Shopify vs Square POS and Ecommerce

When our researchers put Square vs Shopify head to head, they found Square POS is better overall because it provides more advanced business management and development features for a better price. Shopify POS does offer some great ecommerce features, though, and it has a wider range of support options than Square POS. Both are also among the best retail POS systems, making them excellent choices for businesses focused on sales and customer experience.

In this guide, we’ll go over exactly how Square POS and Shopify POS compare on everything from features and pricing to customer service and ease of use, so you can get a better idea of which is best for your business needs.

If you’re in the market for a POS system today, compare custom quotes with our POS price comparison form to see how top providers compare when it comes to your bottom line.

How Do Shopify vs Square Compare at a Glance?

As we mentioned, Square POS and Shopify POS are two of the best options for improving your ecommerce sales. Large feature catalogs, excellent hardware options, and robust help and support options put them both in top three providers on the market, according to our research.

Coming up in this guide:

• Shopify POS Overview
• Square POS Overview
• Best Value POS: Square
• Best for Business Features: Square POS
• Best for Hardware: Square POS
• Best for Online Store: Shopify POS
• Best for Customer Service: Tie
• POS Alternatives
• How Do We Research and Test The Best Ecommerce Website Builders?
• Square vs Shopify: Which is Best Overall?
• Square vs Shopify FAQs

Still, there are some key differences between Square POS and Shopify POS, which could make a big difference for specific businesses. Here are how these two POS providers compare on those important criteria:

• Square POS is more affordable than Shopify POS
• Shopify POS has better ecommerce functionality than Square POS
• Square POS is better for business management and development than Shopify POS
• Square POS has better hardware functionality than Shopify POS
• Square POS is better suited to restaurants and brick-and-mortar stores
• Shopify POS is better suited to online stores and omnichannel retailers

Those are the key differences between Square POS and Shopify POS, but if you need a bit more information, keep scrolling for in-depth dives into pricing, features, support, and ease of use.

Shopify POS Overview

Yes, Shopify is better known for its incredibly robust website builder, designed for those interested in launching an online store. However, given the company’s success and resources, a POS system is a natural addition to the service, which is how Shopify POS was born. It’s definitely an impressive option compared to other POS systems, although it isn’t as good as Square, as we’ve mentioned.

For one, Shopify POS costs money. The cheapest plan is available with all Shopify website builder plans, so the minimum amount you’ll have to pay is $5 per month.

Users can add products to the Shopify POS with this simple field. Source: Tech.co

Additionally, Shopify doesn’t have the same level of business development and management features found on Square, which is a great way to build your business. Also, Shopify has virtually no restaurant functionality: If you’re in the food industry, you can check out these other POS for restaurants instead.

Still, Shopify is a stellar option for businesses that are more focused on ecommerce than in-store purchases. It offers excellent front-end software functionality and stock management features, while providing great integration with the Shopify website builder, which is one of the best ones on the market.

Square POS Overview

Having revolutionized the card reader game with this simple mobile attachment in 2010, Square has evolved a lot since then, building out a POS hardware lineup that now represents a substantial percentage of the POS market share.

Square has become such a dominant force of frequent updates in the POS market that our research found it to be the top POS provider available today, thanks to its excellent business management and development features, top-tier customer reviews, good help and support options, and rock-bottom entry price.

Square offers a form for adding each new item to the backend of the software. Source: Tech.co

It does have a few shortcomings though, particularly compared to Shopify: Its website builder and online store functionality does not compare to Shopify, which focuses on ecommerce more than anything. Additionally, it lacks a few tools that some shops may need; It has no employee training mode, and it lacks cost and profit management features (the latter of which Shopify does offer).

Still, Square is definitely considered the best POS for retail stores, small businesses, and restaurants, so be sure to consider it before moving on to any other option.

Best Value POS: Square

If you’re looking for a cost-effective POS system, Square is undisputedly cheaper than Shopify. Not only does Square offer a generous free plan with everything you need to get started – including a complimentary card machine – but its paid plans offer a slightly better return on investment than Shopify’s too.

Shopify does offer lower transaction fees though, and its entry price of $29 per month is well within the budgets of most small businesses. Below, we’ll break down the pricing plans for each, so you can compare them, dollar for dollar.

How much does Shopify POS cost?

Shopify POS offers two core pricing options. The first is Shopify Starter, which is included with all Shopify website builder plans, and starts at $5 per month. This plan is a bit rudimentary, with only a single login, order and product management, and basic customer profiles.

Other the other hand, the Shopify Retail plan, which costs $79 per month per location when billed annually. This is where you get the real value, adding features like inventory management, omnichannel selling features, and in-store analytics. This Shopify plan is a more expensive option than all of Square’s plans, but really does offer a lot as far as features are concerned.

Learn more about Shopify POS pricing in our dedicated guide

How much does Square POS cost?

Square POS has the ultimate brag when it comes to pricing: it’s completely free. That’s right, the Square POS Free plan costs zero dollars per month for the service. However, the plan does come with transaction fees of 2.6% + 10¢ for in-person and 2.9% + 30¢ for online, but you’ll be able to stay charge-free until you make your first sale.

