Square vs Clover: POS Comparison 2021

Square is one of the biggest and most recognisable brands in the world of POS, and rightly so. In fact, we think it’s one of the best all-round POS systems on the market.

Clover, on the other hand, can’t quite cut the mustard in this company. It’s decent for restaurants and businesses with an online focus, but in our opinion, Square is almost always the better choice.

Of course, we don’t say that without our reasons. Our researchers at Tech.co have sunk thousands of hours into studying the POS market, the needs of businesses, and which providers are the best on the scene. Let’s take a look into the findings to see how we concluded that Square is the best choice for you and your business.

Major Differences Between Square and Clover

Square and Clover both allow restaurants and retail businesses to accept and track payments through their respective POS software. However, the companies go about it in slightly different ways.

In this guide:

• Major Differences: Square vs Clover
• Pricing and Plans
• POS Hardware
• Core Software Features
• User Experience
• Alternatives to Square and Clover
• The Verdict

Square, doesn’t charge any monthly fees. Instead, you pay transaction fees on each sale – 1.75% on card-based transactions, and 2.5% on manual keyed-in sales. Clover, meanwhile, charges for its POS software packages, as well as charging transaction fees on top of those monthly payments.

Similarly, Square POS works with the impressive Square Online website builder and ecommerce platform. Clover, on the other hand, while brilliant for accepting online orders, requires you to create a website with another platform first.

Square’s hardware packages tend to be cheaper than Clover’s as well, which might make a big difference if your business is just starting out.

All told, there are precious few circumstances in which we would choose Clover over Square.

Square vs Clover: Pricing and Plans

Square and Clover are similar in a number of respects. Both charge transaction fees on every sale you make, and both have dedicated plans for restaurants and retail businesses. However, with Square, you can get started with a fully functioning POS for free. Let’s take a closer look at each company’s pricing structure and software plans.

Find out more – How Much Does a POS System Cost?

Square POS Pricing and Plans

Square keeps its pricing remarkably simple. Businesses only have to pay transaction fees on the sales they make. Square charges 1.75% on card-based transactions and 2.5% on manual keyed-in sales. However, if your business processes more than $250,000 in card sales and an average ticket size of more than $15, you might be eligible for custom rates from Square.

You will have to pay extra for the extra features that Square offers with its dedicated plans for restaurants and retail – more on those below.

Square for Restaurant

You can get started with Square for Restaurant for free, and you’ll get plenty of features that are essential for running a restaurant in 2021.

However, if you upgrade to the Plus plan, which costs $69 per month, you’ll get a range of improvements compared to the free plan. For example, you’ll get 24/7 support, rather than support on Monday-Friday 9am-5pm. Similarly, you get improved reporting tools, live information on sales, and improved seat and table management.

Finally, there’s Square for Restaurants Premium. This tier is strictly POA, and is designed for larger restaurant chains.

Square for Retail

Square for Retail is broadly similar to the retail setup – there's a free introductory plan, a paid-for Plus plan, and a POA Premium plan.

The free plan, again, gives you everything you need to run a successful restaurant. However, the retail Plus plan is even more enticing than its restaurant counterpart. It costs $49 per month, and you’ll get reduced transaction fees – card-present transactions drop from 1.75% to 1.6%.

You also get extra features with the Plus plan, including product exchanges, barcode printing, and inventory history.

The Premium plan, meanwhile, offers all the same features as the Plus plan, but also gives you custom pricing per location and custom transaction processing rates.

Clover POS Pricing and Plans

Clover’s pricing, on the other hand, is slightly more complex. It offers three plans suitable for any type of business and two plans for different types of restaurants and you’ll have to pay transaction fees on top of each.

The Payments Plus, Register Lite, and Register plans could all be used by any type of business, but you’ll be limited by the type of hardware you can use.

By contrast, the Table Service and Counter Service restaurant plans come with features specifically designed for bars, cafes, or restaurants, including floor planning and food order apps.

Clearly, Square’s pricing is far simpler to navigate, and will almost certainly work out cheaper for most businesses.

Clover Payments Plus

Clover’s entry-level plan is, confusingly, called Payments Plus – which was formerly known as the Terminal plan. It costs $4.95 per month and gives you cloud-based payments, as well as employee and customer management tools.

However, you don’t get inventory or order management features, and you’ll have limited access to the Clover App Market – so adding extra features will be harder, as well.

Clover Register Lite

The Register Lite plan is Clover’s middle option and is designed for businesses with credit card sales of less than $50,000 P/A. It’ll set you back $9.95 per month, plus 2.7% + $0.10 transaction fees on every sale you make. It has all the features found on the Payments Plus plan, as well as some nice extras.

However, the Register Lite plan is only available to businesses using the Clover Go, Flex, or Mini hardware devices.

