Squarespace vs Shopify in 2026: Which Store Costs Less?

Squarespace is cheaper per month and Shopify is cheaper per sale, which means the whole comparison collapses into one question: how many things do you sell?

The answer is not the one this page used to give. On a 45 euro download, Squarespace Core costs about 0.93 euro a sale, because downloads pay its store fee, which is zero on Core, leaving only Stripe's card processing. Shopify Basic through Shopify Payments costs about 1.11 euro.

Core is also 5 euro a month cheaper than Shopify Basic on annual billing, so on per-sale arithmetic Shopify never catches up. It wins on other things.

An ecommerce platform is software that lists your products, takes payment, handles delivery or fulfilment, and pays you the balance. Squarespace is a website builder that grew a store; Shopify is a store that grew a website.

That origin difference explains every fee decision each has made.

Framekit, which we build, grew a store for one kind of seller only, and that belongs here rather than in a closing footnote.

A studio gets the portfolio, the client galleries and a digital store on one site from $0 a month at 5 percent, on its own domain from the $9 Starter plan, with the fee falling to nothing on a flat plan.

Nothing physical can be sold on it at all, so the print run priced below is outside what it does.

We corrected this comparison on 12 October 2026: an earlier version said we had built the store on both platforms, and it now describes what we actually did, which was price one studio on each vendor's published rates.

The same day we re-read Squarespace's transaction fees article, which puts downloads on the store fee rather than the digital content fee; that reverses this page's digital-product verdict, and the crossover it used to quote is gone.

Full disclosure: Framekit sells digital products, so we compete with both at the edges, and we cannot sell physical goods at all. We have kept this comparison between Squarespace and Shopify and put our own position in one short marked section near the end. Every figure below was read from each vendor's own published pricing in August 2026, and our own fee tiers were re-verified on 20 September 2026 with no change.

How We Compared Squarespace and Shopify

We priced the same hypothetical store on both, from each vendor's published pricing rather than from accounts we opened.

It belongs to a small design studio selling two things: a 45 euro digital template pack and a 90 euro physical print run.

Two products, deliberately, because the common assumption is that Squarespace charges different rates for each; its own help centre says it does not, and that is the heart of the comparison.

Both pricing pages were read in August 2026 with no promotional code, on a European connection, and both vendors served us euros, so for once there is no currency to reconcile and the figures compare directly.

Verified means we read it in the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026 and are reporting it with a link. Community sentiment means users report it consistently and we did not reproduce it.

Judgements about which store suits which studio are labelled as ours.

We quote no third-party star ratings, because the large review aggregators blocked automated access during this round of research, and we publish no speed figures because they depend more on your images than on your platform.

In one lineone design studio store with a 45 euro digital product and a 90 euro physical one, priced on both platforms in the same currency on their published August 2026 rates.

The Two Ladders

Both ladders below were read from Squarespace's pricing page and Shopify's pricing page in August 2026, and both served euros to the same European connection, so these figures compare directly without a conversion.

The column that matters is the fourth.

On Basic, Squarespace charges a platform fee on top of whatever your payment processor charges, and from Core it charges none on store sales, downloads included; its higher fee applies to courses, video pages and memberships, per its transaction fees help article.

Shopify charges no platform fee at all if you use its own payments, and a lower card rate than most processors offer.

What One Sale Costs

Squarespace does not process payments itself; you connect Stripe or PayPal and pay their rates directly. Stripe's published rate for standard European cards, read on its own pricing page in August 2026, is 1.5 percent plus 0.25 euro, and that is the figure used in the Squarespace rows below.

Your own rate will differ by country and by card type, so treat these as the shape of the comparison rather than as your exact bill.

And on the 90 euro physical print run, which pays the same store fee:

Notice that there is no reversal. On both products Squarespace Core is cheaper per sale than Shopify Basic, because its store fee is zero and Stripe's European card rate is lower than Shopify's. Only Squarespace Basic's 2 percent puts Shopify ahead per sale.

