shopify vs. squarespace
Published on: January 30 2023 by pipiads
Table of Contents About shopify vs. squarespace
- Shopify vs Squarespace (Which is the best eCommerce Builder?)
- Shopify vs Squarespace Review 2022 - Pros and Cons you should know!
- Shopify vs Squarespace: Where's the Best Home for Your Store in 2021?
- Shopify vs Squarespace: Which is the Best eCommerce Platform?
- Shopify vs Wix 2022 (Don't choose WRONG!)
- Shopify vs Squarespace | When to use each one..
Shopify vs Squarespace (Which is the best eCommerce Builder?)
so shopify and squarespace are two absolutely dominant players in the website building space, but that doesn't mean they're both great choices for you. in fact, they're both very different and they're really good at really different things, but it's not especially obvious for most people which one you should be getting. so in this video, we're going to compare the two head-to-head and see which one's actually the better builder for your needs. whether you are a personal brand, selling stuff, drop shipping, a fundraiser, it doesn't matter what you're looking for. we're going to tok about that in this video and help you decide which of these is actually the right one to choose. so before we get into the first category, i want to start off with a little bit of a background with both of these builders, and i think this is really going to kind of explain the intent of both of them, and that'll foreshadow and explain a lot throughout the rest of this video. so let's start off with squarespace. squarespace was founded in 2003, and originally it was really just to help people make general websites, and it's kind of expanded from there. now you're able to host podcasts on here. it's fantastik for blogging, single page websites, multi-page websites and, of course, e-commerce as well, and so because it's kind of well-rounded, there, it's really been our go-to recommendation, just as a blanket recommendation. if somebody just says, hey, mike, i want to make a website, and they don't say anything else, i'm just going to say: have you tried squarespace? and that's really a go-to for that one. but because they're kind of so well-rounded, they're not hyper-focused in any one category. now on the flip side, we're seeing shopify was founded in 2006 and they are hyper focused. they're extremely focused on one partikular client and that is the e-commerce user, the e-commerce merchant, anybody looking to sell online. that is really exclusively what shopify does. now, that doesn't mean that they're always better because, like i said, squarespace has a lot of those peripheral tools. so, for example, if you are somebody looking to have an online store but you also want to have a podcast, a couple about me pages, and you really want a well-rounded website but you still want to sell stuff, squarespace might be your better option there, and we'll tok more about that in a minute. but just keep in mind that the main intent of shopify is absolutely to be selling to clients, so that's going to be why it's more scalable in general. you're going to see a lot of big e-commerce-based stuff around them, a lot more payments being accepted and things of that nature, and, with that being said, that kind of brings us into the very first category of this video. i want to tok about the pricing options. now, pricing with these, as i've mentioned before, is really where you can again see where these two are really oriented. so starting with shopify, being that they're so oriented for e-commerce, their base one is actually 29 per month and their most expensive one is 299 dollars per month. so really widespread there and it's going to make sense. i mean, of course i'll link down below so you guys can check the latest prices, see if they have any sales and read more about what the different tiers actually offer. but it's going to essentially make sense. as you go to the higher tiers, you're seeing lower fees on there when you're selling stuff and, of course, more features as well. now, on the flip side, remember how i said: squarespace was really geared towards anybody and everybody out there that's looking to make a website, and that's exactly what we're seeing here with their pricing as well. so their cheapest option is not really meant for e-commerce, it's going to just be. if you want to make a website in general, i believe you can sell stuff on there, but you have some pretty high fees and stuff like that, so it's really not meant for e-commerce. but it's about uh 12 per month, and their most expensive one is not quite as premium as the shopify one. it actually only goes up to 40 a month, and the first one that they actually call an e-commerce tier, though, is actually 26 dollars a month. so when you're looking at the cheapest e-commerce plan for both of these, when you're kind of, you know, going a head-to-head comparison here, you're looking at 26 versus 29, but that's not the only thing you need to consider. when you're looking at the price, of course, the price per month is very important, but with e-commerce, you also have a price per sale. anytime you're selling stuff, you might be looking at fees on here, and this is also really important to consider. so with shopify, they actually charge 30 cents plus anywhere from 2.4 to 2.9, and a point five to two percent fee, uh, for non-shopify payments transactions, so they really want you to be using shopify payments. unfortunately, they're not accepted everywhere in the world just yet, so there are situations where you wouldn't be using shopify payments and you would still be required to pay that extra fee there, like i said. so