Beyond its attractive free option, Square POS offers two different plans for restaurants and retail respectively. The Square POS Plus plan for Restaurants is $69 per month, and a Retail-specific version is even more, costing $89 per month. These plans unlock more features, from advanced reporting and inventory management to exchanges and even cheaper in-person transaction rates.

Square POS also offers a Custom plan that allows for custom processing rates. You’ll have to contact the Square sales department for more information on this plan.

Learn more about Square POS pricing in our dedicated guide

Best for Business Features: Square POS

When it comes to business features, Square really takes the cake against all POS providers, not just Shopify. Square can equip your business with all the tools you need to keep track of your business and scale it in the future.

Usability is a big factor in Square’s dominance with business tools: The service performed perfectly in our tests for how easy it is to use, how quickly the interface could be navigated, and how few errors occured during our test (zero, to be precise). Its interface is just as or more easy to customize when compared to top competitors including Lightspeed and EPOS Now. Shopify has great business tools as well, even if Shopify’s interface isn’t quite as intuitively organized as Square’s.

Square and Shopify both have broad reporting capabilities, and both received perfect 5/5 scores for their analytics, which cover discounts and refunds, as well as tracking sales across core metrics like items, categories, or team members. This video takes a look at how Square handles advanced reports:

With detailed reporting tools, inter-store transaction functionality, delivery support, and a vast array of third-party integrations, Square is simply a powerhouse of business features.  The only downside is inventory management, since it’s good but not perfect with Square. In contrast, Shopify is a stellar option for inventory tools.

Best For Hardware: Square POS

If you’ve been to a restaurant, retail shop, or even farmer’s market, you’ve likely seen a piece of Square hardware in action. The sleek, stylish systems are everywhere now, providing a delightfully comprehensive experience compared to the POS options of old.

For one, the Square Card Reader makes payment extremely easy and costs virtually nothing. Yes, Shopify POS offers a mobile app that can turn any mobile device into a POS, but the ease with which Square offers its service is hard to beat. Square has now launched Square Stand second generation too, so it’s easier than ever to transform your iPad into a POS and payment system.

For more robust systems, we have to give the advantage to Square as well, if only because they offer restaurant-specific options that are a bit more flexible with how you use them. Still, this category is pretty close, as Shopify offers a lot of solid hardware options that can improve your business, as long as it isn’t a restaurant.

Square has an excellent array of hardware options that businesses can individually purchase or buy in packages. Source: SquareUp

Best For Online Store: Shopify POS

While Square is better than Shopify POS at a lot of stuff, there’s no competition when it comes to an online store. Shopify is built as an ecommerce platform, offering arguably the largest catalog of online store features in the world. In fact, Shopify is so incredibly robust that our research found it to be one of the best ecommerce website builders available, so that should give you a good idea of what it offers when it comes to online stores.

Square Online is the online service for Square, and it really doesn’t match up to Shopify. It has fewer sales and website-building features, less integrations, and generally limited functionality compared to the mammoth that is Shopify.

While Square Online offers a number of useful AI-powered features, including AI-generated team announcements, and AI menu creators, Shopify’s AI builder, SideKick, is far more capable of building a powerful ecommerce website. Simply put, if you’re in the market for a POS that works well with ecommerce, Shopify is the way to go.

Shopify offers more integrations than Square. Source: Tech.co

Best for customer service: Shopify

As two of the top POS providers on the market, Square and Shopify both some similar experiences when it comes to customer service. Both have 24/7 live support, both have a robust knowledge center for offline learning, and both offer a solid community forum to glean information from other users. Setup is also quite easy with both POS systems.

However, our hands-on research found some of Shopify’s knowledge center responses were slightly better than Square’s: You’ll be able to figure out how to create product variants or view analytics with less hassle with Shopify’s help, giving them a slight edge when to comes to customer service overall.

POS Alternatives

Square and Shopify POS are two of the best point-of-sale options out there for businesses of all sizes. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right for your company. We’ve done the research to help you find the right system. Take a look at the table below for our top picks and check out our best POS guide for small businesses for more information

How Do We Research and Test the Best Ecommerce Website Builders?

We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we’re giving you the clearest, most useful product recommendations.

After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we put them through their paces with hands-on testing to see their real strengths and weaknesses. In this case, we put 16 website builder products to the test across 398 areas of investigation.

Based on years of market and user needs research, we’ve established an ecommerce website builder testing methodology that scores each product in seven main categories of investigation and 33 subcategories; this covers everything from customer feedback to design, ease of use, and more.

Our main testing categories for ecommerce website builders are:

• Website Features: the capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.
• Sales Features: the sales-focused tools a builder offers, including payment features, POS integrations, AR & VR integrations, check-out options, and more.
• Design Functuality: the aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customizable themes.
• Customer Satisfaction: external customer opinion. This is the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder – the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
• Ease of Use: how user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
• Value for Money: the balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
• Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder.

When it comes to calculating a product’s final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are simply “nice to have.” For example, when assessing the best ecommerce builders, we weigh sales features more heavily than other categories.

After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs. We also have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run this testing process regularly, to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.

Learn more about our research.

Square vs Shopify FAQs