If you're starting an online store in 2025, you'll quickly find three names come up over and over — Shopify, WooCommerce, and Squarespace. They're all capable platforms, but they're built for very different types of businesses.
Choosing the wrong one early can mean a painful and expensive migration six months down the line — lost time, lost money, and the headache of moving your products, customers, and SEO to a new platform. This guide cuts through the marketing to tell you what actually matters, so you can make the right call from day one.
Who Each Platform Is Built For
Understanding the original design intent behind each platform tells you a lot about whether it's right for you.
Shopify was built from the ground up as a dedicated ecommerce platform. Everything — from checkout to inventory to shipping integrations — is designed specifically for selling online. It's the default choice for serious stores because it removes friction at every stage of running a business. If you're planning to scale, run paid ads, or manage a large product catalogue, Shopify is almost always the right answer.
WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress, transforming an existing content site into a fully functional store. According to W3Techs, it powers around a third of all ecommerce websites globally — a testament to how deeply embedded it is in the web's infrastructure. It's the most flexible option on this list — you can build almost anything with it — but that flexibility comes at a cost. You're responsible for your own hosting, security updates, plugin compatibility, and performance optimisation. It's best suited to businesses that already have a WordPress presence or have developer resource available.
Squarespace was originally built as a website builder for creatives, with ecommerce added as a secondary feature. If your products are visually driven — jewellery, art, photography, fashion — and you care deeply about how your store looks, Squarespace gives you the most polished templates out of the box. For smaller catalogues where design matters more than advanced selling features, it's a genuinely strong choice.
Pricing: What You'll Actually Pay
Headline pricing rarely tells the full story. Here's an honest breakdown of what each platform will cost you once you account for everything.
| Platform | Starting Price | Transaction Fees | Hosting Included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | £25/month | 0% (own payments) | Yes |
| WooCommerce | Free plugin | Depends on provider | No (separate) |
| Squarespace | £17/month | 0% (Business plan+) | Yes |
Worth noting: WooCommerce looks cheapest upfront, but once you factor in hosting (£5–15/month), an SSL certificate, a premium theme (£40–100 one-off), and essential plugins for security, backups, and SEO, the real monthly cost often exceeds Shopify. Factor in your time too — managing a WooCommerce site takes significantly more ongoing maintenance.
Shopify's transaction fees are worth understanding. If you use Shopify Payments (their built-in payment processor), you pay 0% transaction fees on all plans. If you prefer a third-party processor like PayPal or Stripe, Shopify charges an additional 0.5–2% per transaction on top of the processor's own fees, depending on your plan.
Squarespace charges 0% transaction fees from the Business plan upwards, but the Basic Commerce plan at £23/month is where you unlock key features like abandoned cart recovery and product reviews.
Ease of Use
If you're not technical, this is probably the most important factor in your decision.
Squarespace wins here by a clear margin. The drag-and-drop editor is genuinely intuitive, the templates are beautiful out of the box, and you can have a professional-looking store live in an afternoon with no technical knowledge at all. The tradeoff is that customisation has limits — you work within the framework Squarespace provides.
Shopify is also very beginner-friendly, particularly on the store management side. Adding products, managing orders, processing refunds, and reading your analytics are all well designed. The initial setup is straightforward, and the app store means you can add functionality without touching code. Where it gets complex is when you want to heavily customise the design — you'll either need a premium theme or a developer.
WooCommerce has the steepest learning curve of the three. Installing it is straightforward if you already have WordPress, but the configuration goes deep — payment gateways, shipping zones, tax settings, and plugin management all require attention. If you're not technical, budget for a developer to handle the initial setup. Ongoing maintenance is also more hands-on than either Shopify or Squarespace.
Apps, Plugins and Integrations
The ecosystem around each platform is as important as the platform itself.
Shopify has the most mature app ecosystem — Statista data confirms it leads US market share — with over 8,000 apps covering every use case imaginable — email marketing, reviews, loyalty programmes, subscriptions, upselling, returns management, and much more. Most major SaaS tools (Klaviyo, Gorgias, Yotpo, ReCharge) have dedicated Shopify integrations that are well maintained and deeply connected to your store data.
