Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: Who Is The Best?

Do you intend to launch or relaunch your online business? You’ve likely heard good things about Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace. They are some of the most impressive contenders for the most excellent eCommerce website builder titles.

Which one, nevertheless, suits you the best? You’re in luck, though.

In our Squarespace vs Shopify vs Wix comparison, we’ll discuss each platform in depth to help you decide which is ideal for your company.

From design options and price to e-commerce functionality, we have you covered.

So, let’s get started and get a cup of coffee. 

1. Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: Overview & Key Differences

Firstly, in what areas do the three platforms face competition? Ecommerce!

Squarespace and Wix are the two most well-liked general-purpose website builders. They provide features, functions, and themes for both e-commerce and non-e-commerce websites.

Shopify, however, is widely used and trusted by many user mainly from the e-commerce website specialty.

1.1. Overview 

Shopify is a renowned e-commerce platform that lets you develop and run online stores.

Its goal is to assist users in creating scalable online businesses. It offers a ton of applications and hundreds of built-in functionality. Products may be sold directly from your website or through various marketplaces and social media platforms.

Shopify is the go-to platform for online business of all size – from a small business at home, to a medium size company and enterprise. The ability to cater for your need when you scale is arguably one of the strongest point of Shopify. Shopify however is also a good choice for new entrepreneurs who want to streamline the process of setting up their first online store, because of the rich resources & sharing from large user base, enormous app ecosystem, and ease of use.

They also provide people who are still choosing between platforms a chance to try what they have to offer for 33 days with just $1, which we recommend you to try out

 

Wix is a cloud-based web creation platform with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that lets users design and construct websites.

It is built for anyone who wishes to create a website but is new to coding. It works well for small enterprises, blogs, portfolios, personal websites, and even some e-commerce requirements.

 

Meanwhile, Squarespace is a platform for creating and hosting websites renowned for its slick design templates and intuitive user interface.

It came to life to make it easy for people to create professional-looking websites without requiring technical knowledge. It is frequently utilized for e-commerce sites, blogs, portfolios, and corporate websites.

 

1.2. Key differences 

Below is a summary of the key differences between these 3 powerful platforms:

	Shopify	Wix	Squarespace	Verdict
Pricing	Starts at $5/month A free trial is available	Starts at $27/ month No free trial	Starts at $23/month A free trial is available	Shopify 🏆
Design & customization	Free and paid templates are available and suitable for all business types. Simple theme editor	Free and paid templates are available, but fit more small stores. Simple theme editor	Free and paid templates are available but fit more small stores. Simple theme editor	Shopify 🏆
Ease of Use	It is less user-friendly than the others, as it offers more complicated tools	Simple drag-and-drop editor to customize pages and products	Simple drag-and-drop editor to customize pages and products	Squarespace 🏆
eCommerce features	More powerful features with a wide range of tools	Useful tools but not as advanced as what Shopify offers	Useful tools but not as advanced as what Shopify offers	Shopify 🏆
Marketing tools	Automatic SEO tools, the vast array of accessible marketing applications.	They are helpful tools but must be more responsive and have more options.	Lacking SEO add-ons and may cost extra fees for email marketing	Shopify 🏆
App & integrations	Thousands of applications are available.	There are 782 applications available.	There are just 41.	Shopify 🏆
Customer support	Various and responsive support channels	Various and responsive support channels	Various and responsive support channels	Tie 🤝
	Visit Shopify	Visit Wix	Visit Squarespace

Key takeaways:

• If e-commerce is your first concern, choose Shopify. Shopify is the best platform for e-commerce. It is perfect for all kinds of businesses.
• For your small shop project, go with Wix if you want access to a simple drag-and-drop builder or only need a little personalization.
• Choose Squarespace if you run small to medium-sized businesses or want to create good portfolios and creatives.

2. Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: A Deep Dive Comparison

Now, let’s break down the difference between Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace.

2.1. Pricing 

A smart e-commerce business owner knows how important it is to monitor their pounds, shillings, and pence.

This raises the question of how value for money compares to Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix.

Now let’s investigate:

2.1.1. Shopify Plans

Shopify has five plans in total (annual price):

• Starter ($5/month)
• Shopify Basic ($29/month)
• Shopify ($79/month)
• Shopify Advanced ($299/month).
• Shopify Plus (starting at $2,300/month)

All Shopify pricing plans offer a 3-day free trial (no credit card needed). Additionally, Shopify allows you to try out all their excellent features for 30 days more, with just $1

2.1.2. Wix Plans

Wix offers eight premium plans, one enterprise plan, and one limited free plan. The eight premium plans are divided into three Ecommerce plans and five Website Plans (which lack e-commerce functionality).

These are the three Ecommerce plans (annual price):

• Business Basic ($27/month)
• Business Unlimited ($32/month)
• Business VIP ($59/month)

Wix doesn’t provide a free trial for its premium services. However, you must cancel the plan within 14 days of purchasing to get a complete refund.

