Wix vs Shopify vs Squarespace (2023) — Which is Best?

[Music] hi all I'm Matt Walsh from style Factory the go-to site for e-commerce tips and reviews today I'm going to look at Wix versus Shopify versus Squarespace these are three of the most popular online store builders on the market but it can be hard to choose between them so in this video I'm going to zoom in on their key pros and cons and help you work out which one is the best option for your project and at the end of the video I'll share some links to special trials and discounts that help you make the most of all three tools before I begin though a couple of quick things to note first I'd like to encourage you to like this video Hit subscribe and click the notifications Bell this helps us out and gives you easy access to a host of e-commerce resources and second if you're interested in getting an even deeper dive into Wix Shopify and Squarespace don't forget to check the video description for links to lots of our useful blog posts about the three platforms okay let's kick things off with a bit of background about these platforms they all started life in the 2000s with the aim of letting people build a website without needing coding skills and all three platforms work in broadly the same way you access them in a web browser and use drag and drop editing tools to build your site or store there's no software to install locally and you don't have to worry about buying hosting but which platform form is best for you well I'm going to look at five key areas that you need to focus on when deciding between Wix Shopify and Squarespace and highlight which product wins in each the first thing to consider is templates when it comes to the quantity of free templates it's a definite win for Wix which offers users nearly 900 of them this is far more than the number provided by Shopify and Squarespace in terms of quality this is a subjective area but for me Squarespace wins here the templates provided are contemporary classy and A Cut Above those of its Rivals Aesthetics aside there's a couple of other template issues to consider however when it comes to wix's templates although they are mobile friendly they're not 100% responsive this means that rather than adjusting themselves automatically to suit the device they're being viewed on they usually require a bit of manual design work to make them look their best on smartphones and second there's also template editability to think about while Shopify gives you full access to your templates code Squarespace and Wix don't although you don't technically need code access to create a site with any of these platforms being able to edit it can come in handy if you want to make very bespoke adjustments to your site's design so when summing up the template offering from these three platforms I'd argue that Squarespace wins on quality Wicks on quantity and Shopify on flexibility now let's take a look at ease of use for me the winner in the ease of use department is Squarespace it's got the cleanest most intuitive interface of the three products we're comparing it gives you easy to use sophisticated style controls along with a fluid engine content editor that lets you position content around your site exactly the way you want to Wix and shopify's drag and drop tools aren't bad and give you a lot of flexibility when it comes to content layout too but neither's interface is quite as slick as squares spaces let's move on now to something particularly important in this comparison e-commerce features when it comes to e-commerce features it's a comfortable win for Shopify in most areas this is partly because it was was specifically designed to be a dedicated e-commerce platform by contrast Wix and Squarespace started life as more General website builders that only acquired e-commerce tools relatively late in their development this means that Shopify has had a big head start when it comes to e-commerce and as a result its selling tools are generally more sophisticated than the Wix and Squarespace equivalents there are four key areas in particular where Shopify represents a better choice for e-commerce than Wix and Squarespace One Drop Shipping and print on demand Drop Shipping is a method of selling products where you don't manufacture purchase store or deliver any of them yourself instead you take orders for products via an online store and send these to A supplier the supplier then ships the products to the customer and charges you a fee for doing so Shopify is by far the best of the three platform forms when it comes to drop shipping not only does it offer you a much wider range of Drop Shipping apps than the other two platforms it also gives you access to a dedicated Drop Shipping starter kit containing resources and dedicated tutorials to help you make the most of the business model you'll find a link to this in the video description it's a similar story with print on demand pod this is a form of selling where you apply custom designs to products which are then printed and fulfilled by a printing supplier every time an item is ordered from your store Shopify is again the winner offering Integrations with a much wider range of pod Services two International selling Shopify is also the strongest solution of the three when it comes to International selling its Shopify markets feature lets you create different selling areas based on country or groups of countries you can then manage currencies languages International domains and payment gateways for these markets easily all in one place Wix come second here it lets you build multilingual sites easily enough and you can create more of them than with Shopify it also lets you display prices in local currencies although significantly your store visitors won't be able to check out in their local currency which may negatively impact sales Squarespace has a long way to go before it competes with Wix and Shopify in this area you can only run your store in one currency and if you want to translate your site you'll need to use the weglot app which can end up being very costly three automatic tax calculation shopify's automatic tax calculation features are more sophisticated than those of either Wix or