Shopify
Compared on our own monthly crawl of 29.9M live business domains, both vendors' pricing pages read on Sep 7, 2026 and 6,279 G2 reviews.
Published Sep 7, 2026Updated Sep 7, 2026August 2026 crawl
Shopify
1,184
domains gained from Squarespace in 90 days
Squarespace
622
domains gained from Shopify in 90 days
Choose Shopify if…
- Selling is the business: Shopify Payments at 2.9% + 30¢ online with no platform fee, inventory across 10 locations on Basic and 200+ reports
- You sell in person or on marketplaces: casual point of sale on every plan, POS Pro at $89 a month per location, 50 synced marketplace orders a month free
- You will need staff logins and a customisable checkout as you grow: 5 seats on Grow, 15 on Advanced, full checkout control on Plus
Choose Squarespace if…
- The website is the product and the store is a sideline: every plan sells, Core at $29 a month on annual billing charges 0% on store sales
- You sell services, courses, memberships or subscriptions: included on every plan with no app, at a digital content fee of 7% on Basic down to 0% on Advanced
- Support quality matters: G2 scores Squarespace 8.5 to Shopify's 8.4, and Shopify's second most cited complaint is Expensive (152 mentions)
How we collect this data
Every number names its source and the date it was read.
1,184 domains dropped Squarespace and now run Shopify in the 90 days to September 7, 2026, against 622 that went the other way: a 1.9 : 1 flow in Shopify's favour (TechnologyChecker, August 2026 crawl). The two are not in the same category. Shopify is detected on 2,246,824 domains (34.42% of ecommerce platforms, position #1) and a Shopify signal means a Shopify storefront or checkout; Squarespace is detected on 1,018,293 domains (6.84% of CMS platforms, position #3) and its signal means a site built and hosted on Squarespace. 2,210 domains carry both signals at once, which is what a Squarespace site with an embedded Shopify checkout looks like, so read the two-way counts as the movement of the store, not of the whole site. Shopify is the pick when selling is the business: Shopify Payments at 2.9% + 30¢ with no platform fee, point of sale, shipping labels and 1000s of apps from $29 a month on yearly billing. Squarespace is the pick when the site comes first and the store is one part of it: every plan sells, Core at $29 a month on annual billing charges 0% on store sales, and courses, memberships and subscriptions are built in. G2 reviewers score the two level at 4.4 stars, with Shopify ahead on five of seven criteria and Squarespace ahead only on quality of support (8.5 to 8.4).
At a glance
August 2026 crawlShopifyShopify2,246,824Squarespace1,018,293ShopifyShopify34.4%Squarespace6.8%ShopifyShopify#1Squarespace#3ShopifyShopify1,184Squarespace622SquarespaceShopify$39/moSquarespace$25/moShopifyNoSquarespaceNoWho is switching between Shopify and Squarespace?
Analysed Sep 7, 20261,184domains moved from Squarespace to Shopify in the 90 days to Sep 7, 2026 · 622 went the other way
Switched = dropped Squarespace on every host we track since May 30, 2026 and currently runs Shopify. A drop is a tag disappearing from our crawl, not a confirmed cancellation. 2,210 domains run both today. Counts are domains, not accounts.
“1,184 domains switched from Squarespace to Shopify in the 90 days to Sep 7, 2026 (TechnologyChecker, https://technologychecker.io/compare/shopify-vs-squarespace)”
1,184 domains switched from Squarespace to Shopify in the last 90 days → See the list
129,580 domains have dropped Shopify since we began tracking it in March 2026. Most go to Magento.
