Shopify, Lightspeed, Wix or Squarespace?

Pick Shopify if selling is the main job of your site, or if you sell both online and in a shop and want one catalogue for both. Pick Lightspeed if you run a restaurant, or a store where the till comes first and its retail tools already fit. Pick Wix or Squarespace if your site is mostly content, bookings or a portfolio and the shop is a small part of it. In Canada, Shopify starts at $49 a month ($37 billed yearly), and Square Online has a $0 plan for very small sellers. We build Shopify stores, so read this with that in mind; we've tried to say plainly where the others win.

The short version

Export matters more than it looks. It decides how easily you can leave later. All four let you take out your products and orders as CSV files, with the limits noted above. None of them, Shopify included, will hand over customer passwords.

Shopify

Choose it when the store is the business. Shopify is built around the catalogue, checkout and orders, and almost every selling need, from subscriptions to wholesale to bundles, has an app. Shopify POS runs the same catalogue and stock in a shop or at a market, and in Canada it works with the WisePad 3, POS Terminal and Verifone Victa Mobile readers. French is a full store language, which matters for Quebec, where a business's website has to be available in French.

Costs to know: $49 a month on Basic, or $37 billed yearly. Online card payments through Shopify Payments cost 2.8% + 30¢ on Basic. If you use another payment provider, Shopify adds 2% per sale on Basic. Apps can add monthly fees if you're not careful.

It isn't right when you sell a handful of products from a site that's really about something else, when you need table service, or when you want to own and host the code yourself.

Lightspeed

Choose it when the shop floor comes first. Lightspeed is a point-of-sale company at heart, with Retail and Restaurant products, and its eCom builds the website on top of that. Restaurants and bars in particular are better served by Lightspeed than by Shopify, whose POS is built for retail. Lightspeed is also Montréal-based and its eCom handles several languages.

Costs to know: Lightspeed lists its Retail plans in US dollars on its website, with eCom included in the plans, and notes that prices vary and extra fees may apply. Check the current page for your setup and ask about payment processing.

It isn't right when online sales are growing faster than in-store sales and you need the depth of Shopify's app ecosystem, or when export limits frustrate you: on Retail X-Series, customer and sales history exports stop at 1,000 rows unless you work around them.

Wix

Choose it when you need a flexible website first. Wix is a strong site builder with bookings, events and a store, and its Multilingual feature translates store content. For a studio, a practice or a restaurant that sells a few gift cards or products, it's often the simpler tool.

It isn't right when the catalogue grows. Wix exports products 5,000 rows at a time and leaves out digital products, and its reviews can't be exported. When stores move from Wix to Shopify, products with 4 or more options come over without their variants and need rebuilding, which tells you how differently the two handle product data.

Squarespace

Choose it when design and content lead. Squarespace templates look polished with little effort, and member areas, scheduling and a blog sit in one place. Photographers, makers with a small line of products and editorial brands are often happy there.

It isn't right when you need French with its own addresses, since Squarespace relies on Weglot for multilingual sites, or when your store relies on its blog and you might move later: Squarespace exports blog posts only as a WordPress file that Shopify can't import. Its product export also leaves out digital products, variant images and image alt text.

What about WooCommerce and Square Online?

WooCommerce is free software on WordPress, which suits people who want full control of the code and are happy to manage hosting, updates and security. Its built-in exporter handles products only; orders and customers need an extension. Square Online has a $0 plan in Canada with online card payments at 2.8% + 30¢, the same rate as Shopify Basic, which makes it a reasonable start for a café or a very small shop already using Square at the counter. Its paid plans are $36 and $99 a month, billed annually.

Five questions to settle it

1. Where do you sell? Online only, online plus markets, or a shop with a website? The more in-person selling, the more POS matters.
2. How many products and options? Dozens of products with sizes and colours point to a commerce platform rather than a site builder.
3. Do you need French? In Quebec, yes. Check that checkout and emails are translated too, not only the pages.
4. Who will run it? A hosted platform takes care of updates and security. Self-hosted software puts them on you.
5. Can you leave? Look at what the export gives you today, before you need it.

If you're already on one of them

Switching is less painful than it used to be, as long as the redirects are done properly. Our migration pages explain what each platform's export can and can't carry: Lightspeed, Wix, Squarespace, WooCommerce and Square Online. Each move is part of our free Shopify setup: the build and migration cost $0, and you pay only your Shopify plan and any paid apps you choose. For running costs, see what Shopify costs in Canada, or request your free setup.