Shopify vs Wix vs Squarespace for NZ small businesses

Which is best for a NZ small business: Shopify, Wix or Squarespace?

If selling products online is a real part of your business, Shopify is usually the better choice. It's built around stock, checkout, shipping and payments, and it handles NZD, GST-inclusive pricing and NZ card payments without workarounds. If you mainly sell services, take bookings and want a good-looking site you can edit yourself, Wix or Squarespace will often do the job for less each month, and Shopify can be more than you need.

A quick disclosure: FOUNDR builds on Shopify, so we have a preference. We've tried to keep this comparison fair, and there's a section below on when we'd tell you not to use Shopify.

How do the three compare at a glance?

Plan names below are from each provider's own pricing page at the time of writing (November 2026). Features and plans change, so check before you sign up.

	Shopify	Wix	Squarespace
Built for	Online stores first, with a website around them	All-purpose websites, with ecommerce and bookings added	Design-led websites, with a store and scheduling available
Plans	Basic, Grow, Advanced, Plus	Light, Core, Business, Business Elite (Core and above take payments)	Basic, Core, Plus, Advanced
NZ payments	Shopify Payments is available in NZ, plus other providers	Connects to providers such as Stripe, PayPal, Afterpay and Laybuy	Stripe and PayPal, with Afterpay through Stripe for NZ businesses
Appointment booking	Through an app or a link to your booking system	Wix Bookings, built in	Acuity Scheduling, a separate Squarespace product
Apps and add-ons	Large app store, mostly commerce-focused	Large app market, broad mix	Extensions marketplace, more limited range
Best fit	Retail, product brands, salons selling haircare online	Service businesses that want booking and a site in one place	Studios, creatives and service businesses where the look matters most

Which is best for selling products online?

Shopify. That's what it was made for, and it shows in the details you notice after a few months of trading: inventory across variants, low-stock alerts, discount rules, abandoned checkout emails, gift cards, order management on your phone and a checkout that most NZ shoppers have already used somewhere else.

Wix and Squarespace can both run a small store well. If you sell a handful of products alongside your main business, either will cope. The gap opens up as the catalogue grows, when you need stock to match a shop counter, or when you want to add things like subscriptions, bundles or wholesale pricing. On Shopify those are usually a setting or an app away. On the others you're more likely to hit a limit and work around it.

One cost detail worth knowing: on Shopify, if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top, and that fee is highest on the Basic plan. On Squarespace, the Basic plan charges a fee on store sales that the higher plans don't. Both are easy to avoid once you know about them.

How do they handle NZD and GST?

All three let you sell in New Zealand dollars. The things to check are how prices are shown and how tax is set up.

• Show prices GST-inclusive. NZ shoppers expect the price on the shelf to be the price they pay. Shopify has a setting to include tax in product prices, and Wix and Squarespace both have tax settings in the store dashboard. Make sure prices display the way you expect.
• Set GST up once, properly. Shopify lists New Zealand among the countries that can use its built-in tax service. With Wix and Squarespace, check the GST rate and settings in the store dashboard before launch. Either way, tax is your responsibility, and your accountant should check the setup against your GST registration.
• Check the receipt. If you're GST-registered, customers who buy for their business may ask for a tax invoice. Place a test order and look at what the customer actually receives.

Which NZ payment options can I use?

Shopify Payments is available in New Zealand, which means card payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay come through one provider, with payouts and fees in one dashboard. You can also add PayPal and buy-now-pay-later options like Afterpay.

Wix lists Stripe, PayPal, Afterpay, Laybuy and eWay among the providers you can connect, depending on your country. We couldn't confirm that Wix's own payment service is offered to NZ businesses, so check that in your dashboard before you plan around it.

Squarespace works with Stripe and PayPal. Afterpay is available to Squarespace businesses in New Zealand, connected through Stripe.

The practical difference is small for a low-volume store. It matters more when you want in-person and online sales in one place, which is where Shopify's own payments and point-of-sale are strongest.

What about booking appointments?

This is where Wix and Squarespace have a real edge for service businesses. Wix Bookings sits inside Wix, with staff calendars and online payments or deposits, so a small studio can run its website and bookings from one login. Squarespace's answer is Acuity Scheduling, a separate product with its own plans that can be embedded in a Squarespace site or most other websites.

Shopify doesn't have built-in appointment booking. Salons and clinics on Shopify usually keep the booking system they already use, such as Kitomba, Timely or Fresha, and link to it with clear Book buttons on every page. For a salon that's often the better setup anyway, because the booking system holds client notes, rosters and history that a website builder's calendar won't replace. We cover the options in more detail in our guide to salon online booking.

Which is best for SEO?

Any of the three can rank on Google. All of them let you edit page titles and descriptions, set clean URLs, add image alt text and generate a sitemap automatically. The platform matters much less than the basics: a fast mobile site, a page for each service or product category, real words about what you do and where, and a properly set up Google Business Profile.

Where they differ is mostly at the edges. Shopify's product and collection structure suits a store with many products. Wix and Squarespace are simple to manage for a service site with a handful of pages. If local search is your main goal, our local SEO guide for NZ businesses will help more than switching platforms.

Which is easiest to manage yourself?

Wix gives you the most freedom to drag things around, which is great if you like designing and frustrating if you don't. Squarespace is more structured, so it's harder to make it look messy. Shopify's editor is section-based: you add and reorder sections within your theme. It's less freeform, but it keeps the design consistent when you're adding products at 9pm.

All three are hosted for you, with security and updates handled by the provider. That's a big reason we prefer hosted platforms for small businesses over self-managed options.

When is Shopify overkill?

We'll say it plainly: Shopify isn't the right fit for everyone. It's probably more than you need if:

• You sell services only and have no plans to sell products online.
• You want booking, payments and your website in a single product with one bill, and you don't already have a booking system you're happy with.
• Your site is a handful of pages that rarely change, and the monthly cost matters more than room to grow.

In those cases, Squarespace or Wix is a sensible choice, and we'd rather you picked the right tool than paid for features you won't use.

Shopify starts to make sense when products are part of the picture. For a salon, that's often retail haircare. For a tradie or café, it might be gift vouchers or merchandise. Once you're selling and shipping, a store-first platform saves time every week.

What does each one cost?

At the time of writing, Shopify's Basic plan is NZ$59 a month billed yearly or NZ$65 a month billed monthly, according to Shopify's NZ pricing page. Card fees and any paid apps or themes come on top. We've broken down the full running cost in how much Shopify costs in NZ.

Wix and Squarespace prices change often and depend on billing period and promotions, so check their pricing pages directly. Compare like with like: the plan that lets you take payments, on the billing period you'll actually use, plus transaction and card fees.

Can I switch platforms later?

Yes, but it takes work. Products, customers and orders can usually be exported, but the design doesn't move between platforms and has to be rebuilt. The important part is keeping your Google rankings, which means setting up redirects from every old page address to its new one. If you're thinking about it, read moving your website to Shopify first.

Next step

If you've decided Shopify suits you, our website base is $990: one of our ready-made designs rebuilt with your logo, colours, photos and words, including an online shop for up to 25 products from one brand and Book buttons linked to your booking system. You can pay in full or spread it over 3, 6, 9 or 12 months with no interest. Your Shopify plan is billed by Shopify separately. If you're not sure which platform fits, or your project is bigger, ask for a free, fixed-price proposal and we'll tell you straight, even if the answer is Wix or Squarespace.