extensions in Squarespace’s repertoire. The breadth of options available on Shopify’s app store sets it apart and solidifies its position as the top choice for businesses seeking a rich and diverse selection of tools to enhance their online presence.

Marketing tools

Shopify

Shopify offers a host of valuable features, including cart abandonment recovery tools, which help recover potentially lost sales by engaging customers who leave items in their carts without completing the purchase. Moreover, Shopify provides a generous allowance of 10,000 free email marketing per month, empowering businesses to connect with their customers effectively through email campaigns. 

Additionally, the platform offers SEO optimization tools, ensuring that your online store ranks well in search engine results, enhancing visibility, and attracting more potential customers. Shopify also supports the creation of blog pages, allowing you to share valuable content, engage your audience, and establish a strong online presence for your brand.

Squarespace

On the other hand, Squarespace offers SEO optimization features, enabling your website to rank well in search engine results and improve online visibility. Additionally, Squarespace supports the creation of blog pages, providing you with a platform to share engaging content and connect with your audience effectively.

Wix

Wix offers a range of valuable features, including 200 free emails per month, allowing you to connect with your customers through email marketing. Additionally, Wix provides abandoned cart recovery tools, helping you recover potential lost sales by engaging with customers who left items in their carts without completing their purchase. 

Moreover, Wix offers SEO optimization features, ensuring your website ranks well in search engine results and gains better online visibility. Wix also supports the creation of blog pages, providing you with a platform to share engaging content and strengthen your connection with your audience.

The Verdict

Shopify stands out as the best choice for marketing tools, offering a comprehensive set of features that cater to businesses seeking an all-in-one marketing solution. Wix provides similar marketing tools to Shopify, but its free email limit is capped at 200, whereas Shopify offers up to 10,000 free emails per month. 

On the other hand, Squarespace concentrates solely on SEO optimization and blog pages, making it ideal for businesses prioritizing search engine visibility and content sharing. Given its extensive marketing toolkit and generous email allowance, Shopify remains the top contender for businesses seeking to maximize their marketing efforts effectively.

Customer support

Shopify

• Offers 24/7 phone support, live chat, and email support.
• Offers support materials in 21 languages.
• Has a support center with images and video tutorials.

Squarespace

• Provides chat and email support.
• Provides support materials in 6 languages.

Wix

• Offers phone support, live chat, and email support.
• Provides support materials in 12 languages.
• Has a help center rich in multimedia content.

The Verdict

Shopify’s 24/7 support center makes it the top choice for customer support among the three platforms. With a vast range of support channels available in multiple languages and a help center enriched with multimedia content, users can access comprehensive assistance at any time.

Who Should Use Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix

Shopify is a better option for

• Businesses with larger budgets and a need for advanced ecommerce features
• Businesses with a focus on international sales and a need for multiple payment gateways
• Online retailers, small enterprises, solo entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs seeking a full-service ecommerce solution
• Businesses that have a large inventory and need advanced inventory management tools

Squarespace is a better option for

• Creatives, artists, photographers, and designers who want a visually stunning website
• Small enterprises seeking a user-friendly, straightforward website builder

Wix is a better option for

• Small businesses or individuals with a limited budget and standard ecommerce needs
• Businesses with a focus on design and branding

Bottom Line

After conducting in-depth comparisons, it becomes evident that Shopify emerges as the clear and overwhelming winner when evaluating Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix. Shopify stands out as the top choice across various aspects, such as pricing, transaction fees, free trial duration, web design, and eCommerce features. While Wix and Squarespace offer more budget-friendly plans than Shopify, they fall short in terms of the extensive features that Shopify provides. 

Read more:

• Shopify vs Jumpseller: Which platform is best in 2024

Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix: FAQs