Squarespace vs BigCommerce: Which One Is Better?

In this review, we will dissect the faceoff between Squarespace and BigCommerce, unraveling the mysteries of each platform to help you discover which one will reign supreme for your online ambitions.

Key Takeaways

• Squarespace excels at providing a visually appealing and user-friendly platform. It is an excellent choice for businesses focused on creating a strong online presence with aesthetic design and content creation. 
• BigCommerce is a robust e-commerce solution, offering powerful built-in features and an extensive collection of third-party apps. It is an ideal choice for businesses aiming to establish a strong and feature-rich online store.

Squarespace vs BigCommerce: Quick Comparison

At a glance, BigCommerce and Squarespace are both popular platforms. They share similarities in providing a variety of website designs and e-commerce tools to help businesses optimize their online presence and facilitate e-commerce operations.

However, the key differences lie in their strengths and targets:

Squarespace shines with its stunning design templates and intuitive interface, appealing to creatives and small businesses focused on crafting visually appealing websites. It emphasizes ease of use and design, making it ideal for those prioritizing aesthetics and straightforward e-commerce capabilities.

In contrast, BigCommerce is tailored for more extensive e-commerce needs, supporting businesses of all sizes with its advanced product management, multi-channel selling, detailed analytics, etc. It’s suited for businesses seeking a platform that can handle complex operations and scale alongside their growth, offering a broader range of e-commerce features than Squarespace.

BigCommerce vs Squarespace: Table Comparison

BigCommerce vs. Squarespace: Pros & Cons

​​Let’s delve into the pros and cons of the two platforms to see how they stack against each other.

Squarespace vs. BigCommerce: In-depth Comparison

Now, to understand the nuances and what best fits your online presence, let’s compare Squarespace and BigCommerce in-depth.

Ease of Use

Both offer a user-friendly interface, allowing merchants to create an online store without extensive technical skills. Each provides users with a distinct experience.

Squarespace

Squarespace features a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor that simplifies website creation. Its section-based design approach and the introduction of the Fluid Engine offer enhanced control over site design, ensuring neat organization and the ability to freely position elements. 

With over 168 high-quality, professionally designed, and mobile-responsive templates, Squarespace caters to various aesthetics for different purposes, emphasizing modern and polished appearances that are highly customizable. 

Squarespace also introduces AI builder assistance through Squarespace Blueprint, which elevates the setup process by actively suggesting design elements and combinations, thus streamlining the creation of unique websites.

The Squarespace mobile app is generally more user-friendly for a broad range of website management tasks, appealing to users who prioritize ease of use and design.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce also provides a straightforward setup process that might necessitate additional time and effort to configure the store completely. Its latest app is designed to give users access to their theme’s template files for advanced editing. This allows for the effortless drag-and-drop addition of various content types.

With a vast library of over 180 attractive, mobile-friendly templates, BigCommerce caters to various business types and styles. While their designs are not as stunning as Squarespace, they perform optimally across devices.

The BigCommerce mobile app, while highly effective for e-commerce management on the go, might require a slight learning curve for users to fully leverage its extensive features.

The Verdict

In the ease-of-use comparison, Squarespace takes the lead primarily because it focuses on simplicity and convenience.

For individuals and small businesses prioritizing quick setup and beautiful design over extensive e-commerce functionalities, Squarespace is the preferable choice.

Pricing & Fees

Squarespace

Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial. Its pricing plan includes:

• Four subscription plans: From $23 to $65 per month if paid monthly (up to 30% discount for annual billing)
• Transaction fee: 3% for sales only in the Business plan
• Credit card processing fee: In-house ​​Squarespace Payments and major providers like PayPal and Stripe start at 2.9% + 30¢.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial. Its pricing plan includes:

• Four subscription plans: Starting from $39 to $399+ (25% discount for annual billing)
• No transaction fees
• Credit card processing fee: Default payment charge from 2.05% + 49c (following the US rate)

The Verdict

While each platform targets a different customer base, in a comprehensive approach, BigCommerce offers a more flexible pricing structure for businesses, spanning from small to large firms. Businesses will have a solid foundation to enhance their sales growth without any concern.

Sale features

Squarespace

• Payment gateways

Squarespace provides a limited selection of payment gateways, primarily supporting Squarespace Payments, Stripe, and PayPal. 

By integrating Stripe or Squarespace Payments with your Squarespace storefront, you can access various payment methods, including Visa, Afterpay, Discover, Apple Pay, etc.