The Crossovers

In one lineSquarespace Core stays cheaper than Shopify Basic on both downloads and physical goods at any volume on per-sale arithmetic, and the case for Shopify is everything the per-sale table does not capture.

Downloads, Squarespace Core against Shopify Basic. Shopify costs 5 euro more per month on annual billing and 0.18 euro more per sale, so there is no crossover: at twenty sales a month, Squarespace Core costs 35.60 euro and Shopify Basic 44.20 euro, before the delivery app Shopify needs for files.

Downloads, Squarespace Basic against Core. Basic takes 0.90 euro of a 45 euro download in store fee, so a sale costs 1.83 euro there against 1.11 on Shopify Basic.

The 6 euro a month to move to Core removes the 2 percent and pays for itself at 300 euro a month in sales.

Physical, Squarespace Core against Shopify Basic. Squarespace is 0.36 euro cheaper per sale and 5 euro cheaper per month, so it stays cheaper indefinitely on per-sale cost alone.

If you sell physical goods and the store is small, Squarespace is genuinely the better financial choice and most comparisons get this backwards.

Where that stops being trueShopify Basic includes no additional staff accounts, Grow allows up to 5, and Advanced up to 15.

Once a second person needs a login, or you need real inventory management, multi-channel selling, or shipping integrations, you are buying Shopify for reasons the per-sale table does not capture.

Here is a test you can run in a minute. Multiply your monthly store sales by 0.02 if you are on Squarespace Basic; on Core the platform fee is zero. Add your plan and compare the total to 22 euro, which is Shopify Basic on annual billing.

If yours is larger, move to Core before you think about moving to Shopify.

Where Squarespace Wins

In one linethe site around the store is better, the entry price is lower, and for a small catalogue attached to a portfolio it is the more sensible purchase.

It is a website first. Squarespace's published templates are built around portfolio, journal and about pages with the store placed inside them, while Shopify's themes start from the shop, so the site around it tends to read as a store with pages attached.

That is our judgement from each vendor's template galleries, not a build we ran.

Core is a strong plan. At 17 euro a month it includes complete customisation with CSS and JavaScript, unlimited contributors, advanced analytics, and professional email from Google Workspace, plus 0 percent on physical and download store sales.

That combination is unusually generous at the price.

Lower entry cost. Basic at 11 euro a month is half Shopify Basic's annual rate, and if you sell three physical items a month the fee difference never catches up.

One subscription for the business. Scheduling, invoicing, and email campaigns are included rather than integrated. For a studio running everything alone, that is worth real money against assembling the same stack.

The gotchathe 7 percent fee on courses, video pages and memberships on Basic is the highest platform cut among mainstream website builders, and studios moving from templates to teaching walk straight into it.

Squarespace does not hide it, and almost nobody reads which products it covers. We cover the wider picture in is Squarespace worth it for photographers.

Where Shopify Wins

In one lineno platform fee through its own payments, a lower card rate, and the entire apparatus of running an actual shop, which Squarespace does not attempt.

No platform transaction fee. With Shopify Payments there is no cut on top of card processing, and the card rate itself is 1.9 percent plus 0.25 euro on Basic, falling to 1.8 on Grow and 1.7 on Advanced.

That is competitive with what you would get from a processor directly.

Inventory, shipping, and channels. Real stock tracking, shipping rates, label printing, and selling across marketplaces and social channels are all native. If the store is the business rather than an attachment to it, this is not a close comparison.

Staff accounts. Grow allows up to 5 and Advanced up to 15. Squarespace Core offers unlimited contributors, which is more generous on paper, though the roles and permissions are less granular.

The app ecosystem. Nearly anything a shop needs exists as an app, including digital delivery, which brings us to the gotcha.

The gotchaShopify is built around physical goods and selling a downloadable file requires an app, including a free one from Shopify itself.