Magento1,470
WooCommerce1,275
Wix eCommerce543Squarespace Commerce463
PrestaShop32Shopify plans
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per mo) | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $39/mo | $29/mo | Full online store, unlimited products, hosting, SSL, POS for casual sales, 24/7 live chat, Shopify Payments at 2.9% + 30¢ onlineNo additional staff seats · 2% fee on third-party payment providers · 10 inventory locations · Limited checkout customization · Up to 3 B2B catalogs |
| Grow | $105/mo | $79/mo | Everything in Basic with higher cashback on sales (up to $7,500)Third-party payment fee lower than Basic; rate depends on plan |
| Advanced | $399/mo | $299/mo | Everything in Grow with higher cashback on sales (up to $10,000)Third-party payment fee lower than Grow; rate depends on plan |
| Plus | $2,300/mo | Not published | High-volume checkout, custom functions, up to 9 expansion stores, bot protection, up to 500% higher API limitsStarts at $2,300 a month on a 1- or 3-year term · Custom user groups and Plus certified apps only here |
Squarespace plans
| Plan | Monthly | Annual (per mo) | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $25/mo | $19/mo | Templates, drag and drop editor, custom domain (free for 1 year on annual billing), commerce with a 2% online store transaction fee2 contributors · 30 minutes of video hosting · 10 AI credits one time · 7% fee on digital content and memberships · No code injection or advanced code block |
| Core | $39/mo | $29/mo | 0% online store transaction fee, code injection, advanced code block, Google Workspace professional email, discounts, payment plans, shipping labels, promotional pop-upsUnlimited contributors · 5 hours of video hosting · 20 AI credits a month · 5% fee on digital content and memberships |
| Plus | $65/mo | $49/mo | Everything in Core plus reserved cart and timer for releases50 hours of video hosting · 40 AI credits a month · 1% fee on digital content and memberships |
| Advanced | $139/mo | $99/mo | Everything in Plus with unlimited video hosting120 AI credits a month · 0% fee on digital content and memberships · Automated tax calculation at 0.05% (maximum $0.99) |
| Feature | Shopify | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $29 to $299 a month on yearly billing ($39 to $399 monthly); Plus from $2,300 a month | $19 to $99 a month on annual billing ($25 to $139 monthly) |
| Trial or free tier | 3-day free trial, then $1 a month for 3 months | 14-day free trial, no credit card; no free plan |
| Store transaction fee on top of card processing | None with Shopify Payments; 2% on Basic with a third-party gateway | 2% on Basic, 0% from Core; 7% on digital content and memberships on Basic, falling to 0% on Advanced |
| Card processing | Shopify Payments at 2.9% + 30¢ online and 2.6% + 10¢ in person on Basic; international cards + 1% | Squarespace Payments on every plan; the rate is not listed on the pricing page |
| Products | Unlimited products; 10 inventory locations on Basic | Unlimited products and services on every plan |
| Point of sale | Casual in-person sales on every plan; POS Pro at $89 a month per location | Squarespace point of sale on every plan |
| Abandoned cart recovery | Included | Included |
| Discounts and gift cards | Discount codes and gift cards on every plan | Gift cards on every plan; discounts and payment plans from Core |
| Shipping | Shipping labels with discounts up to 87%; third-party calculated rates not on Basic | Shipping labels and carrier-calculated shipping from Core |
| Selling channels | Social, marketplaces, AI chats and POS on every plan; 50 synced marketplace orders a month free | Facebook and Instagram product promotion on every plan; Google Shopping from Core |
| Subscriptions, courses and memberships | Not priced on the pricing page | Included on every plan, with the digital content fee by tier |
| Checkout | Limited customisation on Basic; fully customisable on Plus | Checkout on your own domain and express checkout on every plan; commerce APIs from Core |
| Staff seats | No additional staff logins on Basic; up to 5 on Grow, 15 on Advanced, unlimited on Plus | 2 contributors on Basic, unlimited from Core |
| Automated tax calculation | Not priced on the pricing page | Not on Basic; 0.15% of the order (maximum $0.99) on Core, 0.10% on Plus, 0.05% on Advanced |
| Marketing | Email campaigns, customer segments, automations and pay-per-send SMS on every plan | Newsletter and form blocks on every plan; promotional pop-ups and Mailchimp or Zapier integrations from Core |
| Reporting | 200+ real-time reports plus custom analytics | Traffic and SEO keyword insights on every plan; ecommerce analytics from Core |
| Support | 24/7 live chat on every plan | Not listed on the pricing page |
| Hosting, domain and SSL | Unlimited hosting, custom domain and SSL included | Hosting included; free custom domain for 1 year on annual billing |
Shopify129,580Squarespace17,543Shopify441,180Squarespace679,978Shopify-21,699Squarespace+1,218Top countries for ShopifyTop countries for Squarespace- ConcentrixIT Services and IT Consulting
- PepsiCo, Inc.Food and Beverage Services
- HPIT Services and IT Consulting
- FordMotor Vehicle Manufacturing
- Unilever PLCManufacturing
- Kohl’s Corp.Retail
- Inspire Brands Inc.Restaurants
- Whole FoodsRetail
- CompassReal Estate
- Médecins Sans FrontièresNon-profit Organizations
Share of each vendor's enriched companies in the segment. A gap is a lean, not a verdict; rows under 30 companies a side or under 5 pp are marked.
