Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders with over 2 million customers but how good is it when it comes to selling online?
Well, that is what we are going to be looking at in our in-depth Squarespace review by looking at how much Squarespace costs, what features they offer and how easy the platform is to use, so let’s get started…
Total out of 5
14-Day Free Trial, No Credit Card Required
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Squarespace Review: Quick Summary
Is Squarespace any good? Yes, we were really impressed with the Squarespace platform and it is definitely worth considering for small businesses and creators for a number of reasons:
- Easy to use – ideal for people who have never built a website before
- Customization – lots of tools to build a good-looking website
- Features – it comes with a good selection of features to allow you to sell all different types of products
Squarespace is lacking in payment gateways and integrations, which might be limiting for some.
But overall, we think Squarespace is a great option for small businesses and creators who are looking for an easy-to-use platform to build a website and online store.
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Squarespace Pricing
Business Package
$23/m if billed annually
Basic Commerce
$27/m if billed annually
Advanced Commerce
$49/m if billed annually
Business – £24/m (£17/m if paid annually)
Commerce Basic – £28/m (£23/m if paid annually)
Commerce Advanced – £43/m (£35/m if paid annually)
Even though Squarespace offers 3 plans that allow users to sell online, in reality only the Basic and Advanced Commerce are viable options as they offer more ecommerce features and no transaction fees and for the price difference, there is no reason why you would go for the business plan over the basic commerce one.
The pricing of the Basic and Advanced Commerce plans are also very attractive when compared to many other ecommerce platforms as they offer a good selection of features for a lower monthly cost and this is reduced if you pay for your plans annually, working out at around a 30% discount.
Free Trial
Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial and doesn’t require any payment information to be provided upfront in order to be able to take out the trial.
Customer Reviews
Before we get into the review, we decided to see what Squarespace’s existing customers thought of the platform by checking out Trustpilot, G2 and Capterra.
1.5 out of 5
4.4 out of 5
4.6 out of 5
Squarespace Features
Squarespace offers a good selection of features but if you want access to all of them, then you will need to be on the Advanced Commerce plan but we have summarised the features that are available below but just be aware that not all of these are available on the Business and Basic Commerce plans.
Ecommerce Tools
- Sell different types of products – this includes Physical, Digital, Service and Subscription
- Custom Forms – add custom forms to your products so customers can add personalizations to their products
- Product Quick View – lets customers see product info without having to click on the product page
- Limited Availability Labels – increase urgency with product labels notifying customers of the limited availability of products
- Product Variations – create variations, with their own images and prices
- Customer Accounts – let customers create accounts to help streamline future purchases
- Member Area – have a gated area that is only available to your members, where you can sell exclusive content or products
- Gift Cards – increase repeat custom by selling gift cards through your store
Squarespace Marketing & SEO Tools
- Built-in Blog – add content to your site in the form of blog posts
- Abandoned Cart Recovery – automatically send emails to customers who abandon their cart, with a prompt to complete the checkout
- Discounts – create automatic discounts that apply to orders to offer a % discount or free delivery
- Instagram – link to your Facebook business profile and tag your product on Instagram
- Product Reviews – let customers leave reviews for your products
- Email Campaigns – a built-in system that allows you to capture email addresses and send targetted emails
- Social Media Integration – post updates directly to your social media accounts to keep your followers in the know about your store
Squarespace Payment Gateways
When it comes to payment gateways, Squarespace has very limited options, which are:
- PayPal – and Venmo with PayPal business account
- Stripe – for all credit card transactions
- Afterpay – for buy now, pay later sales
- Square – used for in-person POS sales
This may be quite limiting for some businesses and does limit the opportunity to potentially save money on transaction fees in the future.
Does Squarespace charge transaction fees?
If you opt for the Business package, then you will pay a 3% transaction fee, which is pretty big! On the two commerce packages, you do not pay any transaction fees.
Squarespace Shipping Options
Squarespace offers a range of shipping options, including:
- Flat rate shipping
- Weight based shipping
- Carrier calculated shipping – based on FedEx, UPS, and USPS rates
- Local pick-up
You can also install Squarespace extensions that offer alternative shipping options that you can offer your customers.
Squarespace Reporting & Analytics
Squarespace comes with a host of built-in analytics to help you manage your site, these include:
Traffic Reports which show:
- Traffic including the number of visitors and bounce rate
- Traffic sources
- What keywords they used to land on your site
- Where your visitors come from
Sales Reports which show:
- Sales, this includes conversion rate, average order value and revenue per visit
- Sales by product
- Funnel performance
- Abandoned carts
There are also analytics that relate to your site content and engagement, which can be useful, especially if you are using SEO on your store.
Website Builder
One of the things that Squarespace always promotes in its marketing is that it offers a very easy-to-use website builder but is this actually the case?
The website-building process begins when you sign up with Squarespace as part of the set-up process is setting up your website and this can be done by building it yourself or using one of the pre-made templates.
