Square Online Store Review: The Right Ecommerce Platform for You?

Here’s a quick summary of the best features and weaknesses I found when testing Square Online:

Square Online’s pricing starts with its free plan. Letting you set up and sell for free, you can have an unlimited number of products and connect POS with your store.

If you decide to upgrade, Square Online has two paid plans: Square Plus and Square Premium. Let’s take a look at each plan in more detail:

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Plan Name Square Free	Plan Name Square Plus	Plan Name Square Premium
Monthly price (paid annually) $0	Monthly price (paid annually) $49	Monthly price (paid annually) $149
Transaction fee 3.3% + $0.30	Transaction fee 2.9% + $0.30	Transaction fee 2.9% + $0.30
Displays ads on your site	Displays ads on your site	Displays ads on your site
Ecommerce	Ecommerce	Ecommerce
Custom domain	Custom domain	Custom domain
Recommended for Getting started selling	Recommended for Small to medium stores	Recommended for Large and growing stores
Try Square	Try Square	Try Square

As enticing as the free plan sounds, it does come with key drawbacks:

• No abandoned cart recovery or PayPal transactions
• Square Online ads across your site
• Square Online domain ending with “.square.site”

If you intend to scale up your store, a platform like Shopify is a better choice and cheaper to start. Shopify offers more powerful features, including large shipping discounts for each order and the ability to sell across global markets.

Is Square Online good value for money?

We found Square Online to be relatively good value for money, especially since it’s one of the only builders that will let you sell online for free. 

Keep in mind that you will have to pay transaction fees on all plans. Still, the rates are industry standard – even on the free plan. If you’re on a budget, Square Online is one of the lowest ecommerce entry points.

Holly Choules Writer

Are There Any Transaction Fees?

You will encounter transaction fees with Square Online, which differ depending on your plan:

In terms of the wider market, transaction fees are pretty standard for the Square Plus and Square Premium plans. For instance, competitors like Wix and Squarespace also have the same transaction fees of 2.9% + 30¢ for most payments.

While the Square Free plan has a higher rate of 3.3% + 30¢, you do have to pay for the more expensive plans to access these discounted rates. It’s only worth it if you intend to sell a higher volume of products from your website, so keep that in mind.

After creating a Square Online account and answering a few questions about my business, I was redirected to my dashboard. From this page, I could access a handy setup guide that told me exactly what I needed to do next. It covered everything from activating my account to setting up point of sale.

During the process, you’re encouraged to choose a theme and edit your website. You’ll only have five basic themes to choose from on the free plan, but an additional 22 professional themes on a paid plan.

How Easy Was My Theme To Customize?

While customization options are limited, it was extremely easy to edit my Square Online’s store, meaning that you won’t need any design experience to create an appealing website. 

Its drag-and-drop editor made it easy to add additional pages and new sections like customer testimonials to boost my store’s social proof. Then, I could customize my site’s color scheme and fonts, even incorporating my brand colors by entering HEX codes.

How Do I Upload Products to Square Online?

You can start adding products to your Square Online store during the setup process. From the dashboard, I clicked on “create new item” and was directed to a page where I could upload my first product. I could specify:

• The item type (i.e. mark whether it’s physical or digital)
• Product title, images, and a description
• Product variants, such as size or color

Once you’ve added a few items, you can then head to the recently improved Square Item Library to manage your inventory. From this page, you can easily monitor your items by tracking your stock numbers and changing the visibility of certain items.

Square Online has highly robust sales features, outperformed only by those of Shopify and BigCommerce in our testing. On top of the ability to sell unlimited products free of charge, its highlights include:

💵Point of Sale (POS)

• Price: POS software from $0, first POS hardware free, processing fees from 2.6% + 15 cents

If you also have a brick and mortar store, Square’s point of sale system can integrate your in-store sales with your ecommerce sales, consequently improving the customer experience by reducing. This impressive feature is accessible on the free plan and above, and comes with your first Square Reader for free alongside the Square App for transactions.

