Square vs Squarespace: Which Platform Is Ideal For Your Business

This article will analyze and compare different aspects of Square and Squarespace, including the key differences, pricing plans, ease of use, themes and designs, sales and marketing features, security, and customer support.

Key Takeaways

• Template library and customization – Squarespace provides more professionally designed and customizable template options, while Square offers limited templates for those prioritizing ease of use over visual differentiation. 
• Built-in features and scalability – Squarespace includes more robust ecommerce, marketing, and management features. At the same time, Square focuses on easy inventory handling and essential selling, 

Square vs. Squarespace: Key Differences

Here are some critical differences between Square and Squarespace: 

• Templates: Square has a more limited template library with fewer customization options, while Squarespace offers professionally designed templates in various styles. 
• Features: Squarespace has more built-in ecommerce and marketing features, while Square focuses on ease of use and inventory management. 
• Pricing: Square has lower monthly pricing, but limits arise on free accounts. Squarespace plans are pricier but include more functionality. 
• Customization: Square templates have basic customization within set structures. Squarespace allows extensive design changes and rearrangements.

Square vs. Squarespace: Pros and Cons

Square

Here are more elaborated pros and cons of using Square as an ecommerce platform

Pros: 

• Easy to use interface: Square’s dashboard utilizes an intuitive drag-and-drop layout and prominent categorization of tools to streamline navigation for entrepreneurs of all technical skill levels. Selling processes are simplified from setup through everyday operations. 
• Affordable pricing tiers: Square’s free plan allows merchants to test the platform’s core features without commitment, while basic paid subscriptions start affordably low. This removes barriers preventing experimentation or growth for emerging ventures with limited budgets. 
• Robust inventory controls: Comprehensive stock tracking functionalities empower sellers to optimize supply chains through real-time analytics of sales velocities and reorder points. Automated fulfillment and order syncing further enhance process efficiency. 

Cons: 

• Restricted payment integrations: Relying solely on Square’s hosted processing potentially incurs avoidable transaction fees compared to platforms supporting multiple processors. This extra cost diminishes profits over time, and some buyers prefer non-Square payment methods. 
• Basic storefront designs: Square’s few out-of-the-box themes emphasize practical functionality over aesthetic brand-building opportunities. Merchants have limited creative control to differentiate their online shops through visual identity. Constrained customizations: 
• Required IT coding knowledge: While Square templates keep the technical setup simple, their rigidity constrains unique personalizations that showcase diverse product assortments appealingly. Non-coder merchants cannot fully realize their design visions.

Squarespace

Here are more detailed pros and cons of using Squarespace as an ecommerce platform: 

Pros: 

• Beautiful Templates: Squarespace has beautifully designed, professionally made templates that allow merchants to create polished, visually appealing stores without design experience. Templates are fully responsive and work seamlessly across devices. 
• Robust Content Management: The intuitive block-based editor empowers merchants to quickly develop and organize blog content, pages, menus, etc. Integration with SEO tools like XML Sitemaps helps content perform well in search engines. 
• Advanced Media Capabilities: Merchants can easily upload, manage, and organize large image/file libraries. Bulk upload tools simplify adding multiple assets simultaneously. Flexible display options allow showcasing media to its full potential. 
• Cost Effectiveness: Even basic plans have no platform transaction fees, keeping recurring costs low. Monthly pricing is affordable for individuals and small businesses. The free trial allows for fully exploring features. 
• Extensive Customization: Through CSS/JavaScript insertions and page-specific styling, experienced merchants can modify templates to achieve tailored visual identities and complex functionality. 
• Embedded Apps: Squarespace’s robust third-party App Store supplements core tools through integrated extensions for analytics, marketing automation, payment processing, and more. 

Cons: 

• Payment Options Limited: Processors offered on entry plans incur additional transaction fees. Some payment methods like BECS are unavailable. 
• Cookies & Tax Compliance: Automated solutions are less comprehensive than competitors for advanced GDPR cookie management and VAT/sales tax. 
• Limited Google integrations: Features like XML Sitemaps and structured data are basic compared to dedicated CMS platforms. 
• Mobile Point of Sale Limited: Integration is only offered in select regions, limiting in-person sales capabilities for international merchants. 
• Limited Developer Access: Coding customizations involve constraints compared to self-hosted platforms with complete tech control.

Square vs. Squarespace: Detailed Comparison

Pricing Plans

Square

Square Online provides affordable pricing plans to suit various types of online stores. The detailed pricing plans include:

• Free plan: $0 per month + processing fees
• Plus plan: $29+ per month + processing fees
• Premium plan: custom price + processing fees

The free plan is an excellent starting point, with zero upfront costs beyond the standard 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee per transaction through Square payments. However, it has limited features like exclusive use of Square as the sole processor. 

