Feature
A Squarespace art gallery website without the spreadsheet behind it
Squarespace templates are among the best-looking gallery sites on the web. The usual failure is not design — it is maintaining the site and the real inventory separately. Within six months, sold works linger online, dimensions on the press page contradict the invoice, and someone has the Monday copy-paste job.
What Squarespace is for
Squarespace solves publishing: artist pages, exhibition press, about and contact, optional Commerce for prints and books. Hosting, SSL, and custom domains on paid plans are mature. For a small gallery that wants a beautiful five-page site and accepts hand-updating product pages, it works.
Squarespace Commerce can sell fixed-price SKUs with cart checkout. It is weaker than Shopify for high-volume store operations but strong enough for modest print sales.
The spreadsheet (or Artlogic) behind the site
Most galleries on Squarespace also run inventory in Excel, Airtable, Artlogic, or Artwork Archive. The public site does not read that system. Every new work means: add to inventory, upload to Squarespace, write alt text, set price, duplicate for each edition variant if Commerce is used.
When a work sells, someone must update both places. Fair week amplifies the drift: holds verbal in the back office, still "available" on the site. This is the problem gallery website builder was written to solve.
When Squarespace is still the right choice
Stay on Squarespace if: the site is mostly brochureware; commerce volume is low and manual updates are acceptable; or you are waiting for a migration window after fair season.
Move to catalogue-first publishing when: artist pages need dozens of works across multiple shows; edition availability must be live; you send viewing rooms and cannot expose those works on the public store; or consignment statements must agree with what sold online.
Hybrid: Squarespace public site + Art.industries operations
Some teams keep Squarespace live while moving deals, inventory, and invoicing to Art.industries Core (free). That fixes the back office first but does not fix dual catalogues — you still update Squarespace by hand.
The consolidation path is Website Studio on Advanced: public artist and exhibition pages render from live inventory. Mark a work sold once; the next site build reflects it. Compare features on Squarespace vs Art.industries.
Squarespace Commerce vs gallery deals
Commerce on Squarespace handles self-serve checkout. It does not handle holds with release dates, confidential offers, consignor splits, or six-figure paintings that should never be a public product. Those are deals — see online storefront for how galleries run both modes.
Galleries on Squarespace Commerce plus spreadsheet for paintings are running the same split as Shopify — just with a prettier site wrapper.
FAQ
- Can we keep Squarespace and only use Art.industries for inventory?
- You can, but you maintain two catalogues. Most galleries consolidate when drift becomes visible to collectors. Art.industries publishes from the same records you use internally.
- We use WordPress, not Squarespace — does this apply?
- Same dual-catalogue problem; WordPress is often worse maintained. See gallery website builder and migration guide.
- Does Art.industries replace Squarespace Commerce?
- Yes, for galleries that want checkout on the same catalogue as deals. Storefront checkout on Advanced covers edition sales without parallel product pages.
- What about our SEO and URLs?
- Migration is mostly a 301 redirect map. The migration guide covers cutover order; gallery-website-builder guide covers redirect discipline.
- How does pricing compare?
- Squarespace has no permanent free tier; Art.industries Core is free for inventory, CRM, rooms, and invoicing. Advanced ($30/month) adds custom-domain site and storefront. See pricing.
Start on free Core for the back office
Import works, run viewing rooms and Stripe invoicing, then rebuild the public site from the same catalogue when Squarespace becomes the bottleneck.