WordPress, Shopify or Squarespace: which should you use?

It depends what your website needs to do.

In short: Squarespace for a simple site you’ll update yourself, Shopify if selling products online is the main job, and WordPress when you need flexibility, lots of content or custom features.

It’s rarely just a website

We get asked this a lot, and some agencies will tell you it has to be WordPress, or it has to be Shopify, because that’s what they build. The better question is how the website connects to everything else: your CRM, your bookings, your stock, your brand and your marketing. It’s very rarely just a website, so look at the bigger picture first.

Squarespace

• Good for: simple brochure sites, portfolios and small businesses who want to make their own changes.
• Watch out for: limits on custom features and SEO control, and a site that can look like everyone else’s.

Shopify

• Good for: selling products online. Payments, stock and delivery are all handled well.
• Watch out for: monthly fees plus apps that add up, and less flexibility for content-heavy pages.

WordPress

• Good for: flexible, content-heavy and custom websites, with a huge range of add-ons and strong SEO control.
• Watch out for: it needs looking after. Updates, security and hosting matter, which is why we offer care plans.

And the others

Webflow is great for design-led sites, and hand-built static websites are as fast and secure as it gets, but need a developer for most changes. Our own new website is built that way, because speed matters to us and we have developers on hand.

Five questions to decide

• Who will update it, and how often?
• Are you selling online, or generating enquiries?
• What does it need to connect to?
• How much content will you publish?
• Where do you want the business to be in three years?

Answer those and the platform usually picks itself. If it doesn’t, that’s exactly what a Digital Roadmap Session is for. Or see how we approach website design.