Introduction | Best website builder for maker led in-person workshops

If you run a pottery studio, sell your paintings, weave, throw, carve, or sew for a living, and you're also trying to run a website, you've probably read the same advice everyone gives: use Shopify. It's the name that tops every "best ecommerce platform" list. And it's built for one thing really really well: physical items. SKUs, inventory counts, shipping addresses, fulfillment. If you're a maker selling finished pieces off a shelf, you can pretty much stop reading here and go sign up for Shopify -- it's going to work great for you 9 times outta 10. 

But if your business isn't only physical items... Keep reading. A platform built around shipping physical items is going to make you build workarounds, buy add-ons, or integrate other platforms, for the other parts of your business. And you need to know the tradeoffs you're making when you choose the platform with the fancy checkout, when you're onto app #3 and you still don't have class signups flowing smoothly.

I recently worked with a craft studio that hosts in-person events and sells at-home kits online. She built her business on Shopify, then moved to Squarespace, and ran her point-of-sale through Square, and was stitching the two together by hand because neither did everything she needed. Workshop signups would show as "pending" instead of confirmed, and customers kept asking her about it to make sure they were actually signed up. Private events ran through her inbox: an email back and forth, an invoice through her bank, a wire for the deposit, and the same routine every time someone wanted to book the studio. She was lacking an integration with Faire for the wholesale side of her business, and overall the design was lacking. She was ready to just start over again on Shopify (because it was 'default choice' everyone picks), but reached out to discuss alternatives.

So, we went deep on Square and Wix (two platforms she wrote off for years because they were lightyears behind Shopify and Squarespace way back when), plus the two incumbents -- Shopify and Squarespace.

Now, the four platforms each have their own place in the ecommerce and workshops space, and depending on what is a priority to you/your business, you may pick one where another business picks a different one. There's no "perfect" or "best" option, it's all a deeply independent choice based on the size and shape of your business. All you can do is reflect on what you need, consider the tradeoffs, determine your biggest priorities, and pick the solution that best meets your needs right now.   

I'm not going to tell you who she picked, because like I said -- each business is unique and there's no perfect or best option. I'm happy to discuss your needs and make recommendations if you'd like, however! 

When "just use Shopify" is really great advice

Shopify earned the default spot for ecommerce for good reason. If you're shipping physical goods to people, it's hard to beat: inventory tracking built around SKUs and variants, shipping calculated by weight, a checkout built and rebuilt around exactly that job for two decades. For a dropshipper or a product company with a warehouse or someone whose main buisness is just physical products "just use Shopify" is really great advice.

The problem shows up the moment your business is also a studio, a class schedule, a membership, or an event. Booking, ticketing, and deposits aren't native to Shopify (the one exception is deposits... but that's on their Plus plan for $2,300/month 😮). They get bolted on as apps, the same way they would on most standard ecommerce platforms. That's not automatically a dealbreaker, you can run a workshop app on top of Shopify and make it work. But it means the platform's whole design, the shipping-and-fulfillment, the quick and easy ShopPay checkout, the things it's built to do best, isn't the thing your business needs most. You end up paying for depth you'll barely touch, then building around gaps in your workshop and booking side, the part of the business that actually needs the help.

So the real question isn't which platform has the coolest features or the one most recommended online. It's whether the platform will actually run your business the way it needs to run: tickets instead of shipments, deposits instead of full payment up front, a private booking calendar instead of just a cart, or whether you're going to spend the next year forcing a round peg into a square hole -- it'll work, it's just not as smooth, easy, or pretty as it could be.

An introduction to which platform might actually fit your business

Square treats tickets and appointments like the main event. They are built into the platform from the start rather than tacked on as an afterthought. Ticketed events are a native item type, invoices have a built-in deposit feature, loyalty and email marketing are bundled into the subscription instead of sold separately. (did someone call for unlimited email sends?? thanks Square!). Its weak spots are narrower: a few checkout limitations, like not being able to buy two ticket types in one transaction, and lighter inventory management overall, are worth knowing about before you build around them.

Wix is the dark horse with it's dedicated system for classes, courses, and private sessions, built specifically for a business like a studio instead of bolted on afterward. And its flexible loyalty program lets customers earn points for referrals and reviews, not just purchases, more than Square offers on paper. It's not all peachy-keen though: points can't be earned at your counter, only online, so a customer standing right in front of you has to sign up on their phone instead. Premium card fees run higher than the other three, and email marketing is billed as its own separate product instead of bundled into your plan. All of that can add up (and quickly). But, if you're running a strict classes only business, Wix is a strong contender. 

Shopify does exactly what you'd expect from a platform built around physical items. No native ticketing, no native booking, no native loyalty program. Digital downloads and subscriptions both need a separate app to run. What it does give you is real strength in the mechanics underneath all of that: generous product limits, in-admin bulk editing, fantastic checkout experience for customers, and a native Faire integration if wholesale is part of your business. It's a strong platform built around a different kind of business than a studio or a maker teaching workshops, and that gap is worth fully understanding before you pick it out of habit.

Squarespace has a genuine, no-oversell inventory system with an active cart hold, and by far the most granular staff permissions. Its real weak spot though is in it's native booking option. Booking and deposits run through Acuity, and that's a completely separate paid subscription from your Squarespace plan. 

None of these are the "best" platform. Each one offers a set of features that may or may not meet your needs. And which trade-offs you can live with depends on what your business actually does day to day, and how much of your revenue comes from classes and workshops versus shipping products.

Where to go from here

Maybe you're stitching two platforms together by hand right now, the way our studio owner was. Or maybe you're staring down Shopify because that's the name everyone points to but it just doesn't seem... right. Either way, you're on the verge of bending to fit a platform that was never built around how your business runs and you know there's gotta be a better way. Four things separate a platform that works with you from one you're constantly working around: tickets and deposits, loyalty and email, day-to-day operations, and the real cost once everything's added up. I recommend reading all four parts straight through-- you're choosing one platform for your whole business, and it needs to hold up across everything these four parts cover, together.

Part 1 covers event tickets, private bookings, and deposits, across all four platforms. By the end, you'll know which platforms treat booking and deposits as a real feature and which ones just bolt an app on top, useful if most of your business is classes or workshops, not shipping products.

Part 2 covers loyalty programs and email marketing, how each platform handles keeping customers coming back, whether that's a regular in your Tuesday class or a wholesale account that reorders every season. By the end, you'll know which platform makes that easy to build and which one makes you pay extra for it.

Part 3 covers the operational side: inventory management, point of sale, Faire and wholesale integration, who on your team gets access to what, plus design flexibility (fonts, colors) and whether digital products and subscriptions are built in or bolted on. By the end, you'll know which platform actually supports how you run things day to day, and which one you'd be fighting every week.

Part 4 covers the actual math: plan pricing, transaction fees, and the hidden costs that don't show up on the pricing page. I'll close it out with my own take on which platform fits a workshop-heavy business versus one that's mostly retail, plus a worksheet to help you score your own priorities against all four instead of just taking my word for it.

If you already know your business leans heavily on workshops and bookings, start with Part 1. If you're trying to figure out what any of this actually costs, jump to Part 4. But wherever you start, here's what I'd actually consider as you read: are you picking a platform because it's what everyone else uses, or because you already know what your business needs and you're just figuring out which platform actually gets you there? Totally fair if it's the first one, that's the easy path, and Shopify's name is everywhere you look. This series, and the worksheet waiting at the end of it for you, is here to help you get to the second.