Squarespace work in more countries and crucially cater for vat MOS a fairly complicated tax that must be paid if you are selling digital products to consumers in the EU Wix does come with some automatic tax calculation tools but fairly ungenerous limits apply to the number of transactions that they can be applied to squarespace's automatic tax feature involves making use of a tax jar extension and this currently only works in the US four point of sale point of sale or POS refers to the process of accepting payments for in-person purchases at a physical location for example a retail store or Market stall POS functionality lets you make use of card readers barcode scanners and other selling Hardware during the purchase process while automatically recording sales and updating inventory levels in the dashboard of your online store Wix Shopify and Squarespace all provide point of sale features but of the three platforms under discussion Shopify is currently the winner its POS Hardware range is the most extensive and its offering for selling in physical locations the most developed not only that but it's accessible at the cheapest price point it's starter plan which costs just $5 per month now bundles POS features overall it's hard not to view Shopify as the winner when it comes to selling online it is a pure e-commerce solution rather than than a general purpose site Builder and its feature set reflects this now let's take a look at something very important in web design search engine optimization all three website Builders are pretty good when it comes to search engine optimization giving you more control over SEO elements than key competing products editing SEO components like URLs page titles redirects meta descriptions and so on is very easy in all of them you won't have the full control over Hosting technical SEO and sitemaps that you get with self-hosted platforms like WordPress but Wix Shopify and Squarespace are all flexible enough in the search engine Department Shopify and Squarespace both beat wicks in one key SEO respect however and that's in their use of responsive design Google's preferred approach to website creation as mentioned earlier responsive websites adjust their size automa Ally to suit the device they're being viewed on although Wick sites do feature some responsive elements they're not fully responsive yet while for the majority of users this isn't going to be something to worry about in super competitive SEO niches the lack of fully responsive templates may not be ideal of course SEO features are fairly pointless without content so now let's look at the content creation tools that each of these platforms gives you when it comes to content creation tools Wix and Squarespace offer more outof the-box options than Shopify their blogging features Galleries and image manipulation tools are all more sophisticated and flexible Squarespace is a particularly good choice if you're working in a creative area music video photography art Etc as not only are its templates particularly impressive when used for these sorts of projects its tools for creating and showcasing creative content are particularly good and squarespace's new gated content features which let you create membership sites or sell online courses are particularly useful to users whose main focus is on monetizing their content rather than selling physical products so far we've looked at the features in Wix Shopify and Squarespace I want to finish things up now with a look at scalability how easy does each platform make it to turn your online store into a significant L larger business well it's probably fair to say that the winner in the scalability department is Shopify there are a few reasons for this first it makes a massive ecosystem of apps and Integrations available to its users these allow Merchants to add significant new functionality to their store easily or connect it to a host of important third-party services second and as I discussed earlier Shopify gives you significantly better International selling features than Wix or Squarespace letting you expand your business into other markets much more easily and finally Shopify gives you the option of using a genuinely Enterprise version of its tool Shopify plus this lets you create multiple stores on one account sell at multiple physical locations and Avail of a host of Enterprise grade features including Advanced security features better API access account management service and much more although Wix and Squarespace technically offer enterprise versions of their platforms too they are less fully featured than Shopify plus especially in the e-commerce department so let some things up if you want to build a site that places a huge emphasis on content creation blogs videos Galleries and so on then Squarespace and Wix are a more natural fit than Shopify Squarespace is a particularly good choice for Creative users like musicians artists and photographers or for selling gated content but if selling online or at point of sale is the main goal it's hard not to view Shopify as the best option here although the e-commerce features in Wix and Squarespace are pretty good they're just not as developed as those in Shopify particularly where International selling is concerned and that's it our take on Wix versus Shopify versus Squarespace if you'd like to try any of these platforms out it's important to note that you can sign up for them in special ways that save you money or give you access to Extended trials if you check out the video description you'll find links to these special offers these are affiliate links but please note that we have a strict honest reviews policy using them comes at no extra cost to you and helps us to fund more reviews and comparisons for more e-commerce advice and reviews do make sure to subscribe to our Channel and hit the notifications Bell and finally if you have any questions at all about Wix Shopify or Squarespace do leave them in the comment section we read them all and we'll do our best to [Music] help

Channel: Style Factory

Views: 3,339

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Id: 4EuZjHWWoag

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2023