With the Register Lite plan, you can access basic inventory and order management tools, as well as gaining improved access to the Clover App Market. You can also connect to customer-facing displays, and calculate tax on items.

Clover Register

The most expensive plan costs $39.95 per month, and if you use the Clover Station or Station Pro, you’ll be required to use this plan. It charges 2.3% + $0.10 for all transactions, and extra cash registers cost $9.95 per month.

Confusingly, if you actually have a Clover Station, Clover calls this plan “Classic”.

Inventory and order management is improved again, allowing you to add items with modifiers and variants, as well as exchange orders.

You’ll be able to pair your POS software with a remote kitchen order display, and it supports weight scales. You’ll also get full, unfettered access to the Clover App Market.

Clover Table Service Restaurant

The Table Service Restaurant Plan costs $69.95 per month. Again, processing fees are 2.3% + $0.10, and extra registers cost $9.95 per month. You get more features compared to the Register plan, including floor planning apps and a specific restaurant orders app.

Clover Counter Service Restaurant

The Counter Service Restaurant Plan costs $39.95 per month. This plan is designed specifically for food vendors that don’t offer table service – bars, pubs, or food trucks, for example. Additional registers again cost $9.95 per month. Card processing rates jump back up to 2.5% + $0.10 per transaction.

Clover's iPad interface

Square vs Clover: POS Hardware

Square and Clover both offer stylish hardware to accompany their POS offerings. There's precious little to choose between the pricing for each company’s hardware offerings, but Square's system runs best on iPads, so you’ll want to factor the cost of those in before getting started.

Square POS hardware

Square gives all users a card reader for free when they start using the service – helpful for a small business just starting out. As Square POS runs best on an iPad, though, you’ll need to have one of those to get started, if you don’t already – with the cheapest new iPad starting at $329.

Beyond this, Square card readers for magstripe cost as little as $10 per go, and plug directly into iPads. Standalone readers for contactless and chip transactions cost $49.

The Square Terminal, which takes payments and prints receipts, costs $299 – though you’ll need to pay an extra $39 if you want to connect it to the internet using an ethernet cable. Printer paper is a dollar a go, as well.

The Square Stand, which houses your iPad and connects to the card reader, costs $169. The full Square register, meanwhile, cost $799.

Square will sell you a range of hardware kits, which can make the process of getting set up much easier. For example, the Square Stand Kit – which includes the Stand, card reader, a cash drawer, and a receipt printer – costs $646. The Square Register kit, which includes the Register, a cash drawer, and receipt printer, costs $1,329.

For almost any bit of hardware you’ve seen someone using in a shop or restaurant, Square will happily sell its version to you.

Clover POS hardware

Clover will also gladly sell you a range of hardware options. Its Clover Go chip and contactless payment reader costs $69.

The Clover Mini, meanwhile, which functions both as a touchscreen interface for you and your employees to enter transactions, as well as a chip and contactless reader, costs $749. You can also use it to view any information about your business at any time.

The Clover Station costs $1,349, and serves as an all-in-one POS system with a cash drawer and receipt printer. It’s a mite more expensive than Square’s option, but remember – with Clover, you won’t need to buy an iPad.

Clover Flex, which is basically a mobile payment terminal with a screen, costs $499. It’s a smart-looking piece of kit, and would be perfect for restaurants with roving squads of servers.

Finally, the Clover Station Pro costs $1,649. It includes everything above except for the Flex, as well as some bundled apps such as Tips, Shifts, and Discounts, which are great for running any sort of business.

All told, Square and Clover are pretty similar when it comes to hardware – though Square’s reliance on iPads might convince some that Clover is the better, more cost-effective option. However, in our opinion, Square is still the provider to go for, especially as you’ll recoup the cost of an iPad by not having to pay Clover’s monthly fees.

If you already own an iPad you can use for your business, it’s a no-brainer. With that, and Square’s free card reader, you may be able to avoid paying for any new hardware at all.

Square vs Clover: Core Software Features

Let’s take a look at the core features that both companies offer and see who is better at what.

Sales

With Square, you’ll be able to accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express cards all at the same rates. You can also accept Apple and Google Pay contactless transactions. What’s more, you can issue and accept digital gift cards, and even store your most regular customers’ card details on file.

And on top of that, Square will allow you to accept online orders and eGift cards.

Clover will also accept all the same payment methods. However, it also offers digital receipts and one-touch tipping. Similarly, you’ll be able to process refunds and returns quickly and easily.

Again, Clover supports online orders and eGift cards.

Analytics and reporting

With Square, you’ll be able to track all your sales through the Square Dashboard. It shows you everything from your profit and loss to your inventory, and much more besides. Plus, you’ll be able to gain valuable sales insights from the dashboard, as well as export it to dive deeper into your data.

Clover’s analytics tools also allow you to track and analyze sales in real-time. Plus, you’ll be able to see sales across your locations, check tips and server totals, and even see the volume of credit card transactions per card type.

