Squarespace E-commerce Review 2023: Expert Rated 4.7/5

What Are the Pros and Cons of Squarespace? 

Squarespace’s design-centric approach to website building and drag-and-drop builder are quite a hit among users with limited know-how and knowledge of the process. But the platform does have its share of hits and misses. While that’s true of almost every e-commerce store builder, including big names like Shopify and BigCommerce, let’s find out how Squarespace stacks up.

Blogging

Squarespace has blogging roots and excels in offering beautiful content displays that blow other e-commerce providers out of the water. It walks you through different personalized themes depending on which category you identify your blog with. This is a good starting point for blogging beginners.

To optimize your blog, Squarespace has a feature-rich customization panel to ensure that your blog is click-worthy, SEO-friendly, and has standout UI design including email marketing features to connect with your audience.

Store Design 

Building storefronts is as easy as pie, thanks to Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor, supplemented by layouts and ample customizable themes. However, the one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the lack of an autosave feature.

What I found absolutely frustrating was that I had to manually save every change I made to the storefront design, every single time. And that does get tedious, especially since this is only the first step in a long process.

But the one good thing about Squarespace is that you can preview your template even before you start editing it.

The user interface (UI) is clean and crisp — you have access to everything from selling and marketing tools to your inventory and POS on a single dashboard. You don’t need to keep shifting between tabs or go back-and-forth to get your store designed.

You can also edit your templates in full-screen mode, cutting out all forms of distraction. That’s a smart trick, in my opinion.

Product Management

Now let’s talk about adding products to your store. Squarespace lets you auto-preview how your listing looks while you’re creating it: I found the split-screen feature handy.

You can also duplicate a product listing and simply update the picture if you’re selling similar products — very convenient for sellers with multiple product variations.

There is an option to save your listing as a draft if you want to make further changes, publish it immediately, or schedule it for later.

I liked the freedom to decide when product listings go live. The listing scheduling feature is something even big players like Shopify and BigCommerce lack. In this regard, Squarespace scores brownie points.

You can also start a dropshipping business with Squarespace. It allows you to connect with several fulfillment services by using their fulfillment extensions. However, Squarespace only offers six third-party fulfillment extensions and contacting these providers falls outside their scope of support.

Abandoned Cart Recovery

Abandoned cart recovery is extremely helpful for all e-commerce sellers, and Squarespace doesn’t disappoint. But the bummer is that you get access to abandoned cart recovery only with Squarespace’s Advanced Commerce plan, which allows:

• Automated emails to your customers 24 hours after they abandon their cart/checkout
• The option of customizing each email you send to customers

The customizable feature of abandoned cart recovery emails makes a world of difference to me, but the deal breaker is that you don’t get this feature with the Basic Commerce plan. So, if your budget is tight, you will have no abandoned cart recovery support from Squarespace. Most other key market players provide this feature even with their basic plans.

Inventory Management

With the Squarespace app, you can manage your inventory and get notifications whenever your products are out of stock. Simply download it on your mobile device and get all the details you need to manage your inventory, even on the go. You can also sell different versions of the same product (say a lampshade in color variations) as distinct units.

However, this built-in inventory management covers only the basics. You’ll need to consider a third-party app for better, more analytical end-to-end inventory management. You can consider integrating the following in the back end:

• ShipStation
• Xero
• Katana Manufacturing ERP
• inFlow Inventory
• Booquable

These are only a handful of the many third-party apps you can integrate to make inventory management an easy affair, though it will come at an extra cost.

Order Management

Order fulfillment can be done using the Squarespace app. Every time a new order was placed or an existing one fulfilled, I got a push notification and an email about it.

I was also able to print shipping labels to fulfill orders using the app. The process is efficient, streamlined, and simple. I found this built-in feature to be fairly sufficient and didn’t feel the need to integrate a third-party service provider like ShipStation.

However, if you’re selling physical and digital products or have a large inventory, you might want to rope in an external service provider. The portal works best with ShipStation, Easyship, and Shippo. All three can be installed as an extension in just a few clicks.

Squarespace also lets you fulfill bulk orders from its orders dashboard. If you’re a wholesaler, this feature will be extremely helpful to you.

