Shopify vs Squarespace: pricing, features and which to choose

Shopify was founded in Ottawa, Canada, in 2006 by Tobi Lütke and partners after they built software for their own snowboard store, and it grew into one of the largest commerce platforms in the world. It serves first-time sellers, small brands, fast-growing direct-to-consumer companies and large enterprises on Shopify Plus. Merchants use it to run an online store, accept payments through Shopify Payments, sell in person with Shopify POS, sync with marketplaces and social channels, and manage inventory, shipping, taxes and customers in one admin. A large App Store, a theme store and a big network of agencies and developers extend what stores can do.

A Shopify store starts from a theme customized in a visual editor or built headless with Hydrogen. The platform handles hosting, checkout, product catalogs, discounts, gift cards, B2B pricing, multiple currencies and languages, and more than 200 reports. Shopify Messaging sends marketing emails, Shopify Flow automates workflows, Shopify Inbox handles customer chat, and Shop Pay offers fast checkout across millions of stores. The Winter '26 Edition added Rollouts for scheduling theme changes and running A/B tests, and SimGym, an app that simulates shopper behavior with AI agents trained on purchase data so merchants can test changes before launch. Developers build apps through Shopify's APIs.

Shopify's strengths are its ease of setup, reliable hosting and checkout, the largest app and theme marketplace in ecommerce, strong point-of-sale tools, a capable AI assistant included at no extra cost and early support for selling inside AI chats. Its weaknesses are costs that add up through apps and transaction fees, less design freedom than custom builds and lock-in to Shopify Payments for the best rates. WooCommerce is open source and runs on WordPress. BigCommerce includes more features without apps. Wix and Squarespace suit simpler stores with strong site builders. Choose Shopify if you want a dependable platform that can grow from first sale to enterprise.

Squarespace was founded by Anthony Casalena in 2003 and is one of the best-known hosted website builders, alongside Wix and Webflow. It went public in 2021 and was taken private by private equity firm Permira in a $7.2 billion deal that closed in October 2024. The company also runs a domain registrar, after buying Google Domains' customer accounts in 2023, and sells scheduling through Acuity, which it acquired in 2019. Its appeal is design quality with little effort. Templates are polished, typography and spacing come configured, and the editor limits choices so sites rarely look broken. That suits photographers, artists, restaurants and service businesses more than complex applications.

A new site starts either from one of more than 200 templates or from Blueprint AI. Blueprint asks about the business, goals and preferred style through forms and checkboxes, then generates pages, layouts, colors and fonts, which you refine in Fluid Engine, the drag-and-drop editor for version 7.1 sites. Built-in AI writes and rewrites page copy, product descriptions, blog posts and email campaigns. Commerce covers physical and digital products, services, courses, memberships and invoices, with Squarespace Payments, shipping labels and automated tax. Scheduling, email marketing and a link-in-bio tool sit in the same account. Custom CSS and JavaScript are available on paid plans for designers who want more control.

Squarespace's limits show up as sites grow. App and plugin choice is narrow next to Wix or WordPress, blog and SEO controls are basic, and the editor does not allow the layout freedom of Webflow or Framer. Store owners with large catalogs usually move to Shopify. Wix has a free plan, more apps and its own AI site builder. Webflow and Framer suit designers who want pixel-level control and interactions. Durable and Hostinger Horizons generate a site from a prompt for less money. Pick Squarespace if you want a good-looking portfolio, restaurant or service site quickly and care more about design than extensibility.