WooCommerce vs Squarespace: An Ultimate Comparison (2024 Update)

In today’s technology era, having an eCommerce store is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to reach out to billions of people on the internet. However, it is not easy to choose from 200+ rising eCommerce platforms. WooCommerce vs Squarespace are two solutions that you may have come across frequently, given that they both place highly on any list of top eCommerce platforms.

If you are struggling to find the most suitable platform between these two or wondering whether you should move from one platform to the other, look no further! In this article, LitExtension – The #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert will walk you through:

• Overview of WooCommerce and Squarespace;
• A thorough comparison between Squarespace vs WooCommerce;
• Pros and cons of each platform;
• Is WooCommerce or Squarespace more suitable for your needs?

No more ado, let’s get started!

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WooCommerce vs Squarespace: An Overview

#1. What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress that provides the most customization ability. Basically, WooCommerce is a commerce plug-in for WordPress. It transforms each and every WordPress site into a full eCommerce store. With a powerful content management system (CMS) and the flexibility to customize every aspect of the online store, WooCommerce has established a solid reputation among WordPress users as well as online retailers.

According to BuiltWith, 6,1 million live websites using WooCommerce in January 2024, making up about 20% of the eCommerce market share.

#2. What is Squarespace?

Officially launched in January 2004, Squarespace is a hosted CMS solution that allows online retailers to create and manage a portfolio, blog, or eCommerce store without deep technical knowledge. Every type of business in the world can drag and drop to build a professional and eye-catching website from scratch.

Squarespace allows you to showcase your top-notch visual and handles all aspects of your store, from products to orders, without using any additional plugins. Reaching about 3 million users by Jan 2024, Squarespace gradually confirms its popularity and applicability.

Both platforms are well created to serve the needs of online merchants, but with different levels in terms of technical requirements and eCommerce functionalities. In the following paragraphs, we will dive deeper into these distinctions and finally determine which platform is right for you between WooCommerce vs Squarespace.

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WooCommerce vs Squarespace: Detailed Comparison

If you don’t have enough time to run through the walls of text, or you want to compare WooCommerce vs Squarespace in a more intuitive way, take a look at the table below!

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#1. Pricing

When it comes to choosing a suitable eCommerce platform for your online business, pricing is undoubtedly one of the most crucial factors. Understanding the pricing details and managing the store within the budget is indeed the key to the success of a business.

WooCommerce pricing

WooCommerce is a plugin that anyone can install on a WordPress site without paying a dime. However, as it requires more than just a site to start an eCommerce business, the price might add up when you go further into building your online store.

First off, if you do not currently own a ready-to-use WordPress site and have to build everything from scratch, the mandatory fee can be quite a lot. It comprises the cost of registering the domain (about $15 annually), hosting (from 10$ monthly), as well as an SSL (Secure Sockets Layers) certificate (up to $65 annually). This fee may get even higher if you are working on a big site. If you want to get tips on the lowest WooCommerce price, follow the link for more details.

Squarespace pricing

As Squarespace is a hosted eCommerce platform, the pricing plans seem easier to understand. So how much is Squarespace?

There are four Squarespace pricing plans available with different choices of included services: Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advance Commerce.

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Consider the annual payment if you plan to build your business over the long term because you can save up to 30% that way! For instance, you only need to pay $276 once per year and then be fully prepared to start your business instead of spending $396 total for the Business plan.

Each of these Squarespace pricing plans provides you with the following amazing features:

• A custom domain name;
• Default SSL security encryption;
• No limit on bandwidth and storage capacity;
• SEO features for site ranking on search engines;
• Mobile-optimized websites and basic website metrics.

Even though Squarespace pricing plans do not come with a free option and eCommerce store owners are only able to sell when they choose from the Business plan up, Squarespace eCommerce is still worthwhile with the breadth of features provided.

Above all, Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial to test out the features. In case you find this platform is not right for you, you can easily get your money back with a simple cancellation process.