Another thing I really liked about the platform was that it lets you undo an order if there is any problem with its fulfillment and mark it as “Pending” on the orders dashboard. This will help you iron out any issues with wrong or misplaced orders.

Shipping 

Squarespace gives you four standard options for shipping your products:

• Flat rate
• By weight
• Carrier determined
• Free shipping

It’s up to you to choose the option that best suits your sales strategy, but you cannot assign different shipping rates for different items. Whichever rate you choose will apply storewide.

My advice would be to weigh all your options and compare the totals. Select the best shipping rate depending on how much you want your customers to pay.

If you want free shipping, it will apply to all orders, even international ones. That is, unless you create a “Shipping Zone” and assign a specific rate to all orders in that area.

While, at first glance, I though Squarespace’s shipping options were limited, the Shipping Zone feature gives you ample leeway to charge the fee you think suits you best.

Point-of-Sale

Squarespace has partnered with Square since 2019 to offer its customers a seamless POS experience. It does not charge you anything extra apart from Square’s standard fee on both its e-commerce pricing plans.

However, if you’re using Squarespace’s Business plan, you will need to pay an extra 3% transaction on every sale.

Analytics

I found ample sales and marketing analytics among Squarespace, where I could track sales, acquisition, and engagement. I was also able to add website extensions to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) for sales, marketing, inventory, shipping, and fulfillment records.

Despite extensive reports, I found Squarespace lacking in real-time updates, which can leave you in the dark if your website is seeing a sudden surge of visitors.

Marketing Support

Squarespace excels at marketing support with a stellar built-in email marketing feature and a unique Video Studio App.

I enjoyed the convenience of the Squarespace Video Studio App, which picks up your best performing products and advertises them on your social media channels.

In a highly competitive e-commerce market where every seller is trying to make an impression on the customer, having your own in-house video generator is a boon. And as with all things Squarespace, the end result is visually stunning and attention grabbing.

Apart from that, you also get the standard banners, promotions, and social media integrations that come with most other e-commerce website builders.

If you ever feel like your online store is vulnerable to attacks, you can always submit a support request to get it inspected by the Squarespace team.

Need some help? Squarespace offers the following avenues to have your queries resolved:

• 24/7 email: Raise a ticket with your concern, and the Squarespace team will get back to you. Note that there’s a wait time of roughly 45 minutes to four hours, but this is by far one of the best in the industry. I experienced a wait time of one hour.

• Live chat: Fill in your name, email, and query to start a live chat with a customer support executive. You don’t need to add any codes to get started, unlike BigCommerce and Shopify, where the process is long and drawn out. I was able to chat with customer service instantly.
• Social media: You can drop a DM, tweet, or comment on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook and wait for the team to answer. The response time depends upon that day’s query load.
  
• Webinars: I found the webinars to be a great resource to learn from; you can access these from Squarespace’s help page.
• Help center: This is the parent page for all kinds of customer support offered by Squarespace, and right off the bat, you’ll get to see an array of options to get your query sorted.
• Squarespace and Circle Forums: Want some advice from other Squarespace members? Join the community and circle forum. Insightful and helpful, I found golden advice from existing Squarespace users here that could help your business in the long run.

While Squarespace does not offer phone support, I still scored it a five because the team is extremely robust and prompt with responses. You don’t need to connect over a phone call.

Compare Squarespace Alternatives

While Squarespace is definitely one of the frontrunners in website building and branding, how does it compare to other key players, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, WooCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce?

How I Rated Squarespace

I test e-commerce providers based on the following factors:

• Value: What do you get for each plan — and does it hit that sweet spot of cost ratio to features?
• Ease of use: Is it simple to use the platform with intuitive tools, familiar interfaces, and supportive tutorials or tours?
• Features: Does the platform offer tools that support your business, including marketing integrations, plug-ins, reporting, and management? How effective are the features?
• Security: Which measures does the platform take to protect your business? Does it offer Payment card industry (PCI) compliance and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates?
• Support and improvements: How well does the platform help when you need it? And will it continue to grow with your needs?

Learn more about our review methodology.