The battle of Squarespace and Shopify is never ending, at least for me. Trying to convince recording artist clients to use Squarespace is no easy feat. But now, I have receipts… Shopify is and always will be an e-commerce platform. As an artist you sell merch, but the main focus is the music, which becomes difficult to display the music and creative aspect on a platform that is built with e-commerce as the main selling point and focus.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to accomplish an artist website via Shopify, it can be done, but it doesn’t look ideal. I always suggest Squarespace because there is more creative control, as e-commerce is not Squarespace’s first focus. If your websites purpose is to just sell merch, like Megan Thee Stallion then yes, Shopify as the main platform, all day. Megans website is entirely on Shopify, but you’ll notice, every page has products, thats why it look so appealing and flows well. She has no music videos, no photos, bio, nothing; her music is just linked at the top with streaming service icons.

Shopify also gets very expensive since nearly every feature you need, to run things smoothly, costs monthly. The only reason I would remotely suggest Shopify, is for the “Print On Demand” (POD) integration. Even then, I would find a work around, but now there is no more excuse, Squarespace offers POD integration.

The two examples I want to share with you guys are Chance the Rapper and Joyce Wrice. Their main websites are built on Squarespace and their merch is sold via Shopify, which is linked to their Squarespace website. That’s because Shopify does not allow them to display their creativity correctly and creating pages to look pleasing without any e-commerce aspects gets costly, as it is a difficult task. This can be hard to convey to artists’ and their teams since we are spoon fed Shopify almost everyday. It’s impossible to avoid the Shopify marketing that makes you feel like you HAVE to be on Shopify to sell anything online, successfully for “just $29/mo.” Oh and… you can’t even change the URL on your shop, it always has to be ___your domain___/collections/all. “I understand you wish to change your /collections/all URL to /shop. I was able to do some research on this and confirmed with my team. This is not possible within the limitations of the platform right now.” - Krista from Shopify Support.

Chance and Joyce’s teams get it, you have to use two platforms in conjunction if you want to use Shopify for the e-commerce portion. They may have done this because POD wasn’t available for Squarespace at the time they created their websites, if they do POD, but now it’s really easy to just use one platform. Receipts are below.

Chance’s website is on Squarespace and his merch store is on Shopify. He uses two different domain names to make the websites work together.

Joyce’s website is on Squarespace and her merch store is on Shopify. She uses one main domain for Squarespace and a sub-domain for her Shopify store.

A little bonus receipt… Saweetie’s website is custom built via Cloudflare and her merch store is on Shopify. She also uses two different domain names where the main website links to the Shopify store. Warner Music has all of the resources to custom code a Shopify and yet they still chose not to build her main website via Shopify, only her merch is on Shopify.

Oh and DJ Khaled’s website is on Squarespace, I rest my case 👩🏽‍⚖️ lol.

So, lets get out of the mindset of “you’re an amateur if you use Squarespace”. Elon Musk’s Boring Company website was relaunched being built entirely on Squarespace and Elon is no amateur.

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Both US and International users can use the following code for 10% off of your plan. Enter code: KARINABATH10 at checkout.

Also, keep in mind Shopify has a very heavy backend and as I said earlier, it gets costly. Read more about it here: What Platform Is Better, Shopify or Squarespace For Your Website and E-Commerce Needs