Square is a point-of-sale (POS) and payment processing platform that helps all kinds of businesses, from start-ups to big stores, handle payments and sales. It not only makes in-person and online payments but also comes with tools for mobile, retail, and online sales – all in one package. Typically, this POS system is not only affordable but also user-friendly.
With all those benefits, is Square worth it? Is it suitable for your business? Let’s delve into our detailed Square reviews to make your final decision. Here’s what we’ll cover:
Ready to discover the most popular POS system? Keep on reading.
What is Square?
Let’s explore what Square exactly is before delving into thorough Square reviews.
In 2009, Square started with a unique card reader for mobile devices, the first of its kind. That one idea made Square expand from just one product to a whole set of tools for running all aspects of businesses, covering hardware, software, and much more.
Now, it has become one of the biggest point-of-sale (POS) and payment processing platforms serving all kinds of businesses.
Its operating system provides everything businesses need to sell and manage operations, like Square POS, Square Online Store, Square Reader, Square Register, and more. This way, businesses can sell anywhere, work better, handle inventory, talk to customers, book appointments, take orders online, and do much more.
Besides, Square blends in-person and online payments with mobile, retail, and online sales tools, all in one simple package. These tools open up lots of possibilities and countless chances for any business, whether it’s a big chain or a small local shop.
Pros and Cons of Square
Before going to detailed Square reviews, let’s check out the good and not-so-good things about using Square first.
Square pros
- Free to begin: With Square, you can sell anywhere without setup or monthly fees – only pay when you make a sale.
- Easy setup: Signing up with Square is quick and straightforward. There are no long-term contracts or commitments.
- Affordable pricing: Square charges a clear flat rate and a small percentage for each sale. This helps businesses easily plan for their payment processing costs.
- Flexible payment options: Businesses can choose from various payments, such as debit and credit cards, gift cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and contactless payments.
- Mobile friendly: Businesses can use Square’s mobile app to process payments and manage their account from their smartphone or tablet.
- Versatile hardware: You can choose from a range of integrated POS systems and customize them with accessories for your business.
- Integrated third-party apps: Square lets you connect your Square account with popular third-party apps to enhance your selling experience.
- User-friendly dashboard: With Square, you can access all your business info in one place – real-time reports, customer contacts, and more.
- Extra features: Square offers additional tools like invoicing, inventory management, and employee management to streamline operations.
Square cons
While Square reviews highlight some positive aspects, it may not be suitable for every business. Here are a few areas where Square falls behind its competition:
- Not ideal for big businesses with huge sales: Square only gives lower fees after you make $250,000 in sales each year. While it’s competitive with providers like Stripe and PayPal, other top services may have lower fees at lower sales levels.
- Business limits: Square isn’t for high-risk or high-fraud businesses. If you sell things like online gambling, illegal stuff, age-restricted items, or credit counseling services, Square won’t work.
- Account freezing for irregular activity: Too many chargebacks or fake charges can make Square freeze your account and stop your funds. This can stop your business for a while and takes time to fix.
- Limited customer support: Square’s customer support mostly uses online tutorials and chat. Even though chat is quick, getting help for big problems can be slow.
So, with these details, you may answer the question, “Is Square Up legit?” on your own and graph the basics of Square pros and cons. But to find out whether “Is it worth using Square?”, check out our thorough Square Up reviews in the next part.
Detailed Square Reviews
In this comprehensive Square Up review, we’ll look closely at its standout features, how it helps your business, and its pricing. This will make it easier for you to decide.
Square POS review
Square’s POS software helps your business accept payments and track sales. It also manages online orders, inventory, customer outreach, and team management. In this part of Square POS reviews, let’s go over some of its outstanding features:
Payments:
Our Square reviews showcase the seamless payment experience it offers to businesses. Whether online or over the phone, you can easily accept various credit cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and more. You can also store card details for speedy checkouts and effortlessly manage gift cards. Besides, Square POS lets you access funds hassle-free through Square Checking.
Check out:
Square POS lets you sell effortlessly both online and in-store with synced sales and inventory. Additionally, it handles swiped card payments seamlessly offline, processing them within 72 hours.
Operations:
Square POS allows sellers to unify sales, inventory, and locations in one dynamic system. You can dive into insights with Square Analytics, sync with inventory partners, and manage multiple locations effortlessly from your Square Dashboard.
However, Square might not be the best fit for businesses seeking a highly specialized POS system with advanced features. If you’re a dedicated Windows user, the Square POS app won’t work for you.
Square POS pricing:
You can start to use the Square POS software for free. There are no setup or monthly fees. You just need to pay whenever you take a payment. Here are detailed processing fees:
- Card present: 2.6% + $0.10 per transaction
- Card not present: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
- Keyed in: 3.5% +$0.15 per transaction
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Square for Retail
The next solution in our detailed Square reviews is Square for Retail.
Square for Retail is basically a POS app that uses Square’s payment technology and comes with smart, easy-to-use tools made just for retail businesses. With Square for Retail, you can accept payments, handle inventory, and track your retail business’s performance – all in one place!
Designed for retail:
You can sell faster and smarter with a point of sale made for retail. Easily upload thousands of items and quickly ring up sales by searching with keywords or using a barcode scanner.
Integrated payments:
Square for Retail accepts all major payment types, including Afterpay, both in-store and online. Take payments with Tap to Pay on your iPhone, and all your sales are automatically tracked in one place. Get deposits in your bank account as fast as the next business day.
Multi-location inventory:
You can also keep track of your cost of goods sold to know your profit margins. Easily manage, adjust, or transfer inventory across all locations, and set alerts for low stock. Connect with vendors and send purchase orders in minutes using simple templates.
