This article compares three popular platforms— Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace.
Choosing the right e-commerce website is the first step to building a successful storefront.
Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace offer robust features and functionalities. However, they differ in certain aspects.
Today, we are discussing all the features that can impact your online store’s performance. Our previous guide discussed Shopify Competitive Advantage Over WooCommerce Stores if that interests you.
Now let’s begin with Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace comparison.
Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: Key Features
| Shopify | Wix | Squarespace |
| The E-Commerce Powerhouse | A Versatile Website Builder | A Creative Toolbox for Business |
Comparing Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace comes down to certain key features.
All these platforms bring you some unique features. Before we delve into the comparison, here are some advantages of each of these platforms.
Shopify: The E-Commerce Powerhouse
Shopify Websites are specifically tailored for e-commerce businesses.
It offers comprehensive features designed to optimize your online store’s performance. In addition, Shopify provides advanced inventory management, secure payment gateways, and seamless integration with various sales channels, making it an ideal choice for businesses of all sizes.
Shopify Google Search Console Integration is one of the most important integrations for a Shopify Website.
Wix: A Versatile Website Builder
Wix is a renowned website builder providing an all-in-one solution for visually stunning websites.
With its drag-and-drop interface and intuitive design tools, Wix offers an excellent user experience. In addition, it empowers users to customize their websites to their liking without any coding knowledge.
Squarespace: Creative Toolbox
Squarespace is a platform that offers creative themes and designs. This gives people an opportunity to create visually pleasing websites. Squarespace is used to build creative portfolio websites and storefronts. However, it is not suitable for running and managing a bigger storefront.
Let’s get right into the comparisons to understand this better.
Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: Design and Templates
Wix offers stunning visual appeal.
One of the standout features of Wix is its vast collection of professionally designed templates. These templates are visually appealing and cover various industries and niches. In addition, Wix allows you to fully customize these templates, ensuring that your online store stands out from the competition.
Similarly, Squarespace also offers customizable templates, pre-built layouts, and flexible design tools. It offers various free design and template options to create an online store. These templates work just as well for a blog page or professional website as well.
On the other hand, Shopify is more seamless and conversion-oriented.
Shopify offers a selection of well-designed, Mobile-Responsive Themes optimized for conversion.
These themes are specifically crafted to provide a seamless shopping experience to your customers across various devices. In addition, Shopify Themes are highly customizable. This enables online store owners to maintain brand consistency while enhancing user engagement.
That seems like a win for Shopify Businesses.
Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: Comparing SEO Capabilities
Wix provides essential SEO tools and features to help improve a website’s visibility on search engines. It allows you to optimize meta tags, titles, and descriptions, ensuring your web pages are easily discoverable. These are just some fundamental SEO tactics.
SEO Experts say both on-page SEO and off-page SEO are crucial for an e-business website’s health.
Unfortunately, while Wix has significantly improved its SEO capabilities…
It still falls slightly short compared to Shopify.
Shopify SEO: The Optimization-First Approach!
Shopify is built with a strong emphasis on SEO.
It provides advanced SEO features.
This includes the fundamentals like customizable title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt tags. Additionally, Shopify automatically generates sitemaps and canonical URLs. Sitemaps make it easier for Google to crawl and index a Shopify Store in the search results. Our guide, Create a Robust Shopify Sitemap, explains how to build an indexable Shopify Storefront with structured sitemaps.
Shopify SEO functionalities also facilitate more advanced technical optimizations and integrations. It also enables site indexing and analytics tool that shows traffic to your site.
All this contributes to higher search engine rankings and improved organic traffic.
Wix SEO: Building a User-Friendly Online Store
Wix offers an array of e-commerce features for online store owners.
It allows businesses to easily create and manage their online store. For example, it supports various payment gateways, provides inventory management capabilities, and enables you to offer discounts and promotions. In addition, Wix’s user-friendly interface makes setting up product pages, tracking orders, and managing customer interactions simple.
Built-In SEO Features on Squarespace
Majority of SEO features are better exercised on Shopify or Wix.
Squarespace is better for people with very basic sites. It offers full control over all the main SEO components. This includes URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, alt text, etc. It also offers built-in mobile optimization, like static URLs for every product category. Squarespace gives businesses great control over SEO. However, you must have technical knowledge of SEO terms and strategies.