Other key features of Square’s POS include:

• Fraud protection – Square monitors all payments that go through its POS. If any unusual behavior occurs, its systems will notify you.
• Square customer directory – Syncs customer information across your online and in-person sales channels, helping you build your contacts list and cultivate long-term customer relationships.
• Square gift cards – Offer ecommerce gift cards that shoppers can redeem in both physical and digital stores.
• A range of POS hardware – Alongside your reader, you can also purchase other hardware for your store, starting from $10 per item. This ranges from classic registers to barcode scanners.

💰Payment Methods

With Square Online, you can accept payments online via most of the popular options, meaning you can give your customers more choice at checkout. The following digital payment options are supported:

• Google Pay
• Apple Pay
• After Pay
• Cash App
• Stripe
• PayPal (only available on the Paid Plan)
• Buy Now Pay Later
• Square Online gift cards

Additionally, all Square Online accounts are automatically connected to the Square Payment Processor, making it easy to get selling as soon as you set up your website and list your first products.

🛳️Shipping Options

With Square Online, you can send your parcels through popular shipping carriers including USPS, UPS, DHL, and FedEx. Plus, you’ll have plenty of choice over your shipping regions and how much you charge to deliver to each. You can determine your delivery rates in the following ways:

1. Free shipping 
2. Flat rate (charge the same rate regardless of how much a customer orders)
3. By order weight 
4. By order total
5. Real time rate: Only available on Square Online’s paid plans, real time shipping calculates the most accurate shipping costs for each order, preventing you from over or under charging customers.

Other great fulfillment features Square Online supports are:

• Curbside pickup
• On-demand delivery: Deliver orders to nearby customers through a service provider like DoorDash. ($1.50 + Square Online’s usual transaction fees)

There are only five themes included on the Square Free plan. Once you upgrade to either the Square Plus or Square Premium plan, you’ll get access to a total of 34.

Our testing found Square Online to have the smallest selection of templates. Still, the designs the builder does offer are attractive. Our testers were impressed by the look and functionality of the templates overall, since they follow a clear navigation and use engaging elements.

If you’d prefer to have more creative control over your online store, we’d recommend Squarespace instead. It offers free eye-catching templates and more ways to customize your website’s design.

Whether you need a specific marketing feature or an accounting tool, Square’s app marketplace is filled with over 300 high-quality extensions that’ll help you grow your business. 

Square Online’s range of apps are fit for a variety of purposes, be it ticketing, team management, or invoicing. However, the range doesn’t offer quite as many options as Shopify, with SEO being neglected entirely.

As with most app stores, you’ll find a mixture of free and paid apps. You can use the categories and filters to narrow down your options and find the integrations suited to your budget and needs.

Some apps do offer free trials, so there are opportunities to test out certain apps before you buy too.

Square has a support center, in-app help, community forum, and a YouTube channel. However, during our research, we found its support center to be lacking answers to very common queries.

When I tried to speak to someone directly, I found three key ways to reach out for help:

1. Email: Available around the clock, but responses take around 24 to 48 hours
2. Phone: Wait times differ depending on plan type
3. Live chat: Available Monday to Friday from 8am to 8pm CT

Opting for the live chat, I spoke to the automated Support Assistant, which was able to help me change my account settings. Each response was prompt – under 10 seconds to be exact!

There are approximately 2,200 cyber attacks a day worldwide, and Square Online deploys key security measures to protect your website from external threats:

• Two-step authentication – Merchants can add an extra layer of protection when they log in, making it trickier for hackers to access their account.
• SSL Certificates – This is a sign that your Square Online store runs on a secure server that isn’t vulnerable to attacks.
• PCI compliance – Platforms like Square Online must be PCI compliant to show that they protect your details, as well as your customers’ data.