It is a small cost and a real setup step, and it is easy to miss when you plan a Shopify store that sells files. We cover the options in Shopify apps for digital downloads.

The second gotchaif Shopify Payments is unavailable in your country, or you prefer another processor, Shopify charges a third-party gateway fee of 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced, and 0.2 percent on Plus.

That single change makes Shopify Basic more expensive than Squarespace Core on both product types, and every figure in our tables assumes you use Shopify Payments.

Which One Fits a Creative Studio

In one lineif the store exists because your work sells itself, Squarespace; if the store is the work, Shopify.

The honest test is not about features, it is about where attention goes. A photographer with a portfolio and six print editions is running a website with a shop on it, and Squarespace is built for that.

A studio with forty products, stock levels, and a shipping problem is running a shop, and Shopify is built for that.

The mistake in each direction is predictable. Studios pick Shopify because it is the ecommerce brand, then spend months making a shop look like a portfolio.

Or they pick Squarespace Basic, sell digital templates, and hand over 2 percent for two years when 6 euro more a month on Core would have removed it.

One more consideration that is not a feeneither platform will hand you a working copy of the finished site.

Squarespace exports a subset of content in a WordPress-compatible format, and Shopify exports products, customers, and orders as CSV files, which is genuinely useful because your customer list is the asset.

Before you commit to either, confirm you can export customers, because that is the part you will care about in three years.

Where Framekit Fits

We build a website builder and sell digital products, so we compete with both of these at one edge and not at all at the other. Rather than salt that through the comparison above, here is our position stated once, including the part that rules us out for a large share of readers.

Framekit is an AI website builder made for creative work, so a studio gets a portfolio, client galleries, and a digital store from one subscription on one domain.

Free at $0 with a 5 percent fee on product sales, Starter at $9 a month, Pro at $19 with 3 percent, and Business at $39 with no fee.

Where we lose to Shopify, decisivelywe sell digital products only. There is no shipping, no inventory, no product variants, and no physical fulfilment of any kind. The 90 euro print run in this comparison cannot be sold on Framekit at all.

If anything you sell goes in a box, Shopify is the answer and we are not in the conversation.

Where we lose to Squarespacebreadth again. Scheduling, invoicing, and a physical store are all there and none of them are here.

Where we are not cheaper than Squarespaceon downloads our fee is 5 percent on Free and Starter, against 2 percent on Squarespace Basic and nothing on Core at 17 euro, and our 0 percent arrives at $39 a month or $31 on annual billing. What we add is client galleries and video review on the same account, not a lower fee.

How to Choose

In one linework down these questions in order and stop at the first one that describes you, because what you sell decides this comparison long before any feature difference gets a chance to.

1. Do you sell physical goods with stock levels and shipping? Shopify, and stop comparing. Nothing about Squarespace's store is built for that.
2. Do you sell digital products from a small catalogue? Squarespace Core at 17 euro a month billed annually, which takes no fee on downloads, unless you need Shopify's inventory or staff tools.
3. Do you sell downloads on Squarespace Basic today? Move to Core once sales pass about 300 euro a month, because it removes the 2 percent store fee for 6 euro more.
4. Is Shopify Payments unavailable where you are? Squarespace, because Shopify's third-party gateway fee of 2 percent on Basic removes its whole advantage.
5. Is the store a small part of a site whose real job is showing your work? Squarespace Core at 17 euro a month.
6. Do you need more than one person with a login and granular permissions? Shopify Grow at 62 euro a month billed annually.
7. Do you sell only digital files alongside a portfolio and client galleries? That is the narrow job Framekit is built for, on one site from $0 a month and on your own domain from the $9 Starter plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Shopify cheaper than Squarespace?

Not on per-sale arithmetic for a small creative store.

Squarespace Core takes no platform fee on downloads or physical goods, per its transaction fees help article, and costs 17 euro a month billed annually to Shopify Basic's 22, so with Stripe's European rate of 1.5 percent plus 0.25 euro it is cheaper per sale and per month.

