Shopify vs Squarespace: A Store or a Site That Sells

The short answer: price will not decide this one. Shopify Basic and Squarespace Core both cost $39 a month on monthly billing and $29 a month billed yearly, and both charge 2.9% + 30¢ per online card payment (checked on 26 October 2026 on the Shopify and Squarespace pricing pages). What decides it is what the website is for. If the store is a few products on a site that mainly sells a service, a practice or a brand, Squarespace carries it with bookings, invoices and memberships in the same dashboard. If the store is the business, with stock in more than one place or sales at a counter, Shopify is the system built for that. Choose Squarespace if your job is a website that books, invoices and sells a little. Choose Shopify if your job is selling products, with the website as the shop window.

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Squarespace sells the website first: templates, a domain registrar of its own, then online stores, services, invoicing, scheduling, content and memberships, donations and email campaigns as parts of the same site, per its homepage. Shopify sells the commerce system first: a checkout, a catalogue, payments, shipping and a point of sale, with the storefront as one channel among the Shop app, marketplaces, social and AI chats, per its pricing page. A coach selling a workbook and a ceramics brand selling 200 products will both find a store in each. Only one of them needs everything Shopify brings.

Since the price will not decide it:

1. The fee on Squarespace's cheapest plan. For example, Squarespace Basic at $19 a month billed yearly takes a 2% fee on online store orders that Core at $29 does not, so Core's extra $10 pays for itself from $10 / 0.02 = $500 a month in store sales, using the Squarespace pricing page. Below that, Basic is cheaper; above it, compare Core with Shopify Basic, where the price is the same.
2. What you sell besides products. List last year's revenue by type: products, sessions or bookings, memberships, invoices. If products are under half, the business runs on things Squarespace builds in and Shopify does not list on its plans.
3. The figure that tells you it worked. Product orders per 100 visitors to product pages, read in each platform's own analytics for the four weeks after launch, against the same four weeks on the old site.

The plan ladders, rung by rung

USD, read on 26 October 2026 on the Squarespace pricing page and the Shopify pricing page. Shopify's yearly figures for Grow and Advanced changed between page loads that day, $79 or $89 and $299 or $359; its monthly figures did not, so plan on those. Squarespace's card rates apply through Squarespace Payments, which it offers in 13 countries including the US, the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Where the two part

What the store sits inside

On Squarespace the store is one feature of a site that also schedules, invoices and sells content, and invoices carry no Squarespace transaction fee on any plan. On Shopify the store is the product, and around it sit inventory across up to 10 locations, B2B catalogues and marketplace order imports (pricing page). A business that sells its time fits the first. One that sells boxes fits the second.

Selling face to face

Squarespace sells in person through its mobile app, with payments processed by Square, and only in the US, per its plan comparison. Shopify takes in-person payments on every plan from a phone or card reader, at 2.6% + 10¢ on Basic, and sells a full retail setup as POS Pro at $89 a month per location (POS pricing). A market stall works on either; a shop with staff and stock counts leans to Shopify.

Who can edit

Squarespace Basic allows 2 contributors and every plan from Core allows unlimited contributors, which suits a team of writers and a designer. Shopify Basic has no extra staff accounts; Grow allows 5 and Advanced 15, per the pricing page. A store with three people in the admin is on Grow, at $105 a month.

Find the name with an agent, buy it as a person

Squarespace runs an MCP server at https://mcp.squarespace.com/mcp with two domain tools: one generates brandable names from a plain description of the business, the other checks availability and price and returns a checkout link. It needs no key and no account, and its tools are read-only; nothing is registered or charged in the chat.

1. Describe the business in two sentences and ask for 15 available .com names with prices.
2. Narrow the list to five, and ask for each name's alternatives in other extensions.
3. The human check: a person searches each finalist in the trademark register for your market and on the social platforms you use, then follows the checkout link and buys the one that passes. Shopify sells domains too; the name is yours to point at whichever platform wins.

Free before you commit

Squarespace gives every site a 14-day trial with no card, and Shopify three free days and then $1 a month for three months (Squarespace, Shopify). Build the same product page and checkout on each, place a test order, and time how long a second product takes to add.

On Squarespace, read the small print under "Free custom domain". The free year comes with annual billing, covers names in Squarespace's cheapest domain price tier, and then renews at Squarespace's standard rate plus taxes (pricing page). A gift that registers your domain with the platform's own registrar also makes the platform the default place your name lives, so put the renewal date in the calendar the day you register.

Squarespace makes sense if

• The website sells a service, a practice or content, and products are a side line.
• Bookings, invoices and memberships should live beside the pages.
• Several people edit, and the budget is one plan.

Shopify makes sense if

• Products are most of the revenue, with stock to track.
• You sell at a counter or pop-up as well as online.
• You want marketplaces, social and AI chats fed from one catalogue.

The Shopify entry covers its plans, and Webflow vs Squarespace looks at Squarespace from the marketing-site side. Squarespace has no entry on this site.

FAQ

Do Shopify and Squarespace cost the same?

At the entry point that sells, yes: Shopify Basic and Squarespace Core are $39 a month on monthly billing and $29 a month billed yearly, both with online card rates of 2.9% + 30¢ (Shopify, Squarespace). They part on what else the plan includes.

Can Squarespace sell in person?

In the US, through the Squarespace mobile app with payments processed by Square, per its plan comparison.

Is there a free plan on either?

No. Squarespace starts with a 14-day trial and offers no free plan; Shopify's $0 Agentic plan sells only in AI channels, and its store plans start with three free days (Shopify pricing).