- Highs: Beautiful web designs. Relatively simple to use. Quick to set up a website. Suits a good range of professions.
- Lows: Extra transaction fee on Business plan. Needs more integration options. No POS integration.
- Best for: Business wanting a visually stunning online store that’s easy to set up and manage.
How Squarespace works
Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform for building and running a personal blog, business website, or online store. This website builder comes with its own hosting, which includes the tools to create, manage and edit your website content.
However, it’s important to note that you’ll be initially assigned with a built-in domain that ends with ‘squarespace.com’. To change this, you’ll need to register a new custom domain or transfer an existing domain to Squarespace. You can register domain names directly in Squarespace.
Although the online store is suitable for eCommerce, businesses with hundreds of inventory items would be better off with Shopify or Wix.
Squarespace is also a serious contender for businesses in the service sector because of its handy booking features, as well as those offering subscriptions and digital content.
Accepted payments
Squarespace is known for its stylish and easy-to-use templates. Getting a website up and running is easy and takes almost minimal effort.
Squarepace’s eCommerce features are accessible on the Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce plans, which will be covered in this review. Its Personal plan, which is also its cheapest plan, unfortunately doesn’t have eCommerce features.
Squarespace eCommerce sites in Australia accept Afterpay as a payment processor in a Commerce Basic or Commerce Advance plan. Businesses can enable this by connecting, or creating, a Stripe account. However, Afterpay charges a 6% processing fee of the order total plus USD$0.30, so it’s important to take note of this if Afterpay is important for your business.
Connecting with Stripe on Squarespace allows businesses to accept Visa, Mastercard and American Express payments. Other payments accepted by Squarespace are Apple Pay and PayPal transactions.
Best alternatives: Leading ecommerce platforms for a small business
Squarespace ecommerce pricing and payments
Squarespace charges a monthly or annual subscription fee on their four main plans.
Their cheapest plan for an eCommerce store is a Business plan that’s AUD$35 on a per-month basis, or AUD$300 upfront for a year (which works out to AUD$25 each month). Their premium eCommerce plan, Squarespace Advanced, costs AUD$61 per month, and AUD$624 if paid upfront annually (which is AUD$52 a month).
Squarespace does have a positive point on GST. Australian businesses that are registered for GST under the Australian Taxation Office can apply for an exemption from GST collection through Squarespace.
| Squarespace plan | Monthly subscription* | Annual subscription* |
|---|---|---|
| Business | A$35/mo | A$300 upfront (~A$25/mo) |
| Basic Commerce | A$40/mo | A$408 upfront (~A$34/mo) |
| Advanced Commerce | A$61/mo | A$300 upfront (~A$52/mo) |
* GST not included.
| Squarespace plans | |
|---|---|
| Monthly* | Annual* |
| Business | |
| A$35 /mo | A$300 (A$25 /mo) |
| Basic Commerce | |
| A$40 /mo | A$408 (A$34 /mo) |
| Advanced Commerce | |
| A$61 /mo | A$300 (A$52 /mo) |
* GST not included.
Although subscriptions can be stopped at any time (they auto-renew until you cancel through the account), payments are non-refundable. Therefore, it’s worth being sure if you can pay a lump sum upfront for a year or if a monthly subscription is more suitable.
Payments through the online shop are processed by Stripe or PayPal, depending on which one(s) you activate. However, Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee for any payments accepted through your online store on the Business plan. Add to that the Stripe or PayPal fees, and it can get expensive. On the Basic and Advanced Commerce plans, Squarespace does not take any transaction fees – instead, you only pay the fees applicable to Stripe and PayPal.
| Plan | Squarespace fee |
Stripe fee |
|---|---|---|
| Business | 3% | 1.75% + A$0.30 for domestic cards 2.9% + A$0.30 for international cards |
| Basic Commerce | 0% | 1.75% + A$0.30 for domestic cards 2.9% + A$0.30 for international cards |
| Advanced Commerce | 0% | 1.75% + A$0.30 for domestic cards 2.9% + A$0.30 for international cards |
| Plan | Plan fee |
Stripe fee |
|---|---|---|
| Business | 3% | 1.75% + A$0.30 (domestic cards) 2.9% + A$0.30 (international cards) |
| Basic Commerce |
0% | 1.75% + A$0.30 (domestic cards) 2.9% + A$0.30 (international cards) |
| Advanced Commerce |
0% | 1.75% + A$0.30 (domestic cards) 2.9% + A$0.30 (international cards) |
Stripe fees are pretty decent for domestic cards, but might be a little high for international cards. These fees are charged through Stripe, not Squarespace, and you must be registered with Stripe in order to connect payments with the online store.
