By Bogdan Rancea
Art Storefronts vs Squarespace: Which is better? After testing both of these creator-focused platforms myself, I’d say both solutions are excellent, but they excel in different areas.
Squarespace is probably the better option if you’re looking for an easy-to-use, flexible, and affordable platform, ideal for selling a handful of basic products online. It’s not the most powerful ecommerce solution, but it comes with great themes to make your brand stand out, innovative options for selling memberships and bookings, and a user-friendly interface.
I’d recommend Art Storefronts to full-time artists who want to scale their operations, with a range of intelligent tools. It’s great if you need more step-by-step guidance and support building your store and launching marketing campaigns. Plus it comes with powerful AI tools that can increase your sales.
Art Storefronts vs Squarespace: Quick Verdict
To keep things simple, I’ve condensed this comparison review into a brief overview of what each platform does best, so you can hopefully make a quick decision based on your goals.
The TL;DR verdict is:
- Pick Squarespace: For a user-friendly, intuitive, and powerful platform, that combines great design features with integrated marketing tools, and multiple options for selling physical products, services, memberships, and courses.
- Pick Art Storefronts: For a platform dedicated specifically to artists, with exceptional support for store design, marketing campaigns, and both online and offline selling capabilities. It’s also great if you want to invest in print on demand.
Art Storefronts Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Fantastic community and customer support options
- Print on demand options for streamlined fulfillment
- End-to-end consulting and assistance with web design and marketing
- Intuitive merchandising tools, like augmented reality
- Powerful AI capabilities for reporting and analytics
- Offline and online selling options
Cons:
- Confusing and expensive pricing structure
- Very niche focus
Squarespace Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Easy-to-use design and business management tools
- Support for selling various types of products and services
- Integrated appointment booking and membership tools
- Attractive and responsive templates
- Decent marketing tools (with in-depth analytics)
Cons:
- Basic ecommerce functionality
- Limited advanced features
What Art Storefronts Does Best (and Where it Falls Flat)
Art Storefronts is a unique type of ecommerce solution designed specifically for artists. It gives you all the tools you need to develop an online store, with templates, a blog, and integrated payment processing. However, you’ll also gain access to a range of great services from the team.
Art Storefronts’ team can design your store for you, optimizing it for your specific needs, create marketing campaigns and strategies on your behalf, and even handle fulfillment for you. The company offers a print-on-demand service, so you can reduce the cost and complexity involved with producing and shipping your own pieces.
While Squarespace does integrate with POD tools like Printful, Art Storefronts gives you products in a wider range of sizes and formats than most print on demand competitors.
Art Storefronts really excels in offering features tuned to the specific needs of artists. There’s an integrated CRM system for tracking client relationships and qualifying leads. AI tools help you understand your audience’s preferences, and offer insights into how to increase conversions.
You can even leverage AR tools to show your customers your products in different settings. Plus, you get offline and online selling tools. You can even create ready-to-print catalogs for events.
The marketing tools are amazing too, with features like the Art Copilot for creating campaigns, and the marketing hub that can run your social media and email strategy for you.
Unfortunately, Art Storefronts is a lot more complex than Squarespace. The company clearly expects to do most of the work of building and managing a store for their clients, so you won’t get an intuitive experience if you want to handle everything yourself.
You’re also extremely limited in what you can actually sell, as Art Storefronts focuses exclusively on artists. There are no options for selling courses or subscriptions here. Additionally, I don’t think the analytical and reporting tools on this platform are as advanced as they could be. You’ll really need to work with the team to get in-depth insights.
What Squarespace Does Best (and Where it Falls Flat)
Typically, I recommend Squarespace to companies and individuals looking for a website builder that combines exceptional design tools and templates, with a user-friendly experience. Compared to Art Storefronts (and some other ecommerce platforms), Squarespace is a breeze to master.
You’ll have no trouble choosing one of the amazing, high-quality themes offered on the platform and customizing it to your needs with the drag-and-drop editor. Squarespace also has some decent marketing capabilities.
The platform is already search engine optimized, and allows you to create your own blog for content marketing. It can integrate with various marketing tools for email and social media campaigns too, though the app market is a bit basic compared to some alternatives (like Shopify).
I’m also a big fan of Squarespace’s analytical tools, which make it easy to track the performance of your business and marketing campaigns over time.
Where Squarespace falls short is in the area of advanced ecommerce. Squarespace is great if you want to sell memberships, courses, and one-on-one services (with integrated booking options), without having to use third-party tools. You can easily invoice clients for services, integrate with POS solutions for offline sales, and use a range of payment processors to manage transactions.
You can also sell physical products on Squarespace, but there’s no built-in payment processor, the shipping solutions are limited, and you won’t be able to connect with many dropshipping and POD companies. Squarespace’s inventory management tools are pretty basic too, which makes it less of an ideal option for people with large product collections.
MORE: Art Storefronts vs Shopify
Art Storefronts vs Squarespace: Pricing and Fees
In my opinion, Squarespace is the winner of this comparison from a pricing perspective. Squarespace runs on a simple subscription model, with prices ranging from around $16 to $49 per month. If you want to sell on the platform, you will need at least a “Business” plan, starting at $23 per month, but this does come with transaction fees of 3%.
The Commerce plans, (Basic for $36 per month, or Advanced for $65 per month) eliminate these transaction fees, and offer access to additional features, like point-of-sale support. Although there are cheaper ecommerce solutions out there, Squarespace is still pretty affordable.
Art Storefronts has a much more complicated pricing structure. There aren’t any “pricing plans” on the website, because each client gets a custom plan based on the specific level of service and support they need. If you need help building your store, running marketing campaigns, and so on, you can expect to pay a decent amount for your service.
Based on what I could find online, most companies will pay around $3000 or more for the initial setup of their store, then additional monthly fees for hosting, support, and other features. Plus, Art Storefronts takes a commission from any sales made through their platform.
Art Storefronts vs Squarespace: The Verdict
Both Squarespace and Art Storefronts are great tools for creators, but they target very different customer groups. Squarespace is intended for smaller creators who want to sell a handful of basic products, subscriptions, or courses online. It’s particularly great if you want to design an amazing portfolio or website with stunning themes.
Art Storefronts is intended for larger, more established artists, that want to scale their operations, with print on demand, AI, augmented reality, and advanced design and marketing support.
