Squarespace vs Shopify: Which Is Better for Selling Online?

How Much Do Squarespace and Shopify Cost?

Both platforms set prices per billing country, so every figure here is in US dollars as of October 2026. The Squarespace plan prices come from its machine-readable price catalog, updated October 5, 2026, because the HTML pricing page shows each visitor the prices of their own country. The Shopify figures come from its US pricing page.

Read the table by card rate rather than by plan name and the comparison gets simple. Squarespace Core and Shopify Basic are the same deal: $39 a month, or $29 on yearly billing, and 2.9% + 30¢ per online card sale. One step up, Squarespace Plus and Shopify Grow both charge 2.7% + 30¢, for $65 against $105 a month. At the top, Squarespace Advanced and Shopify Advanced both charge 2.5% + 30¢, for $139 against $399.

The plan that breaks the pattern is Squarespace Basic. It is the cheapest subscription at $25 a month, but it adds Squarespace’s own 2% fee to every sale of a physical, download or service product, on top of the card rate. The 12-month section below shows the revenue at which that fee outweighs the cheaper plan.

The trials differ as well. Squarespace gives 14 days with no card required and has no free plan. Shopify starts with a 3-day free trial, then most plans cost $1 a month in the US for the first three months before standard pricing applies; Plus is not part of that offer.

Squarespace’s Old Plans Closed to New Sign-ups in 2026

If you are researching Squarespace with an older article open, the plan names will not match what you see. Squarespace’s current line-up is Basic, Core, Plus and Advanced, and as of February 2026 new subscribers can no longer sign up for Personal, Business or the Commerce plans. Squarespace’s plan guide puts the change in one line:

Two consequences follow. Advice written for “Commerce Basic” or “Commerce Advanced” describes plans you cannot buy any more, with fees that do not match today’s table. And a site on one of those legacy plans cannot go back to it after cancelling: Squarespace’s cancellation guide says reactivating means upgrading to a current plan.

Transaction Fees and Card Rates

A sale on Squarespace carries two separate costs, and Squarespace’s fee guide names them directly:

The processing rate goes to the payment processor; the transaction fee is Squarespace’s own, and on current plans only Basic charges it on commerce sales, at 2% of each sale; Digital Products such as courses carry their own fee on Basic, Core and Plus. Shopify works the other way round. Its plans charge no fee of their own when you use Shopify Payments, but add 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced when a third-party provider processes the payment instead.

That is a real Shopify weakness for a merchant who wants a third-party processor: on Squarespace Core and above, Stripe or PayPal adds no Squarespace commerce fee, while on Shopify a third-party provider such as PayPal costs a share of every sale when you use it instead of Shopify Payments, and a US store cannot activate standalone Stripe at all. If Shopify Payments is your primary provider, PayPal transactions are exempt from Shopify’s third-party fee. Our breakdown of whether Shopify locks you into its payment system covers when the fee bites and when it does not.

Beyond the standard card, the two processors price the extras differently, and neither is cheaper across the board. This page does not price Stripe or PayPal; each publishes its own rates.

For a US store the pattern is this: Squarespace is cheaper on premium cards against Shopify’s two lower tiers, 3.2% against Shopify Basic’s 3.5%, but not against Shopify Advanced. Shopify is cheaper on international cards on every plan: it adds 1%, where Squarespace adds 1.5%. Which one matters depends on how your customers pay.

What Does Each Platform Cost Over 12 Months?

To compare the two as one bill, take a US store that sells only online, pays month to month, takes standard cards through each platform’s own processor and averages $50 an order. The bill is twelve months of the plan, plus the card rate and 30¢ on every order, plus any transaction fee the platform adds. Month-to-month prices are used because they are the stable ones on both pricing pages; the calculator below also switches to yearly billing.

Within each platform, a higher plan buys a lower card rate, which is what moves the cheapest plan as revenue grows. Shopify’s plan guide says it plainly:

Two things stand out. Up to $150,000 a year, Squarespace Core and Shopify Basic cost the same to the dollar, because they share both a price and a card rate. At $600,000 Squarespace’s cheaper upper tiers show: its Advanced plan charges the same 2.5% as Shopify Advanced for a much lower subscription and comes in $792 below the cheapest Shopify option, Grow.

The chart shows why the plan price moves the total so little. At $150,000 and above, card processing is more than 90% of the bill; at $24,000 it is about two thirds, and that is where the plan price weighs most.

Squarespace Basic is the plan to watch. Its 2% fee costs more than Core’s higher subscription once your sales pass $8,400 a year on monthly billing, or $6,000 on yearly billing. At $24,000 a year Basic comes to $1,620 against Core’s $1,308.

The other place the bill moves is the processor. If you take cards through a third-party provider such as PayPal instead of the platform’s own processor, Shopify Basic adds 2% of sales, which is $3,000 a year at $150,000. Squarespace Core and above add no commerce fee, though Squarespace Basic keeps its 2%.

So below $150,000 a year, fees should not decide between these two. Choose on the limits and features in the next sections, and come back to the fee rows only if you run third-party payments or sit high in the revenue range.

Put your own revenue and order size into the calculator below. It uses the same prices and rates as the table, opens on the $150,000 row, and switches to yearly billing or a third-party processor.

How Many Products and Variants Can Each Platform Hold?

