Pros & Cons
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- Simple, intuitive setup
- Lets you sell physical and digital goods
- Supports POS systems
- Unlimited storage and monthly data transfers
- Useful video tutorials
- Free service tier
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- 24/7 customer support is walled behind the most expensive tier
- Mobile app only available for iOS
Square Online Specs
| 24/7 Phone Support | |
| Drag-and-Drop Site Editor | |
| Free Version | |
| Live Chat | |
| Point of Sale Support | |
| REST API | |
| SSL Certificate Included | |
| Transaction Fees |
You’ve probably been on the customer side of the Square Online e-commerce platform many times, whether tapping your card on a Square terminal in a coffee shop or buying items from an online store. Square is just as easy to use on the business side. You can start selling products within minutes of signing up, and the service's many store customization options, handy photo editing app, unlimited storage and bandwidth, social media integrations, and robust video tutorials make it easy to recommend. However, Square Online has one weak spot compared with the competition: Its 24/7 customer support is paywalled behind its most expensive tier. Our Editors' Choice winners for e-commerce, Shopify and Wix Stores, pull slightly ahead with their around-the-clock customer service across all plans.
Plans and Prices
Square has three e-commerce tiers: Free, Plus, and Premium. The Free tier is good if you want to test the e-commerce waters and don't mind the inability to apply your company's brand. Free subscribers get SEO tools, and the ability to sync with Square POS terminals, sell on social media, and accept card payments. However, Free lacks Square’s robust website themes, meaning you're locked to its default aesthetic. Strangely, Free subscribers cannot set item quantity limits, so a single customer can clear your stock.
(Credit: Square/PCMag)Despite Square’s Free tier being fairly lightweight regarding features, it stands apart from the competition by simply existing. The cheapest tiers for Shopify and Wix start at $29 and $27, respectively, per month. Neither has a free version.
Next is the Plus tier, which costs $29 per month. This plan lets you leverage Square's website design tools and themes to give your online shop a unique visual identity. In addition, you can create customer accounts, whip up QR codes for items like menus and pre-orders, or create subscriptions. Helpful analytics and statistics are available when you need a deep dive into sales data.
Building upon Plus, the Premium tier costs $79 per month and offers real-time shipping rates. It's also the tier where the walled-off 24/7 customer support kicks in (more on that in a bit). Premium has unlimited storage and monthly data transfers like every other Square tier.
Square charges 2.9% and 30 cents per transaction. The Premium tier drops the rate to 2.6% plus 20 cents per transaction.
You can sample the Free plan using Square's 14-day trial. However, the trial isn't available with paid plans unless you do a workaround by signing up for Free and then upgrading. The trial requires you to keep a credit card on file.
Building a Square Online Store
Once you select a tier and create login credentials, Square asks basic questions to determine how your customers receive their orders (shipping via Square, pickup, or in-house delivery). After that, Square presents its dashboard.
(Credit: Square/PCMag)This dashboard is sleek and easy to navigate. In a nice touch, it has a video tutorial checklist that walks you through the packing, shipping, and customization options. I appreciated that the tutorials were front and center.
Plus and Premium members can build their websites using templates. Once you select one, you can customize the website for web and mobile use. You can apply different fonts and colors, add drop shadows to your buttons, and round out the corners of your windows—it all gets pretty granular. The stock template options are attractive, but it's good to know you can tailor them to your brand's specificities.
The most important feature of an e-commerce platform is the ability to upload items to your stock. Square Online makes this a breeze. Clicking the Items tab takes you to your backend catalog, where you can add digital and physical items to your shop.
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Photo Studio App
Photo Studio by Square is a companion app for iOS devices (it lacks an Android version). It's included with your subscription and is useful for snapping product photos.
You can easily photograph an item, remove the background, change the background to a preset image, and even add effects like a drop shadow. Afterward, simply add the product's price and description, and upload the data to the online store.
Photo Studio and Square Online sync almost instantly. Although it's not an Adobe Photoshop replacement, the app does the job if you don't need studio-quality images. That said, a cheap lightbox and an iPhone can take you a long way.
Payment and Add-Ons
Square accepts all major credit cards, Square gift cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. The e-commerce platform also accepts Square POS, a system that simplifies importing orders, items, and inventory.
In addition, Square Online has an application programming interface (API), so developers can create third-party add-ons outside the Square App Marketplace. If you don't want to do that, the Square App Marketplace contains dozens of apps in 16 categories, including Accounting, Booking & Scheduling, and Loyalty & Rewards.
Uptime
Website uptime is one of the most important aspects of an online store. If your site is down, clients or customers cannot find you or access your products or services. Square strives for 100% guaranteed uptime, but the company acknowledges it's an impossible promise.
To mitigate this, Square offers transparency by letting you know when outages occur. Subscribers can sign up for downtime alerts, and Square's hardware lets you accept payments in an offline mode. Square also has a website, isSquareUp.com, that lets you check for outages.
(Credit: Square/PCMag)Customer Service
If you’re having an issue with your online store, you need help quickly. Square Online has customer support, but you can only access its phone lines from Monday to Friday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT, if you have the Free or Plus plans. You can contact Square via email (the company's website says a response may take 24 to 48 hours) or web chat (which leverages a bot to answer questions outside of phone support hours).
If you have the Premium tier, you can access 24/7 customer support. It's good that perk exists for those who pony up, but I'd like to see all subscribers receive this benefit. Shopify and Wix Stores have that, after all.
Verdict: A Square Deal
With user-friendly features that empower you tailor your online store to your exact specifications, Square Online is an attractive service for any business. It's an especially easy sell if you're already invested in the Square ecosystem. The main drawback is limited customer service hours unless you subscribe to the Premium tier. Thanks to 24/7 customer support with every tier, Shopify and Wix Stores inch past Square to remain our Editors' Choice winners.