This is why it can be a little difficult to manage for many businesses.
Shopify: Extensive E-commerce Tools
Squarespace and Wix offer e-commerce tools such as pricing tables, forms, and more.
These tools help in growing online businesses more seamlessly. But when it comes to E-Commerce Tools, Shopify beats both of these platforms. Shopify is renowned for its extensive suite of e-commerce tools and functionalities.
It offers advanced inventory management, secure payment gateways, and the ability to handle large product catalogs effortlessly. Shopify also provides comprehensive analytics and reporting, empowering online business owners (like you) to make data-driven business decisions.
Pricing and Support of E-Commerce Website Builders
Wix offers a range of pricing plans to suit different business needs. They include website hosting, custom domain names, and customer support. The transparent pricing lets you choose the plan that best aligns with your budget and requirements. In addition, Wix also provides customer support through various forms of services. They offer a knowledge base, ticketing system, and community forum to help business owners solve any issues.
Coming to Squarespace. All plans include fully-managed cloud hosting.
There are four plans categorized Basic Plan, Business Plan, Basic Commerce Plan, and Advanced Commerce Plan. The monthly pricing for the plans is 23$, 30$, 40$, and 65$, respectively.
Shopify, on the other hand, offers value for money.
It offers different pricing tiers that cater to businesses of all sizes.
While it may appear slightly higher in price than Wix, Shopify’s feature-rich plans justify the investment. With Shopify, you can access robust e-commerce functionalities, unlimited bandwidth, and 24/7 customer support. Take a look at the various Shopify Website pricing plans and find out what suits your business.
| Basis | Starter | Basic | Shopify | Shopify Advanced | Shopify Plus |
| Suited For | Best for small sellers or individuals | Best for small stores or businesses | Best for larger stores and established brands | Best for enterprise businesses in need of custom reporting and additional features | Best for big corporations as it offers an all-in-one solution for business management |
| Monthly Payment Options | Monthly $5 | Monthly $39 | Monthly $105 | Monthly $399 | Not Available |
| Annual Payment Options | Not Available | $29 / Year | $79 / Year | $299 / Year | $2000 / Year |
In addition, the Shopify support team is highly-responsive.
They proactively assist business owners in solving issues via live chat, email, and phone.
Integrations and Add-Ons
Wix has an extensive App Market where you can find many add-ons and integrations to enhance your website’s functionality. From marketing tools to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, the App Market offers a plethora of options. While the selection may not be as extensive as Shopify’s, Wix ensures that the available integrations meet the essential needs of most businesses.
On the other hand, Squarespace integrates with a variety of third-party services, including Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and more. This platform is a well-known website-building site tailored to beginners’ unique needs.
Now let’s talk about what Shopify brings to the table.
Shopify boasts a robust App Store that provides a vast selection of integrations and add-ons.
These apps enable you to extend your store’s capabilities, integrate with third-party tools, and automate various processes. So whether you need advanced marketing solutions, inventory management tools, or shipping and fulfillment integrations, Shopify’s App Store has you covered.
Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace: The Key Takeaways
In the battle of Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace, all platforms offer unique strengths that can benefit your online store.
Wix shines with its versatility and user-friendly website builder, making it an excellent choice for those who prioritize design customization and ease of use. On the other hand, Shopify provides advanced features and scalability. Thus, it is an ideal platform for businesses looking to grow and expand.
Ultimately, your choice between Wix and Shopify should depend on your business needs and goals.
When deciding, consider factors such as design flexibility, e-commerce functionality, SEO capabilities, pricing, and support. By carefully evaluating these aspects, you can select the platform that aligns perfectly with your vision and sets your online store on the path to success.
Building a successful online business calls for more than just a great website builder.
It involves:
✅Thoughtful planning
✅Effective marketing strategies
✅Providing value to customers
With the right platform and a comprehensive approach, you can establish a solid online presence and achieve remarkable results in the competitive world of e-commerce. So, Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace, which platform is best suitable for your website?
Embark on an exciting journey as you bring your e-commerce business goals to life!
Comparing Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace is not the only comparison we did. BigCommerce is another e-commerce giant that has many users. Read our next guide for a comparative analysis of BigCommerce versus Shopify.