By company size
Leans Squarespace (+9.5 pp)Shopify68.4%Squarespace77.9%Shopify17.4%Squarespace13.8%Shopify4.9%Squarespace2.5%Shopify1.9%Squarespace0.7%Shopify0.5%Squarespace0.2%By industry
Shopify2.4%Squarespace2.4%How buyers rate Shopify and Squarespace
G2, read Sep 7, 2026- Largest segment
- Not published
- Entry price on G2
- $29 / per month · Basic
- Free trial
- G2 has no trial information
- Plans listed
- Not published
- Largest segment
- Not published
- Entry price on G2
- $18 per month billed annually · Business
- Free trial
- G2 has no trial information
- Plans listed
- Not published
Shopify8.8Squarespace8.7Shopify8.9Squarespace8.8Shopify8.8Squarespace8.8Shopify8.9Squarespace8.8Shopify8.4Squarespace8.5Shopify8.8Squarespace8.7Shopify +0.5· 4,183 / 970 answeredShopify8.8Squarespace8.3G2 scores features by category only when both products are rated on a shared feature set, and it publishes none for Shopify and Squarespace. The feature table above is ours, read off each vendor's own pages.
G2 also publishes an AI-generated summary and a set of generated FAQs for this pair. We link rather than reproduce them — they are machine-written, we cannot verify the claims in them, and the verdict and FAQs on this page are the editor's. Read G2's own comparison →
Shopify
What people like about Shopify. Ease of use leads the G2 topic counts (272 mentions), then easy integration (101), on a panel of 5,142 reviews. The ratings agree: Shopify scores 8.9 on ease of use and ease of admin against Squarespace's 8.8 on both, and its widest lead is product direction at 8.8 to 8.3. Our profile data puts 73.55% of Shopify's enriched base at companies of 1 to 10 people and retail as its largest industry, which matches G2's small-business reviewer panel.
What people do not like. Expensive (152 mentions) and limited customization (95) are the two complaints, and the plans page explains both: Basic is $39 a month on monthly billing, adds a 2% fee on every sale through a third-party gateway, allows no additional staff logins, and keeps checkout customisation to a minimum until Plus at $2,300 a month. Quality of support is Shopify's lowest rating on the page (8.4 against Squarespace's 8.5).
G2's own summary of the g2.com/products/shopify listing, with each topic's mention count.
Generated from real user reviews on G2
- Users highlight the ease of use of Shopify, which allows quick and effortless e-commerce setup without technical skills.(242 reviews)
- Users appreciate the easy integration with various platforms, which improves the overall user experience and satisfaction.(90 reviews)
- Users find Shopify to be a very easy to use platform for all their e-commerce needs and product sales.(77 reviews)
- Users love the quick setup of Shopify, enabling even beginners to launch their stores efficiently and effortlessly.(77 reviews)
- Users appreciate the reliability of Shopify, as it handles traffic well and prevents downtime during peak times.(55 reviews)
- Users find Shopify to be expensive, particularly for new businesses needing affordable options to grow.(124 reviews)
- Users find limited customization options in Shopify, leading to reliance on costly third-party apps and fees.(77 reviews)
- Users find Shopify's limited features and customization options frustrating, often requiring additional paid apps for functionality.(47 reviews)
- Users find the pricing issues concerning, as extra fees and costs for features can quickly escalate expenses.(34 reviews)
- Users find poor customer support frustrating, particularly for new customers needing timely assistance with issues.(21 reviews)
Squarespace
What people like about Squarespace. Ease of use again (24 mentions) and templates (12), on a panel of 1,137 reviews, with G2's summary crediting design quality. Squarespace ties Shopify on ease of setup (8.8) and leads on quality of support (8.5 to 8.4). The rest of the criteria go to Shopify by 0.1 to 0.5 of a point, so the gap between the two is narrow everywhere except product direction.
What people do not like. The same two labels as Shopify at far lower counts: limited customization (8) and Expensive (7). The pricing page shows where the cost sits: Basic charges 2% on store sales and 7% on digital content, allows 2 contributors, and leaves out discounts, shipping labels and commerce APIs until Core.