Shopify's own card rate of 1.9 percent plus 0.25 euro is lower than most processors quote, and it becomes the better buy when inventory, staff accounts or sales channels matter.

Does Squarespace charge more for digital products than physical ones?

Not for downloads. A download product pays the same store fee as a physical one, 2 percent on Basic and 0 percent on Core and Advanced.

The higher fee, 7 percent on Basic, 5 percent on Core and 0 percent on Advanced, applies to courses, video pages and memberships, so a studio selling template packs pays the lower rate and one selling a course pays the higher.

How much is Shopify per month?

Its pricing page served us euros: Basic at 29 euro monthly or 22 billed annually, Grow at 82 or 62, Advanced at 384 or 289, and Plus from 2,100 euro. Prices display in local currency, so check your own region before budgeting.

Shopify also advertises an introductory three days free followed by 1 euro a month for three months, which is left out of the figures here on the same principle applied to every introductory rate in this series: compare on the standing price.

Does Shopify charge a transaction fee?

Not when you use Shopify Payments. If you use another payment provider, Shopify charges 2 percent on Basic, 1 percent on Grow, 0.6 percent on Advanced, and 0.2 percent on Plus, on top of your own processor's rate.

That fee widens Squarespace Core's cost lead further, so check Shopify Payments availability in your country first.

Can Shopify sell digital downloads?

Yes, through an app rather than natively, including a free one from Shopify. Shopify is built primarily around physical goods, so budget an extra setup step. Check that the app you choose handles download limits or license keys if you need them.

Which is better for a photographer selling prints?

Squarespace Core if the print shop is a handful of editions attached to a portfolio, because its store fee on physical goods is 0 percent at that tier and the surrounding site is stronger.

Shopify if you are carrying stock, managing fulfilment, or selling through more than one channel.

Which is better for selling templates or presets?

Squarespace Core, on cost alone, since it takes no fee on downloads and costs 5 euro a month less than Shopify Basic; Shopify only if you need its shop tooling.

If you would rather not run a shop, the cheaper route is usually a dedicated digital-product platform rather than either of these, which we compare in the best Shopify alternatives for digital products.

Can I move my store between them?

Partly. Shopify exports products, customers, and orders as CSV files, and Squarespace exports a subset of site content in a WordPress-compatible format. Neither moves the design.

Before committing to either, confirm you can export your customer list, because that is the asset that matters in three years.

Do I need Shopify's Grow plan?

Only for staff accounts, lower card rates, or the features above Basic. Basic includes no additional staff accounts beyond the owner, so a second person with a login is the usual reason to move to Grow at 62 euro a month billed annually.

Which has better SEO?

Both handle the fundamentals competently. Squarespace supports 301 redirects through URL Mappings and generates sitemaps automatically, but its structured data cannot be edited. Shopify gives more control over templates and markup.

Neither will decide whether you rank; your content and your links will.

Final Verdict

Sell physical goods and the answer is Shopify, at 22 euro a month billed annually on Basic, with no platform fee through Shopify Payments and a card rate lower than most processors quote directly.

Sell digital products and, on cost, the answer is Squarespace Core, which takes no fee on downloads and undercuts Shopify Basic per sale and per month; choose Shopify when the catalogue needs inventory, staff accounts or more channels than a website.

Sell a handful of things alongside a portfolio that is doing the real work, and Squarespace Core at 17 euro a month is the more sensible purchase, because you are buying a website with a store rather than a store with a website.

Just move off Basic once your store sales pass about 300 euro a month, and keep courses and memberships off it entirely.

Where Framekit does not compete. We cannot sell physical goods at all: no shipping, no inventory, no variants. Anything that goes in a box rules us out entirely, and Squarespace and Shopify both do that.

We are only relevant to the digital half of this comparison.

Related readingShopify vs Gumroad, Squarespace vs Webflow, and Squarespace alternatives for creatives.