Shopify vs Square: Which One is Best to Grow Your Online Store?

Shopify and Square are two of the most loved eCommerce platforms, with exciting features for businesses of all sizes. Both platforms also have their own POS services, which help you accept payments through different payment modes, whether offline or online.

In this article, we will discover both platforms individually and compare their services thoroughly so that you can make the right choice to grow your online store in 2024.

So, let’s get started with Shopify first.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is an eCommerce solution provider, and if you have ever sold products online as a business, you have surely come across Shopify. It has one of the biggest market shares in the eCommerce platform. Shopify provides retailers with a platform where they can host their stores online, sell products, accept payments, and manage the entire business from one place. As it is an online eCommerce platform, you need to accept online payments from customers whenever you make a sale. To tackle that, Shopify also provides its own POS service to customers.

Shopify POS is the primarily integrated POS system offered by this company that you can easily use to accept payments across your stores and different channels. It comes with a starting plan of $5 per month, and there are various benefits to using this system in your business processes. Whether you accept payments from the POS or not, Shopify takes $5 every month as a subscription fee for its POS system.

Having learned about Shopify, let’s dive into the features it offers.

Features of Shopify

Integrated SEO tools

One integral part of growing an online store organically is to do a lot of search engine optimization for the website. This is challenging if you are new to the business or to running eCommerce stores. But Shopify has made it easy. As it aims to help businesses of all sizes, Shopify comes with integrated SEO tools to assist you in following SEO best practices to rank your eCommerce store higher on search results.

Moreover, if you ever feel that the integrated SEO tools don’t serve your purpose well, you can download and integrate any other third-party SEO tools from the Shopify App Store. Different apps available on the app store can help you develop meta tags, fix broken links, create site maps automatically, provide alt text to your images, & many other things that increase the ranking of your website and make it visible to more search queries.

Dropshipping support

Suppose you are in the dropshipping business and want to use Shopify as your storefront where customers can place orders. You can forward them to your dropshipping agent, who will take care of your order delivery. In that case, Shopify provides significant support for such processes, too.

The Shopify App Store has multiple such applications that can help you connect with wholesalers worldwide that support the dropshipping business model. You can use the Oberlo app on the Shopify store to find relevant wholesalers and drop-shippers from AliExpress and list their products on your store to run your drop-shipping business successfully.

Advanced analytics

It is important to make an analysis and change your course of action based on the operational data that you gather. Shopify developers have understood the importance of this and have developed powerful analytics services for the platform.

You can create dashboards and reports to look at vital metrics for your business, like visitor demography, total sales, item-wise sales, profit percentage, and many other things. Apart from that, you can also generate reports regarding your inventory, marketing, or any other aspect of your business. Moreover, if you want to dive deeper with a specialized tool, you can integrate your website with the Google Analytics tool.

Knowing about the different features of Shopify, let’s have a look at its rival, Square.

What is Square Online?

Square Online is another high-quality online store builder similar to Shopify. Since its beginning, this product has acquired customers rapidly and reached new heights. If you are just starting an eCommerce store and don’t want to spend too much on it, Square can provide great value to you.

The best part about this is its awesome and powerful POS solution that can be integrated with online and offline stores through a single plan.

Let’s take a look at the features of Square Online, which make it a prime competitor to Shopify.

Features of Square

Free forever

Any business that wants to start an eCommerce store without investing significantly should try Square. It provides a basic plan wherein the services are free forever, and you only have to pay a 2.9% + 30 cents transaction fee on each transaction that happens through the POS or Square website. This simple pricing option frees you from the burden of monthly fixed payments and allows you to pay as you go.

The free plan works well for most businesses, as you can list unlimited products on your website and easily manage sales through the Square POS. The only downside to the free forever plan is that you cannot move your store to a custom domain of your choice, but you can do that with a $29 per month paid plan from the company.

Robust POS integration

One of the best things about Square is its awesome POS solution. It has a unique POS solution that works best in your offline store as well as on your online website. The POS can help you track all your orders from a centralized dashboard, and it can also facilitate getting newer orders.

You can create POS QR codes and paste them on your website or in different areas of the store to accept online orders or self-pickup orders easily. This smart POS solution can also send a courier pickup to your store or warehouse if the order is for home delivery, or it can notify you to keep products ready before the customer arrives for self-pickup.

Product photography tool

Most small businesses don’t have the resources to get their product photography done professionally, and this sometimes becomes a roadblock for them. Square has created a unique feature in its product ecosystem that helps customers click on professional-grade product photographs right from their phones.

The tool allows you to do a lot of post-processing with simple processes, change the background or perspective of the images, and do a lot of other editing.

We’ve discussed both of these tools now, and they are equally fantastic, but let’s pitch them head-to-head and find out which is the best between the two.

Shopify vs. Square

	Shopify	Square
Payment Processing Fees	Online payments are charged between 2.4% to 2.9% per transaction, whereas offline payments are charged between 2.4% to 2.7%.	Online payments are charged at 2.9%, whereas offline payments are between 2.65% to 3.5%.
Customer Service	You can reach customer support through email, chat, and phone with a callback service.	Square provides customer support across phone, email, live chat, and social media handles.
Contract Length	All plans have a minimum 1-month contract and can be taken up to 3-year agreements.	There are no contracts, and you can pay as you use the service.

Conclusion

Both of these eCommerce website builders have their own features and adhere to effective product development strategy that set them apart from each other. If you don’t want a commitment and monthly fees and have fewer sales, you can do really well with Square’s free plan and pay transaction fees. But if you want to get premium features and decreased transaction fees with longer contracts, you should choose Shopify.

While there is no single winner here, it all boils down to individual needs and how much money you are looking to spend on an eCommerce store . Before you fix any one of these, make sure to give them a try and select the one that meets most of your needs and budget.