Which Squarespace Plan Is the Best Fit for You?
If you’ve decided to build your website on Squarespace but you’re not sure which Squarespace plan best fulfills your needs, this post is for you.
Squarespace has four plans:
Personal - $12/mo billed annually or $16/mo billed monthly
Business - $18/mo billed annually or $26/mo billed monthly
Basic Commerce - $26/mo billed annually or $30/mo billed monthly
Advanced Commerce - $40/mo billed annually or $46/mo billed monthly
Here’s a detailed overview of each plan:
Personal Plan
Like all Squarespace plans, the Personal Plan comes with one year of free domain name registration, unlimited bandwidth, access to the full catalogue of mobile-optimized templates, free SSL security, SEO tools, and basic analytics.
The Personal Plan is aptly named because it’s best if you have a personal website. It lacks key features that are necessary for running an online business, such as e-commerce, advanced analytics, and the ability to customize your website using CSS and Javascript.
Business Plan
The Business Plan is perfectly suited to most service providers, brick-and-mortar stores that need a basic informational website, and nonprofits.
In addition to the basic functionality offered by the Personal Plan, the Business Plan includes basic e-commerce functionality, advanced website analytics, promotional pop-ups and banners, and the ability to fully customize your website using CSS and Javascript. It also allows nonprofits to accept donations.
The Business Plan also comes with professional G Suite business email free for a year. And email isn’t the only perk of having G Suite. As the name implies, it comes with the full suite of Google tools, including 30GB of Google Drive cloud storage. You’ll also get a $100 Google Ads credit if you spend $25, which can give you a marketing boost when you’re just starting out.
If you are a service provider who also sells products (digital or physical) or you want to sell your services through Squarespace’s e-commerce platform (as opposed to billing clients through a payment processor or project management system), you may want to consider upgrading to the Basic Commerce Plan. E-commerce transactions on the Business Plan will cost you a 3% transaction fee. Depending on the number of sales you make on a monthly or annual basis, upgrading may be financially advantageous.
Let’s say, for example, that you’re on the Business plan and you pay annually, which comes out to $216/year. You do $10,000 in sales every year through your Squarespace e-commerce shop. With the 3% transaction fee, you’re actually paying $516 to Squarespace every year (not including your domain name renewal fees). If paid annually, the Basic Commerce Plan costs $312/year and has no transaction fees, so you would actually save $204/year by upgrading.
Here’s a rough guideline. If you pay for your Squarespace plan annually and you are doing $3,250 or more in sales every year, the Basic Commerce Plan is a better deal. If you pay for your Squarespace plan monthly and you are doing more than $1,500 a year in sales, you should switch to Basic Commerce.
The Business Plan is Squarespace’s most popular plan. I require my clients to be on the Business Plan or higher because it allows me to fully customize and integrate their websites.
Basic Commerce Plan
If your sales are above the thresholds mentioned above, the Basic Commerce Plan is not only going to be a better deal financially; it will also give you a lot more functionality.
The Basic Commerce Plan allows returning customers to create accounts for faster checkout. It comes with advanced commerce analytics and checkout on your own domain name (which lends more credibility to your business).
The Basic Commerce Plan also comes with some advanced integrations. You can sync your products with Facebook’s Product Catalogue, which will allow you to tag your products in Instagram posts. Squarespace Commerce plans also allow integrated accounting with Xero. Automatic syncing makes things a lot easier come tax time. You can also link Squarespace and Shipstation to make shipping label printing faster and easier.
Advanced Commerce Plan
The Advanced Commerce Plan doesn’t come with any financial advantages over the Basic Commerce Plan but if has a ton of extra functionality for those who run successful product-based businesses.
Abandoned Cart Recovery - Abandoned cart recovery can increase conversions by sending email reminders to customers who leave your website before completing the checkout process.
Gift Cards - Selling digital gift cards is a great way to increase sales around the holidays.
Subscriptions - Whether you’re selling a magazine, subscription box, or recurring service, automatic payments will make your life so much easier.
Advanced Shipping - Advanced shipping automatically calculates shipping rates through all major carriers for each zip code.
Advanced Discounts - Advanced discounts allows you to apply discounts based on set criteria rather than across your whole store.
Limited Availability Labels - Limited availability labels increase urgency by notifying customers that there are only a few of a particular item left.
API Integration - APIs allow you to integrate any third-party service you want for order fulfillment, inventory management, and more.
Basically, if you do a high volume of sales, have a subscription product or service of some kind, or just want to increase the functionality of your online shop, the Advanced Commerce Plan is your best bet.
Need for a professional Squarespace designer to give your online business the credibility and panache it deserves? Read about my services and book your free 30-minute Discovery Call today!
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