To accept PayPal, you need to connect your PayPal Business account with your online store. PayPal has different transaction fees depending on the type of transaction, but a standard fee is 2.6% + AUD$0.30 per transaction. Additional fees are applied to cross-border transactions and currency conversion.
Ecommerce features
Squarespace plans have many features that benefit businesses and bloggers. Its recent updates have also prioritised eCommerce features to stay more competitive with other website builders like Wix.
These recent features are suitable for small, independent retailers and professionals offering appointments, subscriptions, digital products, takeaways, or other services.
The following table shows how its subscriptions differ on the commerce-specific functions.
| Commerce feature | Business | Basic Commerce | Advanced Commerce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accept donations | |||
| Unlimited products | |||
| Gift cards | |||
| Customer accounts | |||
| Checkout on your domain | |||
| Advanced analytics | |||
| Advanced merchandising | |||
| Products on Instagram | |||
| Limited availability labels | |||
| Abandoned cart recovery | |||
| Sell subscriptions | |||
| Advanced shipping | |||
| Advanced discounts | |||
| APIs for orders & inventory |
| Business | Basic Commerce |
Advanced Commerce |
|---|---|---|
| Accept donations | ||
| Unlimited products | ||
| Gift cards | ||
| Customer accounts | ||
| Checkout on your domain | ||
| Advanced analytics | ||
| Advanced merchandising | ||
| Products on Instagram | ||
| Limited availability labels | ||
| Abandoned cart recovery | ||
| Sell subscriptions | ||
| Advanced shipping | ||
| Advanced discounts | ||
| APIs for orders and inventory | ||
Let us go through some main functions included on all or some plans.
Product catalogue and SEO: On any Business and Commerce plan, you can add unlimited products with variants and images. There are also SEO settings and tools included for individual products and for the whole store.
Discounts: You can set basic discounts on the Business plan, and limited or automatic discounts on the Commerce plans.
Image: Squarespace
Squarespace checkout with Afterpay option.
Checkout on your domain: On the Business plan, customers are redirected to Stripe or PayPal during checkout. However, on higher plans, checkout is available securely on your site, which increases the sense of security and gives a consistent shopping experience.
Gift cards: On all plans, you can sell digital gift cards that are redeemable in your online store.
Order management: You can manage orders online or in the Squarespace Commerce app. The app has limited functionality, but it enables you to stay on top of customer orders. You can also add and edit basic product details and upload images in the app.
Customer accounts: Returning customers can save their account details for the next time they purchase on your site. This generally increases sales conversion, but it is only available on the Commerce plans.
Reports and analytics: Since the platform does not integrate easily with external reporting software (extensions are available, but Squarespace does not guarantee full compatibility with these), you’re dependent on the sales reports in Squarespace that can be exported to Excel. Overall, the records are sufficient for a small business, but you have to be on a Basic or Advanced Commerce plan or it might be quite a limitation.
Image: Squarespace
You can sell on Instagram with a Squarespace online store.
Sell on Instagram: You can connect your business Instagram profile with the Squarespace website. This allows your followers to easily click an image to buy a product you’ve promoted on the social media platform.
Image: Squarespace
Example of a subscription sold through Squarespace.
Merchandising tools: Squarespace allows you to show relevant items on product pages and let customers join a waitlist for items not in stock. You can also bulk-edit products from a spreadsheet to save time. However, these features are only available on the Commerce plans.
Squarespace subscribers can access other tools as well, such as a free Video Maker tool to create a brand or product video for your online audience. This is quite a neat extra feature that helps you create a video with easy templates and style choices.
If your business requires an online booking system for customers to schedule appointments or purchase event tickets, you can also subscribe to Squarespace Scheduling with different pricing plans that start from AUD$20 a month. These plans can be used with or without a Squarespace site, so its features are not part of the Business or Commerce plans.
Image: Squarespace
Squarespace Scheduling has a monthly or annual cost, but is a full-fledged booking system.
Restaurants and hospitality businesses can also link their Squarespace website with Tock, a platform for table reservations, deliveries, events, and takeaway orders. This comes with a monthly fee and transaction rate on top of Squarespace’s fees, but it gives you a solid range of booking tools if you’re a restaurant owner.
Another handy service is called Squarespace Members Area, which starts at a monthly subscription of AUD$12 a month. This feature allows you to set up membership-based access to premium content or services offered on your website.
Finally, there’s Squarespace Email Campaigns, with plans that start from AUD$12 a month. It allows you to integrate email marketing features with your Squarespace online store.
Setting up the website
To set up a site with Squarespace, click on the “get started” button on their website. You will then be asked a few questions about the kind of website you want, or you could also go straight to their templates section to pick a theme. Once you’ve selected a template, you will then be asked to create an account or log in into an existing account.