• Point of sale

Squarespace provides a built-in POS system designed for in-person sales, catering to businesses operating physical storefronts or engaging in events, markets, and pop-up shops. This functionality, however, is exclusive to users on the Commerce plans and is currently limited to merchants based in the United States.

• Abandoned Cart Recovery

The abandoned checkout recovery feature ensures a follow-up email is dispatched 24 hours post-cart abandonment. ​​It allows for the customization of reminder emails, ensuring brand consistency. 

Additionally, the feature’s opt-in design respects both merchant control over communication and customer preferences, ensuring emails are only sent with explicit permission and offering an opt-out for recipients. This feature targets specifically identified customer segments based on their interaction at the checkout stage.

• Inventory management

Squarespace provides online store owners with an easy-to-use inventory management system that centralizes product management, stock adjustments, and variant handling through a straightforward interface. 

This system automatically updates stock levels to prevent overselling and offers customizable inventory alerts. Integration with various sales channels, including social media and online marketplaces, ensures real-time inventory syncing across platforms. 

Additionally, Squarespace’s analytics tools aid in optimizing stock levels and analyzing sales trends, enabling merchants to make informed decisions about inventory replenishment and product performance.

• Sell in multiple currencies

Squarespace Commerce enables transactions in about 25 currencies, offering multi-currency support that caters to a broad international audience. Accessing its major payment gateways, Stripe and PayPal, will support selling in more currencies.

• Shipping

Squarespace’s Commerce plan enhances your shipping capabilities, allowing you to define shipping zones and rates through flat rates, real-time carrier rates, or weight-based rates in collaboration with leading carriers like FedEx, UPS, and USPS for precise shipping cost calculations. 

Additionally, Squarespace streamlines the shipping process by offering integrated shipping label purchases. It lets businesses personalize their product packaging, enhancing the customer unboxing experience – a crucial brand touchpoint. 

BigCommerce

• Payment gateways

BigCommerce offers over 65 payment gateways, ensuring a wide range of options for accepting online payments. Furthermore, it facilitates connections with the most favored digital and mobile wallets, including Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal, etc.

• POS

BigCommerce does not have an in-built POS system. Instead, it offers the flexibility to integrate with various third-party POS providers, such as Square, Clover, Hike, PayPal, Zettle, Heartland Retail, ConnectPOS, Vend, etc.

• Abandoned cart recovery

BigCommerce’s Abandoned Cart Saver feature allows merchants to automatically send targeted notifications and emails to customers. 

Merchants can receive instant alerts for every abandoned cart or opt for summary digests, facilitating strategic follow-ups. This built-in tool is still limited; thus, for more advanced needs, store owners will need support from abandoned cart third-party extensions.

• Inventory management

BigCommerce equips merchants with robust inventory management tools. Merchants can track inventory at product and variant levels, enabling detailed stock management based on performance and popularity.

The platform supports omnichannel selling through seamless integration with various sales channels and physical stores facilitated by third-party apps and CSV imports. Real-time syncing with Square’s POS system enhances accuracy, reducing overselling and manual errors.

BigCommerce’s Import/Export feature streamlines inventory management by enabling bulk updates and the integration of data from various sources, making it easier for merchants to keep their product listings accurate and up-to-date across all platforms.

• Sell in multiple currencies

BigCommerce supports over 100 currencies and empowers global commerce by allowing customers to view prices and complete transactions in their local currency. 

• Shipping

BigCommerce streamlines shipping management with the ability to create and manage multiple shipments per order, supported by its V2 Shipping API for customizing shipping zones, methods, and carrier integrations. Merchants can specify details like shipping provider and tracking number for each shipment. 

The platform enables the configuration of diverse shipping strategies. It integrates with major carriers like UPS, FedEx, USPS, Canada Post, Australia Post, etc., for real-time shipping quotes, improving transparency and customer choice. 

Additionally, BigCommerce supports connections with carrier accounts and partners for extended functionalities such as label printing and insurance, ensuring a flexible and efficient shipping process.

The Verdict

BigCommerce emerges as the preferred choice, providing superior sales capabilities that create broader business opportunities. The platform is more adaptable and growth-focused for e-commerce activities.

Marketing Features

Squarespace

• SEO

Squarespace simplifies SEO by seamlessly integrating effective strategies into its platform, eliminating the need for plugins or custom code. 

The platform automatically generates and links a proper sitemap, ensures clean URLs for easy indexing, and facilitates automatic redirects for multiple domains, contributing to a user-friendly and search engine-friendly environment.

Structured data, automatic tagging, and Google-rich image search optimization for products further enhance the SEO capabilities of Squarespace. Users can maximize their SEO efforts by manually enabling features like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), adding meta tags to pages, and ensuring SSL certificate activation for domain security. 