G2's own summary of the g2.com/products/squarespace listing, with each topic's mention count.
Generated from real user reviews on G2
- Users love the ease of use of Squarespace, enjoying simple integration and customizable options for professional websites.(20 reviews)
- Users appreciate the user-friendly customization of Squarespace, enjoying endless possibilities for unique website creation.(8 reviews)
- Users love the intuitive design of Squarespace, making it easy for DIYers to create professional websites effortlessly.(7 reviews)
- Users rave about the stunning templates on Squarespace, making their visual businesses look exceptionally professional.(7 reviews)
- Users appreciate the customizability of Squarespace, allowing endless possibilities for unique website designs and features.(5 reviews)
- Users feel the limited customization options in Squarespace restrict their creative potential and advanced design needs.(5 reviews)
- Users express frustration over poor customer support, facing long response times and billing issues with Squarespace.(5 reviews)
- Users face significant domain issues with Squarespace, including slow DNS propagation and problematic support during migrations.(4 reviews)
- Users find Squarespace expensive, especially for higher-tier plans and frequent email campaigns, but value convenience.(4 reviews)
- Users face integration issues with Squarespace, finding it difficult to connect external services and manage scalability.(4 reviews)
The reviews are a tie and the switching data is not. 1,184 domains dropped Squarespace for Shopify in the 90 days to September 7, 2026 against 622 going back, a 1.9 : 1 balance, with 2,210 domains running both at once. G2 gives Shopify the edge on product direction (8.8 to 8.3) and Squarespace the edge on support (8.5 to 8.4), neither of which is a 2 : 1 difference, so the corridor is better explained by what each platform is for: a store that outgrows a website builder moves to a commerce platform, while the reverse move is a store that has become a brochure site. Both platforms lose more domains elsewhere: Squarespace lost 2,362 to WordPress in the same window and Shopify gained 3,339 from WooCommerce.
The number worth citing is the direction, with its caveat attached. 1,184 domains moving from Squarespace to Shopify against 622 moving back in one quarter is a 1.9 : 1 flow, on bases of 1.0 million and 2.2 million domains, and 2,210 domains carry both signals at once. That last figure is the caveat: Shopify is a storefront and checkout, Squarespace is a site builder, and a Squarespace site can embed a Shopify checkout without leaving Squarespace. A share of the "switches" on this page are stores changing their checkout, not businesses changing their website.
The profile data says where each platform's real competition is. Squarespace lost 2,362 domains to WordPress in the same window, twice what it lost to Shopify, and Shopify took 3,339 domains from WooCommerce, nearly three times what it took from Squarespace. A team choosing between these two is usually deciding whether the store or the site comes first, and the corridor says stores that grow tend to end up on Shopify.
Where the crowd may be wrong: G2 reviewers call Shopify expensive 152 times, but the plan with a fee on store sales is Squarespace's Basic. On $1,000 a month of orders its 2% fee is $20, twice the $10 gap between the two Basic plans on annual billing, and the fee only disappears on Core at $29, the same price as Shopify Basic. Shopify's own 2% applies only when a merchant declines Shopify Payments. The cheaper platform depends on volume and on which processor you use, not on the headline price.
How we compared · TechnologyChecker sells access to the switching lists behind this page; the numbers do not change with that.
Where this data comes from
August 2026 crawlOur detection dataFirst-party
The switching corridor, adoption curves, market shares and customer lists come from our own monthly crawl of 29.9M live business domains, detected across the full signal stack: HTTP headers, rendered DOM, JS globals, DNS, TLS and certificate transparency.
A switch is an observed change, not a survey answer: a domain dropped Shopify on every host we track and now runs Squarespace. Counts are domains, not accounts. Company attributes (industry, employee band, country) come from the enriched samples named in each caption (441,180 companies for Shopify, 679,978 for Squarespace).
Full detection methodology →The vendors' own pages
Pricing tables and the feature matrix are read from shopify.com and squarespace.com, entered by hand and checked cell by cell by an editor. Every table names its source URL and the date it was verified.
A verification older than 90 days withdraws the page from search until an editor re-checks it, so a stale price cannot outrank a current one.
G2's published numbers
Star ratings, review counts, the seven satisfaction scores with respondent counts, segment shares and topic mention counts, as read on Sep 7, 2026. Numbers only: no review prose is reproduced, and every figure links back to G2's own comparison.