It is one of the most excellent free website builders, yet e-commerce is unavailable with the free plan. You can create a store and add items, but Wix will require an upgrade when adding a payment option.

2.1.3. Squarespace Plans

 

Squarespace offers four plans: Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. It also provides a 14-day free trial.

Online shopping is not included in the Personal plan. The remaining three (yearly cost) are as follows:

• Business ($23/month)
• Basic Commerce ($28/month)
• Advanced Commerce ($52/month)

The verdict: Shopify wins as it offers more options and flexibility, especially when you have plans to expand your business later.

2.2. Design & customization

 

It is crucial to assess this aspect as you need an excellent tool to build a beautiful store to impress shoppers.

Templates	116 themes with 11 free ones. Additionally, the one-time pricing of the premium themes ranges from $100 to $350. Every theme is contemporary, fresh, and optimized for mobile devices.  Shopify themes are appropriate for stores of all kinds and sizes.	There are 800 designs, including 127 specifically designed for e-commerce sites.  However, some Wix themes are outdated, so the quality varies.	Squarespace offers more than 150 stunning, contemporary website themes.  Regarding their applicability, Squarespace designs have features exclusive to small businesses.
Templates editor	A simple theme editor to customize sections and blocks. To make the necessary adjustments, you must be familiar with HTML, CSS, and Liquid (Shopify’s template language) or engage a developer.	To alter the templates, use Wix’s unstructured drag-and-drop editor. Wix offers Site Design to control the website’s fonts, colors, animations, spacing, buttons, and blocks.	You can utilize the drag-and-drop editor to make changes to Squarespace templates. Squarespace offers Site Styles to help users control the website’s fonts, colors, animations, spacing, buttons, and blocks.

The verdict: Shopify is excellent in number, quality, and theme selection. A recurring theme in Wix and Squarespace will lead you to the inevitable conclusion: small stores are the sole applications for these platforms. So Shopify won!

2.3. Ease of use

Even though all three platforms guarantee a simple user experience, we discovered that each solution had a somewhat different learning curve.

Page Editor	Although Shopify’s editor is simple, it is less user-friendly than the others. The rich text editor on Shopify allows you to align photos and videos with text, which changes based on what you type to match your business’s theme.	With Wix’s drag-and-drop page editors, anybody can create stunning web pages. Add, remove, modify, and move sections and blocks around.	With Squarespace’s drag-and-drop page editors, anybody can create stunning web pages. It is an organized yet incredibly flexible drag-and-drop visual editor.
Product  Editor	Add product categories, types, vendors, collections, and tags for each product. Add barcodes and quantity per location. Neither Squarespace nor Wix supports Shopify’s customs information shipping option.	Edit the product name, description, photos, price, product variations, SKUs, shipping information, brand name, collection, and SEO details. Wix offers 100 product variations.	The three builders’ product editors allow you to edit many details of your products. You can personalize the checkout button for every product, add subscription fees, and create custom forms.

The verdict: Many general-purpose website builders need an easy-to-use page editor, which most e-commerce builders also need! Squarespace is the winner as it is a more user-friendly e-commerce builder than the others.

2.4. eCommerce features

Ecommerce business owners seek an easy-to-use platform with all their desired features.

Thankfully, the Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace dashboards are all simple. You may manage every facet of your website and online sales from here.  

Having stated that let me examine each platform’s standout eCommerce features in further detail:

2.4.1. Payment processing

Of the three, Wix and Shopify allow you to link more payment channels to your business than Squarespace does.

Regarding transaction fees, which are your e-commerce platform’s portion of the sales, you may avoid them on all three platforms (based on location and plan).

You may link more than 100 payment channels with Shopify. There are no transaction costs if you are content with utilizing Shopify Payments, the company’s payment gateway.  It is important to note that Shopify Payments aren’t accessible in every nation.	You can integrate more than 100 payment gateways with Wix. Wix does not impose transaction fees, whether you utilize a third-party payment processing system or Wix Payments.	Squarespace limits your payment options to three: PayPal, Stripe, and its in-house payment system, “Squarespace Payments.” Squarespace does not support Google Pay. Squarespace waives transaction costs if you subscribe to one of its more costly “Commerce” plans.

The verdict: Shopify is the winner in payment processing as it offers more choices for your customers, facilitating a better buying experience. 

2.4.2. Abandoned cart recovery

Wix vs Squarespace vs Shopify all provide you with the means to automate the procedure of abandoned cart recovery.

Shopify allows you to customize the outreach process to a larger extent and detect more cart abandonment. You can deliver highly personalized cart recovery messages and recognize different kinds of cart abandonment.  Automation allows you to design complex customer journeys and increases your chances of increasing income.	While Wix’s services aren’t as sophisticated as Shopify’s. It provides abandoned cart recovery on most of its premium plans.	Although Squarespace provides useful solutions to avoid cart abandonment, these are limited to the brand’s most costly subscriptions.

