not sure whether to go with Shopify or
Squarespace I promise you'll have a much
better idea after watching this video
welcome to websitetooltester.com '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 artistic 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]