G2's comparison of this pair →Only the first column is ours alone: no other tracker publishes who is switching between Shopify and Squarespace. Where the sources disagree, the page says so next to the numbers rather than averaging them.
How many companies switched from Squarespace to Shopify?
1,184 domains dropped Squarespace and now run Shopify in the 90 days to September 7, 2026, against 622 that moved from Shopify to Squarespace. Counts are domains, not companies or contracts, and a drop means the Squarespace signal disappeared from our crawl on every host we track while a Shopify storefront or checkout appeared.
Which is more widely used, Shopify or Squarespace?
Shopify, by about 2.2x: 2,246,824 detected domains and 34.42% of the ecommerce platforms category (position #1) against Squarespace's 1,018,293 and 6.84% of CMS platforms (position #3), as of the August 2026 crawl. The two sit in different categories, so the shares are not of the same total.
Is Shopify or Squarespace cheaper for an online store?
It depends on volume and processor. Squarespace Basic is $19 a month on annual billing but adds a 2% fee on store sales; Core at $29 charges 0%. Shopify Basic is $29 a month on yearly billing with no platform fee when you use Shopify Payments (2.9% + 30¢ online), and a 2% fee if you use a third-party gateway. On $1,000 a month of orders, Squarespace Basic's fee is $20, twice the $10 difference in subscription.
Can a Squarespace site use Shopify?
Our crawl finds 2,210 domains carrying both a Squarespace signal and a Shopify signal at once, as of September 7, 2026, which is what a Squarespace site with an embedded Shopify checkout looks like. Those domains are counted as running both, not as switchers in either direction.
What do G2 reviewers say about Shopify vs Squarespace?
Both score 4.4 stars on G2 (5,142 reviews for Shopify, 1,137 for Squarespace, read September 7, 2026). Shopify leads on five of seven criteria, with the widest gap on product direction (8.8 to 8.3); Squarespace leads on quality of support (8.5 to 8.4) and the two tie on ease of setup (8.8). Shopify's most cited complaint is Expensive (152 mentions); Squarespace's is limited customization (8).
Is Shopify better than Squarespace?
For a store, the data leans Shopify: 1,184 domains dropped Squarespace for Shopify in the 90 days to September 7, 2026 against 622 going the other way, and Shopify is the larger platform at 2,246,824 domains to 1,018,293. For a website that also sells, Squarespace includes commerce on every plan and charges 0% on store sales from Core at $29 a month on annual billing. G2 scores them level at 4.4 stars.
How much does Shopify take from a $100 sale?
On the Basic plan with Shopify Payments, an online card sale costs 2.9% + 30¢, which is $3.20 on a $100 order, with no platform fee on top. With a third-party gateway on Basic, Shopify adds a 2% transaction fee ($2.00) and the gateway charges its own rate. In-person card sales through Shopify Payments cost 2.6% + 10¢ ($2.70 on $100).
What is the downside of using Shopify?
Cost is the most cited complaint on G2 (Expensive, 152 mentions), followed by limited customization (95). The pricing page shows why: Basic is $39 a month on monthly billing, charges 2% on sales through a third-party gateway, includes no additional staff logins, and keeps checkout customisation limited until Plus at $2,300 a month.
What are the downsides of using Squarespace?
G2 reviewers cite limited customization (8 mentions) and Expensive (7) on a panel of 1,137 reviews. On the pricing page, the Basic plan charges 2% on store sales and 7% on digital content and memberships, allows 2 contributors, and leaves discounts, shipping labels, Google Shopping and commerce APIs to Core and above. Our crawl also shows 1,184 domains leaving Squarespace for Shopify in the 90 days to September 7, 2026, against 622 coming back.
Is Shopify cheaper than Squarespace?
Not on the headline: Squarespace Basic is $19 a month on annual billing against Shopify Basic at $29. But Squarespace Basic charges 2% on every store sale, so above $500 a month of orders the fee erases the $10 difference, and Squarespace Core at $29 (0% fee) costs the same as Shopify Basic. With Shopify Payments there is no platform fee on Shopify; with a third-party gateway Shopify Basic adds 2%.
Includes questions people also ask on Google for this comparison, quoted as Google shows them; the answers are ours, from the data on this page.