Customer feedback

The Square Customer Directory manages all your customer information in one easy place – you can even use it to see customer spending habits and send them individual messages.

Through Square’s digital email receipts, you can start private conversations with unhappy (or happy) customers before they start ripping into your business online.

Clover, meanwhile, offers almost exactly the same set of features – you can communicate directly with customers, as well as rewarding them with perks and discounts, or driving more traffic with promotions.

Integrations & Add-Ons

Square’s App Marketplace has a range of apps that you can connect to your POS to give it more features. For example, you can connect it to a BigCommerce or Wix website. You can even integrate CRM tools such as Mailchimp to make your customer communications even better, or take orders through fulfilment providers such as Ecwid.

Similarly, Clover has a large app store, which covers everything from payroll apps such as Gusto to recruitment apps such as JazzHR. It also accounts for the more typical ecommerce, CRM, and customer reward apps.

However, Clover limits users’ access to the app store depending on their pricing plan, which seems a bit up-selly to us.

Square vs Clover: User Experience

Square and Clover both pride themselves on being extremely customer-focused. But which service provides the best overall user experience?

Ease of use

Square’s iPad and iPhone based setup make it a breeze for most people to get their heads around – piggybacking on a popular mobile operating system certainly helps reduce the learning curve.

Like its hardware, Square’s software is also incredibly minimalist and sleek. You won’t find yourself confronted with loads of options on every screen – instead, things are pared back and digestible. This, of course, makes everyday tasks super easy. However, it can mean that more advanced jobs can require a fair amount of tapping through different menus.

Clover’s UI is slightly more complex, but should be eminently digestible for most people.

All told, there’s not a lot to choose between the two providers. However, we think Square will likely be easier for most people to get to grips with quickly.

Customer service

Clover offers all US customers 24/7 support, irrespective of what pricing plan you might be on. It also has a dedicated online help center, which can assist you in using all of Clover’s products. Plus, it has an FAQ page, blog, and developer page to help with any issues you might be facing.

Square, on the other hand, offers phone support from 6am to 6pm, while email support questions are typically dealt with in less than 24 hours. Again, Square offers an online support center, which can help you work through any issues on your own.

How Square's backend looks on a tablet

How Clover works on two of its terminals

Clover and Square POS Alternatives

Clover and Square aren’t the only POS providers on the market. In fact, there are more POS options for growing businesses than you can count.

For Restaurants

When it comes to restaurants, bars, pubs, or cafes, our favorite POS option is TouchBistro. As the name might suggest, it’s designed specifically with the food service industry in mind, and includes many features by default that Square or Clover provide through apps.

With that being said though, Square remains an excellent choice for quick-service restaurant businesses, with menu, inventory, and layout management included in the free restaurant plan.

For Retail

Square is, genuinely, our top choice for retail businesses in need of an affordable POS system. Its free plan is simply unmatched by the competition.

Lightspeed POS, meanwhile, comes out on top overall, and shines when businesses have complex inventories of products that they need to sell – think companies with lots of product variants.

Want to know more? Check out our guide to the Top 10 Retail POS Systems

For Online Ordering

Say your business relies on online orders – which POS system should you use then?

We’d recommend either Shopify or Square POS as all-round options, but there are some compelling outsiders for niche use cases.

Square offers its own website builder and ecommerce platform which can give you a brilliant, branded experience to offer potential customers. However, Square also integrates with third-party ordering and delivery companies which can help make accepting and sending orders out far easier.

Shopify, of course, is an ecommerce giant and will help keep all your online transactions in one place. You'll also get your own branded online store and the ability to sell your products through loads of different sales channels. For example, you'll be able to hold a presence on Amazon, Instagram, and eBay.

Clover, though, is a very useful platform for online ordering. You'll find its setup slick and easy to understand and it's a great fit for restaurants as well as retail stores. However, you should bear in mind that you can't create your own site with Clover – you'll need to have an existing online presence and make sure the Clover integrates with your platform of choice.

Toast, on the other hand, is a compelling option if you don't have (or don't want) any POS hardware. As an entirely virtual system, you can sell stuff online with just a phone or a tablet. It supports online ordering, takeout, and contactless delivery.

Square does also offer its own website builder and ecommerce platform, Square Online, which can keep all your online dealings in one place.

Verdict

In our mind, there’s only one winner here – Square POS.

It’s not only one of the best all-round POS systems on the market, but it's also significantly cheaper for small businesses and less complex than Clover. Being able to get started with a fully functioning POS for absolutely nothing is, quite simply, remarkable.

Now you know that Square is the better POS system, it’s worth getting started for free by clicking here.

If you’re not completely sold on Square and want to keep your options open, you can always use our quick and easy questionnaire to get bespoke quotes from the leading POS suppliers in moments.