Shopify or Squarespace? The honest answer for UK small businesses

It's the first question on most discovery calls, and the honest answer is shorter than the internet makes it: it depends on whether you sell products or bookings — and almost nothing else.

Sell products? Shopify.

If your business ships things (or sells digital goods), Shopify earns its £25/month (£19 on annual billing). The checkout is the best in class, inventory and shipping are native, the email and reviews ecosystem is mature, and it scales from 10 products to 10,000 without replatforming. This site runs on it — we build on the platform we recommend.

Sell your time or expertise? Squarespace.

If the job of your website is enquiries and bookings — therapists, trades, consultants, studios — Squarespace at roughly £15/month does it beautifully: fast to build, easy to edit yourself, with clean forms and scheduling. Paying Shopify prices for a site with no products is buying a warehouse to store a filing cabinet.

The edge cases, honestly

A few products on a service business? Start Squarespace; its commerce covers a handful of items. Selling only on Instagram/TikTok? Shopify's £5 Starter plan exists, but it can't run a real website — fine as a toe in the water, not a home. Heavy subscriptions, bundles or wholesale? Shopify, no contest.

What matters more than the platform

We've audited struggling sites on both. The platform is almost never the problem — the unclear homepage, the missing email capture, the tracking that lies: those are. Pick the platform that fits what you sell, then spend your energy on the things that make it convert.

We build on both — fixed prices for each are published here — and if you're genuinely unsure, a free 20-minute call will settle it. We'll tell you plainly, even when the answer is the cheaper build.