For more advanced functionality, Square offers valuable paid tiers: 

• Professional ($16/mo): A monthly fee unlocks expanded inventory tools, abandoned cart recovery, and customized checkout pages. Live chat support is also included. 
• Performance ($26/mo): Besides the above, subscriptions gain access to order notifications, gift cards, loyalty programs, and promotions to bolster sales. 
• Premium ($72/mo): As the top-tier plan, merchants benefit from exhaustive analytics, multiple user accounts, optimized taxes, and multi-location inventory syncing ideal for growing businesses. There are also discounts for annual commitments. 

All plans remove Square branding and provide unlimited storage capacity for optimized performance. Higher subscriptions also open integration with third parties like Facebook and QuickBooks to streamline operations. 

By scaling features and costs proportionately, Square’s versatile pricing models make building an online presence attainable, whether just starting or seeking more robust tools for expansion. Affordability at every level is a significant advantage.

Squarespace

Squarespace offers a comprehensive range of affordable pricing plans to suit varied business needs: 

• Personal Plan ($16/mo): Ideal for primary sites but excludes e-commerce capabilities. 
• Business Plan ($23/mo): Enables essential selling features like an online storefront and unlimited products. 
• Basic Commerce Plan ($27/mo): Provides complete transaction processing at no additional cost, removing fees on sales. Product listings and orders are supported. 
• Advanced Commerce Plan ($49/mo): Marketers gain advanced tools like discount codes, multi-user roles, and comprehensive analytics. Automated cart recovery and shipping updates aid optimization. 

While the Personal plan focuses solely on standard websites, the other options progressively unlock expanded online store functionality. Both commerce tiers allow unlimited items to be sold. 

Merchants primarily benefit from higher tiers through acquisition features, like promotions, and order administration assistance, such as package tracking integration. They provide a complete commerce solution overall. 

With clear roles and competitive monthly pricing starting from $30, Squarespace makes professional e-commerce readily accessible to businesses large and small through a suite of capable plans. Its offerings present a low-cost pathway for online selling.

Ease Of Use

When choosing an ecommerce platform, ease of use is paramount. Both Square Online Store and Squarespace prioritize intuitive interfaces. 

With Square, merchants can comfortably sell physical and digital goods through a simplified workflow. Creating a storefront is a breeze using Square’s themes and customization options. Product and inventory management tools are logically organized inside Square. 

Meanwhile, Squarespace elevates small businesses through attractive, professional designs. Merchants appreciate its live WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) editing. Merchants can edit the page elements, colors, and images as quickly as when using the drag-and-drop features. No coding skills are required to achieve polished store layouts or marketing landings. 

Overall, both platforms guide new sellers from website conception to optimized selling with clarity. Square presents item listings and dashboard navigation. Squarespace’s clean layout keeps navigation frustration-free. 

Below is a detailed comparison between Square and Squarespace regarding Ease Of Use:

Signing Up

When setting up their online stores, merchants want the signup and onboarding process to be seamless. 

Both Square and Squarespace aim to deliver just that, though Squarespace’s approach impressed us more: Square’s signup involves basic information entry before accessing the dashboard. While guides there help navigation later on, merchants don’t receive any instructions upfront.

By contrast, Squarespace immerses new users in a guided onboarding. Upon choosing a template, merchants are walked through customizable elements using its builder interface. This compares favorably to Square, which shows tutorials only post-registration. 

With Squarespace, setup assistance is available early when first engaging the template editor. Merchants can immediately see how to modify colors, fonts, pages, and more, all within the welcome tour. This smooth introduction sets them up for success compared to consulting help articles later.

While Square provides helpful resources, Squarespace eased confusion through proactive guidance during initial template exploration. Its onboarding streamlines the earliest steps and transitions merchants directly to refinement. A seamless signup experience is key for both platforms, and Squarespace delivered the slicker introduction through contextualized onboarding within the editor itself.

Dashboard and Products

Square’s dashboard provides a clean, straightforward experience through an intuitive left sidebar menu. Merchants can quickly view key metrics like sales and navigate between essential sections such as products and categories from the dashboard. This simplified and focused interface makes important tasks readily accessible.

In Square, basic product information can be directly edited from the template editor. However, merchants must switch back to the dashboard to make most changes. This separated workflow is less efficient. 

On the other hand, Squarespace’s dashboard is more advanced, housing administrative controls and store customization tools. While fully featured, merchants must spend more time familiarizing themselves with all the available options and locating needed features.