WooCommerce benefits from the broader WordPress plugin ecosystem — over 59,000 plugins — though quality varies significantly. Many powerful tools are available for free, which is a genuine advantage. The risk is plugin conflicts and compatibility issues as you add more, which can require technical troubleshooting.
Squarespace has the most limited integrations of the three. It connects to the major tools (Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Instagram) but has no open app marketplace. If you need a specific integration that Squarespace doesn't offer natively, you're largely out of options.
Payment Processing
Shopify Payments is Shopify's built-in processor, powered by Stripe. It supports all major cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and buy-now-pay-later options like Klarna and Clearpay. Setup is instant and everything works out of the box.
WooCommerce supports virtually every payment provider via plugins — Stripe, PayPal, Square, Klarna, and dozens more. This flexibility is excellent but setup requires installing and configuring each one individually.
Squarespace supports Stripe and PayPal natively, with Afterpay available in supported markets. It's sufficient for most small stores but more limited than the other two.
SEO Capabilities
All three platforms support the SEO fundamentals — custom URLs, meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text, and sitemaps. Where they differ is in depth and control.
Shopify handles technical SEO well out of the box — fast page speeds, clean URLs, automatic sitemap generation, and structured data for products. The main frustration is limited URL structure control (product URLs always include /products/) and some duplicate content issues that require apps to resolve.
Squarespace has solid built-in SEO tools with a clean interface, auto-generated sitemaps, and good mobile performance. It's sufficient for most small to medium stores but lacks the fine-grained control of the other two.
WooCommerce with the Yoast SEO plugin (free) is arguably the most powerful of the three for SEO. You have full control over URL structure, breadcrumbs, schema markup, and page speed optimisation. For content-heavy stores where blogging is part of the strategy, WordPress's native content capabilities are a genuine advantage.
Customer Support
Shopify offers 24/7 support via live chat, email, and phone on most plans. For a business-critical platform, this is significant — if something breaks on a Friday night before a big sale, you can get help immediately.
Squarespace offers 24/7 live chat and email support, though phone support isn't available. Response times are generally good.
WooCommerce is open source and free, which means there's no official support team to call. You rely on community forums, documentation, and your hosting provider's support. If you encounter a conflict between plugins, finding a resolution can take hours. This is one of the most underappreciated costs of WooCommerce.
Which Platform is Best for Your Situation
Choose Shopify if:
- You're serious about growing an ecommerce business and plan to invest in paid advertising
- You want everything to just work without managing hosting or plugins
- You sell physical products and need robust inventory, shipping, and fulfilment tools
- You want access to the best third-party integrations for email, reviews, and analytics
- You're managing more than 50 products
Choose WooCommerce if:
- You already have a WordPress site and want to add a store without switching platforms
- You need maximum flexibility and have developer support available
- Budget is a primary concern and you're comfortable managing the technical side
- You run a content-heavy business where blogging is central to your strategy
- You sell digital products or memberships and want granular control
Choose Squarespace if:
- Your store is small (under 100 products) and design is a top priority
- You're a creative professional — photographer, artist, designer — selling your own work
- You want the fastest possible setup with the least technical overhead
- You don't need advanced integrations or a complex checkout experience
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Starting on Squarespace then migrating to Shopify is one of the most common and painful mistakes. Squarespace is great for getting started quickly, but once you outgrow it — and many stores do — migrating your products, customer data, and SEO is a significant project. If you have growth ambitions, start on the platform you intend to scale on.
Underestimating WooCommerce's true cost catches many people out. The plugin is free, but the hosting, themes, plugins, and developer time are not. Build a realistic budget before committing.
Choosing based on price alone without considering time investment is a false economy. Shopify at £25/month may cost more than a free WooCommerce plugin, but if you spend ten hours a month managing your WooCommerce setup that would otherwise be spent on marketing and sales, the calculus changes quickly.
Our Verdict
Quick answer: Shopify for serious stores, WooCommerce for WordPress users, Squarespace for creative brands.
- Choose Shopify if you're serious about ecommerce growth, running paid ads, or managing more than 50 products. It's the industry standard for good reason.
- Choose WooCommerce if you already have a WordPress site, want maximum flexibility, or have developer support available.
- Choose Squarespace if your store is small, product range is visually-led, and design matters more than advanced ecommerce features.