After you’ve created an account and chosen a template, you will start a 14-day free trial. In contrast to other platforms, this trial is specific to the website you’re building, not the Squarespace account. So you can create multiple free websites while offline during the trial (you must subscribe to a plan for it to go live) enabling you to play around with designs and setting up products, pages, and other necessities in your website.
If you don’t upgrade to a paid plan before your trial ends, you will lose access to the website until you do. However, it is handy if you’ve used Squarespace before and want to experiment with a new website on the platform first before actually committing to a plan.
Website templates
Squarespace’s templates are one of the main attractions of the website builder – they’re simple, stylish and extremely visually-oriented.
Many of the themes are dependent on good quality photos, as poor images can look really bad across a whole page. That being said, you can opt for a minimalistic website with only product photos in the online store.
Image: Mobile Transaction
Squarespace ecommerce templates are stylish, but perhaps too simple for some.
Squarespace has over 140 templates to pick from. You can filter these by “Online Store” (as seen above and below), “Scheduling”, “Membership”, “Portfolio” and other template styles. Or, you could pick a blank slate and add pages and sections manually if you prefer a more customised website.
Image: Mobile Transaction
Some online shop templates offered by Squarespace.
Whatever your choice of template, you can switch themes later, add or remove sections on pages and choose specific layouts and designs for each new element you want to add to a page.
Image: Mobile Transaction
Within each template, Squarespace still gives you many options for what to add to a page.
All templates are automatically responsive, and they fit perfectly on smartphone or tablet screens.
Adding or editing a page is also quite intuitive on Squarespace. You can adjust the sizing of website banners and edit buttons by hovering over the sections. However, its customisation options are limited compared to Wix or building your own website from scratch.
Much of the editing in Squarespace is done in the side menu or pop-up window within the editor, and changes are immediately applied to the website on the right. No coding is needed, but you can add custom CSS or JavaScript.
Domain and hosting
As an all-in-one website platform, hosting is included on all Squarespace subscriptions. You will only need to pay extra for your own domain, but its annual plans include a free domain for the first year. Alternatively, you can use a free URL format which ends with ‘squarespace.com’ , but we wouldn’t recommend it for a professional-looking site.
All subscriptions include SSL security (the little padlock icon next to the URL field in your browser) which gives website visitors an added sense of security that they can trust your site. To add it all up, Squarespace also comes with unlimited bandwidth and storage usage.
Third party integrations
Through Squarespace Extensions, you can connect your online store with a selection of third-party apps for shipping, finance, inventory, and marketing tools.
Merchants can also connect with Google products, social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter), Stripe, and PayPal.
However,Squarespace does have a limitation of not being able to sync your sales with Xero, unless you use an extension app that has no direct support from Squarespace. However, it does connect with QuickBooks, FreshBooks and Dext for accounting.
There is no connected POS system available for Squarespace in Australia yet, so your in-store sales cannot be linked to online sales. Other ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Square Online are built to work in unison with a POS system, but Squarespace still mostly focuses on online transactions.
Image: Mobile Transaction
Side menu within the Commerce menu – these are the main ecommerce options in Squarespace.
Customer service and reviews
All Squarespace plans include 24/7 customer support, but only via email and Twitter (@SquarespaceHelp). You may wonder, does the 24/7 claim only apply to when you can write to the team, and not when you get a response? Probably, judging from user complaints about their slow responses.
A live chat is available between 5.30am-8pm Eastern Time (7.30am-10am AEST) on weekdays only. Unfortunately, Squarespace does not have a helpline to call.
While they do have a good range of help topics in their website’s Help section, it can be confusing to identify what information applies to Australia or to the US. That being said, most of the information applies to both countries, so it’s still pretty relevant.
According to many customer reviews, Squarespace’s support is not great. Some complain their issues were not resolved, and the lack of a call center makes it hard to get timely help. Others also mention that the website isn’t that intuitive, and can be buggy at times.
Our verdict
Squarespace is suitable for personal websites, sole traders, and small businesses that would like to sell products, services, and raise donations online. However brick-and-mortar stores with a larger inventory would probably benefit more from retail-focused eCommerce platforms like Shopify or BigCommmerce.
You don’t pick Squarespace for the broadest choice of features. You pick it to create the best-looking website with little prior knowledge about web design. Almost every feature is carefully curated to make it super-quick to create a gorgeous website without hiring a designer.
You don’t pick Squarespace for the broadest choice of features. You pick it to create the best-looking website with little prior knowledge about web design.
You may need a photographer or good stock image though, because most of the templates depend on high-quality imagery.
The platform is user-friendly, but with some limitations around what can be added within the themes. Squarespace is ideal for those who don’t want an overly complicated website builder, but it definitely has limited integration capabilities compared with other eCommerce platforms.
