Squarespace or Shopify? Choose Squarespace when the site is the product and the shop is a feature; choose Shopify when the shop is the business. Squarespace is design-led and site-first: portfolio, bookings, blog and a handful of products live in one editor. Shopify is store-first: catalog, stock, markets, checkout and data are the product, and the look is something you build on top.
We are a Shopify agency, so we have a bias, and we will say where Squarespace is the better answer. We also have a gap: we have never run a Squarespace migration for a client. Our Shopify Launch Sprint has been used on other platforms, and the last section says exactly what we know and where each fact comes from.
Squarespace or Shopify: design platform or commerce platform?
Squarespace is the better home for a brand whose pages do the selling; Shopify is the better home for a brand whose catalog and operations do. The difference is not the look, because both can look excellent. It is what happens on the day you have hundreds of products, three countries to ship to and someone packing boxes.
What does Squarespace do better than Shopify?
Squarespace makes a coherent, beautiful site faster and with less to manage. Layout, typography and the blog sit in the same editor, so a founder with taste can ship a good page in an afternoon, with no developer and no app to choose. Shopify can match the result, but someone has to build it: its strength is the machinery behind the page, not the editor in front of it.
That is why we would not push every Squarespace brand to move. If most visits come to read, book or look at work, and the shop is a side door, the site is doing its job.
Who should stay on Squarespace for selling?
Stay on Squarespace if selling is secondary to the site and your operations fit in one panel. In practice that means four kinds of brand:
- Creatives with a few products. Prints, books or limited editions around a portfolio.
- Service sellers. Consultations, classes and appointments, where the product is time and the shop takes the payment.
- Small catalogs. A short, stable range, one market, one place where stock lives, no complex variants.
- Content-led brands. The blog, newsletter or portfolio brings the traffic and the shop converts a small share of it.
There is a middle path: keep Squarespace as the site and send people to a Shopify store. Squarespace’s help center describes the options: links and buttons to your Shopify store, and Shopify buy buttons only through custom code that Squarespace Support will not help with. It works for a pilot. As a permanent setup it tends to fail, because the customer leaves your design at the moment of purchase and you now run two systems with two sets of numbers.
At what point does a Squarespace brand need Shopify?
When the shop has to do things the editor was not built for and you spend your time working around the platform instead of using it. Ask these seven questions of your own Squarespace admin; the answers depend on your plan and what you run.
- Catalog depth. Do you manage hundreds of products with variants and attributes that you edit in bulk or sync from a management system? Shopify is built around that data, with bulk editing, custom fields and an API to connect your ERP or product database.
- Stock and fulfilment. Do you hold stock in more than one place or use a logistics partner? Squarespace’s help center describes managing inventory from one panel and connecting a third-party fulfilment service. Shopify tracks inventory per location and lets you fulfil orders from the location that holds the stock.
- Apps and integrations. Do you need email flows, subscriptions, reviews, loyalty or a shipping tool? Squarespace has extensions; Shopify’s App Store is where many commerce tools are listed, so you rarely build from scratch.
- Markets and currencies. Squarespace sells in one store currency, with a multi-currency checkout for shoppers when you use Squarespace Payments or Stripe. Shopify Markets goes further: local prices, translations, international domains and duties per market.
- Wholesale. Do trade customers need their own prices and terms? Squarespace’s help center covers invoicing wholesalers; Shopify has B2B features built around company accounts, with catalogs and pricing for them.
- Checkout control. Do you want to test the purchase flow, add upsells or offer local payment methods? On Shopify the checkout is a surface you work on, and it is one of the four guarantees of our Sprint.
- Analytics. Do your platform’s numbers match your real orders? Server-side tracking with GA4 and the Meta Conversions API is part of every store we build.
One yes is a nuisance. Three yes is a platform problem. That rule is ours, not Squarespace’s or Shopify’s, and it is a judgment call: a brand with two yeses and a strong content engine may still be right to stay.
Can a Shopify store keep the look of your Squarespace site?
Yes, if the front end is rebuilt from your design instead of picked from a catalog. Design-led brands are right to fear a migration that swaps their look for a generic template. The answer is not to stay put: it is to treat the look as a specification. Four steps:
- Write the look down. From the live site we extract what makes it yours: fonts and type scale, colors, spacing, image ratios, button and hover behavior, the rhythm of each page.
- Rebuild it as code. With our Custom AI System the Shopify front end is written from scratch for your store only: same pages, same structure, same content, and no apps slowing it down. This is what the Sprint calls a store rebuilt 1:1.
- Compare side by side. Home, collection, product and search are replicated in week one. On the first Friday you get staging and a ten-minute Loom to watch next to your current site, then a live review.
- Decide on the differences. Some Squarespace behaviors have no direct equivalent: a particular block, a scroll effect, a bookings page, a members area. For each one we propose to reproduce it, replace it or drop it, and you decide at the review.
A migration is not a redesign, and we say so. The Sprint is not a restyling: it is your store, faster and shorter to buy from. If you want a new look, that is a separate and later decision. We have run this design step on a WooCommerce store and on a proprietary platform, not yet on Squarespace; the step is the same, only the source differs.
Which Squarespace content leaves with you, and which stays behind?
Squarespace exports products, contacts and orders as CSV files and site content as a WordPress XML file, and that XML does not import into Shopify. The details come from Squarespace’s import and export guide, its product export page and Shopify’s official guide to migrating from Squarespace. In three groups:
- Comes out as CSV. Products (physical and service), contacts, and orders from the Orders panel. Shopify imports products and customers from CSV; orders need a third-party app. Import in this order: products, customers, orders, so that orders link to the right records.