that's a little bit of a drawback with shopify, but the good news is they do have plenty of different ways to accept payments as well, anything from amazon payments to paypal to to stripe and squarely. you really have a lot of options out there. now, on the flip side, squarespace has fewer fees and so squarespace actually only accepts stripe, paypal and square, all of which are going to have their own fees on there. but regardless, you generally will be seeing slightly lower fees with squarespace. so really comparing these two head to head in the pricing category, i kind of have to say that these are really kind of tied here. i'll put links below in the description so you guys can go down and check out really what each tier offers you can figure out for your own needs. like, for example, squarespace is going to come with a domain for the first year. you might have different features on shopify, so go down and check those out. i have a link in the description so you can see the latest prices on both of them and compare the tiers to figure out which one's right for you. the next category we tok about is actually the design. so when you're making a website, you want something that looks fantastik, and both of these do a great job of that, but they do it in a very different way. so at first glance, you might say that the clear winner is squarespace, as they have over 110 different uh themes or templates. i'm going to use themes and templates kind of interchangeably here. so, as you can see here, squarespace has tons and tons of different templates you can choose from, and they have a really nice tool on the top where you can sort them. and just look at the online store ones- and even within this category, there are tons of amazing templates to choose from. all of them look fantastik and the good thing is they're included in your subscription. you don't have to pay any extra for these. you can pick whichever one you like and just add it to your site. now, shopify has, uh only nine free themes, so you're much more limited on the free themes, but they do have 72 other paid themes. so when you're looking at paid themes, i'm toking about about 150. but if you want to save that cash and you want to have a theme- uh, that's kind of just, you know- included with your subscription, which i mean honestly, i think is very appealing, then squarespace is a great option here as well, and so, honestly, between the two of them, the number of themes is important, but actually looking at how they appear is a little bit more subjective and, in my opinion, i think squarespace does look a little bit better. so, in general, i do lean towards squarespace, with the design aspect across all the website builders, though squarespace has always been kind of one of my favorites with regards to how they look, they're generally clean, they're easy to build with. so, of course, design and aesthetiks are very important for a website, but equally important are the apps and the features, essentially the functionality of your website and when you
Shopify vs Squarespace Review 2022 - Pros and Cons you should know!
if you ever wanted to open an online shop, the names shopify or squarespace should be very familiar. yeah, these two are probably the most popular ecommerce website builders in the current market, but which provider is the one for your next webshop? well, i spent the last few months testing both providers and i have some juicy takes, so follow me along in this shopify vs squarespace review. [Music]. let's look at what squarespace versus shopify offers in a bit more detail. first, the good news: both providers offer you a way to test out their platforms without even spending a cent. surprisingly, both have the same 14-day trial deal. but this isn't a free plan, meaning you can't publish a website without upgrading to a premium plan. shopify versus squarespace commerce plans are a bit different. first, shopify is only for e-commerce, meaning every plan here has all the tools you'll need to thrive. shopify usually starts from around the 30 a month, which, for unlimited storage, space and bandwidth, is a really fair price. but it recently started offering the first year with a 50 discount, so you can start here for only 15 a month. i'm not gonna lie: this is an impressive deal. sure, your price will jump back after renewal, but it still saves you around 180 dollars. so what is the actual difference between shopify plans? advanced tools like reporting or analytiks, lower fees for transactions and more locations, as well as staff accounts. squarespace ecommerce options start from the second ecommerce plan, since the first one is only for simple websites. every plan here has unlimited storage, space and bandwidth. however, it throws in a free domain name for one year. the cheapest you can start selling here is 23 a month, so it's more expensive than shopify to start, but after renewals it becomes a bit cheaper. so what's the difference between the more expensive plants? kinda a lot. a few really useful tools, even for small stores, are locked behind a better plan. these include abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping and subscription selling. to summarize, shopify versus squarespace pricing: both platforms offer very similar packages in pricing features. shopify has the lite plan, which is a really good option for beginners, while squarespace offers lower transaction fees and a free domain on top. squarespace versus shopify small businesses verdict: i personally lean more towards shopify for pricing, especially with the discount they offer now. and, by the way, if you already like