You’ve come to the right spot if you’re searching for an e-commerce solution and are having trouble deciding which is best for you.
We’ve taken our microscope to three of the most widely used e-commerce platforms available today: Squarespace, Shopify and Wix.
We’ve put the three well-known website builders on the internet against one another in this Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix comparison to help you decide which is best for your online business.
Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix: Background Overview
Among website builders, Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace are the heavyweight champions.
These platforms are all very simple to use. Without any technical knowledge, you can easily create and manage websites with them.
Shopify
Source: Shopify app store
Shopify is a specialized e-commerce platform that provides online businesses with a wide range of features and integrations.
Founded in 2004, Shopify is a hosted e-commerce platform. It is the best choice for beginners who have no prior experience with web development, coding, or programming to launch and run their own online store.
Source: Shopify app store
With countless apps and hundreds of built-in features, Shopify assists users in creating scalable online stores. Products can be sold straight from your website, as well as through a variety of marketplaces and social media platforms.
This platform is well-known for its intuitive user interface, which makes setting up and managing an online store simple even for those without any technical experience.
Source: Gymshark
Presently, over 4 million active websites worldwide utilize Shopify. Among the most well-known Shopify websites are YEEZY SUPPLY, Gymshark, Jeffree Star Cosmetics, and ColourPop.
Squarespace
Source: Squarespace
Squarespace offers a one-stop shop for designing sophisticated, useful websites, including e-commerce platforms. Without needing to be an expert in web development, you can create a polished and eye-catching e-commerce site with Squarespace.
Beautifully designed templates are one of Squarespace’s distinguishing features. The responsive design of these templates guarantees that websites display well on both desktop and mobile devices.
Source: Squarespace
Squarespace makes it easy for people and companies to create websites that look professional without any coding knowledge. It is frequently used for e-commerce sites, blogs, portfolios, and business websites.
Squarespace currently hosts almost 3 million active websites globally, which includes some well-known brands like Skillshare, Vagaro, and Vimeo.
Wix
Source: Wix
Wix is an adaptable website builder with ecommerce features for setting up an online store.
It is a cloud-based platform that was established in 2006 and markets itself as the industry leader in website creation. Wix is a user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder that’s easy to use for website owners and a developer’s paradise for complete beginners.
Source: Wix
Wix is ideal for people who want to build a website but are not familiar with coding. It works well for small businesses, blogs, portfolios, personal websites, and even certain e-commerce requirements.
About 8 million websites worldwide are currently powered by Wix.
Among the most well-known Wix websites are Sharethrough, Yotpo, Mananalu, Mane and TerraLiving.
Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix Comparison: E-commerce Features
E-commerce store owners want an easy-to-use platform that has all the features they require.
Thankfully, the dashboards of Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace are all simple to use. You can manage every part of your website and online sales from this point on. You can handle everything from changing your billing details to adding products to editing content from a single, central location.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping has become more and more popular in e-commerce lately. Thus, the list of e-commerce functionalities is incomplete without dropshipping!
With the dropshipping business model, you delegate order fulfillment and inventory management to a third party. Dropshipping entails giving the dropshipping providers access to all order details and allowing the products to be shipped straight to your customers.
Shopify: a platform optimized for dropshipping
Source: Shopify
Shopify offers strong features, specialized applications and integrations that make it the best platform for dropshipping
It has partnerships with well-known dropshipping companies like Spocket, AliDropship, and CJ Dropshipping.
Retailers can also get specialized dropshipping starter kits that include resources and tutorials to get them started.
Squarespace: dropshipping with third-party integrations
Source: Squarespace
Dropshipping is supported by Squarespace as well but less options compared to Shopify.
Applying different providers through third-party applications.
Wix: dropshipping options available
Source: Wix
You must link your Wix store to dropshipping apps on the Wix App Market before launching your dropshipping business. This platform offers a smooth selling experience by collaborating with numerous well-known dropshipping businesses, such as Spocket and Modalyst.
Dropshipping is available on Wix, though it is less extensive than it is on Shopify.
- Fewer specialized dropshipping management applications
- A smaller selection of applications than Shopify’s is available on App Market to improve your online presence.
Print On Demand
This type of selling involves adding personalized designs to merchandise which are subsequently printed and delivered by the printing company of your choice each time a customer places an order.