Squarespace allows editing many product details directly within the template editor interface. Merchants can preview changes in real time and continue refining the store layout simultaneously without leaving context. This centralized and streamlined process is more convenient overall.

SEO

Square makes SEO implementation quite simple through guided assistance during product uploading. Merchants are walked through adding necessary metadata fields like titles and descriptions that help rank. This hands-on approach removes much of the complexity for novice users.

However, the templates provided may not accommodate advanced customizations that power users rely on. Square’s options focus solely on essential on-page elements. 

Squarespace; however, requires more self-learning to optimize stores but equips merchants with more robust technical controls over the long run. Its tools go beyond titles to allow specifying structured data, XML sitemaps, and additional tags.

Helpful explanatory prompts remain, yet the learning curve is steeper than Square’s step-by-step guidance. For committed SEO projects, Squarespace allows merchants to test non-surface-level strategies. One such advanced feature automatically converts image captions to alternative text tags, benefiting image rankings. 

Domains

Both Square and Squarespace simplify domain management for merchants. Key aspects include: 

• Connecting Existing Domain Merchants with domains elsewhere can link them seamlessly to their store on either platform when paying for a business plan. 
• Procuring a New Domain Merchants can search for and purchase domains directly from Square and Squarespace account dashboards without external registrars. 
• Streamlined Administration Managing domains alongside other website details within a single dashboard environment streamlines operations. Cost-Effectiveness Domains are included annually for free on initial paid plans, then renewed at affordable rates – $20/year on Squarespace versus $12/year on Square. 

Both platforms help users remove obstacles that could otherwise overcomplicate websites for new entrepreneurs by centralizing domain services and initially waiving registration fees. Their integrated solutions promote accessibility and usability. 

Merchants benefit from simplified domain handling irrespective of domain origin or the need for new names. This allows smooth planning and launches conducive to growing a successful online presence.

Themes and Designs

Square

Square: Easy, but Limited

Square doesn’t offer a vast library of templates. You can filter your search to retail, restaurant, service, and nonprofit templates, but there’s not a lot of variation between them.

Square’s templates can assist merchants in creating clean storefronts that function well but lack distinction. However, customizing aspects like fonts, colors, and logos within templates is straightforward, allowing quick personalization within the same format.

The templates provide a straightforward foundation that adheres to best practices without a solid visual identity. For merchants prioritizing functionality over sophisticated branding, Square’s limited customization remains sufficient. 

However, if visual differentiation and immersive storytelling are core goals, Squarespace’s more extensive options better support ambitious custom designs that can powerfully define a brand. The platform exemplifies for those seeking transformative templates to imprint their brand personality.

Squarespace

Squarespace: Stunning Designs

Squarespace templates impart a polished look with extensive formatting options. The templates showcase high production value with diverse layouts catering to varied needs. 

Squarespace further assists users in decision-making by detailing each template’s embedded capabilities. Its library aids intelligent template selection and the manifestation of vision in a way Square’s more restricted options do not. 

Every Squarespace ecommerce template has a Products page to display your items. Customizing any page on your Squarespace template is easy, and you have more freedom than you would with Square.

The platform also empowers fluid tweaks to page elements without constraints. Users appreciated this adaptability to shape templates according to shifting business needs or creative visions. 

Squarespace’s inclusive custom features streamline essential tasks while preserving ongoing refinement flexibility. This tailored, versatile presentation diverges favorably from Square’s more standardized framework confining modifications.

Ecommerce Features

Square

Square offers an accessible starting point for evaluating ecommerce functionality through a free tier enabling fundamental sales. However, its limited customization, including ads and default domains, is an obstacle for many users.

Square paid plans can help broaden the number of eCommerce features merchants can use. For instance, in the higher plans, Square’s inventory control streamlines resupply, counting, returns, and losses through an intuitive interface, systematizing necessary yet mundane operations. 

While facilitating exploratory testing dedicated to essentials, Square may not meet longer-term aspirations alone. Merchants expanding beyond the pilot stage often demand holistic platforms as comprehensive as Squarespace, with robust integrated solutions nourishing growth. 

Squarespace

While Squarespace entrance costs exceed Square’s, the value it brings can match with Square premium integrations. Squarespace invests in long-term success by furnishing solutions at advanced levels, allowing users to develop their stores with multiple eCommerce features in the future.

Sales and Marketing Features

A comparative analysis of Square and Squarespace’s entry-level ecommerce plan offerings: Square Professional Plan ($12/month): 

• Website pop-ups 
• Discount promo codes
• Order information emails 

Squarespace Business Plan ($23/month): 

• Website pop-ups 
• Discount promo codes 
• Order information emails 
• Website analytics 

Both support essential promotional tools like pop-ups and coupon codes. Both also provide order updates via email. However, only Squarespace’s Business plan includes analytics. This dashboard insight allows merchants to optimize marketing strategies using visitor data, contributing more value relative to its higher, still accessible, cost. 