Connect with customers:
With Square for Retail, you can automatically create customer profiles with every transaction and view purchase history to offer a personalized experience. Then, you can sort customer profiles into groups based on their visits and create your groups.
Employee tools:
Our Square reviews also reveal that you can establish unique permissions and accounts for your staff to manage registers and handle payments. Additionally, employees can clock in and out at your point of sale, and you can track and edit their timecards directly from the system.
Sell in-store and online seamlessly:
Square for Retail empowers you to manage them directly from your POS, thanks to its seamless integration with the new Square Online Store.
Square for Retail pricing:
You can start using Square for Retail for free. There is also a Plus plan ($89/month) and a Premium plan with custom fees. Check out the additional processing rates in the table below:
Plans | Free ($0/month) | Plus ($89/month) | Premium (Custom) | |
Processing fees per transaction | Online | 2.9% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 | Custom |
In-person | 2.6% + $0.10 | Discount: 2.5% + $0.10 | Custom | |
Manually entered | 3.5% + $0.15 | 3.5% + $0.15 | Custom | |
AfterPay | 6% + $0.30 | 6% + $0.30 | 6% + $0.30 | |
Square Online Store
Another interesting feature in our Square reviews is Square Online.
Square gives every user a free and fully-featured website builder called Square Online. While it provides excellent value with its sales features and customer support, it has some limitations in design flexibility.
For easy multichannel sales management, your online store syncs seamlessly with Square’s other data, including inventory levels, product details, sales, and customer information.
If you already have a website, you can connect your Square account to other eCommerce platforms. Most of them allow Square for payments, and some, like Weebly, fully integrate with your Square POS and Dashboard data.
Ease of use
Signing up for Square Online is simple, involving a few questions about your business. Once you have an account, it gets easier. You get a basic layout to edit with your company’s logo, colors, and fonts. No technical knowledge is needed to start selling, but customization options are somewhat limited.
Design flexibility
Unlike other builders, Square Online doesn’t offer a vast template library. If you’re very creative or want to build from scratch, this may be frustrating.
However, the end product follows best practices, offering a clean site with good visual displays. There’s plenty of white space, and the site is easy to navigate – a pleasing eCommerce store.
Sales tools and features
Square Online provides robust sales features, especially if you use Square POS in your physical store. Accessing all of this for free makes it a great value. You can use various sales tools, including adding products, managing stock, processing payments, setting up your store, and calculating taxes.
Besides, there are integrated marketing tools like SEO, pop-ups, and email to help optimize your store.
Square Online pricing
Offering honest Square reviews becomes more objective when you take the price into consideration.
You can start using Square Online for free with basic features. However, Square also offers 2 upgraded plans at $29/month for the Plus plan and $79/month for the Premium plan (billed annually), each with additional sales and marketing features.
There are also additional processing fees for each plan. See the table below for more details:
Plans | Free ($0/month) | Plus ($29/month) | Premium (Custom) | |
Processing fees per transaction | In-person payments | 2.6% + $0.10 | ||
Online payments | 2.9% + $0.3 | 2.9% + $0.3 | 2.6% + $0.3 | |
In-house delivery | $0.5 per order | $0.5 per order | Free | |
On-demand delivery | $1.50 per order | $1.50 per order | $1.50 per order | |
Hardware and software
The last thing we cover in our comprehensive Square review is its software and hardware solutions.
Square offers various hardware options. Besides, you can easily download its free software from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, and updates are sent through these app stores as well.
Square Reader for Magstripe:
When you join Square, you get a free Magstripe reader to start accepting payments wherever you go. If you want an extra magstripe reader, it’s $10.
Square Reader for contactless and chip:
This reader takes chip payments and contactless methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay. It’s handy in the current business scene, where contactless payments are becoming more common. If you want the charging dock too, the whole set is $66, starting at $49 for the device.
Square Register:
This advanced device lets you take payments from magstripes, chip cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and e-wallets. It comes with pre-installed POS software and costs $799 or $39 per month for a year.
Square Stand:
Plug this device into your iPad, and it becomes a mobile checkout station. It’s $149 or $14 per month for 12 months, and it includes a magstripe reader and a contactless chip reader.
Square Terminal:
The newest device from Square has a built-in display, magstripe reader, chip reader, and receipt printer. It’s priced at $299 or $27 per month for a year.
Squareup Reviews – FAQs
Squareup, or Square, is a large business tech platform assisting all types of businesses, whether offline or online. The Square operating system enables owners to sell anywhere, manage inventory, communicate with customers, schedule appointments, and more. Yes, Square was initially founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. Its legal name, “Square, Inc.” has been changed to “Block, Inc.” in 2021. It also received some famous awards and recognition in the industry. Some of them include Voted Adweek’s best POS system 2022, Afterpay voted among Best Buy Now, Pay Later Apps by the Wall Street Journal 2022, etc. If your sales are low or vary each month, Square is a good choice. It ensures you only pay processing fees for what you earn. With no monthly fee, it’s one of the more flexible POS platforms with various solutions for businesses of all types. Absolutely, Square follows the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). That means you don’t have to personally prove your PCI compliance. No, Square offers affordable pricing for small businesses. It doesn’t charge monthly or annual platform fees. You only pay when there’s a transaction and what you use. For most in-person transactions, Square charges 2.6% plus $0.10. If you manually enter the card, it’s 3.5% plus $0.15 per transaction.
Is Square Worth It?
With our detailed Square reviews, you now know that Square has clear fees, lots of payment options, and a fantastic set of tools for sales, marketing, and business management. Small business owners, startups, and everyone in between can easily customize it to fit their needs.
While it has some drawbacks, like set fees and limits on what you can sell, Square provides incredible value, especially with many free perks.
Feel free to contact us if you have any related questions.
