Do you have a product or service and want to offer recurring payments through Squarespace?
Not sure how to set up Squarespace recurring payments?
You are at the right place.
As an entrepreneur who uses Squarespace to host your business online, you may be looking to add a recurring payment flow. If yes, the steps this article outlines will help you achieve it quickly.
In this blog learn about:
- How to set up and enable recurring payments on Squarespace
- Benefits of using Squarespace for recurring payments
Let’s get started.
Contents
4 Steps to Set Up Recurring Payments on Squarespace
Squarespace originally began as a website hosting service. At that time, it did not come with a subscription feature, but overtime updates have made it effortless to add recurring payment services. It’s, thus, a great platform for subscription businesses to sell subscription products. But, you should learn about the difference between subscription billing and recurring billing before actually getting started with the setup.
Here’s what you must know before you begin to enable recurring payments for your subscription product:
- Upgrade to the Commerce Advanced plan at just $49 per month with 0% transaction fees of its own. It is one of their highest tiers, so you find all the relevant subscription features necessary to run a service-based business.
- Squarespace supports Stripe, Paypal, Apple Pay, and Afterpay payments. So, if you already rely on these payment methods for your business transactions, this shouldn’t be a problem.
To set up recurring payments on this all-in-one platform and enjoy recurring revenue, here are the steps you need to follow:
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Set up “Customer Accounts” to Start With Recurring Payments
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Create a Storefront or a Store Page to Sell Subscription Products
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Add a New ‘Subscription’ Product
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Save Product Details for Your Online Store
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Popular and Trusted Website Builder
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Secure Website to Accept Recurring Payments
Squarespace websites are SSL-certified. This means improved security for all your customers and their data (payment information).
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Effective Content Management System to Manage a Content
Your Squarespace website can serve as a great content management system.
You can manage all edits to your content within the browser, making it an effective tool for all your marketing strategies.
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Optimized for Search Engine to Increase Visibility
One thing great about Squarespace is that their websites are search engine-optimized. You no longer need to spend time optimizing your site from scratch. Squarespace creates a site map automatically for Google to index the content.
Other components, like meta descriptions, blog post URLs, page titles, etc., are customizable and can easily be set up as SEO-friendly.
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Great Customer Support to Solve Any Query
Squarespace’s customer support team is always available to answer your queries via live chat or via email, which is a great add-on.
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Drag and Drop to Express Creativity
For those of us without any design expertise, Squarespace offers a range of themes and templates. You can easily drag and drop all components that make up a page. The webpage templates are also responsive and support devices of all screens.
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Email Leads and Saves Your Time
As an entrepreneur, you can now easily find prospects, gather their email addresses, and send marketing emails. Squarespace also makes it easy for your marketing team to analyze your emails’ open rate and reader activity.
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Integrates Accounting Software to Minimize Data Entry
Whether you set up an eCommerce website or a subscription-based community, you can easily integrate and sync accounting software like FreshBooks, QuickBooks, and more. This also makes it super easy for business owners to track payments and tax details.
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Builds a Loyal Community
With Squarespace, building a loyal community is easy. You just have to create member areas on your website dedicated to paying customers or members. You can also easily manage recurring services or products offered to these community members.
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Offer Discounts Easily
You can also easily set up customer discounts based on some loyalty criteria. These automated discounts will apply each time a customer is directed to the checkout page. For instance, offering a 10% discount if they purchase over a threshold of $200.
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Send Cart Reminders to Arrest Abandonment
When selling physical or digital products, you’ll notice some customers abandon their cart in the checkout phase. To gently remind them to continue with the purchase, Squarespace allows you to send email sequences with the email they captured in the first step. This simple step can nudge customers to fulfil orders, providing you with greater sales and profitability.
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Design Options for Easy Customization
As mentioned above, Squarespace offers wonderful customizable templates.
If you want to create a user-friendly website that stands out from your competitors, all within an affordable budget, then Squarespace is a great choice. -
Free Website Hosting and Domain Name
When you first sign-up for Squarespace, you get a free domain name on an annual payment. It is a highly affordable and economical option for most business owners.
Also, entrepreneurs don’t need to use any additional website hosting services, as Squarespace takes care of all the hosting details, so you don’t have to.
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Can you create recurring events in Squarespace?
Yes, with the help of an existing payment system (third party service) like PayPal and Stripe, you can easily set recurring events in Squarespace. Following the steps outlined above is a sure shot way to set up such services and get them running promptly.
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Can you make monthly payments in Squarespace?
Yes. You can effortlessly set up a monthly recurring payment in Squarespace by following the steps outlined above. You can set this frequency in weeks or months. You can also choose from the duration of 1 to 12 under the “Repeats every” option.
Customer Accounts are essentially where your customers can view and interact with your product or service they have subscribed to. It is where they will sign in and see payment and subscription details, and more. Setting up customer accounts is a crucial step that you cannot skip.
Source: Squarespace
To set up, go to “Squarespace Commerce” from the Home page, then “Customer Accounts”. Click to activate the option “Enable Customer Accounts” that appears and “Save” your changes.
Note that Squarespace began as a platform to sell physical products, and they use the same terms to describe when you sell services or digital products.
Source: Squarespace
After you create customer accounts, you will have to create a store page to display and sell your products or services. To do so, go to “Pages” and click the plus sign on “Main Navigation”. In the overlay that appears next, click on “Store”.
Now that you have created a store page, the next step is to begin adding subscription products and their descriptions.
As you begin adding a new subscription product, Squarespace takes you to an edit page where you can update the product details.
Source: Squarespace
Do not forget to click on the option “Subscription Product” to let the system know this is not a physical product but a subscription-based product.
Source: Squarespace
When selling service-based products, make sure to set the product type of the newly added product as “Service”. This way, Squarespace will not prompt your customers to share unnecessary information like shipping address.
Lastly, while editing the service product, you will see an “Edit Subscription Settings” popup. Here, you can set the options for recurring payments, like the frequency in “Weeks” or “Months”. You can also set “Billing Cycles” and additional payment information like the expiry of the subscription.
Source: Squarespace
It is also important to remember that Squarespace treats service products as physical products. Keep this in mind, as you will see terms and fields that may only apply to physical products. Don’t get too bogged down with these details as they are irrelevant to our goal of setting up subscriptions for a service product.
You are finally familiar with all the steps to set up a recurring payment for your subscriptions on your existing website. You can also easily set up recurring donations on Squarespace. Let’s now talk about the benefits of using Squarespace to sell subscriptions.
13 Benefits of Using Squarespace for Recurring Payments
Setting up recurring payments for your online business is the simplest way to boost revenue. It sets your subscription business for predictable cash flow every single month, making your business model highly sustainable.
There are many benefits to using Squarespace for recurring payments; here are the top ones:
As a popular website builder, Squarespace has gained a lot of traction from businesses of all types, big and small. Many digital creatives like freelancers and business owners use Squarespace to set up their business websites and sell subscriptions. Squarespace also provides various built-in templates for different types of businesses.
Got more questions? We’ve got you covered.
Frequently Asked Questions
Use Squarespace to Set Up Your Recurring Payments
Setting up a website has now become more accessible than ever. Gone are the days of coding a website from scratch, having dedicated web design teams and additional testing teams. Online businesses now have to only spend a portion of the time, money, and effort to get a website up and running.
As an entrepreneur or agency owner with monthly retainer clients, you will see that setting up recurring payments has also become an uncomplicated task. Business owners understand the benefits of a recurring payment flow. They are also more motivated than ever to build up this form of revenue stream into their workflow.
Among the many website builders, Squarespace site has great subscription features and the provision to set up a recurring payment. It is an effortless process and your customers can renew indefinitely. When done right, it’ll help you reap recurring revenue and greater benefits in your business.