While Square offers a lower initial investment, the Squarespace package furnishes a standard suite with additional performance tracking utilities absent from its counterpart’s most affordable option. This disparity demonstrates Squarespace’s focus on empowering data-driven growth from inaugural spending levels.

Product Management

Managing inventory is a crucial task for online sellers. Both Square and Squarespace aim to simplify this process. 

Square seamlessly syncs inventory between physical and digital stores. Items sold in person are deducted from the online stock automatically. Merchants can import, organize, and modify products through a straightforward dashboard. Advanced features include bulk uploads, stock alerts, and level tracking. 

Meanwhile, Squarespace’s inventory tools are less extensive. However, merchants can check stock from mobile apps and set up subscriptions. Products are created via intuitive templates specifying details, photos, and prices. Self-service tools enable bulk editing. 

Moreover, while Square offers deeper integration for omnichannel sellers, Squarespace remains user-friendly. Each platform furnishes stock organization and optimization options, smoothing the inventory management workload. Their solutions endeavor to streamline a fundamental yet demanding merchant function. 

Payment and Transaction Fees

Payment Options

While Square integrates with its payment processor, limiting options to just Square, Apple Pay, and Google Pay on its basic plan, Squarespace offers more flexibility. Squarespace allows popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Afterpay. 

This is preferable to merchants, as more payment choices result in higher checkout conversion rates. It’s also better for customers to have their preferred payment brands accepted. Regardless of your builder or processor, payment processing fees remain mostly consistent, such as Stripe, Square, and PayPal charge 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. 

Transaction Fees

When choosing a website builder, it’s essential to understand payment processing and transaction fees. 

Square charges 2.9% + $0.30 on all plans as a payment processing fee using its processor. There are no additional transaction charges. 

Regarding Squarespace, it only charges a 3% transaction fee on its Business plan. Its Basic and Advanced Commerce plans have no transaction fees. 

Security

When choosing a website builder for ecommerce, ensuring payment security should be a top priority. Both Square and Squarespace offer robust security measures to give merchants peace of mind. 

Specifically, these all-in-one platforms provide: 

• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates: SSL encryption protects customer payment details by encrypting data transferred between the store server and browser. 
• PCI Compliance: Square and Squarespace are certified under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This strict security standard is required for any business accepting major credit/debit cards. By using these approved platforms, merchants are also PCI compliant. 

Customer support

Square employs a “live chat” option utilizing an AI assistant capable of rapid responses. However, its lack of a human agent limited complex issue resolution compared to directly interacting with a support representative. 

On the other hand, Squarespace offered live person-to-person support through varied contact methods, allowing complicated problems to be addressed thoroughly. Representatives displayed expert product knowledge to diagnose and solve issues for users. 

While Square’s chatbot provided helpful initial assistance, particularly for basic questions, its automation potentially restricts support compared to Squarespace’s fully staffed customer care team available for any member query or difficulty. This human element strengthened Squarespace’s positioning in adequately serving users.

Which platform is suitable for my business?

Here are more detailed descriptions of who should use Squarespace and Square Online: 

Squarespace 

• Creators/Artists: Those looking to visually represent their brand and showcase their work in a stylish manner. Squarespace’s customizable designs cater well to unique artistic expressions. 
• Small Online Boutiques: Those selling a curated collection of products will benefit from Squarespace’s appeal as a website and an online storefront. Its tools make it easy to establish an aesthetic brand. 
• Growing Businesses: Its robust features provide capabilities to attract more customers over time through content, email campaigns, and analytics. Advanced options allow tracking business expansion. 

Square Online 

• New Digital Sellers: Its straightforward interface, free starting plan, and integrated payments make it approachable for novices venturing into ecommerce. Brick & Mortar 
• Shifting Online: Square’s seamless syncing of in-person and online transaction data streamlines the process of reaching more customers virtually.
• Fast Setups With Fewer Skills: Beginners seeking an easy yet fully functional way to start taking online orders right away are well equipped using Square Online’s uncomplicated dashboard.

Square vs. Squarespace: FAQs

Bottom line

In summary, Square and Squarespace offer merchants beneficial commerce solutions and customer support. While Square provides a more straightforward starting point with additional phone support, Squarespace’s more robust features power business growth from essential to advanced operations. Overall, each platform suits varying needs depending on scope and aspirations.