How to Set Up a Squarespace Online Store

Squarespace lets you collect a deposit and bill the rest later.

Try it on a physical product or a digital download and the option is not there, payment plans only exist for service products.

A store owner building a listing for a handmade item, expecting the same deposit feature they saw on a photographer’s booking page, will not find it.

This guide walks through the actual setup process, click by click, in the order Squarespace itself recommends: create a store page, add products, configure shipping and tax, connect a payment processor, run a test order, then launch.

Key Takeaways

• Setup follows a fixed order: store page, products, shipping and tax rules, payment processor, a test order, then launch.
• Product limits depend on your site version. Version 7.1 caps you at 10,000 products, both site-wide and per store page. Version 7.0 caps each store page at 200 products, with 10,000 as the total across the whole site.
• Payment plans work on service products only. Deposits and scheduled installments are not available on physical, download, or membership products.
• A download product can be priced at $0.00. The customer still passes through checkout but is never asked for card details.
• Commerce does not exist on Squarespace 5. A third-party payment processor is the only option there.

Step-by-Step Setup

Step 1: Create Your Store Page

1. Open the Pages panel on the left side of your screen
2. Click the + icon at the top of a navigation section
3. Click Products, Services, or Group Events, depending on what you are actually selling, then click Store at the top of the window
4. Select a store layout from the options shown
5. Type a page title and press Enter

You can add more than one store page on version 7.1, but Squarespace itself recommends putting every product on a single store page and using categories to organize them instead. Fewer store pages means less duplicated navigation and fewer places for a product to accidentally go missing.

Step 2: Add Your Products

1. From your store page, add products individually, or import them from a CSV file, or pull them in from a different ecommerce platform if you are migrating
2. Choose a product type: physical, digital, service, or gift card
3. Physical and service products can be sold as a one-time purchase or set up as a recurring subscription
4. Fill in variants, images, tags, and categories, this is what makes a product actually findable once your catalog grows past a handful of items
5. For a free digital download, set the price field to $0.00, the customer still goes through checkout, they are just never asked for a card
6. Watch your product count against your site version, 10,000 on 7.1 whether you measure site-wide or per page, or 200 per page with 10,000 as your total on 7.0

Step 3: Organize Products Into Categories

1. In the Pages panel, click the icon beside your store page
2. Click Categories
3. Create the categories your catalog actually needs, then drag them into the order you want them to appear in navigation
4. To attach a category to a specific product, open that product’s editor, scroll to Organization, and select or create the category from the Category field
5. If a category should not appear in your navigation, for example a seasonal one you are not ready to launch, click the … icon beside it, click Edit, and switch off Filter visibility

Step 4: Set Up Shipping

1. Add shipping options for every region you actually ship to
2. Pick free shipping, flat-rate shipping, or a custom rate based on a product’s weight and dimensions
3. If you want to keep sales limited to specific countries, do this through your shipping zones directly, a country with no configured shipping option simply will not appear as selectable at checkout

Step 5: Set Up Tax

1. Create manual tax rules for the countries, states, and cities where you are required to collect tax
2. Or turn on automatic tax rates and let Squarespace calculate this for you instead

Step 6: Connect a Payment Processor

1. Connect Squarespace Payments if it is available in your region, or connect a third-party processor instead, Stripe, PayPal, or Square are all supported
2. Check that your processor actually supports the currencies your customers use, an unsupported currency is one of the more common causes of a failed checkout
3. Confirm your current plan supports Commerce at all, plan requirements for selling online have shifted across Squarespace’s tiers more than once, check your specific plan directly rather than assuming it still applies

Step 7: Run a Test Order

1. Place a real order through your own storefront before telling anyone your store is open
2. Confirm the order lands correctly in your dashboard and that any confirmation email actually sends
3. This step catches a shipping, tax, or payment misconfiguration while it only costs you a few minutes, not a real customer’s trust

Step 8: Launch

1. Confirm your store page, products, shipping, tax, and payment processor are all working the way you expect
2. Publish the site
3. Fulfilling orders is the work that starts here, not a step you finish once

Checkout Errors Worth Knowing Before You Launch

Authentication failed. This usually means the customer’s bank sits in the European Economic Area and requires Strong Customer Authentication. They need to watch for a pop-up from their bank and authorize the purchase there, not on your site.

A country missing from the shipping or billing dropdown. This is not a bug. It means no shipping option exists yet for that country. Add the zone, and the option appears.

Checkout blocked with no payment method available. Customers cannot complete an order until Step 6 above is fully done, connected and verified, not just started and left half-finished.

FAQ for Setting Up a Squarespace Online Store