Our rating(4/5)
Square ecommerce is free on the basic plan, even with pick-up, delivery and in-store POS integration.
Square Online Store is powered by Weebly, but managed in one account alongside your other Square sales channels. The service is very user-friendly and transparent, following the typical simplicity of other Square services.
  • Highs: Free plan. No contract. Simple transaction fee. Pick-up and delivery features. Syncs with in-person payments. Instagram and Pinterest integration.
  • Lows: Only weekday customer support. Limitations on free plan call for upgrade to paid plan.
  • Best for: Square users who want an easy way to build an online store, integrated with delivery, pick-up and POS sales.

What is Square Online Store?

Square offers an ecommerce platform called Square Online Store. You can use it on its own or in conjunction with other services like Square Reader, Square Invoices app and/or Square Point of Sale.

The platform – actually connected to Weebly – is accessed through your Square Dashboard in a web browser. You do not need to create a separate Weebly account because Square Payments (the card processing system) is automatically connected with the website builder so you can start setting up a web store straight away.

Your website will be able to accept payments by Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Square gift cards, with the option to activate Apple Pay, Google Pay. PayPal is only available with a Performance or Premium plan.

Accepted payments

VisaMastercardAmerican ExpressApple PayGoogle PayPayPal

Products can be added to your store from the Square POS system, or you can manually add items to sell online. There are plenty of user-friendly features for customising the website.

The service is ideal for a variety of businesses such as retail shops that ship products, professional services with an appointments or booking system, and food businesses offering takeaway or pickup options.

Pricing and payouts

Square really wants to make pricing simple and transparent, so there is no contractual commitment on any of their services, and you pay a fixed-rate transaction fee per online payment regardless of what debit or credit card is used.

You can create an account and not pay a cent, and still set up an online store on the Free plan, in which case, you only pay a 2.2% rate per transaction.

Of course, it is limited what features you get on the Free plan, so there’s a choice of three paid plans: Professional, Performance and Premium. They are all slightly cheaper if you pay for 12 months upfront, in which case you cannot claim a refund if you decide to stop using the Online Store during that year. Otherwise, it works out as $5-$10 more per month if you pay monthly.

Item Charges
Free plan $0/mo
Professional plan $15/mo annual billing
Performance plan $30/mo annual billing
Premium plan $85/mo annual billing
Card fee (Free, Professional, Performance) 2.2% (any card)
Card fee (Premium) 1.9% (any card)
PayPal Transaction fees through PayPal
Refunds Free
Chargebacks Free (conditions apply)
Item Charges
Free plan $0/mo
Professional plan $15/mo annual billing
Performance plan $30/mo annual billing
Premium plan $85/mo annual billing
Card fee (Free, Professional, Performance) 2.2% (any card)
Card fee (Premium) 1.9% (any card)
PayPal Transaction fees through PayPal
Refunds Free
Chargebacks Free (conditions apply)

The card fee is the same on the Free, Professional and Performance plans: 2.2%. On the Premium plan, you get a lower transaction fee: 1.9% per online payment. If you enable PayPal transactions, those payments will be charged through PayPal, not Square. This will incur a higher transaction fee.

All transactions are settled directly in your bank account within 1-2 business days.

Refunds are free to process, but they take 9-14 business to reach your customer’s account, and you must have the full amount in the “Square balance” (money currently being processed to your bank account) to avoid further delays.

Chargebacks are also free, and that even covers support to help deal with customer disputes in the event of one.

Features

Some features are available on all plans including the free one. This includes:

Products with product options: Fill your online store with an unlimited number of products, whether imported from your in-store selection in your Square POS system or created specifically for website visitors. Since you can track stock levels, you are able to display “only a few left” and “sold out” badges automatically as well as an “on sale” badge. You can add variants of products, organise categories, make items visible or invisible, and use other inventory management functions.

Shopping cart function: Any multi-product online store needs a shopping cart so visitors can keep browsing after adding an item – and go to the checkout to pay when ready. Square knows this is important, so it is included on all plans. Abandoned cart emails are also featured in the Performance and Premium plans.

Image: Square

Your customers can order food to deliver or pick up via your Square Online Store.

In-store pickup option: Enable pickups if you want to give customers the chance to reserve an item or food order, then come and collect it from you within specific time frames or any time. This is quite valuable for takeaway restaurants and small retailers that need to limit face-to-face services.

Customisable shipping rates: Choose between a flat-fee shipping cost, free shipping above a certain transaction amount, or shipping fee based on weight, number of items ordered or the transaction total. A real-time shipping rate calculator is also available, but only with the Premium plan.

Delivery options: Let your customers order online to have their products or food delivered. Settings allow you to specify the limitations of your delivery service, e.g. how many kilometres away you deliver to, how long it takes to deliver, how many orders can be processed at a time etc. You can even add order status text alerts for your customers.

Coupon codes: Coupon codes (e.g. a top banner with the message “enter STUDENT10 at checkout for 10% student discount”) are great for encouraging impulse purchases while the customer is browsing the website.

Image: Mobile Transaction

Square Online Store SEO page settings

SEO settings for a Square web page.

Gift cards: This is not a given in free payment systems, but merchants can accept and sell Square offer gift cards online.

Contact forms and pop-ups: All reputable websites are contactable in some way or another, and Square Store enables this via contact forms. It is also possible to display a pop-up to enable customers to be added to a mailing list, verify visitor age, offer a coupon or make an announcement.

SEO options: Add keywords to images, meta titles and meta descriptions to products, among other things. Just because it’s a free ecommerce builder doesn’t mean you can’t compete on Google.

