After hours or days of extensive research, you’ve narrowed your options to Square and Squarespace – but which one should you choose between Square vs Squarespace?
To create an eCommerce website, the purpose and size are irrelevant. With the same ease, a small child would use to build a house out of toy blocks; many website builders qualify you to create an online store that is both unique and effective.
Therefore, you need to take extra care in selecting a site builder that includes all the important features needed to create the specific website required for your business. When viewed collectively, they appear to be similar.
For example, let’s compare Square and Squarespace. But despite their shared traits, these two platforms offer something different regarding website-building tools and features.
This comparison aims to show the key distinctions between Square Online and Squarespace and determine which Platform is better for creating an online store. Any objective is the superior tool. We will demonstrate that it can handle more site-building activities effectively.
What is Squarespace and Square – General Overview
Two different website builders are great for building an eCommerce platform: Square and Squarespace.
Square
Square Technologies has come a long way since it started in 2009 with Square Reader, a payment terminal. Now, the company offers a range of tools that can integrate into an eCommerce site to help with everything from payments to customer management.
Square describes itself as “a partner” for businesses of all sizes and types. While that may not be a proven reality, there’s no denying that the Platform has evolved and is now one of the most highly regarded solutions for retailers and small businesses.
Square is a great app for adding useful tools to an existing website. It offers free services, but you need to ensure you’re caught up on important features for your website development to avoid any problems down the line.
Squarespace
Squarespace is another example of a powerful website-building platform that started in a college dorm room. Founded in 2003, the Squarespace company has grown to a team of 1,500 enthusiasts. With 3.79 million users, Squarespace is a well-known and respected brand in the industry.
Similarly to other platforms, Squarespace emphasizes e-commerce capabilities (with some impressive real-world examples). However, Squarespace has a much wider range of features than its competitors. Although it doesn’t have a free plan, Squarespace’s paid packages can be a more cost-effective option for your online store.
Starting a web business from scratch can be costly, but with a free membership to Squarespace, you can protect money while building your dream business. In this article, we’ll take a more in-depth look at both platforms to see if this statement is true.
Square vs Squarespace: Pros & Cons
Square – Pros
- Ease of Use: The Square dashboard is simple and easy to use.
- Affordability: Free trial premium plans let you start selling stuff now.
- Great Inventory Control: Tracking inventory and staying organized is easy with Square.
- Reliable Product Management – You can use one dashboard to manage your inventory online from Square, which is incredibly simple. Online stores can manage their inventory and stay organized.
Square – Cons
- Very little customization: Due to the limited website customization Square offers, creating a custom template for your Square online business can be a lot of work.
- Boring Templates – Despite being neat, most templates have similar designs and can get boring quickly.
- Limited Payment Processors: If you don’t use Square’s internal payment processor, you’ll need to pay an additional fee.
- Limited customization: Square templates need to allow for design flexibility, making them difficult to change significantly.
Squarespace – Pros
- Beautiful template design – Squarespace templates are all unique, modern, and easy to modify. Squarespace has beautiful template designs, unlike Square. Squarespace layouts are customizable, clean, and have a dynamic look that can help businesses stand out.
- Robust built-in capabilities: State-of-the-art marketing resources are at your disposal.
- Good value for money: Although Squarespace isn’t the most affordable eCommerce builder, you do get what you pay for.
- Settings for advanced customization – Your templates can be highly customized, and you can even include code to change their look.
Squarespace – Cons
- The website takes time to get used to – New users may take a while to acquire used to the Squarespace editor, as the Platform can feel technical.
- There’s a minimal learning curve: it should take you about an hour to get familiar with the Squarespace editor.
- It does not automatically save your work; you should keep saving it while it runs.
- No phone support: The customer service team is available via email and live chat but not by phone.
Square vs Squarespace: Ecommerce Features
E-commerce Features Connected to Square and Squarespace! Square does a great job covering all the essentials, although the Squarespace platform already includes more robust capabilities.
Square – Ecommerce Features
The cheapest Square subscription allows you to sell products, which is a huge advantage for someone just starting. However, unprofessional ads and domains with the “.square.site” extension ensure that most businesses quickly outgrow the free plan.
The number of eCommerce features you get with Square depends on your chosen pricing plan, just like any website builder. That being said, when we used Square, its inventory management eCommerce feature caught our attention.
You can Edit your stock using Square to remember the following changes:
- getting fresh stock
- count inventory again
- return for replacement
- Loss of stock due to theft or break
Although an exciting feature is not available, it is important for an online store and contributes greatly to Square’s remarkable ease of use.
Squarespace: Powerful Built-in Features
Although Squarespace’s starter plans have a higher price point than Square’s, you gain access to a wider range of features. The Basic eCommerce plan is more scalable than the Business plan and includes all the features you need, making it the best option for most businesses.
Square vs Squarespace: Which One Is Easier to Use?
Task difficulty increases with different tools – compare how Square and Squarespace handle this task. We could give both platforms the same usability marks, but Squarespace gets that permission for a reason.
