Shopify vs Squarespace: which one for a Canadian small business?

Shopify or Squarespace: which one for a Canadian small business?

Squarespace when the website is mainly there to be looked at and sells a few things on the side. Shopify when selling is the point of the site. The prices sit within a few dollars of each other at small volumes, so the honest deciding factor is machinery rather than money.

This is for a maker, a shop, or a service business about to build a first real site and wondering which of these two names to sign up for. It is not for a business already running a busy Shopify store, because nothing here would justify the migration.

Squarespace renders its prices in the browser, so I read that page with a headless browser from a Canadian connection on September 4, 2026 and the numbers came back in Canadian dollars. Shopify labels its Canadian page in CAD directly. Both were read the same day.

Where does the cheaper plan stop being cheaper?

At about CA$760 a month in online sales. Squarespace Basic charges CA$21 a month plus a 2% online store fee on top of its 2.9% card rate, and that store fee is what catches up. Squarespace Core at CA$32 has no store fee and tracks Shopify Basic within a few dollars all the way up, with the two meeting exactly at $177 when sales hit CA$5,000.

The arithmetic is simple enough to check yourself. Squarespace Basic costs CA$21 plus 4.9% of sales, because the 2% store fee stacks on the 2.9% card rate. Squarespace Core costs CA$32 plus 2.9%. Shopify Basic costs $37 plus 2.8%. Put your own monthly online sales into those three lines and you have your answer in under a minute.

Two things fall out of that chart. First, Squarespace Basic is a trap for anyone actually selling, because the plan that looks cheapest is the only one with a fee stacked on top. Second, Core and Shopify Basic are so close in cost that price should never decide between them. At CA$3,000 a month in sales they are CA$119 and $121.

When two options land within two dollars of each other, the price comparison has told you everything it can. Look at what each one does instead.

What actually separates them?

Design on one side, store machinery on the other. Squarespace gets a good looking site with less effort than anything else in this category. Shopify handles stock, variants, calculated shipping, and the recovery tools that sell to people who nearly bought.

The email line is worth pausing on. Squarespace lists professional email from Google Workspace on Core and above, which removes a small monthly bill and a setup afternoon. Shopify expects you to arrange your own. Either way the mailbox should live at your own domain, and the business email guide covers why and what it costs.

When Squarespace is genuinely enough

When the site’s main job is to be looked at, understood, and believed. A photographer, a therapist, a small studio, a consultancy, a maker with eight products: all of these are better served by a site that looks right than by machinery they will never open.

• The website exists to be looked at: your work, your prices, your story, and a way to get in touch.
• You sell a handful of things that rarely change, and shipping is a flat rate you can live with.
• Design control matters more than store machinery, and you want the site to look right without a fight.
• Bookings, classes, or a small membership are the main transaction rather than parcels.
• Online sales are under a few hundred dollars a month and you are testing whether that changes.

The Creston valley is full of exactly this kind of business. On The Kootenay List, compiled September 3, 2026, Creston shows 317 businesses with 164 of them running no website at all. A grower with a farm stand, a preserve maker, a woodworker: for most of them the website has to prove the thing is real and tell you when the stand is open. That is Squarespace territory.

One rule if you go this way. Start on Core, not Basic, the moment you intend to sell anything. The CA$11 a month difference buys the removal of a 2% fee, and it pays for itself at about CA$550 a month in sales.

When Shopify earns the extra work

When stock moves, variants multiply, and parcels leave the building. Shopify themes take more effort to make look like yours, and what you get in exchange is a store that keeps its promises about what is in stock and what shipping costs.

• Stock counts move, variants multiply, and getting them wrong means an apology to a customer.
• Shipping needs real rates by weight and destination, because a parcel to Halifax is not a parcel to Trail.
• You want abandoned checkout recovery, discount codes, gift cards, and a Google Shopping feed.
• Wholesale, pre-orders, or subscriptions are part of the plan within the next year.
• Product pages need to rank on their own, so people find the product rather than the shop.

Shipping is the part people underestimate here. A parcel from Nelson to Cranbrook and a parcel from Nelson to St John’s are not the same cost, and a flat rate that covers both is either losing you money or scaring off the local order. Nelson runs 72 percent of its 714 listed businesses online, the highest share in the region, which means a shopper there is comparing your store against a real one.

The recovery tools matter more than they sound. Most people who put something in a cart leave without buying, and an email that arrives an hour later is the cheapest sale you will ever make. I go through what a real store changes for a small shop in is Shopify worth it for a Kootenay store.

When neither one is the answer

At both ends of the range. Below a certain size, a market table and a Google Business Profile beat any platform. Above a certain ambition, a site you own outright with no platform bill beats renting one forever.

Too early

If you are still finding out what sells, sell at markets and take orders by phone or email for a season. A platform subscription during the experiment is money spent on a question you have not answered yet.

Better on a marketplace

Some makers do better where the buyers already are. The trade is their customers, their fees, their rules, and I lay that out in Etsy versus your own store.

Past what a builder does

When product pages need to rank, when the site does a job past selling, or when you want the whole thing in your own accounts, a built site is the honest answer. From $2,000 once at Kootenay Made Digital, with no platform subscription after it.

The wider comparison across every Canadian option, including Wix, WooCommerce, and Square, sits in the best ecommerce platform guide, and the general builder ranking is in best website builder for a small business in Canada.

How to choose in twenty minutes

Count your products, forecast a realistic month of online sales, and put that number into the three cost lines above. If sales are under a few hundred a month, Squarespace Core. If shipping and stock are real work, Shopify Basic. If you cannot forecast at all, you are too early for either.

Then look past the first year. A builder at CA$32 a month with one or two apps is somewhere near CA$500 a year, so five years is roughly CA$2,500 and you own nothing at the end. That comparison, run properly against a build, is in the website cost guide.

Last thing, and it applies whichever way you go. Register the domain yourself, at your own registrar, in your own name, before you sign up for anything. The platform is a rental and the domain is the address, and only one of those two is worth defending.

Sources and further reading

• Squarespace pricing

  Fetched September 4, 2026 from a Canadian connection, prices in CAD on annual billing. Basic CA$21, Core CA$32, Plus CA$46, Advanced CA$109 a month. Basic carries a 2% online store transaction fee; Core and above carry none. Card rates from 2.9%, 2.9%, 2.7% and 2.5% plus CA$0.30 by tier.

• Shopify pricing plans, Canada

  Fetched September 4, 2026, prices labelled CAD. Basic $37 a month on annual billing or $49 month to month, Grow $99, Advanced $389. Online card rates 2.8%, 2.6% and 2.4% plus 30 cents by tier.

• The Kootenay Business Web Census

  The Kootenay List snapshot behind the town figures quoted here, restated through the site helper rather than typed in by hand.

Frequently asked questions

Related pages

• Retail and ecommerce websites
• Craft beverage websites
• Farm and agriculture websites
• Web design for Canadian businesses
• Web design in Creston