Shopify
With its much wider range of POD service integrations, Shopify emerges victorious once more.
Squarespace
Squarespace offers even fewer options, with just a few POD tools such as Printify and Printful.
Wix
Print on demand is supported by Wix but there are far fewer integration options.
By connecting your Wix store to well-known print-on-demand (POD) services like Printful and Printify, you can also sell POD products with Wix.
Inventory management
Inventory management is an important part of running an online store. Keeping track of your inventory can help you prevent out-of-stock situations and identify when additional products are needed. Luckily, all three platforms including Shopify, Wix & Squarespace, can cover this area.
Shopify Inventory management
Source: Shopify
Shopify is strong in inventory management because it provides a comprehensive inventory package. You can easily track all inventory activities, stay organized, and prevent expensive mistakes with Shopify’s inventory management solution. With Shopify, you can do a number of things, like:
- Arranging and stowing merchandise
- Taking care of product variances
- Counting stock and assigning barcodes
- Advanced inventory, variant, and product option management
Squarespace Inventory management
Source: Squarespace
Squarespace’s eCommerce features are comparatively simple, so there isn’t much to see in terms of inventory.
You can search and manage product inventory from one place using the inventory panel and also from the mobile app.
It requires integration of additional apps to expand and facilitate inventory management tasks
Wix Inventory management
Source: Wix
Wix users can manage and update their inventory. More specifically, you can manually set the inventory status for each product as well as automatically track their stock. The only fields you can fill out to monitor the store inventory are inventory, SKU, and weight.
Point of sale (POS)
By integrating your offline sales into the online system, the POS feature enables you to connect your online and retail stores.
Shopify POS
Source: Shopify
Every Shopify plan comes with a built-in point of sale system. However, you must be enrolled in one of Shopify’s three basic plans or Shopify Plus in order to access additional features like hardware integration and staff management.
Shopify has a feature-rich POS system that goes beyond the basics – much better than Wix and Shopify. Its checkout system supports all major debit & credit cards and also a gift card system.
Shopify POS is accessible anywhere in the world, but the store must be listed among the 175+ countries that accept Shopify Payments.
Squarespace POS
Squarespace offers a point of sale (POS) system only to the Commerce plans users. In collaboration with Square, the Squarespace POS allows you to:
- Taking cash payments in person at physical stores
- Provide in-person savings
- Provide a breathtakingly designed experience
Wix POS
The Wix POS solution is currently only available to certain retailers in the US and Canada who have verified Wix Payments accounts.
Wix POS has all the features a business requires, such as:
- Establishing a flawless shopping encounter
- Mobile POS to accept payments anywhere
- During events, door-to-door sales
It has also collaborated with Square to offer POS features, but it is available only to Wix Business Premium Plan users.
Integrations
Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify users can extend their store’s core functionality by integrating with thousands of other apps available.
Shopify Apps Store
The Shopify App Store has over 9,000 apps in total, making Shopify undoubtedly distinguishable from other e-commerce platforms. The apps are focused on e-commerce, in contrast to the Wix app store, which primarily offers plugins for generic websites.
Squarespace Extensions
Squarespace offers a limited number of extensions (40) and all of which come from third parties. You can still use Squarespace if you just require the most basic apps for your website.
The app categories include shipping & fulfillment, finance, inventory & products, and sales & marketing.
Wix App Market
There are currently over 250 apps, both developed by Wix and by outside developers, on the Wix App Market. Your business model will determine which app categories are available to you. These categories include:
- Marketing
- Sell online
- Communication
Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix Comparison: Ecommerce Functionality
Ease of Use
Squarespace, Shopify, and Wix users find it easy to navigate the system’s intuitive interface and explore the website creation tools. All three platforms help users at every stage of the process—from building to maintaining and administering websites. You can easily access all the main features from the dashboard.
Customization and templates
Choosing a platform with a variety of contemporary, responsive, adjustable, and useful designs is crucial. Beautiful themes from Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify are made for a variety of website purposes including portfolios, restaurants, blogs, businesses and artists.
Shopify
There are over 180 Shopify themes available on the Shopify theme store, both free and paid. Similar to Squarespace and Wix, Shopify is a drag-and-drop application. You can see that all of the fundamental website features are available for customization in the image below.