#2. Ease of Use

The ease of managing an eCommerce site is just as important as its pricing because it is the day-to-day work you will face when running an online store. Let’s scroll down to see the work needed when running an eCommerce store on WooCommerce vs Squarespace.

WooCommerce

Serving as a free plugin that turns every WordPress site into an online store without charge, Woocommerce starts out a bit stronger than its competitors. If you already have a live WordPress site, all you need to do is install it on your site by following the wizard setup, then you’re ready to get off the ground.

You will need to choose a hosting service and then a domain name before getting started with WordPress. Most hosting services offer a friendly and easy-to-understand setting process.

Although WooCommerce does not offer a drag-and-drop website builder, the WordPress Page Builder can be of assistance. Some typical tasks (like adding product inventory, processing orders, etc) are really straightforward if the store owners are familiar with the WordPress interface. It is also easy to add plugins that help accomplish other eCommerce duties, which will be discussed later in this article.

Nonetheless, if the owners want their eCommerce store to be more personalized, they must have the technical knowledge to handle all the complicated code lines. Besides, working on an open-source platform means that you have to take all the security duties (and risks, of course). Hiring developers’ services (Wooexpert) can be a good solution, except for the fact that it might cost a lot of money.

Squarespace

Squarespace makes site building easier for everyone, especially non-technical store owners. As a hosted eCommerce platform, Squarespace does not require any hosting service or domain name. All you need to do is register an account, pick a theme, add products to your store, and you are good to go!

The drag-and-drop website builder allows you to complete your store easily after just a few steps. Don’t worry if it is a bit section-based and does not permit you to drop things anywhere you desire. The brief tutorial guides that help you quickly adjust to it come in handy here! You can easily edit your website’s logo, theme, font, and color after becoming acquainted with the builder… and the store appears just like when you edit it.

Moreover, using a hosted shopping cart service means that you do not need to worry about store maintenance and security issues. The slow-down editor is the only drawback of SquareSpace due to its auto-save feature.

Mentioning the ease of use, Ecwid is also an optimal option. So if you’re interested, here is our Ecwid vs WooCommerce comparison.

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#3. Designs & Templates

The design of an eCommerce platform has the ability to make or break a business, as it is the very first factor to catch the eye. Let’s see what WooCommerce vs Squarespace have to offer in terms of designs & templates.

WooCommerce designs and templates

WooCommerce offers professional themes that are exclusively built for eCommerce stores. These 84 themes at the WooCommerce Theme store cover 12 industries, including fashion and apparel, food and drink, health and beauty, and… so on.

Using WooCommerce means that you are also accessible to the enormous WordPress theme store. It offers a wide range of over 11.000 themes that are most compatible with WooCommerce and can be personalized with a few coding skills.

Apart from free WooCommerce and WordPress themes, you can also opt for premium ones provided by third-party developers. Most themes range from $29 to $99 per year, and since there are thousands of options available, you might be lost just by looking at them. Let’s browse our suggestions on the best WooCommerce themes for your eCommerce store!

With over 90% of the world population owning a mobile phone, it’s vital that your eCommerce store is mobile-friendly. Fortunately, most WooCommerce themes are highly responsive to mobile devices and provide full customization ability. If you master coding skills, the sky is the limit!

Squarespace commerce themes

Squarespace commerce themes are widely known for their aesthetic yet mobile-optimized. At the very first step of creating your eCommerce store with Squarespace, you can pick a template and then customize it effortlessly with the drag-and-drop website builder.

That section-based builder not only helps your store to be more structural but also allows you to apply suitable themes to specific sections. You are not limited to one template, and it somehow makes your eCommerce website more ‘you’!

The only downside is that Squarespace offers 10 free options among 110 beautiful-designed themes.

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#4. Extensions & Plugins

Anyone who says running an eCommerce store is an easy task definitely has not run one. You may not be able to complete numerous tasks on your own and will need the assistance of platform extensions & plugins. In the following paragraphs, let’s see what extensions and plugins WooCommerce vs Squarespace could offer.