The platform’s commitment to clean HTML markup, mobile optimization, and the provision of SSL certificates for secure browsing collectively position Squarespace as an SEO powerhouse. 

• Email Marketing

Squarespace simplifies email marketing with its Squarespace Email Campaigns feature, offering seamless integration for capturing user data and sending personalized emails cost-effectively. Users can easily craft visually attractive emails, ensuring consistent branding between their website and marketing materials. Higher-tier plans include automation features for targeted and personalized communication efforts.

Besides, merchants can choose to integrate with Mailchimp to streamline email marketing without incurring extra costs. You can easily collect emails, enhance marketing efforts, and sync order details, products, and customer information seamlessly, ensuring an efficient approach to email campaigns.

• Social media integration

Squarespace allows merchants to connect their sites with major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, Discord, CodePen, etc., or use social sharing buttons. This integration broadens their online reach and engagement, driving more traffic to the website and significantly boosting online visibility.

• Blogging

Squarespace’s blogging tools make starting and managing your blog easy with image-heavy support, ready-made templates, stock images, and fonts, saving time and money on the design. 

It is well-equipped for new and seasoned bloggers, featuring tools for categorization, tagging, and managing multiple contributors. Squarespace also enables monetization opportunities through videos, podcasts, paid newsletters, and membership subscriptions, opening up opportunities for revenue generation.

BigCommerce

• SEO

BigCommerce is equipped with powerful SEO capabilities to fuel the growth of online stores. One key feature is the platform’s emphasis on SEO-friendly URLs, ensuring optimal indexing for product and category pages.

It automatically incorporates rich snippets into product pages, enhancing search result listings with valuable information such as ratings, pricing, brand details, and stock levels.

The platform’s commitment to SEO extends to site architecture, where user-friendly navigation and crawlability are prioritized. BigCommerce’s content delivery network (CDN) ensures swift loading times, contributing to a positive user experience and favoring search engine rankings. 

With responsive and mobile-optimized themes, automatic redirects, and sitewide encryption via free SSL certificates, BigCommerce provides a comprehensive SEO solution, aligning with industry best practices and Google’s preferences. 

• Email Marketing

BigCommerce does not provide any built-in email marketing services for users.

Users can significantly improve their email marketing efforts and fine-tune customer communications by leveraging extensions such as MailChimp, HubSpot, iContact, Constant Contact, etc. 

Setting up automated messages to thank customers, announce new products, and share online promotions and coupon deals with specific customer lists through these extensions can enhance engagement and marketing strategies.

• Social media integration

BigCommerce excels in multi-channel integration, enabling seamless communication with various platforms and marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, etc., going beyond basic integrations and offering over 30 social media integrations.

With the option to effortlessly add “Buy Now” buttons, the platform transforms social browsing into a streamlined online buying experience. BigCommerce provides a comprehensive approach encompassing diverse media types, such as Instagram Feeds and YouTube video libraries, ensuring a balanced and purposeful social commerce strategy.

• Blogging

BigCommerce incorporates a native blogging feature that allows easy customization, including assigning multiple authors, enabling commenting, and categorizing posts. 

Each blog page comes with its own SEO settings, optimizing visibility, and the platform supports social sharing across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. 

The Verdict

Squarespace appears to have an edge due to its comprehensive set of tools with a user-friendly interface and an array of customizable templates, streamlining business marketing efforts.

Dropshipping

Squarespace

Squarespace doesn’t offer built-in dropshipping features. Users must coordinate directly with suppliers and use extensions on the Squarespace Extensions store to manage and fulfill orders.

The platform has partnered with Printiful, Printify, SPOD, Syncee, and Spocket to facilitate these processes.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce enables dropshipping via a robust ecosystem of 29 third-party apps within its app marketplace. Key solutions like Ali-Express Dropshipping, Spocket, and Inventory Source are available, in addition to 18 print-on-demand (POD) services, including Printify and Printful.

The Verdict

BigCommerce stands out as the favored option for businesses interested in dropshipping. This preference is attributed to its wide array of third-party apps and integrations focused on automation, logistics, and supplier connections. 

Apps and Extensions

Squarespace

The Squarespace Extensions store has 36 third-party tools and plugins to enhance e-commerce, improve SEO, integrate social media, manage online presence effectively, etc. Easily added through the Squarespace interface with a few clicks, these extensions seamlessly integrate into your design for tasks. 

