Squarespace Commerce (overview)

An overview of how selling works on Squarespace, including which plans can sell, what you can sell, and how orders flow.

Squarespace Commerce is the built-in selling feature that turns your Squarespace site into an online store. You don't need a separate e-commerce platform — it's all built in.

Quick summary

Squarespace Commerce lets you sell physical products, digital downloads, services, gift cards, and subscriptions from your Squarespace site. You can sell on any current website plan (Basic, Core, Plus, or Advanced), but your site needs to be on a paid plan before it can take payments. Orders, products, and payments are all managed inside Squarespace.

What you can sell

Product type	Description
Physical products	Items you ship to customers (clothing, gifts, art, etc.)
Download products	Digital files customers download (ebooks, audio files, and other digital content)
Services	Classes, consultations, events, and other services you don't ship
Subscriptions	Physical or service products that customers buy on a repeating schedule. You need Squarespace Payments or Stripe to sell these.
Gift cards	Digital gift card codes customers can spend in your store

What plan do you need?

You can sell on any current Squarespace website plan: Basic, Core, Plus, or Advanced. The older Commerce Basic and Commerce Advanced plans are legacy plans that new sites can no longer sign up for. Trial sites can't take payments, so your site needs a paid plan before customers can buy.

Basic

Unlimited products
Subscription products
Customer accounts
Customer reviews
Invoices
A Squarespace transaction fee on sales

Core, Plus, and Advanced

Everything in Basic, plus:

No Squarespace commerce transaction fee
Commerce analytics
Automatic discounts
Carrier-calculated shipping and shipping labels
Product waitlists
Unlimited contributors

Plus and Advanced also have lower payment processing rates with Squarespace Payments, and lower fees on digital products. Plan features and fees change, so check squarespace.com/pricing for the current details.

If you're unsure which plan you're on, open Settings in your site's main menu, click Billing, then click Subscriptions.

How payments work

To take payments, you connect a payment processor in the Payments panel in Settings. Your options are Squarespace Payments, Stripe, PayPal, and Square (Square only works for in-person sales with Squarespace point of sale). Squarespace handles the checkout experience, and your payment processor pays the money out to your bank account on its own schedule.

There are two separate costs on each sale: your payment processor's processing fee, and a Squarespace transaction fee that depends on your plan and what you sell (some plans have none). Both change from time to time, so check squarespace.com/pricing and your payment processor's own pricing page for current fees.

How orders flow

A customer places an order on your store and pays at checkout. They get an order confirmation email, which acts as their receipt.
You receive an email notification with the order details. These go to the site's administrators and store managers.
The order appears in your Products & Services > Orders panel.
You fulfill the order (pack and ship it, or deliver the service). Download products, gift cards, and subscriptions are fulfilled automatically at checkout.
You mark it as fulfilled in the Orders panel.
The customer receives an "order fulfilled" email, unless you choose not to send it.

Your store pages

Your store is made up of a few pages:

Store page — your product catalog. You add this yourself from the Pages panel.
Cart page — where customers review their selections
Checkout page — where customers enter payment and shipping details
Order status or order confirmation page — shown after purchase (which one depends on what was bought)

Squarespace builds the cart, checkout, and confirmation pages for you. You can change their settings and some styling (for example, the checkout page's colors and logo), but they have limited customization compared to regular pages.

Common questions

Do I need a Commerce plan to sell anything?

No. Commerce plans are legacy plans now. You can sell on any current plan, including Basic, as long as your site is on a paid plan and you've connected a payment processor.

Can I sell in multiple currencies?

Your store has one main currency, which is what you're paid in. You set it under Store Currency in the Payments panel. If you use Squarespace Payments or Stripe, multi-currency checkout is switched on by default: international customers can see prices and pay in their own currency, and your payout stays in your main currency. It isn't available if PayPal is your only payment processor.

Can I offer free shipping?

Yes. You can add a free shipping rate, or create a free shipping discount for all orders or for orders over a certain amount. See Managing orders and your store's Shipping settings.

Need a hand?

If you're stuck, email support@chykalophia.com and we'll help. Include your website address and a screenshot if you can.