Because Square’s feature set is quite limited compared to Squarespace, it has a simple dashboard. No doubt, both platforms offer a simple registration process and an affordable pricing structure.
Squarespace’s user interface is elegant and simple. If so, then Square is a great option for you. The Squarespace dashboard is easy to use but has various capabilities, so you will be aware of its confusing user experience. We enjoy using Squarespace’s many design capabilities to choose and change templates.
When we tested both platforms, we found that Square is easier for beginners, while Squarespace is a bit more powerful and sophisticated.
Square vs Squarespace: Design and Flexibility
The flexibility of both platforms is another thing we examined. Your site builder should have enough capabilities and features to do this, whether you work with design tools or enhance your future online store with plugins and plugins.
Themes and Templates
Square offers square templates professionally created with e-commerce goals in mind. However, there are only a few.
Square cannot expect Originality from this set. Most designs work well for restaurants and service businesses. Easy to change the font and colours of the selected template. Building a basic website will take longer than establishing a brand. On the other hand, Squarespace allows you to build a unique eCommerce website.
More templates are available with details that you can use to choose the ideal layout for your store. The Platform offers a drag-and-drop tool that makes creating a unique design for your next website easy.
Third-Party Applications
Both Square and Squarespace offer many useful apps created by third-party developers to enhance your site. As we discussed earlier, the main advantage of building a Square online store is the support for offline Square items.
But Square also has a respectable app store where you can use third-party apps to connect with your Square online store. Both eCommerce platforms work well jointly in this respect. You can customize your site using a variety of extensions that Squarespace offers.
The advantage of Squarespace is that a third-party provider will certainly provide any services not provided by th Platform.
Mobile Optimization
Building a mobile-optimized website is easy with Square and Squarespace. You can change between desktop and mobile views when setting up your storefront.
However, Squarespace goes a step further by providing an additional mobile app for updating your website on the go. The app allows online business owners to monitor merchandise and communicate with consumers away from their desks.
Square vs Squarespace: General Pricing Comparison
Square Prices
The good news is that Square Online allows you to open a variety of online stores that are relatively affordable. You cannot pay anything except transaction costs in the free plan.
You can access it if you need a more complex configuration.
- Professional – $16 per month,
- Performance – $26 per month,
- Premium – $72 per month.
Squarespace Prices
Squarespace pricing is also very simple. The personal site costs $16 per month and is the least expensive option, but it does not include access to the store building features.
Your full range of options includes:
- Personal – $16 per month
- Business – $26 per month
- Basic Trade – $30 per month
- Advanced Trading – $46 per month
Square vs Squarespace: Payment Options and Transaction Fees
Payment Options
Many website builders only offer a few payment methods on their less expensive plans, but you’ll have more options if you upgrade to a more comprehensive plan.
The most affordable Square package includes the following payment plans:
- Square
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
The most affordable eCommerce plan from Squarespace provides the following:
- Stripe
- PayPal
- Apple Pay
- Afterpay (note – it is only available in New Zealand, Australia, and the US)
Transfer fees
You should know two types of fees when running an eCommerce business – payment processing fees and transaction fees.
- Payment processing fees are charged by the company you use to process your payments, such as PayPal or Stripe.
- On the other hand, your website creator charges Transaction fees for each transaction made on your site.
Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee on all Plans
- Business,
- Basic Commerce,
- Advanced Commerce plans.
Square charges 2.9% + 30¢ on its
- Free,
- Professional,
- Demo plans
Also, Square Charge 2.6% + 30¢ on its Premium plan. If you use Square as your payment processor, this transaction fee is the best fee you’ll need to pay; PayPal will not charge you the same payment processing fee.
Square vs Squarespace: Which One Is the Best for SEO?
If you’re looking for a platform with great SEO capabilities, Squarespace is the way to go. It offers image descriptions in an alternative language, creating it easier for people to find your site through Google search. Plus, you can easily incorporate other SEO best practices into your store.
SEO was a crucial investment for any small business in 2021. And with Squarespace, you can get all the benefits of SEO without spending much money or time on it.
With Squarespace, you can quickly and easily learn how to rank your store higher in search engines. And if you have images on your site, Squarespace will automatically convert your image descriptions into the alternate language Google needs to understand images.
Square vs Squarespace: Performance and Security
Square Performance
Creating an account with Square only takes two minutes. Square has several helpful guidelines that can help you quickly get an online store up and running. Once your Square online store site is created, you can access its simple and clean interface. Square’s dashboard is simple and includes email marketing and inventory management.
Squarespace Performance
Squarespace is less user-friendly than Square. It offers features for anyone unfamiliar with website building, allowing for better branding and SEO.
A Squarespace “helper” appears when you build your site and provides video tutorials and FAQs if you get stuck.
Like Square, managing things like product management is also very simple on Squarespace. Plus, thanks to the Squarespace mobile app, you can do it from any device, which is nice.
Security
Regarding security, Square and Squarespace have your online store covered. One of its draws is the ease with which you can handle security measures using all-in-one website builders (like these two).