BigCommerce

BigCommerce boasts an extensive collection of around 1400 apps to streamline various aspects of your business. These apps cover diverse categories, from accounting and tax to shipping and fulfillment, and more. 

The Verdict

BigCommerce takes the lead in the apps and extensions, allowing businesses to enhance their online operations.

Customer Support

Squarespace

While lacking phone support, Squarespace offers a range of alternatives to cater to users’ needs, including

• 24/7 email support to all plans
• Assistance through social media
• A comprehensive FAQ page
• Informative video tutorials
• An active community forum
• Live chat during working days

BigCommerce

BigCommerce provides comprehensive customer support:

• 24/7 Support via phone, email, and live chat
• Resourceful guides and tutorials with FAQs
• Supportive community through BigCommerce help center
• Specialized support for Enterprise plans

The Verdict

BigCommerce surpasses Squarespace in customer support with its 24/7 availability, diverse assistance channels, and priority services for enterprise users. 

This focus on accessible and tailored support ensures businesses receive the help they need promptly, making BigCommerce a preferred choice for those seeking comprehensive and responsive customer service.

Security

Squarespace

Squarespace provides a robust security environment for e-commerce, ensuring customer data and credit card information are safeguarded through SSL encryption. This adherence to PCI compliance confirms that Squarespace meets the rigorous requirements of the PCI DDS, maintaining a high level of security for all transactions.

Squarespace provides two-factor authentication and daily backups to further bolster security.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce also offers a fully hosted platform with Level 1 PCI DSS certification to ensure the highest protection against credit card data breaches. The platform employs SSL encryption for secure data transmission, reinforced with advanced security measures such as intrusion detection, firewalls, 24/7 monitoring, and fraud protection. 

Additional safeguards like two-factor authentication and IP blocking enhance store security, while integrations with third-party security tools allow for further customization and protection. 

The Verdict

BigCommerce takes a more extensive approach to security and a broader range of third-party security integrations. 

These comprehensive security measures provide a deeper layer of protection against data breaches and fraud, making BigCommerce the preferred option for businesses prioritizing high-level security for their online store and customer data.

Customer/ Expert Reviews

Squarespace

Squarespace has garnered a strong reputation among its users, reflected in a customer rating of 4.6/5 on Capterra from over 2000 pieces of feedback. 

Users praise its design-centric approach, highlighting the ease of creating beautiful, professional websites with minimal effort, along with Squarespace’s user-friendly interface. It’s particularly lauded as an excellent resource for those without a design background, offering a cost-effective solution for developing a polished website. 

However, some drawbacks include concerns over content ownership and the platform’s occasional political and illogical decisions. Users have reported issues with unwanted content deletion without an easy undo option or occasional lag times in system response.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce receives a rating of 4.4/5 stars from 318 reviews on Capterra, highlighting its capability as a potent eCommerce platform for creating impressive online stores. 

Users appreciate the platform’s design flexibility, user-friendly interface for product management, and robust security features. Its support is also commended for aiding businesses in global expansion. The ease of use and the vibrant developer community make employee onboarding smoother, fostering innovation. 

Despite its strengths, some users desire more customization options, particularly in automated communications. There are also critiques regarding the support team’s awareness of platform issues and the platform’s pricing, with some users feeling that BigCommerce is overpriced relative to the features provided.

The Verdict

Squarespace stands out for its more intuitive design tools and user-friendly approach, catering to a broader audience base, reflected in its higher review scores. While BigCommerce is acknowledged for its robust eCommerce capabilities and customization options, it faces criticism for aspects like flexibility and support.

Read more: Ecwid vs BigCommerce: A Detailed Comparison

Final Verdict

While Squarespace shines by allowing for the easy creation of aesthetically pleasing websites without requiring a deep technical background, BigCommerce positions itself as a more robust solution, offering a wide array of tools and options for those looking to build a complex, feature-rich online store capable of growing with their business. 

Who Should Use Squarespace?

Squarespace is perfect for:

• Creatives like photographers, artists, and designers who want to elegantly display their portfolios. 
• Small businesses
• Bloggers and content creators looking to publish engaging content
• Freelancers and consultants
• Nonprofits and educational institutions
• Individuals looking to create a personal website or a site for a special project

Who Should Use BigCommerce?

• B2B merchants
• Enterprises that have traditionally operated offline but are looking to transition into the online space 
• For businesses with plans for quick expansion
• Mid-size to large e-commerce businesses
• Multi-channel and international sellers

Bottom Line

Now that you’re informed about what Squarespace and BigCommerce offer, we hope this article helps you decide on the platform that best aligns with your business needs.

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