one of the builders and want to jump in with premium plans, i'll add the best deals available down in the description. why not support us and save some cash in return. now, design wise, shopify is more about actually getting your online store ready, while squarespace is about doing it with style. in terms of numbers, squarespace offers you around 110 templates, while nearly every shopify review will gripe that it has only none. yeah, seems like not an impressive selection, but wait, there's a bit more to this than meets the eye. sure, squarespace has a lot of templates, but only a few of them are concentrated on e-commerce. second thing, shopify has only a few not so distinctive themes at the start, but it also has over 60 premium templates that you can buy, as well as a third-party market full of different styles to choose from. so, in reality, both providers are very similar in terms of e-commerce designs. if i have to compare the overall quality of templates, squarespace wins my heart. i just really love these designs and how they feel. you know, if you have ever seen a squarespace review or a commercial, you know that doing things in style is important to them. shopify, on the other hand, feels very tiknical. browsing them, you start to feel like everything is built from the same box, with just a few small changes here and there. with shopify, you don't have drag and drop controls and each element is placed in a specific, predetermined place. this means that you build your website from the top, adding new sections or part of these sections as you go down. so most shopify web stores will have identikal structures. but is that a bad thing? not for everyone. these aspects allow you to build colorful and eye-catching designs, sure, in just a few hours, instead of spending days overthinking where the hell should you place this button. squarespace website editor is all about freedom and drag and drop controls. you're not limited by the placement of elements and can add even elements on top of each other to create something like this monstrosity, and there are way more elements for you to choose from. compared to shopify, like way more overall. if you want style and lots of tools to craft the perfect design, go with squarespace. if you want to build just a working modern store and move on with your business, choose shopify. now. both providers offer very similar packages and every needed ecommerce feature you might think of. however, after trying most of them out, i like the squarespace approach more. it has a bit more easily managed options for seo or marketing. what i love about both these providers is the amount of help and support they offer. nearly every tool has an explanation, a checklist, a video instruction about what you should do with and why. there is a large community that can help you out on both platforms. and if you want more one-to-one help, shopify has a 24: 7 support option with live chat, email or phone, while squarespace offers email support and live chat but lacks the phone support option. if the platform lacks a feature you want, there's always the app store. in here you can find in-house and third-party build extensions to your web store. squarespace store is pretty good. it has a few important extensions you can easily integrate, like printful, mailchimp and seo tools, but squarespace has nothing on shopify when it comes to add-ons. this bad boy has over 7 000 extensions. yeah, you heard that right: 7 000 different extensions that you can use. just be aware that most of them have extra fees. before continuing, make sure you're subscribed to the cyber news channel to keep our spirits up and stay up to date on all things hosting related. shopify vs squarespace: which is the best ecommerce platform in terms of easy management? well, this will be a difficult task, since both have some of the best approaches to store management. i already mentioned the help you get along the way, but both providers also guide you through adding or managing products. squarespace online store management tools are a bit more restrictive if you compare it to shopify, but that kind of makes sense. squarespace is a more general builder, while shopify is all about web stores. shopify has way more advanced third-party tools, while squarespace offers more in-house solutions. that, however, doesn't mean that any approach is bad. in fact. in some cases, i found the tools that squarespace provides to be smoother and much more robust. other times, i love the selection of apps that i could easily add to my store to improve it. just keep in mind, though, that in-house solutions are included in your monthly price, while apps will most likely add on top of it. which is the best ecommerce platform? look, i'm going to be honest. both shopify and squarespace are amazing tools for building a business or selling online. both offer easy to use tools, lots of life improving features and affordable options for businesses. each has its small cons and is a bit stronger from different perspectives, so the best ecommerce platform for small business options. well, shopify is a bit more straightforward and tool orientated. it is not the best choice if you want to build a unique website per se, but it's the best option if you want an efficient store, whereas squarespace is much more design and style orientated. if you want to spend some time building something unique to your business, check this platform out. thanks for watching this squarespace vs shopify 2022 video. if this helps you make up your mind, leave a like to show your appreciation and click right here to get the best deals for both pro.