WooCommerce

Regarding eCommerce extensions and plugins, WooCommerce is second to none! Built on WordPress, it obviously inherits the ginormous WordPress plugin repository with over 60.000 plugins (both free and premium) that cover your logistic, technical as well as marketing needs.

WooCommerce also has an extension store with plugins ideally customized for your eCommerce needs, from Store Management, and Marketing to Payment processing. Your store will not only look more professional, but its conversion rates may also increase thanks to customer behavior analysis. Find out the best WooCommerce plugins and be ready to boost your store!

The premium WooCommerce plugins range from $29-$99 per year. If the store owners are acquainted with the coding games, it’s easy to modify the plugins to your liking or browse from reputed third-party developers’ offers.

Squarespace

On the contrary, Squarespace only has built-in apps with a limited number of both platform and third-party plugins provided. There are currently 31 extensions, and there can be fewer due to country restrictions.

Though the limited number can be a big disadvantage in comparison to other platforms, Squarespace extensions still cover the core needs of eCommerce duties: shipping and fulfillment (7), finance (5), inventory & products (10), and sales & marketing (9).

As they are all built-in applications, store owners do not require any technical expertise to use them and improve store performance with ease. Just make sure you check the pricing plan and features well before connecting the apps to your site.

#5. Ecommerce Features

Let’s move to the next part of this WooCommerce vs Squarespace comparison, where we discuss the eCommerce features of each platform. We will go through product management, payment options, shipping options, blog & content, as well as POS.

Product & Inventory management

WooCommerce

WooCommerce provides great flexibility in every aspect of store management, and product and inventory management is unquestionably one of them. Furthermore, WooCommerce supports all types of products, from physical to digital.

A great strength of WooCommerce is that there is no limit to the number of items that can be added, and it’s also simple to incorporate product variants and product add-ons. Besides, the product management interface is easy to navigate, which allows you to arrange product pages and keep track of product inventory easily.

Squarespace

Squarespace enables you to sell both physical and digital products, such as gift cards or gift certificates. You can manage them easily with the Squarespace Product Inventory panel. It’s simple to use and allows you to add new products, change stock levels, manage inventory, or bulk edit your products with ease.

There’s also no set limit to the total number of products you can add to your Squarespace eCommerce store. However, you are limited on how many products can be added to the store page, and it varies depending on the version you are using. For example, if you are using version 7.0, you only have 200 products per store page. Meanwhile, if you upgrade to version 7.1, you can have up to 10,000 products on each store page.

Squarespace also allows you to import products via a CSV file from your existing eCommerce store on Etsy, Shopify, Big Cartel, or other stores. You can manually import other data such as customers, and orders as well.

Payment gateways

Payment processing, one of the first steps of capital turnover, is vital to every business. Therefore, it’s important to keep the payment process simple and seamless.

WooCommerce payment gateways

WooCommerce covers all needs of payment gateways. First off, they release an exclusively customized payment method named WooCommerce Payments that allows your customer to pay by both credit and debit card. And the good thing is that you can freely and easily download it. Especially, your customers don’t need to leave your eCommerce site to process payments.

There are also other leading payment processors, such as Paypal, Stripe, and Square… which please most WooCommerce store owners. If you are based in the US, you can even opt for bank transfers, debit & credit cards, Apple Pay, COD, or cheques. In case you need regional and less popular payment methods, you can choose from 100+ options on the WooCommerce Extension store.

Squarespace payment gateways

On the contrary, Squarespace just offers a few payment options including Paypal, Stripe, and Square. Among these, Paypal and Stripe allow customers to pay via popular international debit and credit cards such as Visa, MasterCard, and American Express… Besides that, among Squarespace eCommerce plugins, there’s a Squarespace POS to accept cash and card payments in person.

Shipping options

WooCommerce shipping options

By default, WooCommerce provides three types of shipping methods: flat-rate shipping, free shipping, and local pickup.

• With flat shipping, store owners can ship items to their buyers at a flat or standard rate per item, order, or shipping class;
• With free shipping, store owners will cover the shipping fee for the clients as a special promotion;
• As for local pick-up, your customers can pick up their orders in person.

