I Compare Square Online vs Shopify: Features, Pricing, and More for 2026

Here’s a quick glance at Shopify’s pros and cons:

Want to know more about what this ecommerce platform has to offer? Read our Shopify review or watch our comprehensive video below:

Play

Below, I’ve listed the key pros and cons of Square Online:

While Square Online and Shopify’s premium plans are matched in pricing, Square Online is the more affordable ecommerce website builder, since it has a free ecommerce plan.

How Much Does Shopify Cost?

• Shopify has three premium plans that all support selling online
• Shopify’s pricing plans go from $29 to $299 per month, when billed annually
• Each plan has a three-day free trial
• Get your next three months for $1 per month 

How Much Does Square Online Cost?

• Square Online has two premium plans
• Square Online’s pricing ranges between $49 and $149 per month
• It also has a free-forever plan that you can sell on

Which Pricing Plan is Best For Selling?

Shopify’s Basic and Grow plans are cheaper and come with far better sales features – including significant discounts on your shipping costs and a wider range of multichannel integrations.

Do be aware that although Square Online’s Square Free plan can help you save money, it will make your site look unprofessional. Branded Square Online ads will show up on your site, and you’ll be forced to use a default domain ending (“square.site”).

Which Platform Has Higher Transaction Fees?

Both Shopify and Square Online charge fees per transaction, but Shopify’s fees are cheaper, and you can remove them completely if you choose the platform’s native payment solution, Shopify Payments.

If you’re not using Shopify Payments, the price of the transaction fee depends on the plan you’re on – the more expensive your plan is, the lower it gets.

Square Online also comes with transaction fees that differ based on the plan you’re on. I’ve compared the fees for both Shopify and Square Online in the table below:

The Winner

Square Online lets you set up and sell for nothing

Square Online has something that Shopify doesn’t: its free plan. It’s more affordable, if less scalable, than any of Shopify’s price plans.

Shopify is our top recommended ecommerce builder for 2026, largely due to its powerful market leading sales features. During our in-house testing, we found that these tools were the best fit for large or scaling stores with substantial inventories to manage.

Of course, you may be at the helm of a smaller store instead. If that’s the case, Square Online might be a more suitable platform for you, but let’s explore each platform’s key sales tools first.

Multichannel Selling

To increase your reach and attract more customers to your store, Shopify gives you the opportunity to connect and sync your site with different sales channels. From Shopify’s backend, I could link my site with:

• Online marketplaces such as Amazon, Target Plus, eBay, Etsy and Walmart (I had to download the Shopify Marketplace Connect app to do so)
• Social media business platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and X

In comparison, Square Online has fewer multichannel integrations to offer its users. Through your dashboard, you’re limited to connecting Instagram or Facebook with your online store, while there’s no direct way to sync with marketplaces like Etsy or eBay.

Shipping Options

Both Shopify and Square Online allow you to ship your products through popular carriers like USPS, UPS, DHL, and FedEx. Additionally, these ecommerce builders also give you multiple ways to calculate your shipping costs, including:

• Free shipping – sending your products to the buyer at no extra cost (i.e. free shipping for all orders over $50)
• Flat shipping – charging a set fee for all shipments (i.e. $5 shipping for all orders)
• Weight-based shipping – charging different fees depending on the total weight of the customer’s order (i.e. $4.99 for all orders weighing 0.99 lb and under)

However, Shopify has a slight edge over Square Online thanks to its integrated Shopify Shipping feature. This built-in suite of tools is available on all plans and comes with real-time shipping rates, the ability to purchase and print labels, and track orders once dispatched.

Payment Options

With over 100 payment methods (spanning digital wallets, credit and debit cards, and more) and a native payment processor, Shopify Payments, Shopify is the clear winner when it comes to payment options.

I highly recommend using the payment processor because it removes third-party transaction fees and makes it easier to manage all payments in one place. 

Though Square Online doesn’t have as many payment options available, you can still access popular ways to take online payments that are already integrated with Square’s payment software. These include:

• Afterpay
• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Cash App
• PayPal (paid plan only)

The Winner

Shopify has more powerful sales tools than Square Online

Whether you’re a first-time seller or you’re looking to grow an already successful business, Shopify’s ecommerce tools can help support your long-term selling goals.