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Shopify vs Squarespace: Where's the Best Home for Your Store in 2021?
not sure whether to go with Shopify or Squarespace. I promise you'll have a much better idea after watching this video. welcome to websitetooltestercom 'pn. e's come from very different backgrounds. Shopify is 100% ecommerce focused and this is reflected in their pricing tiers. Squarespace is mainly a tool to build a website or blog with the extra option to sell online. that's also the reason why Squarespace starts at $12 per month. the cheapest Shopify plan is $26 per month if you opt for a yearly subscription. looking at this table, you can better understand what plans are actually comparable. for example, there is no Squarespace equivalent to Shopify's advanced plan. you should take the time to decide what features are important to you to find your personal ecommerce superhero. for that reason, this round is a drawn. Shopify offers 10 free templates and more than 60 paid ones. the paid ones cost between $140 and $180. they look modern and are fully customizable. Squarespace shows only 10 templates in the e-commerce department. all of them are free and can be customized via HTML and CSS similar to Shopify. this round those 2 Shopify, as you have a much larger selection available and they have a stronger focus on e-commerce. the important thing you need to know about Shopify is that they charge additional transaction fees if you don't use Shopify payments, which is their own payment gateway. the only issue: it's not available in all countries, yet in most english-speaking countries you don't need to worry, though. in addition to that, there's stripe, PayPal and so many more gateways. there are also manual payment methods like bank deposit or cash on delivery. Squarespace has only stripe and PayPal, nothing more. another advantage of Shopify is that you can activate mobile apps for your point of sale. if you are not just an online company, Shopify has more to offer. and raise this round, the Canadian ecommerce giant has a strange habit of adding bits to your URL. you can see here that blog posts always have three additional words in the URL, in this case, slash blogs / news / title for product pages. they always add slash products. Squarespace used to have limitations in this area - but they've just recently fixed it. you now have complete freedom to choose your URLs. yay, but there is one more factor that's important for SEO PageSpeed. to do a quick test, I grabbed four random websites from their showcase galleries. while Shopify is not perfect, their mobile results look significantly better than square spaces. the reason could, of course, be that Squarespace attracts more of an artistik crowd who like to add photo galleries and animations. I find both Shopify and Squarespace let you define shipping zones around the world and add prices based on weight or the order value. both also offer label printing, although with Squarespace, you have to go through the third party software ship station, whereas Shopify has its own label printing solution. you can also use carrier calculated shipping rates, but here's where they are very different. Shopify requires you to pick their $266 per month plan, while Squarespace has this feature included in their $40 per month plan. that's why, in my book, Squarespace wins this round. this battle is far closer than I expected. what happens when your online business takes off? can you scale your store to infinity and beyond? Shopify is generally a great choice as it's prepared to accommodate international commerce and also holds a host of marketing features in their app store, like loyalty program software. Squarespace, unfortunately, doesn't have an app store. that's why it's significantly harder to add these types of really advanced features. if you were in it for the long run, Shopify looks like a very reliable partner for you and wins this round. [Applause]. what about support? who has the more dedicated customer service team? we actually ran a test a short while ago and found that both Squarespace and Shopify offered top of the class support. Shopify made it to position number two, while Squarespace got to number four. generally, at Shopify you'll probably find a more ecommerce focused support team that also offers phone support. with Squarespace, there's only email and live chat support. Shopify also takes this point home and wins this battle- Congrats. at first I actually thought Squarespace was going to have a hard time winning any of the rounds, but after digging deeper I realized that Squarespace is serious about e-commerce. for smaller operations, it might be just the perfect tool, especially if you need a strong blogging functionality, but if your plan is to build the next ecommerce empire with all the bells and whistles, better rely on Shopify. I hope now you have a good idea of which one is right for you. check the links below our video for free trials of both tools and if you'd like to check out an even more detailed comparison, please head over to our blog. thanks for watching. [Applause].