Shopify users can also use CSS and HTML to customize Shopify themes. In contrast to hosted solutions like Squarespace and Wix, Shopify creates its own templating language called Shopify Liquid, written in Ruby.
Squarespace
The Squarespace website builder is a dominant name in top website builders for artists with beautifully designed templates. Currently, on Squarespace template market, there are 168 templates. Drag-and-drop sections are also available in Squarespace, but you don’t have complete control over editing your website. Squarespace websites still have specific areas where each element must be placed.
Customizing themes with CSS and HTML is also possible with Squarespace. That being said, custom codes are only meant to be used to change backgrounds, colors and fonts for Squarespace users. Squarespace does not support code-based solutions, so using CSS to modify other website elements may result in display problems because it is incompatible with the current template.
Wix
With over 800 templates more than 300 of which are free Wix has the largest collection. This platform is thought to have the best drag-and-drop functionality out of the three.
Users of Wix can literally drag and drop any component or section to personalize it to their liking.
Additionally, Wix users can customize their themes using the CSS and HTML languages. However, you won’t be able to switch your Wix theme once you’ve selected it.
Responsiveness
Wix builds a mobile-friendly version of their websites automatically. They cannot, however, be fully optimized. This is a result of Wix’s pages using an absolute positioning strategy. This way, rather than using the user’s screen as a reference, site elements are positioned by pixels. Thus, in order to fully adjust themes for varying screen resolutions, Wix users must use the mobile editor.
Mobile device responsiveness is a feature of Squarespace and Shopify templates. On PCs, tablets, and smartphones, among other devices, visitors can easily navigate your website. Given that mobile traffic now makes up the majority of website traffic, this is advantageous for Squarespace and Shopify.
Shopify vs Squarespace vs Wix Comparison: Pricing Plans
The first thing you look for in an eCommerce platform search is price. You must be clear about the costs involved in moving your brick and mortar business, whether it is a small startup or an established enterprise, online. We have provided you with the comprehensive pricing plans of Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace below so you can quickly assess each e-commerce platform.
Shopify: plans to suit the size of your store
Shopify offers three subscription plans with rates ranging from $29 to $299 per month for annual billing. Available features vary according to the plan chosen.
- Shopify Basic: $29/month, ideal for small stores
- Shopify: $79/month, suitable for medium-sized stores
- Shopify Advanced: $299/month, for larger businesses with more specific needs.
Squarespace: affordable rates for small businesses
Squarespace offers four subscription plans with rates ranging from $16 to $49 per month. E-commerce functionalities are available from the “Business” plan.
- Personal: $16/month, ideal for a showcase site with no e-commerce features
- Business: $23/month, suitable for small online stores
- Basic Commerce: $27/month, suitable for medium-sized stores with more advanced e-commerce needs
- Advanced Commerce: $49/month, for businesses with specific, more complex needs
Wix: flexible pricing for different budgets
Wix offers a range of subscription plans with rates from $17 to $159 per month for e-commerce functionality.
- Light: $17/month, suitable for small online stores
- Core: $29/month, suitable for companies with more advanced e-commerce needs
- Business: $36/month, for larger companies with specific needs
- Business Elite: $159/month, for scaling business
Here are a few tips for new entrepreneurs to start right:
- You can start a business with a $10K budget and there are numerous options for that.
- If you like the idea of starting your own business with the people whom you trust most, fun and profitable family business ideas that you will find very interesting.
- Make use of research tools like commerce inspector to see your competitors’ insights legally like tracking their store’s product data, third-party apps, ad campaigns, and more.
Which is the Best Ecommerce Platform for your Online Store?
These three eCommerce platforms: Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace are among the best available right now and offer an abundance of features to help with website development and management.
Your unique needs and priorities will be the primary determinant of which of Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify to choose. Every one of these e-commerce platforms has benefits and drawbacks that should be taken into account. Shopify is notable for its sophisticated e-commerce capabilities and abundance of integrations, whereas Wix provides more customization options. On the other hand, Squarespace is well known for its exquisite designs and premium templates.
Don’t be afraid to use the free trials that these platforms are offering in order to test them out and see which one best suits your needs. To ensure you make an informed decision, take the time to compare the features, costs and usability of each.
Quick comparisons blogs:
