Kaizen or Squarespace? Built for how Europe sells.
Kaizen is an online store platform made for selling in the EU. The legal parts, the extra ways to sell and the numbers you steer by are part of the product, not a list of add-ons to find and pay for one by one.
Why store owners choose Kaizen
Eight reasons, each one something you can look for in the admin. Where a comparison with Squarespace is fair, it says what Squarespace offers itself and what comes from an extension or a higher plan.
The legal side of EU selling is built in
VAT follows the buyer's country, with OSS and IOSS figures ready for your accountant. Legal invoices and credit notes come in a gap-free series. You also get the 14-day withdrawal function, the 30-day lowest-price indication, product safety information, and customer-data export and erasure. In Squarespace's help centre we found a guide to building your own withdrawal button and automated EU VAT with OSS on higher plans, but no description of the other items.
Sell more than parcels
Appointments, stays, rentals, subscription boxes and downloads share one catalogue, one cart and one checkout with ordinary products. Let outside hosts list their own stays and rentals for a commission, with the DAC7 report included. Squarespace's appointments come from Acuity Scheduling, a separate subscription.
An AI manager that works from your own data
Ask about orders, stock or sales and it answers from your store's numbers, with the arithmetic done in code. It drafts product texts, translates the whole store and builds pages from a short interview. Anything that changes your shop, emails customers or spends money waits for your yes. Use Kaizen's AI or bring your own provider.
Know why your numbers move
Profit by order and product, customer lifetime value, cohorts and a monthly forecast, with alerts and a plain-words account of what changed. Send reports to your accountant on a schedule.
Made for Nordic shops
Book and print labels with Bring, Porterbuddy and Helthjem, offer pickup points from Bring, PostNord and Helthjem, and let customers pay with Vipps and MobilePay. Look up a Norwegian company in Brønnøysundregistrene and send your books to Tripletex. Shopper-facing texts are written by hand in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English. Squarespace Payments is not available in Norway, Sweden or Denmark, so shops there use Stripe or PayPal.
Your data stays in Europe
Your store's database and servers are in Dublin, and every service we add is chosen to keep customer data in the EU. Staff sign in with two steps, roles limit who sees what, and an activity log records who changed what. Squarespace's help page says data is stored in data centres in the United States.
Grow without an app bill
Wishlists, refer-a-friend rewards, loyalty credits, product reviews, back-in-stock emails, pre-orders and tiered or volume discounts are part of the product. Squarespace has reviews built in and back-in-stock waitlists on higher plans. It states there is no built-in way to take pre-orders.
Run several stores, and move in easily
See every store you own in one control center, copy a store with its content, and show your products inside a WordPress site while checkout stays in Kaizen. Bring your products over from a CSV file and keep old links working with redirects. Each Squarespace site is paid for separately.
Kaizen and Squarespace, line by line
Where Squarespace needs an extension or a higher plan, the right-hand side says so. What we say about Squarespace comes from Squarespace's own help pages, documentation and listings. A line is left out where we could not verify what Squarespace does.
Selling in the EU
Legal invoices and credit notes
Kaizen. Issued for every paid order and refund, in a gap-free series, as PDF and on a page the customer can open.
Squarespace. Order receipts can carry your VAT number and a tax breakdown. The guides we read describe no numbered invoice for each order and no credit notes.
Right of withdrawal
Kaizen. A two-step function for customers, the 14-day clock from the recorded delivery, exclusions and a digital-content waiver, with refunds and returns in one queue.
Squarespace. A guide shows how to build your own withdrawal button with a form block in the footer. Submissions go to your email, and you confirm receipt and assess each one yourself.
VAT across the EU, reverse charge, OSS and IOSS
Kaizen. VAT follows the buyer's country. A business buyer's VAT number is checked before VAT is left off, and OSS and IOSS figures are ready for your accountant.
Squarespace. Automated tax covers EU VAT including OSS on Core, Plus and Advanced, not Basic, for a fee of up to 0.15% per transaction. You add your own tax registrations. According to its pages, exempting a customer from VAT is not possible, so reverse charge for a business buyer is not.
Selling more than goods
Appointments, stays and rentals
Kaizen. Part of the catalogue, with opening hours, capacity, seasons, deposits and calendars.
Squarespace. Appointments come from Acuity Scheduling, a separate subscription, listed from 16 USD a month billed annually. Squarespace's own service products are for classes and events that need no specific time.
Several stores under one owner
Kaizen. One control center for every store you own.
Squarespace. One account can hold several sites, but each site is paid for separately, with no multi-site plans.
Growing the shop
Product reviews
Kaizen. Verified-purchase reviews with moderation and structured data.
Squarespace. Built in, with a review request sent 14 days after fulfilment.
Back-in-stock emails and pre-orders
Kaizen. A notify-me list on sold-out products, and pre-orders with a release date.
Squarespace. Back-in-stock waitlists are built in on Core and higher, for physical and service products. According to Squarespace, there is no built-in way to accept pre-orders; it suggests renaming the button.
Tiered and volume discounts
Kaizen. Part of the discount rules.
Squarespace. Buy X Get Y discounts are on Core and higher. A tiered volume discount is not listed in its discounts guide.
Nordic shops, AI and your data
Nordic carriers and pickup points
Kaizen. Bring, Porterbuddy and Helthjem labels, and pickup points from Bring, PostNord and Helthjem, chosen at checkout.
Squarespace. For Norway, Sweden and Denmark, carrier-calculated rates need the Advanced plan and your own DHL, FedEx or UPS account. Bring, PostNord, Porterbuddy and Helthjem are not named on its page.
An assistant that runs the shop with you
Kaizen. An AI manager in the admin that answers from your store's own data and asks for your yes before it changes anything.
Squarespace. Squarespace's AI chat in the editor can create and edit products and discounts and draft email campaigns. It is metered by AI credits, and Squarespace says it is rolling out in waves.
Where your data is kept
Kaizen. The database and the servers are in Dublin.
Squarespace. Squarespace's help page says data is stored in data centres in the United States, and that transfers of personal data rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses. The page was last updated in May 2023.
What it costs
Squarespace's website plans were listed in US dollars at 25 USD (Basic), 39 USD (Core), 65 USD (Plus) and 139 USD (Advanced) a month, with lower prices billed annually. We could not verify euro or Nordic prices. Basic has a 2% Squarespace transaction fee on store sales; Core and above have none.
Squarespace Payments is not offered in Norway, Sweden or Denmark. There you use Stripe or PayPal, and their fees are theirs. Kaizen has no separate bills for what this page describes. The plans and the fee per sale are on the pricing page.
Where Squarespace is the better fit
Kaizen is not the right choice for everyone. Choose Squarespace if:
- You want a design-led website first, with polished templates and a drag-and-drop editor, and a small shop next to it.
- You want hosting, security and the site in one subscription, with a free trial.
- You sell from a country where Squarespace Payments is available and want it built in.
- You want a shop with no Squarespace transaction fee on a plan from Core up.
If your customers are in Europe and you want the legal parts, the extra ways to sell and the numbers in one product, Kaizen is built for you.
Who Kaizen is for
Shops selling in the EU
You sell to consumers in more than one EU country, you carry the VAT, invoices and withdrawal rights yourself, and you would rather have them handled in the product than in several add-ons.
Businesses that sell time, space and subscriptions too
Salons and studios with a booking calendar, a cabin or a bike rental, a farm with weekly boxes, a shop that also sells downloads: one store, one checkout, one set of figures.
Agencies and owners of several stores
One control center, copies of a store, roles with per-section permissions, two-step sign-in, an activity log, and collaborator access that ends on a date you set.
Moving over from Squarespace
- Import your products from a CSV file, with a dry run that shows what will be created and what is wrong before anything is saved. Kaizen reads Shopify's product layout and its own.
- Squarespace exports products, contacts and orders as CSV. A direct importer for Squarespace is not built yet, so arrange the export in Kaizen's layout first.
- Bring your old addresses over as redirects from a CSV file, so links and search rankings keep working.
- Use your own domain when you are ready. Nothing you export from Kaizen is locked in: orders, customers and reports download as files.
Questions
Can I move my Squarespace store to Kaizen?
Your products and your old addresses, yes, through CSV files and a dry run. A direct Squarespace importer is not built yet, so you arrange your product export in Kaizen's file layout first. Your design does not move, because Kaizen's pages are built in its own page builder.
Do I need extensions?
Kaizen has no extension store. What this page describes is built in, and Kaizen connects to Slack, Zapier, Make, Tripletex and the carriers named above.
Where is my data kept?
The database and the servers are in Ireland, and every service we add is chosen to keep customer data in the EU.
Does Kaizen give legal advice?
No. Kaizen provides the tools, and starting texts for terms, privacy, returns and shipping pages in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English, each marked for review. Have a lawyer read them before you publish: you are responsible for what your shop says.
What does it cost?
The plans and the fee per sale are on the pricing page. There are no separate subscriptions for what this page describes.
Try Kaizen with your own products
Squarespace's features, plans and prices change. What this page says about Squarespace comes from Squarespace's own help pages, documentation and listings, last read on 6 October 2026. Prices are list prices on that day, in the currency shown, and prices of extensions and apps are the listing partners' own. Check Squarespace's pages for today's.