Squarespace Canada FAQs: 15 Common Questions Answered
Thinking about creating a Squarespace website in Canada?
I’ve got you 15 common questions on this topic based on my experience creating websites for Canadian small businesses.
Some of these questions I get asked all the time from my prospects and clients, so I hope they will help you save time searching for answers.
July 4th, 2021 update: updated question 2 as Squarespace started collecting taxes from Canadian users since July 1st.
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Squarespace is available in Canada and offers almost identical features as in the United States. However, there are a few limitations for Canadian online shops as below:
Squarespace US allows integrating payment with Stripe, Paypal, and Square. Squarespace Canada can only integrate with Stripe and Paypal.
Automatic shipping calculation is only available to domestic shipments within the US.
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Squarespace is an all-in-one platform, which means you will get everything from hosting, security, to design templates and more with their monthly subscription.
Squarespace has four pricing plans as below:
Personal Plan: US $144/year or $12/month - best for blog, portfolio, personal resume, or a very simple informational site.
Business Plan: US $216/year or $18/month - best for informational websites and small businesses with few to no online products.
Basic Commerce: US $312/year or $26/month - best for new or small online shops.
Advanced Commerce: US $480/year or $40/month- best for online stores with a high sales volume or sell subscription products.
Additionally, you will also pay GST/HST taxes on your subscription. If your business is tax-exempt, you can verify your tax exemption at checkout or when updating payment method.
The good news is with an annual subscription, you’ll get a free year of custom domain and professional email address. That means you won’t have to pay anything else for your first-year website costs.
There are additional paid services that are useful for your Squarespace websites such as Email Campaigns or premium templates. You can see a list of them with this in-depth post on Squarespace Canada pricing.
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Squarespace subscription fees are per website. If you build multiple websites in the same account, each site will have its separate invoices. Within a website, you can have multiple domain names and unlimited contributors with no additional costs.
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Yes, you can purchase a .ca domain directly from Squarespace or have it connected from another domain name vendor to Squarespace fairly easily.
If you have an annual subscription, your website is automatically qualified for a free custom domain name in the first year valued at $20 or less. But since .ca domains tend to be on the pricier side, you might not be able to take advantage of this offer.
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I get this question all the time and honestly, the answer is always depending on your business needs. What features do you need? How often do you want to update your website? How comfortable are you with technical tasks?
As a “closed” system, Squarespace doesn’t have the same level of flexibility as WordPress. There are limited third-party plugins to install and customize your site features. However, this allows Squarespace to maintain the simplicity that makes the platform easy to use for non-technical.
In my opinion, ease of use is the most important aspect of small business websites because if it’s hard to use, you will dread the thought of utilizing the website as a marketing tool (eg. run marketing campaigns, connect with social media ads, improve SEO, etc.). Without this work, your website will be ineffective.
The required maintenance for Squarespace sites is also much lower. You don’t need to frequently update plugins to protect your website from hackers and keep it running smoothly. You can concentrate on your business with peace of mind that your site is secured.
Every business is different and there are cases where Squarespace is not a good fit. Here's a post that lists 5 business types that should not use Squarespace.
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Squarespace is built to be user-friendly and easy to get started even for people who have never created a website before. It comes with 100+ free templates that you can use out-of-the-box or as a starting point for your website.
With the drag-and-drop editor, you’re able to design your website without touching any line of codes. There are also many small but important details the website builder takes care for you, like making the website mobile-friendly, which makes your work a lot easier.
That said, every new tool has a learning curve and Squarespace is no exception. Squarespace has a lot of features, so it will take a couple of hours to get comfortable using it. The good news is Squarespace has an active community, so if you can’t find something you need, a bit of googling or posting a question on their forum will get you there.
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Generally speaking, Squarespace has solid SEO features. There are built-in features that make your site SEO-friendly, such as:
Clean site map: Squarespace automatically generates and updates your sitemap to tell search engines about the structure of its content.
Automatic redirects: If you have multiple domains, Squarespace will redirect users and search engines to a primary domain and use rel="canonical" so you don’t get penalized for having duplicate content.
Mobile responsiveness: Mobile-first design is a must-have to rank high, and Squarespace websites are mobile-friendly by default.
You’ll also get access to easy-to-use SEO features like title tags and meta descriptions.
The only drawback is their website speed. If you have a visual website like mine, there's quite a bit of speed optimization work to ensure your loading time doesn’t hold you back.
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If you want to move to Squarespace from another platform, you can import the existing website content but not the styles. Basically, you’ll save the time to copy-paste texts and reupload photos. Once you’ve moved over all your content, you can transfer your existing domain name to Squarespace.
You can preview what the transfer process may look like with this post on moving from WordPress to Squarespace step by step.
FOR ONLINE SHOPS
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Squarespace supports Canadian currency. If you’re setting up an online store in Squarespace, you can set your currency to CAD by connecting your Squarespace website with a Stripe or Paypal account that uses CAD.
You can change your currency any time with Commerce settings.
If you’re selling to international customers, you can show pricing in multiple currencies by adding it as additional information on your listings.
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Squarespace allows setting shipping zones by the province in Canada. You can even limit shipping to specific cities and postal codes within a province.
Additionally, you can set different shipping costs for each area. For example, if your business is in BC but sells to other provinces, you can set $10 for local shipping and $25 for other provinces.
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Squarespace allows you to set shipping zones to everywhere (all countries) or to your selected countries. For the United States and Canada, you can also select shipping zones to specific states and provinces.
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Real-time shipping rate calculation is only available in the US. This is why if you set shipping zones in Canada, you’ll see these options disabled in Squarespace.
For shipping from Canada, you can choose either a flat rate or by weight. To make the rates more accurate, you can create multiple shipping rules based on geographical areas.
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You can set up different types of taxes in Squarespace. Sellers in provinces with two types of taxes (British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, and Saskatchewan) can display both of these on customer receipts. If you’re selling to more than one province, you can also set separate tax rules for each area.
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Tracking numbers allow customers to track the progress of the shipment from start to finish and feel confident in the delivery process. You can provide your customers with their tracking numbers in Squarespace in a few simple steps. Squarespace has the option for Canada Post tracking number, which allows customers to click and be directed to the package tracking page.
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Currently Squarespace Canada only has integration with Stripe and Paypal. Though Squarespace POS integration is available in the US, it’s not an option for Canadian users.
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