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Published: Jan 28, 2022, 1:00pm
Square Online is an e-commerce platform that allows businesses to sell products with built-in inventory management, a point-of-sale (POS) system and the ability to accept payments online. There’s a free plan available, but the paid plans offer far more features to help your small business sell more effectively.
If you run a brick-and-mortar shop or you sell on location occasionally, you can still use Square to process payments, and the inventory syncs automatically between your online and off-line stores. Square Online also makes it easy for you to sell on Facebook and Instagram.
Square Online is a popular choice for many online sellers because it’s easy to use and free to get started. It’s a flexible platform that works well for mobile sellers, such as food trucks and fair vendors, online retailers, restaurateurs and physical boutiques. These are just a few reasons why it scores high on Forbes Advisor’s list of the best e-commerce platforms.
If you choose the free version of Square Online, it’s important to keep in mind that you’ll still have to pay for payment processing on each transaction. The free plan requires you to pay 2.9% plus $0.30 per sale. Square won’t limit you on how many products you can sell online, but with the free plan, you can only sell on a Square-branded site or on social media. Your bandwidth and storage are limited to 500 MB, so that may limit how much you sell on your site.
All plans can accept credit card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Square Pay and Cash App Pay. You’ll also be able to manage Facebook and Google Ads through your Square dashboard, create coupons for customers and use forms to capture leads to stay in touch with your customers. Square includes search engine optimization (SEO) tools to help you rank a page or product on search engines, like Google, by letting you enter SEO titles, descriptions and making them visible to search engines.
If you’ve already built a small business website and use a different POS system, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the paid plans to use Square Online on your domain. It could be worth it to sign up for Square Online’s Professional plan for $12 per month, if paid annually. You’ll pay the same transaction fee as you would on the free plan, but you’ll also get a free domain for the first year and access to Square’s website builder. The only downside to a Square site is that you won’t get a blog, but you will be able to post to Square’s Stories section on your site, which kind of serves as a blog. This plan upgrade also removes all Square advertising from your business’s online sales.
To accept PayPal, you’ll need to opt for Square Online’s Performance plan, which costs $26 per month, paid annually. Your payment processing fee doesn’t change, but you will get discounts on shipping rates. You can track those who abandon their carts while shopping with you, so you can send an email to prompt them to come back to finish their transaction—a vital feature considering nearly 70% of shoppers leave a site without checking out.
You can also collect product reviews for your site, and you’ll get access to advanced reporting, which shows you how well a product is selling, if you have any trending products and whether customers are using coupons. These reporting features can help immensely with future business decisions.
The highest tier from Square Online is the Premium plan, which will run you $72 per month, paid annually. You’ll get higher shipping discounts than the Performance plan and real-time shipping rates for your customers, so they know exactly how much they’ll pay for shipping. Perhaps the biggest selling point for this plan is the lower transaction rate: You pay 2.6% plus $0.30 per sale, making this a better option for high-volume sellers.
There’s no need to pay for a web hosting service if you choose Square Online to sell online, but you can use your own domain and find a cheap web hosting service, if you prefer, as long as you’re subscribing to one of the paid plans. You also have the option to create a website through Square’s easy-to-use website builder, or a different one you prefer.
To expand Square Online’s functionality, you can integrate more than 200 third-party apps. So, you can sync your Square account with accounting, loyalty, marketing and calendar apps.
Square gets a bit of flak online regarding its limited customer support options. You’ll have access to a knowledge base and forum full of topics with answers from Square’s support team members. Support is available via phone, email and messaging within the app. Phone support hours are limited to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT, Monday through Friday, which could be inconvenient if you’re in a different time zone or need help on weekends.
Square Online is one of the few e-commerce platforms to offer such a full-featured product for free—neither Squarespace nor Shopify offers free plans. Square Online and Squarespace both offer their entry-level paid plan for just $12 per month, if paid annually, while Shopify charges a bit more at $29 per month.
Abandoned cart recovery feature is available for all three platforms, but it’s accessible on the low-cost Shopify plan. You’ll have to opt for the $26-per-month plan on Square Online to get the abandoned cart feature. Squarespace doesn’t give this feature to users unless they’re on the high-tier plan, which costs $40 per month.
Square Online is a good choice as an e-commerce platform regardless of how or where you sell. Even the smallest merchant can get started selling online by only paying payment processing. However, if you’re a seasoned seller who expects to rack up lots of transactions every month, you could end up paying a lot more in payment processing fees by sticking with Square, rather than choosing a more affordable merchant services provider.
Square Online does offer a free plan that includes a POS, inventory management and gives you the ability to accept payments online. There are transaction fees, which cost 2.9% plus $0.30 per sale, but these types of fees are always present when you make a sale online or off-line—though you may be able to find a lower rate through other credit card processing companies.
Square Online employs several methods to keep transactions and information safe on its platform. Websites include secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates and credit card payments are encrypted when submitted. Square also maintains PCI compliance on all its products.
Square acquired Weebly in 2018 and they merged, so Weebly is now a part of Square products. Weebly is a website builder that offers e-commerce options, while Square is more of an e-commerce platform that also offers site-building features. If you’d prefer to use another site builder, like WordPress, you should look for one of the best web hosting services to host your site on the internet.
