WooCommerce vs. Squarespace: Which is Better for eCommerce?

ECommerce platform software is one of the most crucial products in the market today. If you’re an entrepreneur with a good or service to sell, there are many platforms you can use to set up an online shop. When it comes to the best ones, Squarespace and WooCommerce are typically the top rivals. These are the most well-liked eCommerce platforms that can assist your company as it expands in changing and scaling. Sorting through the confusion is challenging because each has unique features and price points.

What is Square space?

Squarespace Ecommerce started as a straightforward website builder and eventually developed into the capability to establish online stores without the use of any other plugins. It is a user-friendly website builder with effective choices for setting up an online store. The numerous templates that are readily available can be used to manage your items, handle online reservations, and provide services. Because Squarespace is SaaS (Software As A Service), your website is safely hosted for you, and you pay a monthly subscription to keep it operational.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is one of the most widely used eCommerce platforms since it is an open-source solution built on the WordPress CMS (Central Monitoring System) and a free WordPress plugin. You can add features and modify the design using themes and plugins. It includes many built-in capabilities, such as store administration features, and it has professional support from a worldwide community. It contains product pages, payment methods, shopping carts, inventory management, order management, and more.

Understanding how a platform handles elements of an eCommerce store is crucial. To assist you in selecting the best solution for your requirements, we will compare WooCommerce and Squarespace in this article.

WooCommerce Pricing vs. Squarespace Pricing

WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin; thus, creating an online store is cost-free. You will need to pay for a domain name, a reputable hosting provider, and an SSL certificate. Additionally, if you select a premium theme for your store, you will have to pay for it. A domain name should cost $10 a year. A managed hosting service can cost up to $100 per month, whereas a cheap hosting service is only $2.75 per month. Similarly, an SSL certificate may run you up to $69.99 annually. All the services are reasonably priced, so you can still save money.

Pricing on Squarespace is significantly more straightforward. Considering that it has set costs for all the things you’ll require. It has the following price schemes because it doesn’t have a free version:

• Personal: $14/mo. (Billed Annually)
• Business: $23/mo. (Billed Annually)
• Basic Commerce: $27/mo. (Billed Annually)
• Advanced Commerce: $49/mo. (Billed Annually)

Using WooCommerce can save you money each month depending on your needs and expertise, so overall, costs are cheap. WooCommerce is free. On the other hand, Squarespace merely provides a full bundle at a fair price and the ease of having all you need in a suitable place.

SEO: WooCommerce vs. Squarespace Ecommerce

WooCommerce largely uses customizable WordPress SEO tools for your eCommerce site. In addition, your WordPress site gives you access to a wide range of free and paid plugins. WooCommerce includes a tone of SEO plugins and extensions that can help you raise the rating of your website. SEO tools like Yoast, All in One, Rank Math, etc. Among WooCommerce users, Yoast SEO is the most widely used SEO plugin.

To attract Google’s attention and place higher in search engine results, Squarespace comes with a number of built-in SEO features, such as access to customizable meta descriptions and titles. Additionally, it offers options for page redirects, hiding pages, automatic sitemaps, and limiting the availability of photos on social media. Similarly, it creates neat HTML pages that are simple for search engines to index.

Without additional plugins or extensions, Squarespace already has SEO tools and provides a complete set of SEO features and tools. While WooCommerce does not have its SEO tools, using it in conjunction with WordPress gives you many SEO options. As a result, your WooCommerce site might have infinite SEO options.

Security: WooCommerce vs. Squarespace Ecommerce

WooCommerce’s security is strongly correlated to the caliber and hosting service, being a self-hosted platform. Most WooCommerce hosting packages come with PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance. Free CDNs and SSL certificates are also included in your online store.

Security precautions abound at Squarespace. They employ organizational and technical security measures to safeguard the company’s and its client’s information. A secret service also keeps an eye on the security measures, guidelines, and practices. You obtain PCI (Payment Card Industry) conformance, SSL certificates, and fundamental features with their service. Additionally, it complies with HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), a security protocol that encrypts content delivered during user sessions and authenticates users accessing your website. Two-factor authentication, inbound threat detection and blocking, disaster recovery, and other features are available.

For your website, WooCommerce offers a wide range of security solutions. Contrarily, Squarespace has adequate security safeguards as part of its service and does not require you to travel any place to secure your website. So, depending on your needs, you can choose any of them.

Customer Support: WooCommerce vs. Squarespace Ecommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source and cost-free platform; hence the main channel for customer support is the WordPress discussion boards. As a result, you’ll get active support using its comprehensive self-help material, which includes videos, to solve problems on your own with the help of a supportive online community. The corresponding team will offer dedicated support for the different extra tools and services you use to run your store. Furthermore, finding outside maintenance service providers to deal with challenging store management concerns is simple.

Squarespace offers a wealth of options to help you manage your website and eCommerce store. You can independently browse their instructions, videos, and community forums to resolve a problem. You may also engage a Squarespace specialist from their list of independent contractors. In addition, live chat assistance is available during business hours, and email and Twitter support are available 24/7 if you sign up for one of their programs.

A sizable community exists around WooCommerce that offers customer help through documentation, guides, tutorials, active forums, and other means. Though it could take some time, this enables you to find solutions to your problems. Paid WooCommerce plugins offer superior support to free ones, nevertheless. Contrarily, Squarespace provides dedicated support staff to its paying customers. Your advantage for quicker service comes from the team of experts’ ability to address your problem quickly.

Ecommerce features: WooCommerce vs. SquarespaceEcommerce

WooCommerce doesn’t impose transaction fees or restrict your eCommerce capabilities while simplifying product management with interactive inventory lists. It is more flexible and offers a greater variety of integration and payment channels and several product variations.

However, Squarespace gives you access to more sophisticated capabilities like additional merchandising tools, cart abandonment recovery, advanced offers, shipping, and more.

However, you must pay additional money if you want more sophisticated services like cart desertion, coupons, inventory tools, etc. Additionally, only available in the United States, Squarespace point of sale does not interface with Squarespace dropshipping suppliers.

The broad selection of eCommerce plugins offered by WooCommerce, which are free to use, is significantly superior to those offered by competing platforms. Despite its ongoing development, Squarespace is already a viable option for local product sales and deliveries.

Payment Integrations: WooCommerce vs. Squarespace

By default, WooCommerce allows offline payments like checks, bank transfers, and cash on delivery. Additionally, major credit and debit cards, as well as Apple Pay, are accepted by US retailers. Additionally, depending on your needs, you may quickly add 140 regional payment providers.

Through the Squarespace app, Squarespace accepts payments in person. You may also connect several market-leading payment methods, including PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Afterpay. Tax collection and checkout flow customization are also simple choices.

Both WooCommerce and Squarespace offer top-notch payment integrations, but WooCommerce provides more choices in terms of payment integrations.

Comparison Chart

Conclusion

Due to their distinctive qualities and key characteristics, WooCommerce and Squarespace stand out as eCommerce systems. However, the optimal choice for you will primarily depend on how vital eCommerce is to you and how scalable your platform needs to be. In general, we advise Squarespace for small to medium-sized companies with a restricted product selection, especially if you operate in the arts. While WooCommerce, in our opinion, is more suited for entrepreneurs wishing to scale their businesses. For consumers who are more technologically skilled, it’s also an excellent choice. Using the distinction, you may decide which eCommerce builder site is better for you. See our articles “24 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites” and “Best Drag and Drop WordPress Page Builders” for additional details on website building plugins and features.