The verdict: Shopify is the winner here, thanks to its more advanced tools than the others.

2.4.3. Point of sale

POS feature allows you to automatically record sales and update inventory levels in your online store’s dashboard, all while using card readers, barcode scanners, and other selling gear throughout the purchase process.

Shopify has the widest selection of point-of-sale hardware and the most advanced solution for physical retail sales. It is available for the lowest possible price – its $5 monthly “Starter” plan now includes POS functions.	Wix provides many point-of-sale (POS) capabilities through its new POS system, Wix POS, and third-party firms, Square and SumUp.	It has the least advanced POS features of the three. Their system is only usable within the United States and can only be used with a card reader (i.e., no other POS hardware is available for the platform).

The verdict: Wix vs Squarespace vs Shopify are three systems that provide point-of-sale functionality. However, Shopify emerged as the clear victor due to its wide selection of POS hardware and its most advanced solution for brick-and-mortar sales.

2.5. Marketing tools

Wix and Squarespace offer the essential marketing elements required for small business success. But when it comes to marketing features, Shopify rules. It is far more feature-rich than the other two and includes all the essential components.

Email marketing	Shopify provides free tools for email marketing. You may send up to 10,000 emails each month for free with Shopify.	Wix also provides free tools for email marketing. However, Wix allows you to send up to 200 emails every month at no cost.	Squarespace has email marketing capabilities, but using them costs extra and is less effective in terms of automation.
SEO	Clever built-in back-end SEO capabilities to improve your store. Compared to Squarespace, Shopify offers you more control over your robots.txt file. Adjust meta descriptions, blog and web page URLs, and title tags to optimize your content.  There are 127 SEO-related tools accessible via their app store. While some are free, some need payment. A very easy-to-read blog for newcomers on this subject.	Its interface has built-in SEO capability and interacts with both Google Analytics and Google Search Console.  Wix websites have certain responsive features but have yet to be quite responsive.	Squarespace’s back end offers built-in SEO optimization.  Squarespace’s Extensions shop doesn’t have any SEO add-ons or applications that we could identify. Squarespace requires you to reroute URLs manually, unlike the others.

The verdict: While the competition between Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace is fierce, Shopify emerges victorious again. Shopify wins because of its automatic SEO tools, the vast array of accessible marketing applications, and the fine-grained control you have over product information.

2.6. App & integrations

Each platform has its version: Shopify offers the Shopify App Store, Wix has the Wix App Market, and Squarespace offers Extensions. 

Shopify offers thousands of applications that are primarily free to use. Many applications are cross-integrated easily.	There are 782 applications available in the Wix app store.	There are just 41 in Squarespace.

The verdict: Overall, the winner is still Shopify because of the huge range of additional features and integrations available via Shopify’s app store.

2.7. Customer support

Finally, let’s see how good they are regarding customer support. 

Live chat, email tickets, and phone support as its three primary methods for “talking to an actual human” around the clock.  Great video courses and help center articles.  The Shopify Community, which has over 900,000 partners and Shopify merchants.	Their customer service is available to you by email and live chat around the clock. Articles covering everything and other frequently asked topics. Wix users may also assist one another in the Wix Forum Community. You may also ask the support staff to give you a callback.	Email and live chat are available through Squarespace from Monday through Friday from 4 AM to 8 PM EDT.  They also have excellent support materials and a community.

The verdict: Shopify and Squarespace, Wix offers an extensive customer service package that includes email, live chat, and phone help. So, it is a tie!

3. Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace, which is better?

These three eCommerce platforms—Squarespace vs Shopify vs Wix—are among the best available now and offer many tools to help with website building and administration.

Shopify win the majority aspects in this review, proving itself to live up to the “most popular ecommerce platform in the world” title. If you want to start your online business by choosing Shopify, now is the best time to register the 33 days usage with just $1 program

However, you can be assured that you can build a beautiful online store, whatever option you choose. Yet, there are some situations where one is better than the others.

• If e-commerce is your first concern, choose Shopify. Shopify is the best platform for e-commerce. It is perfect for all kinds of businesses.
• For your small shop project, go with Wix if you want access to a simple drag-and-drop builder or only need a little personalization.
• Choose Squarespace if you run small to medium-sized businesses or want to create good portfolios and creatives.

4. Conclusion

I hope this comparison of Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace has helped you understand each of the three platforms better! While Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace have advantages, drawing and keeping clients online mostly depends on how you run and promote your business.

We also recommend you to discover the difference between Shopify vs other platforms if you are wondering whether Shopify should be the final decision for your ecommerce journey.

Moreover, at eComStart, we have lots of materials for you to start a successful online store. Don’t forget to check out regularly to discover new articles published every week!

5. FAQs