In case you require additional shipping methods, there are tons of shipping plugins available.

Squarespace shipping options

Squarespace simply cannot compete with WooCommerce in terms of the shipping options provided. There are only two built-in options: flat shipping and depend-on-weight, while carrier calculated is available only to Commerce Advance Plan users. Squarespace users are able to choose third-party shipping extensions, but they need to configure shipping rates in Squarespace.

Blog & Content

Blog and content are a great way to drive more traffic to your website, as well as convert your to-be customers to orders and payments. Fortunately, both WooCommerce and Squarespace offer different yet good tools to create content for your eCommerce site.

WooCommerce blogging tool

Built on WordPress, there’s no doubt that WooCommerce offers a great method to create and manage content. You can easily add a post to showcase your products, update your customers with promotions for upcoming holidays, or increase your search engine rankings.

Just like WordPress blogs, you have the ability to retrieve the older version of your posts. The content you create will be securely stored on the system, allowing you to roll back to any of them at any point.

Squarespace blogging tool

You can create blog posts and excerpts, tag and categorize posts, enable comments, share your posts on social media, and more with Squarespace’s built-in blog page. Additionally, Squarespace offers free blogger templates that are modern and beautifully designed.

However, Squarespace does not provide the on-page editing that WooCommerce inherits from WordPress.

Point of Sales (POS)

If you own a brick-and-mortar store, it’s necessary to have a POS solution that helps to manage product inventory effectively. Let’s see if WooCommerce and Squarespace are able to meet this rare requirement!

WooCommerce POS solution

If you are using both WordPress and WooCommerce, you’re already halfway through the process! It’s easy to access various integrations for offline transactions, including Square. To access both online and offline selling, make sure to add the right integrations to your CMS when getting started with WooCommerce.

Moreover, the Point of Sales for WooCommerce (at $199 if you pay annually) is at your service. It can work natively with WooCommerce, with no need for third-party interfaces. All you need to do is simply download the extension, install it, register for an account, and happy selling!

Squarespace POS solution

Fortunately, Squarespace store owners are not left out in terms of POS. The platform offers an integration with Square services for payments, which means you are able to connect your backend to the Square system to manage inventory and POS selling.

If you need to sell in your offline store, opt for one in the wide variety of hardware options of Square and the software will automatically sync the data with the eCommerce site.

#6. SEO & Marketing Features

SEO Features

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s ranking in search engine results. It is becoming increasingly important because it determines whether your customers see your products before seeing others’.

WooCommerce SEO features

Built on WordPress, a powerful blogging platform, it’s doubtless that SEO is WooCommerce’s advantage. The WordPress editor allows you to edit content, permalinks, meta description, alt tags as well as on-page elements.

On top of that, WooCommerce also offers various SEO features & plugins to optimize your eCommerce website, such as Yoast SEO, All-in-One SEO…

Squarespace SEO features

Squarespace falls a little behind in terms of SEO features. There are no automatic 301 & 302 redirects, no Squarespace SEO plugin for checking, no rich snippet function, and it is rather difficult to add an alt tag.

Nonetheless, Squarespace still covers about 90% of your SEO requirements, including built-in sitemap and mobile optimization, a clean HTML markup… and allows you to track your SEO issue with Google Analytics and Google Console.

Marketing Features

WooCommerce marketing features

It’s easy to boost your sales volume if you make the most out of WooCommerce marketing features.

First off, WooCommerce allows you to discount your whole store by percentage, or apply specific discounts to fixed carts or products. There are also numerous extensions that help you to encourage sales such as the WooCommerce Coupon Campaign or WooCommerce Points and Rewards.

Besides, WooCommerce offers an amazing email marketing experience. The platform allows you to collect email addresses from customers and send out specific WooCommerce email campaigns based on their purchasing history. It’s also simple to craft your emails in plain text or HTML format.

Above that, WooCommerce also features the NewsLetter plugins and Abandoned Cart Recovery. They provide you with great outreach to customers by sending emails regularly or reminding them about the items left in their shopping cart.