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Shopify vs Squarespace: Which is the Best eCommerce Platform?
at first glance, shopify and squarespace look like they're very similar tools. they're both website builders and they both let you sell products, but historically, they were actually created for completely different purposes. so if you're not sure whether you want to go with shopify or whether you want to go with squarespace, today we're going to be going over the main differences and the pros and cons of each. the point of this video is to give you the information that you need in order to make a decision on which ecommerce platform is best for you. so if you are looking for a short answer, squarespace was originally designed as a solution to build content, like websites, like portfolios and blogs, that kind of a thing, so their original focus was on publishing content, not on selling things. on the other hand, shopify started out as an ecommerce product and was specifically designed to make an online store, so all of its features are made for selling products. but squarespace has recently added some ecommerce features and shopify has added some content creation apps, so they are meeting somewhere in the middle. knowing this, shopify is going to be your best choice if you're trying to get into e-commerce, and squarespace is going to be best if you want to build a content-focused website that doesn't involve selling at all. so that's pretty much the bottom line. but there always is grey areas, like, for example, if you're a blogger and you want to sell merch, that's kind of a gray area. if you're an artist and you want to feature your portfolio and sell prints, as well- also a gray area. so in these scenarios, you could tiknically go with either. that's why we're going to do a super in-depth analysis. i'm going to compare everything from pricing, features and templates, and we're also going to be looking at which option would be better for you if you are a drop shipper. i know a lot of you guys are drop shippers. so choosing the right platform it's a pretty big decision. you want to make sure that you like it before investing time into building it. so hang tight with me until the end of this video so that you can make the most informed decision. [Music]. all right, so first off, let's compare pricing, starting with shopify. so shopify has got three tiers. you've got basic shopify, you've got shopify and advanced shopify. most of you are probably just going to need the basic plan, which is 29 us dollars a month, and that includes features like ecommerce integrations. you got 24: 7 customer support. you can upload and sell unlimited amount of products and you also get shipping discounts, which is a huge reason why people love shopify. and if you have a physical store, you can use a shopify pos, which allows you to accept payments in person. you can sell in 133 different currencies and you can set up your store in 20 different languages. so there's a ton of other features, but those are the main ones that are standouts. so let's look at squarespace now. so if you don't need the ecommerce feature, it's going to be 16 bucks, so that's super affordable. but this plan is only going to give you a place to show off your content. it's not a website for shopping. so if you want a website for customers to be able to shop with you and check out, then you'd be looking at the commerce plan. that's 35 bucks a month, so that's a little bit more expensive than shopify, but just like shopify, you get 24: 7 customer support and you can upload an unlimited amount of products. now, there are no shipping discounts, but, like shopify, there is a pos available. so you know, give and take there a little bit. however, in order to use that pos, you would have to be in the us. so if you want the pos, if you need that for your business and you have to sell in person, then you would have to be in the us. you can have multiple languages on your website with squarespace, but it is an extremely manual process which is a little bit annoying, a little bit time consuming. so, as of now, things are looking pretty comparable, but since squarespace is a little bit more expensive, i'm gonna give the pricing category to shopify, all right. so next up is templates. so let's start with squarespace's time. so, squarespace, they have 110 options for free templates and they are really beautifully designed. now, only a few of these templates are actually dedicated to online store themes, so that means that most of the themes are going to be geared towards content presentation. so if you want to showcase your art or your music portfolio, then squarespace is going to be a really great choice. now these themes are also responsive. that means that your website will automatikally resize itself to suit the device that it's being viewed on, so it's always going to look great on mobile. it's always going to look great on tablet or your desktop computer, no matter what. if you want to make a custom change to your template, like maybe basic color tweaks and typefaces, then it's going to be really easy to do with squarespace. now, the one thing that i want to mention is that you don't always get full access to your site's code. in case you wanted to make any custom changes, that might be a little bit more difficult. one really nice thing about squarespace is that it has a built-in integration with unsplash and getty images, so you can really easily add stok images to your website. this is super helpful if you are a blogger and you need to find images really quickly to accompany your blog posts. alright, so now let's look at shopify's option. so the shopify theme store includes over 80 free and premium, professionally designed ecommerce website templates, and you can use any of these for your own online store. there are some really clean cut ones that i love, and then, as of recently, we're getting into some really nice new edgy designs as well. so the designs are all responsive, just like squarespace, and you can edit the code for custom changes. so shopify actually used to be a little bit more tricky to edit- the way that your site would look, but they've recently dropped a new version called the online store 2.0, and when i heard this i was like hallelujah, because now sections are modular, they're extremely customizable and you just have a lot more flexibility when designing your online store. it also makes it way easier to integrate apps into your theme right from the theme editor, without ever having to touch any code at all. so this point may actually would have gone to squarespace without the 2.0, but now that shopify's templates are just as easy to play with squarespace, it's definitely a tight one here. so things are looking really comparable right now. but i think the one thing that is very important is that shopify has themes that have been proven to drive sales. um, so that's really important. i mean squarespace, they have beautiful looking themes, but shopify has themes that have been designed for conversions. there is actually a pretty huge science behind where things are placed and how things look. that's really going to influence people's buying decisions. so selling products is the main purpose of building your website using a theme that is optimized for that is going to be so important. so the bottom line is: both squarespace and shopify have a lot of templates and they're all beautiful options. both are extremely easy to use. so the question that you want to ask yourself is is: are you trying to build a website or are you trying to build an online store, all right, so let's take a look at which platform is going to be better if you want to create a website for your drop shipping business and your print on demand business. so just really quick, guys. if you're not already familiar with what drop shipping is, drop shipping is a method of online selling where you do not keep any inventory at all, so instead you would take the order, then you would send it to a supplier, and then they send that order to the customer, so it's a low risk business model that's become very popular. so for all you creatives out there, print on demand is another cut. it's similar. it.