Making it stand out from other ecommerce platforms, Square Online also has impressive ecommerce fraud detection capabilities. When payments come through, the platform’s in-house system will detect any suspicious activity. With this knowledge, you can then block dubious IP addresses, cards, or emails to keep your transactions secure.

To access this feature, I had to enter the Risk Manager platform from my dashboard. I was impressed by this space, since it showed me plenty of ways to track suspicious activity. I could look at analytics to see when the last offense was, or head to the alerts page to see if there had been any suspicious activity as of late.

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Square Online	Shopify	Wix	Squarespace	BigCommerce
Overall rating 3.8	Overall rating 4.8	Overall rating 4.8	Overall rating 4.7	Overall rating 3.7
Starting Price $49	Starting Price $29 $1/mo for 3 months	Starting Price $29 $26.10 with code “TAKE10”	Starting Price $16 $14.40 with code “WBE10”	Starting Price $29
Free plan or free trial Free plan	Free plan or free trial 3-day free trial	Free plan or free trial Free plan	Free plan or free trial 14-day free trial	Free plan or free trial 15-day free trial
Standout features POS integration Sell unlimited products for free	Standout features Sell unlimited products App market with 8,000+ apps Customizable checkout Multichannel selling	Standout features AI chatbot builder Branded email marketing AI image editing Personalized SEO support	Standout features Great booking tools Easiest editor to use Blueprint AI builder Stunning templates	Standout features No transaction fees Omnichannel selling Advanced SEO tools
Areas to improve No AI builder Limited design freedom Not suited to large inventories	Areas to improve Free trial length Restrictive editor Advanced AI tools	Areas to improve Storage space Changing templates Loading speed Inventory capacity	Areas to improve Autosave functionality In-person selling Phone support	Areas to improve Limited customization Weak AI tools
Try Square	Try Shopify	Try Wix	Try Squarespace	Try BigCommerce
See our Square Online review	See our Shopify review	See our Wix review	See our Squarespace review	See our BigCommerce review

If you’re not completely sold on an aspect of Square Online, here are some alternatives:

If you’re hoping to expand your business in the near future…

➡️ Shopify has the most scalable plans and unparalleled sales features – albeit for a steeper price point than Square Online. If you’re unsure whether such a powerhouse is necessary for your store, BigCommerce is a great middle ground between Square Online and Shopify. There are no transaction fees, unlimited products, and superb shipping options.

If you’re looking for unique templates with high levels of creative control…

➡️ Squarespace is a top choice if you’re in a creative industry and want your website to reflect that. I recommend this platform if you feel limited by Square Online’s themes and want more options.

If you’re stuck for choice and want a safe bet…

➡️ We found Wix to be the most well-rounded platform that can accommodate a variety of industries. It’s a great choice if you want the best of everything, from a beginner-friendly editor to strong SEO and sales features.

So, how did we come up with our verdict on Square Online? Well, I delved into findings from our rigorous, in-house ecommerce website builder research. This research covers the findings of over 300 hours of testing and analysis, providing you with the most accurate information for your needs.

When assessing Square Online, we looked at seven key criteria, which are each weighted based on their importance to users:

1. Sales features (30%)
2. Website functionality (15%)
3. Design features (15%)
4. Help and support (15%)
5. User experience (10%)
6. Pricing (10%)
7. Reputation (5%)

For instance, since sales features are the most important capability an ecommerce platform can offer its users, we made sure to review Square Online’s best sales features in this piece. From these findings, you’ll be able to decide if the platform is the right fit for you!

Understandably, Square Online’s free selling plan makes it an attractive choice for small businesses on a budget, but it’s important to note that the plan is limited, and you’ll need to upgrade if you want to build reputability.

I’ve tested every aspect of Square Online and would mainly recommend it to small to medium businesses thanks to its robust – and free – sales features. However, if you’re scaling your store or have a large inventory, I would opt for another platform like Shopify or BigCommerce instead. These platforms are better equipped for larger businesses, due in part to the brilliant inventory management and multichannel selling tools available.