Instagram, Facebook and Messenger integration: Let’s face it – you can’t avoid social media if you sell online! And Square lets you integrate Instagram (‘Shopping on Instagram’) and Pinterest on all plans. You can also connect Square with Facebook Shops, Ads and Pixel or add a Messenger chat on your website.

Apart from this, there are some considerable differences between Free, Professional and Performance that can make it worthwhile upgrading to a paid plan:

Feature Free Professional Performance
Custom domain
Remove Square ads
Search field
Basic site statistics
Advanced site statistics
Accept PayPal
Product reviews
Shipping labels
Abandoned cart emails
Free Professional Performance
Custom domain
Remove Square ads
Search field
Basic site statistics
Advanced site statistics
Accept PayPal
Product reviews
Shipping labels
Abandoned cart emails

The only difference between Performance and Premium plans is the 0.3% drop in transaction fee: instead of paying 2.2%, Premium users pay just 1.9% per successful payment via the online store. Needless to say, the extra monthly cost of Premium is only valuable if your card turnover justifies it.

Image: Square

Square Online Store template for retail

A simple Square Online Store theme for retail.

Website templates

The first time you start a Square Store design, it asks you to choose a website template. Pick carefully, because once you’ve chosen one, you can’t really go back and switch to another one. This is not necessarily a problem, as Square Store allows you to change every section of the web page from the editor mode.

The editor is very intuitive, with a simple side menu for navigation between parts of the page. In the top left hand corner, there’s a dropdown for switching between pages.

A lot of things can be customised, such as button style, banner design, text layout and colour schemes. This is all good for someone with limited confidence in creating a website, but more advanced web designers and seasoned ecommerce businesses would probably find the options a bit limited.

Payment links to send or embed on website

Instead of building a full website hosted by Square/Weebly, you can make do with a new feature called Square Online Checkout. This is great if you have an existing website that just lacks the product section with pay buttons, checkout and payment system.

Image: Mobile Transaction

Square Online Checkout donation link

Online Checkout donation link settings.

There are two ways to use Online Checkout:

  • Embed products into a website: Copy and paste the code for an item into your website where customers will browse products. The customer clicks the pay button to proceed to an online checkout to pay for it.

  • Payment links: Copy and paste the URL of each product into an email, chat message, social media profile or text message and send it to a customer. The recipient clicks the link and pays for it online.

Each link relates to a specific product or service you’ve added to an overview accessible through the Square Dashboard.

It is also possible to receive donations this way, allowing the payer to determine the transaction total. Payments through Online Checkout cost 2.2% per transaction, with no other fees applicable.

Domain and hosting through Square Online Store

With any website, there’s a cost associated with hosting the domain (i.e. securely storing the website on a server) and domain ownership (your URL). Typically, hosting costs a monthly fee and domains are paid for annually.

With Square, you can get away with free hosting and a free domain if happy with a URL in a https://business-name.square.site format. All the plans include free SSL security, the padlock on the left of a URL in your browser.

To grow online, however, it is best to have a domain that only contains your own brand and excludes the “square.site” part in the URL. Shoppers can be skeptical about online stores that look like they might not be successful, a giveaway being a web address with “square.site” at the end (tech-savvy consumers know this means a free domain).

You can connect an existing URL you own or purchase a new one through the Square Store when setting up the website. Connecting a personal domain will cost $7 a month when billed annually ($11 a month when billed monthly). This is all very user-friendly so you don’t need to be an expert to make this work.

Image: Mobile Transaction

Square Online Store footer free

The Square logo and “Create a free online store” text is visible in the footer on the Free plan.

Finally, the Free plan displays Square branding in the footer of your site that can’t be removed until you upgrade to a paid plan.

Integrations

If you don’t want to be bound by Square’s ecommerce features, fret not: Square Payments integrates with other ecommerce platforms like GoDaddy, Wix and WooCommerce. This may require a technical setup via APIs, so sticking to Square Store is still the easiest option.

Apart from ecommerce platforms, there’s a wide range of partner tools available through the Square account (although you may need to upgrade to a paid plan to allow these integrations). For instance, connect to booking and scheduling systems, point of sale systems (e.g. Vend, TouchBistro and of course Square POS) and accounting tools like Xero and Zoho Books. Whatever business tool you need will probably be covered.

Image: Mobile Transaction

Square Online Store header settings

Example of header settings in Square Online Store.

Customer service

Square generally gets a lot of good customer reviews for its Australian service, but there are also some reports on account holds for transactions considered suspect (this is a security measure common among payment providers). Overall, the service is rated noticeably higher than several competitors like Squarespace and Shopify.

If you need to speak to Square, the phone support is available between 9am and 5pm (Melbourne Time) on weekdays only. Since the system is so user-friendly, it should be unlikely you’ll need to contact Square about using the online store. You can email them any time, but expect to wait 1-2 days for a reply, and only expect it during business hours.

Alternatively, there is a comprehensive online help section that answers a good amount of queries on Square’s support page.

Our verdict

Overall, Square Online Store is a great choice for businesses that are new to selling online and don’t feel confident about setting up a web store themselves. If you already sell through Square, it’s easy to import in-store products to the online shopfront, so that can save lots of time.

There are lots of features already on the free plan such as Instagram and Pinterest integration, pick-up and delivery systems, but we recommend upgrading to at least the Professional plan to use a custom domain and get site statistics to improve online sales.

If you’re not quite there yet, the free Online Store is an excellent, super-simple way to create a stylish website able to sell your products online in no time.