Shopify vs Wix 2022 (Don't choose WRONG!)
so i've been using both shopify and wix to build multiple ecommerce stores over the past years. i've even created complete beginner tutorials on how to set up online stores using both shopify and wix. so in this video, i'm going to compare both of these e-commerce platforms side-by-side. this video is not sponsored by any of these platforms. i'm simply gonna give you my honest opinion based on my own experience and based on some further research that i've done for this specific video. so let's get started. [Music]. now i wanna make clear that i'm gonna compare shopify and wix as e-commerce platforms, so a place where you can build an online store and sell things. because this is already where we can spot a big difference between wix and shopify. both companies started out in 2006, but wix started out as a website builder, whereas shopify, from the beginning, focused on being an e-commerce platform. only in the recent years, wix started rolling out e-commerce features allowing us to sell products on a wix website. so, just based on that fact, it's clear that shopify has a lot more experience in the e-commerce space. however, that doesn't mean that we should immediately go and build our store on shopify. so let's go ahead and take a deeper look into both of these platforms, starting with plans and pricing. with shopify, you can choose between three different plans: basic, shopify and advanced. when you're starting out, the basic plan should be more than enough for you, so that would be 29 per month plus transaction fees for every sale that your store makes. you already get a lot with a basic plan, like being able to sell an unlimited amount of products, 24: 7 support and features like discount codes, abandoned card recovery, marketing automation and a lot more. the main difference between the basic plan and the other plans are the transaction fees. so if you go for one of the more expensive plans, you're gonna have lower transaction fees for every sale that your store makes. so when you reach a certain number of revenue per month, it certainly makes sense to upgrade to a higher plan to reduce those transaction fees. we will take a closer look into payment providers and transaction fees later in this video, because obviously this is a very important deciding factor. now let's look at the pricing of wix. on the pricing page, we first have to switch from regular website plans to business and e-commerce plans, because these are the ones we need to go for if you want to sell products on our website. here we also got three plans: business basic, business unlimited and business vip. and, by the way, these prices apply if you pay yearly. if you want to pay on a monthly basis, then these are the prices for the respective plans. with the basic plan, for 34 per month, you get everything you need for a basic online store. however, if you want your international customers to see prices in their local currency or if you want to sell subscription products, then you need to go at least for the business unlimited plan at 38 per month. now, looking at the wix and shopify plans side by side, we can see that the basic plan of shopify is actually a bit cheaper compared to wix's basic plan. if you pay monthly, then the higher tier plans of shopify are much more expensive compared to wix, at least when you first look at them, because one of the main differences here is that wix doesn't reduce their transaction fees for the higher tier plans. so even though you pay more in a monthly subscription fee for a higher tier shopify plan, the overall cost in a month can still be lower compared to wix, because for every sale that you make, you're gonna pay less in transaction fees. so in my opinion, the plans of shopify are a bit more attractive because with the basic plan, you pretty much get everything you need for your online store, and i also like the fact that you can reduce your transaction fees once you start making more money with your store by simply upgrading to a higher tier plan. shopify does have a 14 day free trial, so you can test out everything before choosing a pay plan. you're going to find a link to that trial down below in the video description. however, if you want to launch your store and make it available to visitors, you do need to be on a paid plan. wix doesn't have a limited free trial. you can basically just create a free wix account, take your time to build your store, but then, once you want to start selling, you also need to be on a paid plan. let's move on and compare the website themes of wix and shopify. both platforms have a lot of beautiful themes for all types of online stores. wix literally has hundreds of free online store themes that you can choose from, so the chances are very high that you're gonna find one that you really like that is already optimized for the kind of online store that you want to build. shopify, on the other hand, only has 9 free online store themes. so if you don't like any of these 9 themes for your store, you have the possibility to browse their premium theme library. however, those themes cost you around 300 as a one-time fee, so wix definitely gets a big point here for having a lot of free themes for online stores. however, one of the key differences between wix and shopify themes is that wix themes aren't always fully responsive, meaning that when you look at your website on a mobile device, it won't