If you're considering Squarespace for your online store, you're not alone. More businesses than ever are choosing Squarespace as their e-commerce platform — and for good reason. But is it the right choice for your specific needs?
We've built dozens of e-commerce stores on Squarespace at Lustro Creatives, and in this guide, we'll give you an honest assessment of what the platform does well and where it has limitations.
What Squarespace E-Commerce Does Well
Beautiful Product Presentation
Squarespace is unmatched when it comes to visual presentation. If your products are visual — fashion, art, food, beauty, home goods — Squarespace's image-first approach and polished templates give you a significant advantage over clunkier platforms.
Built-In Features That Save Money
Unlike platforms that require expensive plugins for basic functionality, Squarespace includes these features out of the box:
- Inventory management with variant tracking
- Abandoned cart recovery emails
- Discount codes and gift cards
- Real-time shipping calculations
- Tax management with automatic rates
- Customer accounts for repeat buyers
Subscription and Digital Products
Squarespace excels at selling subscriptions, memberships, and digital downloads. If you're selling courses, ebooks, or premium content, the platform handles recurring billing and digital delivery seamlessly.
Squarespace Commerce now supports buy-now-pay-later options like Afterpay and Klarna, which can increase average order values by 20-30%.
Where Squarespace Has Limitations
Large Catalogues
If you're managing thousands of products with complex variants, Squarespace may feel limiting compared to Shopify or WooCommerce. The product management interface works best for catalogues under 500 items.
Advanced Inventory Needs
Multi-warehouse inventory, complex supply chain integrations, and advanced wholesale features aren't Squarespace's strength. For these needs, you'll want a more specialised platform.
Transaction Fees
The Basic Commerce plan charges a 3% transaction fee on top of payment processing fees. You'll want the Advanced Commerce plan to eliminate this — which is worth it for serious sellers.
Who Should Use Squarespace for E-Commerce?
Squarespace e-commerce is ideal for:
- Small to medium catalogues (under 500 products)
- Visually-driven brands where product photography matters
- Service + product businesses that need both a beautiful website and a store
- Digital sellers offering courses, downloads, or memberships
- Businesses that want simplicity without managing plugins and hosting
The best e-commerce platform is the one your team can actually use. Squarespace's simplicity is its superpower — it lets you focus on selling, not on managing technology.
4 Game-Changing Squarespace E-Commerce Features
- Abandoned Cart Recovery — Automatically email shoppers who left items in their cart. This alone can recover 10-15% of lost sales.
- Customer Accounts — Let returning customers save their information, view order history, and check out faster.
- Real-Time Shipping — Integration with UPS, USPS, and FedEx for accurate shipping rates at checkout.
- Express Checkout — Apple Pay and Google Pay reduce mobile checkout time from minutes to seconds.
Our Recommendation
For most small to medium businesses, Squarespace Commerce is more than capable. It's beautiful, easy to manage, and includes features that other platforms charge extra for. If you're selling fewer than 500 products and presentation matters to your brand, it's an excellent choice.
Ready to build your Squarespace store? Let's discuss your project.