But there has been a big change with Squarespace recently as version 7.1 means that you now cannot change templates because they are all the pre-built designs use the same base template that has just been customized so that it looks different.
This has eliminated the headache of having to change templates if you want to change your site design (which could be a headache) and you can now just change a few blocks to customize your store.
Talking of customization, Squarespace offers a lot of design tools to help with this, which include:
- A selection of sections and blocks that can be used on all pages
- Style settings including fonts, colors and spacings
- A live editor, with options for all sections, blocks and menu
We were really impressed with the Squarespace editor as not only does it offer a lot of customization options but it is also very easy to use and even someone with little to no experience of building a website could create a good-looking site.
With Squarespace, you can create fully custom pages using the blocks and sections and it also has a built-in blog, which works well.
Squarespace Support
Squarespace does offer 24/7 but this is only available for email support tickets.
If you want to use the live chat, this is only available between 4 am to 8 pm EST, Monday to Friday.
Squarespace doesn’t offer phone support and you do have to navigate the help center to find the contact options.
Squarespace Web Hosting & Performance
Squarespace doesn’t list a lot of information when it comes to their web hosting and the only information available is the following:
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free SSL Certificate
- PCI Compliant Servers
- CDN (content delivery network)
But this doesn’t stop us from putting Squarespace to the test in the real work and we took 5 of their customer example sites and ran them through Uptrends Speed Tool to check load time and Google PageSpeed Scores on both mobile and desktop devices.
We did this once a day for 5 days to get a good spread of data and you can see the results below:
Mobile: 1.91 Seconds
Desktop: 2.27 Seconds
Mobile: 23/100
Desktop: 65/100
In terms of load time, Squarespace is one of the overall fastest of all platforms we tested for both mobile and desktop, which is very impressive but it was let down by the PageSpeed scores, which are quite poor in comparison to some of their competition.
How Easy is Squarespace to Use?
One of the most important aspects when choosing a platform to build your online store is how easy is that platform to use and in this section, we will be looking at the following 3 areas:
- Getting Started
- Inventory Management
- Order Management
Getting Started
Getting started with Squarespace is very easy and they have made the onboarding process very easy as all you need is an email address and password to create an account.
They then ask you what type of website you are creating and for online stores, make sure you select the store option and the type of products that you are going to be selling.
You then set up the basics of your store’s designs, either by using the builder wizard or choosing one of the pre-built templates.
One thing that isn’t immediately evident when you go into your admin dashboard for the first time is that Squarespace has a setup guide, this is because you have to click on selling in the navigation bar to find it.
But it does include all the basic things you need to do, such as setting up payments and shipping before setting your store live.
Overall, the Squarespace admin dashboard is very easy to use as they have a well-labeled sidebar navigation menu and anything that isn’t listed here, such as payment gateways and shipping options are all in the settings, which once again, has a very well-labeled navigation menu.
Inventory Management
Creating a new product is very simple in Squarespace and when you click the add new product button, you will be asked what type of product you want to create and this shows how flexible Squarespace is when it comes to product types as there are 8 to choose from.
All of the add new product pages have a similar layout, like the one in the image above for physical products but they all have their own unique sections that are applicable to that product type, such as an option to upload files for digital products.
One area where Squarespace is lacking a little bit is organization for your products and it feels like a bit of an afterthought as categories can be added through the add new product page but if you want to manage these, then it has to be done through the Shop section in the website customizer.
You can also only add a single level of categories, which is a bit limited, especially for stores with larger product selections, which is where sub-categories are very helpful.
Inventory management is super easy and Squarespace arguably has the easiest to use system going as from the product overview page, you can quickly and easily update stock levels, quantities and the product name.
We also liked that product types are separated in the product overview page and this makes navigating to the right product a lot easier to do.
Order Management
We couldn’t test the order management as our store isn’t published but we checked out the Squarespace documentation and you can print and update order statuses in bulk and it looks like it is as easy as the inventory management.
You can also export all of your order information in CSV format, which is great if you are using thrid-party order management software.
Conclusion
Squarespace Review
Is Squarespace any good for online stores?
Yes, we were really impressed with how good Squarespace is for building an online store, especially for smaller businesses and creatives.
One of the key plus points is how easy the platform is to use and it has a much smaller learning curve than many other options.
It also comes with a good selection of features and offers a very good website builder that allows people with little to no web-building experience to build a really good-looking website.
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But as with all platforms, Squarespace isn’t perfect and we would like to see more payment gateway options and some more integrations built into the platform.
One thing we didn’t like was that you can’t change between pre-designed templates, which would make choosing a base design for your store and the overall building process a lot easier.
Overall, we really liked the Squarespace platform and given the lower monthly costs, it does make it a very attractive and viable option for lot’s of businesses and individuals.
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Squarespace Cons:
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Hi, I'm Paul, the Owner and Founder of EcommerceGold.
I ran my own Ecommerce Business for over 7 years and now help others start their own online retail empires!