always be perfectly optimized, so you'll need to make sure to rearrange all the elements that are out of place for smaller screen sizes. wix does have the so called editor x that you can use to build fully responsive designs. however, that is more geared towards the advanced designer and agencies rather than the average user. shopify's themes, on the other hand, are fully responsive, meaning that you can just build everything on desktop view and it'll automatikally look good on mobile as well. now let's tok a bit more about design customization options for wix and shopify generally. you'll be more flexible using wix to design your online store. you can simply use drag and drop to add any element to your website and customize it as you like. this kind of drag and drop doesn't work on shopify. here, everything has its predefined position and you get some customization options on the side menu, so you definitely do get more flexibility when it comes to website design using wix. in terms of ease of use, i have to say that i find both platforms fairly easy to use for beginners. wix really tries to make it as simple as possible for absolute beginners to build a beautiful website. if you want to get your website up and running as quick as possible with minimum design work, you can use their adi website builder. here you can simply answer some questions, pick some favorite designs and then wix will automatikally design your online store based on your answers. shopify doesn't have something like that, but i still think it's fairly straightforward to build your first online store, especially if you use my shopify tutorial to guide you through step by step. in terms of managing everything else that comes with running an online store, like fulfilling orders, managing inventory handling, customer support or sending out marketing emails, i would say that both of them are equally easy to use. i personally like shopify a bit better in terms of user experience. i just feel like when i use shopify, i really notike that everything is specifically made for selling online and everything is optimized for that specific purpose, so there's no unnecessary features that distract you from what's actually important. however, i did read a lot of comments from similar videos like this one, and saw a lot of people saying that they found wigs a lot easier to use and a lot less complex. so probably the best way would be to sign up for both of these platforms and see for yourself which one comes easier to you. and, by the way, if you need some help in the beginning getting started with either shopify or wix, definitely make sure to watch my beginner tutorials here on youtube. they already helped out.
Shopify vs Squarespace | When to use each one..
so you want to have your own website, but you're not sure where to start. well, today we're going to be breaking down two of the top website builders out there. i'll touch on some of their top features and tell you which ones would work best for you. so stay tuned. so today i'm going to be comparing two of the top website builders out on the market today, which is shopify and squarespace. now, shopify is a website builder, more strictly, a e-commerce platform. that's kind of the way that i see them, and it was one of the platforms that i first started using during my entrepreneurial journey. now, whenever i first started getting into entrepreneurship, i actually started selling on- uh, websites like amazon, right. so on amazon, i didn't really need to build out my own e-commerce platform. i, you know, i was just kind of selling it as like a third-party seller. so amazon kind of laid all the groundwork when it came to, you know, having to build a website, having to get customers, all that stuff. so whenever i decided to start pivoting, you know, because a lot of the anxiety that came in with being on amazon was that at any time they could just decide to, you know, ban your account and you're pretty much done at that point. right, you're at the mercy of amazon. so i decided to start building my own website to be able to start having my own control right, being able to decide what i sold and who i sold to, and one of the first website builders that i looked at was shopify. now, when it comes to shopify versus squarespace, shopify is going to be a website builder but, more strictly, an e-commerce platform. you know, when i was first starting off, i actually started by selling on other platforms like amazon and ebay, but once i decided to launch my own website and be able to sell out off of my own platform, shopify was the first one that i actually used, the first company that i used, and you know they're wonderful when it comes to e-commerce, but they don't really venture out of that right. they kind of staying in their lane, and that's really what they're focused on. now, when it comes to squarespace, squarespace is actually also a website builder, but they can be used as a website or an online store, so they kind of- you know, they kind of- try to be a swiss army knife in a sense when it comes to what their offerings are and they're they can be used for, you know if you just want to build a website, an informative website, or if you want to actually have a store and buy and be able to sell things. now, both of these platforms are amazing. they're great platforms to use. it really comes down to what are you building a website for? okay, so are you building a website to