Based on our hands-on testing, Shopify is the easier platform to set up with due to its speedy onboarding process. Here’s how my onboarding experience went with both ecommerce builders:

My Experience Setting Up

Once I’d signed up to Shopify and answered three key questions about my business, I was immediately redirected to a dashboard.

Here, I was happy to see a personalized 14-step setup guide. Because I told Shopify that I was already running a pre-existing store during onboarding, the first task encouraged me to contact Shopify staff for migration support.

Square Online was also easy to setup with, but I found its dashboard less personalized than Shopify’s. After answering key questions about my business, my dashboard only featured five generic setup steps, such as adding items and customizing the site.

Navigating the Dashboard

From my Shopify dashboard, I could begin adding products and customizing my site’s look. Shopify always recommends adding your products first, since you’ll need these product details in the backend so they can show up on your site.

During Square Online’s setup, it  had generated a base template for me to customize, which appeared on the right-hand side of my dashboard. Unfortunately, on the Free plan, you only have five free templates to choose from, with the other 29 designs requiring a paid plan to access. 

Using the Editor

Shopify’s editor is section-based, so you’ll need to stack different sections on top of each other to change a page’s design. Though I found this process quick and easy to pick up, it can feel quite restrictive at times because it limits the number of ways that you can rearrange your site’s look.

When I jumped onto Square Online’s site editor, I did find it straightforward to use. I could click on the “Site design” button to tweak colors and fonts, or change the look of site banners, headers, and footers from the left-hand sidebar. All in all, the editor’s stripped-back layout does make it easy to use, especially if you’re a beginner!

The Winner

Setting up with Shopify feels easy and personalized

Shopify’s dashboard helps sellers set up quickly thanks to its personalized setup guide. Once you’ve answered key onboarding questions, you can easily follow the steps you create and publish your store with ease.

Shopify has the best template choice overall, with over 200 professional Shopify themes fit for multiple ecommerce industries, from arts and crafts to health and beauty. Do note that only 13 of those templates are free, with the rest costing between $100-$500 each. 

However, many of these themes come with sophisticated design features that Square Online can’t offer, including slide-out checkout carts and complex mega menus.  

Square Online’s choice is much more limited, offering three free themes and 24 additional paid themes for users on premium plans.

I did find that the themes available, however, are responsive and will present your online store in a professional way – just don’t expect as many ecommerce design features as Shopify.

The Winner

Shopify has better templates than Square Online

While Square Online’s design process makes it very easy to use, its limited themes failed to impress me. Shopify’s feature-rich, fully customizable templates, however, look good – and give you tons of control over your branding and product displays.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Square Online and Shopify are evenly matched when it comes to covering your site’s SEO basics, which is a crucial way to boost your store’s rankings in search engine results pages. For instance, both ecommerce builders enable you to:

• Create custom meta titles and meta descriptions
• Create custom URLs
• Add alternative text to images (also a key way to make your site accessible)

In the end, Shopify just beats Square Online thanks to some more advanced SEO features like the automatic generation of hreflang tags. If you plan to sell your goods overseas, these tags optimize your listings for search engines in other countries, making it easier for international markets to find your products.

Blogging

Shopify and Square Online aren’t known for their advanced blogging capabilities, though Shopify does have the better blogging feature overall. 

To create a Shopify blog post, all I had to do was go to the “Sales channels” section in my dashboard and click on “Blog posts.”

After writing a blog post, I could select SEO and visibility settings, add an excerpt, upload a featured image, and enable comments so site visitors could engage with my content.

In comparison, Square Online’s blogging feature is less advanced and difficult to find at first. To add a blog post, I had to add a new page from the editor, then select the “Story” option that was tucked away behind a “Show more” toggle.

I only had control over the copy, background color, and one image I wanted to include. I did also have the option to AI generate the copy, but this is only available on the paid plans.

If you’re looking for a stronger blogging tool with better features, you’ll need to opt for Shopify instead.

Email Marketing

Shopify and Square Online have impressive email marketing tools, alongside a wide range of third-party integrations. However, I’d recommend Shopify here, purely because it supports a larger number of third-party apps that give you more choice. 

