Square vs Shopify Comparison 2020: Which POS System is Best?

Last Updated on November 18, 2020

Ante Rados

Today, we will talk about two POS system providers. To decide which one to choose, you first need to know what important factors of the POS system to look out for. Let’s go over that checklist.

It is important to check if a POS can process all payment methods you are going to need. If you expect customers to mostly pay with debit cards, and the POS system you choose can’t process them, you won’t have much use of its other features.

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Good inventory management tools are a must-have. We live in a digital age and you shouldn’t settle for a POS system unless almost all inventory management is automated. It should also include good report and analytics tools, so you can keep track of how your business is doing.

You should also pay attention to how well your physical locations and online store sync, and what are digital marketing and SEO features you get. For your sales to increase, your business must be easy to find online.

So, who is better in doing this, Square or Shopify? Let’s find that out by pitting them against each other.

So which is better, Square or Shopify?

Square is slightly better for merchants that have exclusively brick-and-mortar stores, but Shopify is much better in all other aspects. Better eCommerce handling, more features and payment gateways, and more sophisticated inventory management are some features Square can’t compete with.

Square discounts	Shopify discounts

Shopify vs Square comparison

Don’t forget to switch between Square and Shopify by clicking on the toggle button. If you are ready to read on, it is time to start this Square vs Shopify battle!

Square online store or Shopify ease of use

Square

☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

Shopify

☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

Both companies have product lines designed to make it easy for small businesses to use. POS setups are easy to learn, so training your employees shouldn’t be a problem no matter which of the two companies you choose.

Website building software in most cases doesn’t require any coding knowledge. Customization options are designed in a way that you can understand and use them with no technical knowledge. Payment processing charges are made simple, so even people creating their first shop will easily get a grip on this.

Both Square and Shopify will be easy to use both for you and your employees. They are both handling ease of use better than what you would expect based on industry standards, so they both get 5 out of 5 stars for ease of use.

Square advantages
No technical knowledge required	Easy POS setup

Shopify advantages
Excellent backend control	Easier to manage big stores

Square vs Shopify website builder

Square

☆☆☆☆☆ 4.5/5

Shopify

☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

Square uses the Weebly website builder since they acquired Weebly in 2018. Weebly is a drag and drop website builder designed with complete beginners in mind.

Weebly utilizes an intuitive grid system. This means that every element will snap in place and auto-align with other elements when you drag it somewhere. This way you won’t have to worry about various elements overlapping. Also, your website will look excellent even if you have no knack for design.

Weebly is compatible with tons of widgets and apps. With this compatibility, you can upgrade the builder if you need additional functionality.

Weebly faces the same problem all other drag and drop builders face. Even with additional functionality you get with widgets and apps, there are limits to what you can do with a drag and drop builder. It is an excellent builder for beginners, but don’t expect to create really complex websites with it.

Square advantages
Drag and drop

Shopify advantages
Capable of creating complex websites

Square vs Shopify templates, themes and customizability

Square

☆☆☆☆☆ 3/5

Shopify

☆☆☆☆☆ 4.5/5

Square has a somewhat different approach to templates than most online store builders. There are no premade themes you can choose from. Instead, you choose a template based on the industry you are in and proceed by picking the layout, fonts and colors the template will use.

Once you choose the basic options, you continue by adding website pages that start as collections of content blocks. The layout of a page is completely customizable; you can add, remove and rearrange custom blocks as you see fit. Initial collections of content blocks you select are just premade layouts that work well.

Customizability isn’t as great when it comes to text. You are limited to only three options of text size. There is also a problem with text boxes. The shape, location, and size of text boxes can’t be adjusted, and that can be frustrating.

Customizability also suffers from a lack of an option to access HTML or CSS of your website. This means that the only way to customize your website is by using the design tool.

Themes, templates and customizability are Square’s weakest point, so if this is important to you, you should consider using Shopify.

Shopify advantages
Top-notch themes	Great customizability

Compare Shopify or Square eCommerce features

Square

☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5

Shopify

☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

Both services accept payments from all major credit card networks. The benefit to using Square lies in Square’s ability to process all payments offline. Shopify is limited to accepting cash and custom payment methods offline. There is also a limitation to Square’s payment processing; if you choose Square as your POS system, you will have to use Square as your payment processor.