sell goods online or are you building a website to offer a service or to build an informative site? right, so you can kind of think, like, build a blog or such. now, if it's to offer a service or to build a blog or an informative site, for me i find it that it's squarespace hands down. squarespace, you got to think it's they try to, they're more inclined or the the more of the customers that they have have to do with blogging. you know news sites, uh, brochure sites, maybe a magazine or even a portfolio. so you know, like, for example, let's say i was running a photography business- i would rather be on squarespace and be able to show my portfolio and then be able to get leads or have a you know contact form where people could reach out and be able to get in touch with me after they've seen my portfolio. that's where i see squarespace really shine. it's a great place for you to convey or show information or to just offer a service. now, if you said that you really wanted to sell goods online, right, you want to do to do true e-commerce, then for me that's shopify. hands-down, you know, pure ecommerce shopify is gonna be a no-brainer for that now we'll tok even deeper about it later. but the customizability- not sure if that's a word, but it is unreal on shopify- the amount of you know different things that you're able to do pretty much whatever you can conceive in your mind. there's going to be a way for you to do it on shopify, which for me, that was a game changer when it came to the flexibility and the creativity that i was able to unleash on that platform. so, when it comes to pricing, you're going to see that shopify's pricing goes as low as 29 a month. the higher tiers mainly give you access to more advanced reports, as well as cheaper transaction fees and more user accounts. they also have a nine dollar light plan, but it's for people who just want to add ecommerce capabilities to an already created website or blog, and for me, i just found it that it wasn't really. it wasn't really worth it. now, when it comes to squarespace, you'll see that squarespace is uh. pricing can go as low as 19 a month. now you can use the higher tiers to unlock e-commerce capabilities if you decide that you want to create an online store on squarespace. but the 19 plan seems that it works pretty well, especially if you just want to have a portfolio and just be able to collect uh contact information. now another big topic is going to be the interface, or the ease of use. now, shopify is extremely user friendly. that platform is pretty easy to master and customizing your website's front end uses, you know, a simple drag and drop interface. there's literally no coding necessary. but if you want a coding, if you want to do some coding or you have a coder that you want to bring in, you're absolutely able to do that. now with squarespace, i found that squarespace can be a little more complex than shopify when it comes to you know how easy it is to actually master the platform, but again, i wouldn't write off the platform. at the end of the day, it's still gonna be a short learning curve. you know the world has changed so much when it comes to you know these, these different platforms where that you can use to build a business off of and really, when you look at it, they're all pretty simple of platforms, right? it's just that you're gonna. it's gonna take you just a little bit longer to actually learn squarespace, as it's not as intuitive as a shopify. now, another thing that i like to look at with website builders is website themes. you know, really, if you think about it, you may not necessarily want to create your own website from scratch, which is what these platforms let you do. you know, no matter how easy it is- especially if you aren't really or you don't feel that you're more creative-minded, you might actually want to bring either bring someone in to create a website for you or find an easier way to get it done right. so i always look at whether a platform has a good amount of website themes available. website themes are pretty much, you know, already created layouts of a website that you can import into your own website. so, instead of you starting from scratch, you can actually have themes that have already been created and all you have to do is go in and put your information in there and you already have a beautiful website created. now, when it comes to looking at the two platforms, shopify has an extensive theme collection. now you'll see on their website that they kind of show some of their own themes, uh. but the way shopify has built their platform, it's in a way that is fairly open, meaning anyone can really create a theme or a plug-in that just bolts onto a website. so you'll see a lot of people who are actually selling their own themes. another website that i'll link to down below is a website called theme forest. you can actually go on this website and you have the option to be able to get even more website themes. so you can actually sift through themeforest, find a, a website theme that works best for whatever your vision is for your business and be able to import that into your shopify account, and it's extremely easy. once you actually have it imported, then all you have to do is you can change the colors around, add photos- you know, uh- put in whatever information that you need for your business and you're pretty much done. so i'll link down to themeforest in the d.