Squarespace’s pricing page says there is no limit to the number of products you can sell on its plans, and that holds at plan level. The limit sits on the site: Squarespace’s help center caps a version 7.1 site at 10,000 products, and the product export to CSV also stops at 10,000. Shopify does not restrict the number of products you can sell.

Options are where Shopify is the weaker of the two. A Squarespace product can carry six option types, such as size, colour, material and finish, while a Shopify product carries three; going further on Shopify takes an app from the Shopify App Store or theme code. Variants run the other way: 250 combinations on Squarespace against 2,048 on Shopify.

Shopify’s 2,048 ceiling has a boundary of its own. Its help center notes that some third-party themes, theme app extensions, public apps and sales channels might not support more than 100 variants, so a product above 100 variants needs its theme and apps checked first. Our guide to Shopify product variants covers planning a large option matrix.

Where Shopify Pulls Ahead: In Person, Wholesale and Abroad

Both platforms run a capable online store. The differences grow once you sell somewhere else as well: across a counter, to trade buyers, or into other countries. Shopify also sells through other online sales channels, and some channels have their own eligibility requirements.

Selling in Person

Squarespace lets sellers in the United States and the United Kingdom use the Squarespace app as a point of sale to take payments in person. Its help center is explicit about the hardware boundary: the app works with a supported Square Reader, in the US only, while the Square Register, Stand and Terminal cannot be used with the Squarespace app.

Shopify includes its in-person selling features in every paid plan at no extra cost, and adds POS Pro as a paid per-location add-on for stores that need advanced retail tools. A market stall works on either platform; a shop counter with dedicated hardware, or several locations, points to Shopify. Our Shopify POS app guide covers the hardware and what each tier includes.

Wholesale and B2B

Shopify B2B, with company accounts and wholesale catalogs, is available well below Plus. Shopify’s help center lists the plans:

On Basic, Grow and Advanced you can assign up to three active catalogs across your B2B markets, while assigning a catalog directly to a company stays on Plus. That covers a store with one to three wholesale price lists; our Shopify B2B wholesale guide walks through the setup.

On Squarespace, wholesale buyers get invoices: its invoicing tool sends branded invoices to clients and wholesalers. None of the Squarespace pricing, plan, fee, tax, currency and customer-management pages we read on October 22, 2026 describes a wholesale catalog, customer-specific prices or net payment terms, so a trade business with its own price lists should plan on Shopify. Squarespace’s Extensions directory does list a third-party wholesale extension, Candid Wholesale, which we have not tested.

Selling Abroad and Collecting Tax

For selling abroad, both platforms show the checkout in the buyer’s currency. Squarespace turns multi-currency checkout on by default when you use Squarespace Payments or Stripe, though not when PayPal is your only processor.

Shopify shows local currencies and lets you set manual exchange rates on Shopify Payments, and Shopify Markets goes further: it manages how customers experience your store by location, customer group, retail location or sales channel. Our Shopify Markets guide covers setting a store up per country.

Tax collection is closer than it looks. Squarespace calculates tax automatically on Core and above (see the disagreement table below) and charges a fee each time it does: 0.15% on Core, 0.10% on Plus and 0.05% on Advanced, capped at $0.99 per transaction when the store’s payment currency is USD. Squarespace cannot exempt specific customers from tax.

Shopify Tax is free until your store reaches $100,000 in lifetime sales, for stores created on or after May 13, 2026, after which a per-transaction fee applies by store location and plan; older stores get the same threshold per calendar year.

Before You Commit: Where Squarespace’s Own Pages Disagree

Three Squarespace facts read differently depending on which of its pages you open. The table shows both sides, as read on October 22, 2026, and what to do while they disagree.

Where Squarespace Is the Better Choice

A comparison on a Shopify-focused site should say plainly where the other side wins, and Shopify’s own comparison page does:

If courses or memberships are the business, the Digital Products fee is the number to compare, because on Squarespace it falls to zero only on Advanced. Our guide to selling digital products on Shopify covers the Shopify side of that comparison.

Squarespace or Shopify: Find Your Route

The verdict table at the top answers by profile; this quiz answers by combination. Five questions cover what you sell, how big the catalog is, where else you sell, where your customers are and where you are starting from. Hard limits route you first, and the rest is weighed.

Already on Squarespace? Move, Stay or Add Shopify

Moving an existing store is a separate decision from choosing where to start, because a move costs exports, redirects and a cutover. Move when a limit from this page is already costing you sales; stay while nothing is. Our Squarespace-to-Shopify migration guide weighs when moving pays and when staying wins, then walks through the move itself.

Two facts to know before you plan it. Shopify’s Store Migration app lists Square, WooCommerce, Etsy, Wix, Amazon, eBay, Clover and Lightspeed as sources, not Squarespace, as of October 22, 2026, and Shopify’s help center covers Squarespace in a separate migration guide. And a site on a legacy Squarespace plan cannot be reactivated on that plan once cancelled.

There is also a middle path. If the site itself is worth keeping, you can leave it on Squarespace and sell through Shopify’s Buy Button. Squarespace allows JavaScript in a Code Block on Core, Plus and Advanced but not on the current Basic plan, so a site on Basic has to upgrade first. Our guide to embedding Shopify with the Buy Button covers the setup.

The Bottom Line

With Squarespace Core and Shopify Basic level on fees, the deciding question is what the store needs to become.

Frequently Asked Questions