Squarespace to Magento: Is this migration worth your ecommerce business?

Currently, there are more and more debates concerning Squarespace effectiveness. Can it be competitive with more advanced eCommerce solutions? And should your online store migrate from Squarespace to Magento? To answer these questions, we prepared a gripping overview of Squarespace to Magento peculiarities. 

Magento vs Squarespace: eCommerce platforms overview

Magento vs Squarespace

To be more precise and informative we`ll discuss our eCommerce engines’ features in terms of:

  • User-friendliness
  • Attention-grabbing templates
  • Mobile readiness
  • SEO-friendliness
  • Affordability

User-friendliness

Squarespace is a hosted website builder that was initially created as portfolio and blogging platform for content-based sites. Regarding user-friendliness, nothing is easier than to maintain a store with it. All you need to launch your Squarespace is to sign up.

Taking into account that Magento is a technically demanding platform that requires a sufficient tech skills, it`s still one of the most comprehensive eCommerce solution aimed at large online stores. Here you have two options: either you’re a tech savvy who 100$ knows how to manage the e-store, or you’re ready to spend a pretty penny for developer`s hiring.

Attention-grabbing templates

Magento is a number one in dressing up your store with advanced, fully customizable eCommerce templates. Magento only provides one built-in storefront theme but a range of third-party templates are available. The downside is that these can be very expensive.

Squarespace has hundreds of responsive and professional-looking templates, you can make a wonderful website with little coding or web development skills. Squarespace is a leader in offering unique, state-of-art themes that ensure an awesome user-experience on your website.

Mobile-readiness

It`s well-known that many of users are used to surf the Internet to find the necessary product directly via cell phones. Based on Think With Google research, nearly 75% of users prefer a mobile-friendly site and 96% of consumers are complaining that they’ve encountered sites that were clearly not responsive to mobile devices.

Luckily, both eCommerce platform don’t repeat the mistake and offer to their clients mobile responsive websites that successfully convert more leads into sales.

SEO optimization

Magento is a total winner here. It offers hundreds of SEO settings out of the box. They are: products and home pages meta tags, canonical tags for categories and products, images optimization, edits of robot.txt files, etc.

What`s more, according to eCommerce platforms research results, Magento get 100 SEO scores from 100 possible.

Squarespace`s SEO capabilities are higher than average that is a good result. Along with this eCommerce engine, you can customize page and site titles, differentiate page and navigation titles, add Alt tags to images, and, what’s more, create an informative, user-attractive blog. However, comparatively to Magento, Squarespace SEO capabilities is more basic than advanced.

Prices and Additional Costs

Magento offers two pricing options. The first one being, Magento CE (Community Edition) which is freely available to download and use. It is best for small or medium-sized organizations. The other option is Magento EE which is a great choice for large enterprises.

Regardless of these two pricing options, Magento is free to download and use. There are also a variety of plug-ins that are available for an additional cost.

On the other hand, Squarespace has several pricing plans. One of them is Basic eCommerce that costs $30 every month for building eCommerce stores. As far as payment gateways are concerned, Magento is incomparable. It takes advantage of its open-source capability by providing both free and paid gateways. Some of the popular ones, being Braintree, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, etc.

Whereas, there is nothing to boast about as far as Squarespace’s payment gateway is concerned. It had only one payment gateway known as Stripe until December 2016. However, fortunately, Squarespace introduced PayPal integration that has been a bonus.

Determine your goal: self-hosted solution or open-source one?

How do you imagine your eCommerce business? Do you see your goal in building a simple but professionally-looking website or you need a powerful, feature-packed online store? Regardless your answer is, both targets can be a way to success. More built-in functionality it offers, far more higher chances you have to be in customers` preferences.

Squarespace

Squarespace is unstoppably winning millions of store owners` hearts and is praised for being one of the best website builders and blogging platforms. Either you’re a blogger or small business owner, this website builder is an ideal choice for creative minds focusing on satisfying best customers` visual experience.

Advantages

  • Easy-to-use site builder and management dashboard.
  • Stylish and professional themes
  • Unlimited products

Disadvantages

  • Promotion features only available on top plan.
  • Small number of themes.
  • Number of integrations is limited.

Magento

Magento is a prominent open-source solution that is presently known as the most flexible eCommerce platform. While Squarespace is a website builder with some basic in-built features, Magento is exclusively targeted on large enterprise business with high goals. Thanks to first-class functionality and piles of helpful options for building your perfect e-store, this engine takes its place of honour in top of eCommerce legends. It`s all-inclusive shopping cart that has everything from promotions to private sales and customer segmentation.

Advantages

  • Open source version is free.
  • Powerful, feature-rich solution that scales easily.
  • Completely customizable.

Disadvantages

  • Paid plans are expensive.
  • Open-source version will be virtually impossible to use for retailers without in-house coding expertise.
  • Extensions are expensive.

Why Migrate from Squarespace to Magento?

Squarespace provides plugins, widgets, apps, and website analytics. The backend design is much similar to blogger, WordPress which makes it easy for beginners to use it. Moreover, this platform is powered with all the basic marketing tools and functions but lacks advanced tools. While Magento comes with the advanced tools that empower to increase sales and grow your business. Using Magento, it is possible to tweak the website’s functionality based on modern requirements. However, the development cost of running an ecommerce website can surpass your store development budget. This is where most of the store owners think to migrate Squarespace to Magento 2 flatform.

On top of that, website based on Magento are mobile responsive and compatible with all the browsers. Magento  also supports responsive themes, a comprehensive site builder, a robust platform, a lot of extension that satisfy your business requirements. Thus, to make the best out of it, avail Magesolution ‘s Magento Development Packages service! With experiences and expertise cultivated throughout the years that we have been deep in the e-commerce world, we can make your business grow on the right track.

Why Choose us?

  • Talented Magento Developers : Magesolution ‘s certified and talented developers are dedicatedly involved in the Squarespace to Magento migration service.
  • Instant Delivery : Support quick delivery with your store completely set and running within 3 to 5 business days.
  • Warranty Period : Our  Magento Migration Services comes with a warranty period of 6 months to fix any issues related to site migration.
  • No Data Loss:  Our experts  make sure 100% security of the clients’ sensitive data during the migration process.
  • Utmost security : Not to worry about stores’ security while working with us!

Conclusion

All in all, it has got to be said that both the eCommerce platforms are very different. Both of them target distinct businesses and objectives. It is challenging to decide which one of the two is better as it depends on your perception. In case you wish your eCommerce store to grow, the best choice to migrate from Squarespace to Magento. The reason being, Magento is considered to be the number one platform for developing eCommerce stores today. 

>>> Read also:

Shopify vs Squarespace: Which is the best solution for your business?