Squarespace commerce features - the honest FAQ [2021]
Whether youβre just getting started or are an established brand, the Squarespace platform can help you to showcase your products at their absolute best and can compete against Shopify and Ecwid in many different aspects. Itβs certainly the most beautiful web platform available.
As a Squarespace Expert, I receive at least one request a day from someone who has built 99% of their Squarespace Store but who needs help with the βfinal 1%β. Iβm more than happy to help these potential clients but, in the majority of cases, the βfinal 1%β cannot be achieved - they want to change things that cannot be changed
Test it First
If youβre planning on building an online store using Squarespace my advice is to start a free trial and test everything thoroughly before you start designing your website. Every Squarespace website comes with demo content, so it is really easy to add one of your own products to the Store page and test it out.
It is important that you check that Squarespace has the features that you need in your country, using your currency, in your language and using your shipping provider. Add one of your own products - preferably the most complex one, with different sizes, colours or other variations, and then connect a payment provider in test mode. Pretend to be a customer by trying to purchase your product using the test checkout. Youβll find that you need to add the tax rates, countries that youβll ship to.
Next, try fulfilling the order as the merchant. Check that the shipping costs match your expectations.
Curious about the limitations you may find? Skip to the list of Squarespace Commerce Limitations that I shared with Squarespace when I met with their Commerce team.
Squarespace Versions
When considering Squarespace for your website or online store, the first - and potentially most important - consideration is which version of Squarespace to use. Confusingly, there are currently two versions of Squarespace currently available, known as Squarespace 7.0 and Squarespace 7.1.
Squarespace 7.0
Squarespace 7.0 is well established, starting life as Squarespace 6.0 way back in 2012 - 9 years ago! It is available in a range of different consumer templates and they all have different features as well as different designs. Thereβs also a βdeveloper platformβ suitable for experienced developers who want to build advanced solutions in the JSON templating language.
The consumer templates are arranged in template βfamiliesβ, the most capable of which is the βBrine familyβ, a range of over 45 templates. If youβre building an online store, I strongly recommend the Brine family, over every other 7.0 option, because these are the only ones to include what Squarespace describe as βAdvanced Commerceβ features. Youβll find links to all the Brine family templates here. There are some other beautiful templates in Squarespace 7.0, but please bear in mind that some of these were introduced in 2012 and have more limited features. Itβs unlikely that these older templates will be updated by Squarespace in the future, so if youβre looking for something thatβs futureproof, using a template like Wells may not be a good idea. To learn when each template was introduced, check out our Squarespace template list.
Squarespace 7.1
Squarespace launched a new version of their platform in 2019 and decided to call it βSquarespace 7.1β. The naming convention is beyond all of us, but suffice to say, this is a new version of Squarespace that has been built from scratch. Squarespace 7.1 will be fantastic when itβs finished, but, at the time of writing [January 2021], itβs far from finished. It includes around 60-70% of the Brine features and, whilst itβs slowly catching up, itβs going to be 2023 before it can match version 7.0 in many areas. That said, if youβre new to building websites and you want to hit the ground running, this version may be for you. Itβs the easiest to use and it has some new features that arenβt available on 7.0. The most significant change is that 7.1 sites can have up to 10,00 products on a single page, whereas 7.0 is limited to 200 products per page.
Squarespace 7.1 doesnβt really have βtemplatesβ. They still use the term βtemplateβ to describe a range of designs that act as starting points. These show you whatβs possible, but they arenβt templates. They all share a single template with the same features.
If you decide that you want to change your design, youβll need to do this manually or start a new trial. It isnβt possible to re-apply any of the starting point designs to your live site.
There isnβt an upgrade path from Squarespace 7.0 to Squarespace 7.1 yet, but theyβre working on it. Also, there isnβt a developer version, so you canβt add features using JSON-T, but you can still add CSS and JavaScript to the consumer templates.
Squarespace Plans
Squarespace sell a range of plans called Personal, Business, Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced:
I donβt recommend the Personal plan to anyone. Itβs cheaper but it has a number of very irritating restrictions that make it unsuitable for anything except a true personal website about you or your non-monetised hobby.
The Business plan is the robust solution for businesses who donβt use eCommerce or who are selling on a very small scale. Squarespace add a 3% transaction fee to all website transactions on this plan - in addition to the transaction fees that youβll need to pay to the payment processor [Stripe or Paypal] so you could end up paying 5.9% of your sales in transaction fees! If you expect to sell more than $3,200 USD worth of goods or services (or the equivalent in other currencies) it will be cheaper to use one of the more highly featured Commerce plans.
The Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced plans are very similar. However, the Advanced plan adds features to lure you towards this more expensive plan, including Abandoned Cart Recovery, Automatic discounts, Carrier-calculated shipping (in the US only), labels that show low stock, and subscriptions.
Squarespaceβs Missing Features
Squarespace is unrivaled for design and, despite some limitations, is still one of the easiest and most cost-effective commerce solutions available. However, it does lack more advanced features and once a client has launched a successful online store, it may not take them long to outgrow Squarespaceβs commerce features. Iβve shared a list of Squarespace Commerce Limitations with Squarespace, and published it on this website for you to see.
Squarespace is Improving
Squarespace are adding new features to their platform regularly. Some features are added to Squarespace 7.1 only whilst others are added to both versions.
Product Subcategories [v7.1]
Products can now be organised into subcategories, giving you more control over how your store is organised, and improving the store navigation for your customers. Product subcategories are supported natively and are available regardless of the pricing plan you are on.
Increased product limit [v7.1]
As mentioned above, you can now list up to 10,000 products on a single store page. The inventory management tools have also been improved to make it even easier to add, arrange and manage products.
Improved SEO for online stores [v7.1]
Squarespace has reconfigured online stores to fully optimise them for search engines. Squarespace now automatically generates SEO-friendly pages with static URLs for every product category. Google and other search engines prefer static URLs to dynamic URLs, which Squarespace previously used and many other ecommerce platforms still use. Product category pages now automatically link to other relevant pages on your store, helping to build page authority and increase page ranking in search results. Squarespace online stores now have category navigation links and breadcrumb links which help Google and other search engines index your store.