What is provided with both platforms is the following:
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate: The SSL certificate encrypts data as it travels between your server and the customer’s web browser, protecting your customers’ payment details.
PCI-DSS Compliance: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a security standard for companies that process large credit cards. Square and Squarespace are PCI compliant, so your website is safe and secure.
Square vs Squarespace: Customer Service
Square Customer Support
You can contact Square through @SqSupport or by filling out an online form to get in touch with the sales team. Square’s Contact Us for Support page redirects you to a Weebly website. That’s because Square used Weebly to provide most of its site-building features rather than building a custom platform. Additionally, Square has a knowledge base where you can search.
If you want help alone, you can visit the Square Knowledge Base.
Squarespace Customer Support
Although Squarespace offers email and lives text chat support which can access during the hours of 4 am to 8 pm Eastern Time, there is, unfortunately, no phone support. It can make it difficult to contact someone if you have technical issues with Squarespace. Although this may be seen as a negative, live chat support does make getting instant information on anything from SEO support to social media connection issues much easier.
Square vs Squarespace: Switching Process
It’s a tie! You’ll need to manually transfer your content to convert an existing website from Square to Squarespace or vice versa.
Unfortunately, you can’t download an entire website from another platform and import it into Square or Squarespace. Instead, you’ll need to create a new Square or Squarespace website and manually add your old information.
What you have to do is the following:
- Activate a plan on your new platform (either Square or Squarespace).
- Choose a template and then use the drag-and-drop editor to duplicate or enhance your existing website design.
- Text from your old site can be copied and pasted onto your new site – make sure to select “Paste without formatting” to enter plain text and avoid unwanted HTML from your old website.
- Use your new editor’s bold, italic, and paragraph settings to format your content the way you want it.
- Finally, upload the photos you want to use in your new template.
How Do You Connect Square With Squarespace?
After creating your Square account, you can follow these instructions to connect it to Squarespace. Please note that a premium account is needed to use this service. Additionally, it is currently only available for managing payments in the United States.
- First, sign into Squarespace. Then, reach out to people in your household and select “Business.”
- After that, click on “Payments” (in the Settings menu) and select “Square.” (Please note that this option is only available in the United States.)
- Finally, set up Squarespace iOS app integration. (Unfortunately, this option is not now available for Android.)
How Do I Know If Squarespace Is Right For My Business?
Squarespace Builder is a top choice for many people, but there might be better options for some.
If you’re a photographer, artist, or anyone who wants to create a visually stunning website, Squarespace is the builder for you. Squarespace is especially successful with visual-based content, which is why it’s one of the best photography website platforms.
However, if you don’t have high-quality photos or your site is mostly text-based, you may need help maximizing Squarespace’s aesthetically pleasing layouts.
Comparison Conclusion: Which One Is Better?
In this article, we’ve compared class and class space in all the important areas. Overall, Squarespace is the winner. It is perfect for those looking to expand their store or build a unique brand due to its combination of beautiful styles and strong features. However, we realize that only some will be fans of Squarespace. Some people may prefer other options for their business needs.
Who should use Squarespace?
Creators who want to establish a strong brand should consider a beautiful and customer-friendly website. Businesses that want to increase their customer base gradually should also consider this when planning their website’s design.
Who should use Square Online?
There are many benefits to moving your brick-and-mortar business online, especially if you’re starting. With quick and easy access to the internet, you can reach a wider range of potential shoppers and get your business up and operating fast and easily.
Verdict
Square is a convenient, easy-to-use website builder that integrates seamlessly with your offline POS system. However, some account stability issues have been reported, and customer service could improve. Additionally, you may find that calculating shipping rates with Square isn’t the most convenient process.
While Squarespace does not have transaction fees, it would greatly benefit from access to offline POS tools – something many of its users have been requesting. Unfortunately, there are few apps available that are compatible with Squarespace.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the same company own Square and Squarespace?
No! Although they sound similar, Square and Squarespace are two companies offering entirely different services.
Does Squa respace use Square as a payment processor?
You cannot link the Square payment processor directly to your Squarespace website. However, if you’re selling in person, you can sync Square’s point-of-sale (POS) system with the Squarespace Commerce app. Squarespace keeps your Squarespace store on track with in-person purchases.
Are There Other Website Builders I Should Consider?
Although Square and Squarespace are excellent platforms, they may not be the proper fit for everyone. If you need clarification on which eCommerce website builder is right for you, check out our comprehensive review of the best options available on the market. Fynd Platform came out on top in this review.
Is Squarespace Website Good For Online Business?
Squarespace is perfect for online businesses that want to take their business to new heights. With advanced website builder features and great SEO capabilities, Squarespace can help businesses grow and succeed.
Can I sell digital products through the My Square Online Store?
Yes, with Square Online, you can sell digital products. Proceed almost as you would when shipping a physical product. However, if you receive hundreds of orders every day, we recommend the Find platform, where you can individually email a link or file to each consumer after they’ve purchased something.