- Comes out partly. The product file leaves out featured images, variant images, image alt text and reviews. Squarespace categories become a single product type, so collections are rebuilt. Sale prices swap places (the regular price becomes the compare-at price). The customer export misses notes and most saved addresses.
- Does not come out. Blog posts and pages: Squarespace gives you a WordPress file for one blog, and Shopify says it cannot import it, so you copy them by hand. Images and uploaded videos cannot be exported in bulk, only downloaded one by one from the asset library. Reviews are collected again with a review app. Anything that belongs to the editor rather than the store (layout, styles, forms, scheduling) is rebuilt, not exported.
The exports are a one-time copy, and Squarespace says nothing syncs afterwards. Freeze the catalog on the day you export, or plan a second import of what changed before go-live.
Squarespace URLs, redirects and your domain: the switch-over
You give every old URL that has traffic or links a 301 redirect to its Shopify address before the domain moves. Squarespace and Shopify build paths differently: Shopify uses /products/, /collections/, /blogs/ and /pages/, while in Squarespace 7.1 product URLs include a /p/ segment between the store page and the product slug. Check the real URLs in your own Squarespace admin, because older sites and custom setups can differ. Nothing carries over by itself.
Start the inventory from your sitemap.xml and Search Console (every page with clicks in the last 12 months, plus anything with backlinks), which is how we do it in the Sprint. Map each old URL to its new one in a CSV and import it under URL redirects in the Shopify admin. Shopify redirects only from URLs that no longer load a page, so do not recreate an old path as a new page by accident. Keep blog slugs, titles and meta descriptions when you copy posts, and read our migration SEO checklist for the full list.
Switch the domain last. Shopify advises disconnecting the domain from Squarespace first to avoid SSL errors, and explains how to connect a Squarespace domain to Shopify. A recent registration or contact change can lock a domain against transfer, so check that days before, not on launch day. Keep your Squarespace plan active until the redirects are verified and you hold every export. Google’s guide to site moves with URL changes is the neutral reference.
What do we know about Squarespace migrations, and what do we not?
We have no Squarespace case study, and we would rather say so than borrow one. What we have are two real moves to Shopify and a process that does not depend on the source platform once the data is out.
- Nazzi, from WooCommerce: online sales +105% in the first 85 days on Shopify against the same days of the year before (case study).
- Cumini, from a proprietary platform tied to the ERP: online sales +67.7% in the 12 months after the move (case study).
Neither was a design-led portfolio site, and results do not transfer between brands. What transfers is the method: the data reconciled before anything else, the store rebuilt 1:1, every URL redirected and tested. Everything specific to Squarespace in this article, the formats and the gaps, comes from the Squarespace and Shopify documentation linked above, so you can check it yourself.
The Sprint takes 14 days to a store ready to publish, go-live between day 15 and 30, then 90 days of support. The price is public: from €5,800, VAT excluded, in 4 installments. Our guide to migrating to Shopify explains the process and what a migration costs breaks the money down. If you sell a dozen products and no one else touches the store, you do not need us: Shopify’s official guide and the CSV files are enough. Coming from Wix instead? Read Wix or Shopify.
Frequently asked questions
Is Squarespace or Shopify better for an online store?
Squarespace is better when the site is the product and the shop is a side door: a portfolio, bookings, a blog and a few products. Shopify is better when the store is the business: a real catalog, stock in more than one place, several markets, wholesale customers, ads and integrations.
Can you move from Squarespace to Shopify without losing SEO?
You can keep most of your search visibility if every old URL with traffic or links gets a 301 redirect to its new Shopify address before the domain switch. Titles, meta descriptions and blog posts are moved by hand. Expect small movements in the first weeks and check them in Search Console.
What can I export from Squarespace to Shopify?
Products, contacts and orders export as CSV files, and Shopify imports products and customers from CSV (orders need a third-party app). Blog posts and pages export only as a WordPress file that Shopify cannot import, so they are copied by hand, and images cannot be exported in bulk.
Will my Shopify store look like my Squarespace site?
It can, if the front end is rebuilt from your design instead of picked from a catalog. With the Shopify Launch Sprint we rebuild your store 1:1 with our Custom AI System, then compare it side by side with your current site. Squarespace-specific effects with no equivalent are shown at review, and you decide.
Does my Squarespace blog move to Shopify automatically?
No. Squarespace exports one blog as a WordPress XML file, and Shopify’s migration guide says it cannot import that file. Posts are copied by hand with images, titles, meta descriptions and slugs, and each old post URL gets a 301 redirect to the new one.
Can I use Shopify and Squarespace together?
Yes, as a stopgap. Squarespace’s help center describes links and buttons that send visitors to a Shopify store, and Shopify buy buttons only through custom code that Squarespace Support does not help with. As a permanent setup it tends to hurt: customers leave your design at checkout and you run two systems.
A final note
Brands rarely leave Squarespace because it is bad. They leave because the shop grew into a business and the site stayed a site. The look you built is an asset worth carrying over, and carrying it over is a build job, not a template choice.
The Shopify Launch Sprint moves your store to Shopify in 14 days with our Custom AI System: a fixed calendar, a public price and 4 written guarantees.
Antonio Manitta
Founder & eCommerce Manager at NoProb Agency
For over 7 years I have helped fashion, supplements, and DTC brands scale their eCommerce. I work in long-term partnership with three brands at a time, building stable systems that compound.
About NoProb →