Paying taxes is an important part of every store. Square has a tax calculator that will calculate the exact amount of taxes you will have to pay, as long as you input your tax rate information.

Square’s inventory management system will update the amount of products with each sale and stop selling products automatically once it is out of stock. One important feature it is missing is the automated adjustment of inventory levels when your product is returned.

An important eCommerce feature you should look out for is the possibility to add options and variations for your products. With Square, you can create option sets that you can easily apply on all similar products, and then just add the variations for each product.

If you don’t know what the difference between option and variation is, let me explain with an example. Let’s say you are selling shirts in your store. Different options would be size and color of the shirt. Variations of the option color would be purple, black, orange, etc.

Square has a feature called Abandoned Cart Saver, which is their version of abandoned cart recovery. It sends emails about abandoned carts to customers who added an item to their cart and left the cart without purchasing anything. Unfortunately, you don’t get this feature in their Free plan and the Professional plan.

Your shipping features will depend on a plan you choose. You can charge the shipping rate based on weight, item quantity and order total with each of the plans. Paid plans let you access real-time shipping rates with UPS, USPS, and FedEx.

Square also has support for unlimited amounts of products, multi-channel selling, tools to sell on Instagram, shipping calculators, gift cards and sales coupons.

While Square has eCommerce features that will satisfy small businesses, bigger stores won’t be overjoyed with what Square has to offer.

Unlimited bandwidth combined with the infinite number of products you can place in your store makes Shopify an option with no limits to the size of your store.
With Shopify, there is also an abundance of payment options to choose from. In fact, it is hard to find a gateway that Shopify doesn’t support. Shopify integrates over 100 payment gateways. There is a page on their website with all payment options listed by country. You will have to pay a transaction fee for using a gateway that isn’t Shopify Payments, but at least there is an option to choose a different gateway.

In contrast to Square’s tax calculator where you have to input your tax rates, Shopify automatically handles major country tax rates based on your location. You will also receive automatic shipping rates from major carriers, so that is two problems fewer on your list. Order management and fulfillment features are also more detailed than Square’s.

Shopify has excellent inventory management with a search bar that lets you find anything in your inventory easily. The inventory management system has support for uploading multiple products simultaneously. Stock management tools, abandoned shopping cart recovery and revenue reports are integrated and importing/exporting information with CSV files make life easier for any retailer.

With Shopify you can also create options and variations for your products. Shopify has built-in support for 100 variants of a product. Each product can have up to 3 options. For more options and variations, you will have to get a third-party app.

Shopify has more options for setting flexible shipping rates. You can set weight and location-based rates. Adjusting rates by fixed-price, tiered pricing and choosing the price point where shipping becomes free is also possible.

Shopify has features with excellent scaling. They are simple enough to use, which is great for small businesses and they are powerful enough to support huge enterprises. When we compare Shopify and Square, Shopify is the winner of this category.

Square advantages
No limit to options and variations	Perfect for small businesses

Shopify advantages
100+ gateways	Automated tax calculator	Excellent scaling

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Square and Shopify SEO & marketing features

Square

☆☆☆☆☆ 2/5

Shopify

☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5

Square is a terrible option when it comes to SEO and marketing tools.

Aside from Instagram and Pinterest integrations, the only marketing tool they offer is called Square Marketing. It is a tool that lets you create and manage email marketing campaigns. The cost of the Square Marketing tool will depend on the number of reachable customers in your customer directory. The price starts at $15/month for up to 500 reachable customers.

There is an app store with additional apps that can add some marketing features, but it is also very limited. In the marketing & analytics category, there are only 9 (no, I didn’t forget to add any 0s after the 9) apps, and half of them (rounded down) are analytics only apps. To fully comprehend how miniscule that number is consider this fact: the number of subcategories in the marketing category in the Shopify app market is larger than number of apps in Square marketing and analytics category.

When it comes to SEO, you can add descriptions of your website, pages and products that will appear in search engines, and that is about it.

Shopify advantages
Flexibility	Shopify Email tool