Shopify does have a free email marketing app, Shopify Email, that gives you 10,000 free emails every month. Additionally, its intuitive editor allows you to create stylish emails, as well as set up automations.

With Square Online, you can also access an email marketing tool to create professional campaigns, set up email marketing automations, and use pre-built templates to create unique designs.

The Winner

Shopify’s marketing features are more effective than Square Online’s

Shopify puts more effort into its marketing features. For example, it offers a wider range of blogging tools than Square Online, while its SEO goes above and beyond with multilingual support that optimizes listings for international searches.

You don’t need to worry about security with Square Online or Shopify. Both platforms are fully equipped to protect your store and your customers, coming with:

• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance
• Built-in SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) security to encrypt sensitive data passing between your customers and your store (like login or payment details)

Additionally, both ecommerce platforms come with powerful fraud protection features. For example, Shopify’s built-in fraud analysis feature enables you to look out for any fraud indicators and offers further support via third-party fraud apps that can boost your ecommerce security.

Be aware that to access this feature, you’ll need to sign up for Shopify Payments first, or be on the Shopify plan and above.

If using Square Online, you can use its free Risk Manager to keep a close eye on your store. Its machine-learning platform is designed to spot any fraudulent orders, and it’ll immediately notify you if it suspects any strange activity.

The Winner

Shopify and Square Online's security features tie

Both platforms provide built-in SSL security, are PCI compliant, and come with fraud protection tools to help you spot phony transactions.

As you create your online store, it’s likely that you’ll run into an issue or two. Shopify and Square Online do have support available, but we found Shopify to provide the best quality customer care.

Customer Support

From Square Online’s “Contact support” page, you can:

• Make a call
• Send an email
• Leave a message for a Support Assistant on Monday to Friday from 08:00 until 20:00 CT
• Ask the community for help

However, when we put Square Online’s chatbot to the test, we were disappointed to receive no response to our questions.

While Shopify doesn’t offer phone or email support, its AI-powered help center assistant provided prompt and thorough responses to my questions.

Knowledge Center

Shopify and Square Online come with useful resources for whenever you get stuck, which includes in-depth articles to read through or threads from the community forum. However, Shopify offers a wider range of resources. These include:

• Video tutorials
• Webinars from other Shopify store owners
• Business courses to upgrade your ecommerce skills
• Posts from the Shopify Blog

These resources can help you to not only create and run your online store, but become a savvier store owner too.

However, both platforms would benefit from tutorials during the setup process, especially Shopify because of its more advanced features. 

The Winner

Shopify has the best help and support

Shopify’s extensive knowledge base and fast, thorough responses make it the best option for a range of queries.

Neither Shopify nor Square Online can carry out site migration for you, but there are still ways to migrate from one platform to another – just be aware that this won’t be a speedy process.

Shopify, according to its official help resources, encourages store owners to migrate via one of three methods:

1. Manually importing your products via CSV (only recommended for smaller stores)
2. Downloading a migration app from its app store
3. Hiring a Shopify Partner to do the job for you

Unfortunately, Square Online has fewer options for site migration. You’ll need to copy and paste key site content, like imagery and blog posts, across to your site manually, then use the bulk importer tool to transfer your products to your new storefront.

To provide the best comparison of Shopify vs Square Online, we used our rigorous ecommerce website builder testing methodology, which involved over 300 hours of data collection.

But what did we test? After surveying 500 small businesses, we identified seven areas most important to them. We weighted each area uniquely based on varying levels of priority:

1. Sales Features: 30%
2. Website Functionality: 15%
3. Design Features: 15%
4. Help and Support: 15%
5. Pricing: 10%
6. User Experience: 10%
7. Reputation: 5%

I used the test findings in each of these areas, as well as my own extensive experience using each builder, to form a balanced and thorough review.

In the Shopify vs Square Online battle, Shopify’s website builder comes out on top overall. This comes down to its powerful sales tools, marketing features enabling you to grow your store, and professional store templates.

However, this doesn’t mean that Square Online won’t be a good fit for your business. If you’re interested in setting up and selling for free, or are running a smaller store that doesn’t require features as powerful as Shopify’s, it’s still a strong option.