Squarespace marketing features

Squarespace users can take advantage of built-in marketing features such as email marketing, social media integration, and ads to increase their sales volume. There are various email templates for store owners to choose from, as well as email campaign analytics so that store owners can keep track of email seeding and make adjustments if necessary.

Squarespace provides integration to over 20 social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram… with millions of users. With a Share button enabled, you can share your content all over places and reach more potential customers.

If you intend to use ads to promote your store, Square can make the most out of your budget with the integration of Instagram, Facebook Pixel, or Facebook Dynamics ads.

#7. Support

WooCommerce customer support

WooCommerce, as an open-source platform, may not be as helpful as its competitors. Because there is no live chat or support, store owners have to find answers to their questions in the WooCommerce Docs or FAQ section. Posting concerns on the community forum is another way to get help, though you won’t get a response right away, and the answers are not official either.

Its humongous plugin store is not a plus point in this case. You might not find any official support regarding plugins and services supplied by third parties.

Squarespace customer support

Meanwhile, Squarespace offers one of the best customer support among top eCommerce platforms. Users can rest assured knowing that they can get immediate help via email or live chat support. Besides the Knowledgebase and Developers Center, there are also webinars, forums, guides, and videos that visualize the steps for store owners.

#8. Security

Security is an important factor when deciding whether to build your eCommerce store on WooCommerce or Squarespace. Improve your eCommerce site security on a regular basis to protect your data and keep the transaction above board.

WooCommerce

Using WooCommerce means that you will take charge of most security risks and issues. Although WooCommerce still protects your account by two-factor authentication, you will be responsible for PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance, SSL certificates… and so on. Furthermore, if you have third-party apps installed on your site, you have to confront security issues and focus on improving site security.

Squarespace

As a hosted solution, Squarespace tackles all security issues on your behalf like with other concerns. SSL certificates are available on every Squarespace pricing plan, and all payment gateways are PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry – Data Security Standard) compliant.

The two-factor authentication improves the security of your account, and Squarespace takes good care of PCI compliance. Furthermore, you will need to verify account ownership every time you reach out to Customer Support. This really aids in protecting your privacy and content.

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WooCommerce and Squarespace: Pros & Cons

After a thorough comparison between WooCommerce vs Squarespace, let’s take a look at their pros and cons before making your final decision.

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WooCommerce or Squarespace: Which Should You Choose?

With a lot of information provided in this thorough comparison between WooCommerce vs Squarespace, we do hope that you have found a suitable eCommerce platform by now.

WooCommerce vs Squarespace: Which Should You Choose? Actually, there is no one-fit-all answer. The needs and wants of an eCommerce store may vary depending on many factors: business size, budget, product types, or technical knowledge.

WooCommerce is the go-to platform for all-size businesses since it’s completely free at the start and chock-full of attributes. Built on WordPress, WooCommerce comes with an enormous plugin repository that meets all eCommerce needs.

If your business size is small to medium, and your technical knowledge & skills are somewhere between non-techy and intermediate, then Squarespace is for you! It is a solid option if you want to showcase your DIY items or photography portfolio.

If you are still unsure about which option to choose between WooCommerce vs Squarespace, we recommend you take a close look at the detailed WooCommerce review as well as Squarespace analysis before giving your final decision.

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WooCommerce vs Squarespace: FAQs

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WooCommerce vs Squarespace: Final Words

All in all, both WooCommerce and Squarespace are amazing eCommerce platforms that currently provide services to millions of store owners out there. WooCommerce impresses its users with a wide variety of plugins and extensions provided. Meanwhile, Squarespace gives out excellent customer support and the peace of mind of taking care of all security tasks for novice users.

We do hope that the detailed comparison between WooCommerce vs Squarespace above aids you in finding your suitable eCommerce platform. Should you need further assistance regarding WooCommerce and Squarespace, do not hesitate to reach out to the LitExtension support team or join our community for more eCommerce tips!