Square Website Builder Review: Pros & Cons

This article will explore the Square website builder’s pricing plans, built-in inventory management, Point-of-sale (POS) system, and robust marketing tools. 

Key Takeaways

• Square Online stands out as an easy-to-use, affordable eCommerce website builder, allowing businesses to create and manage their online presence, sell products, and support payments online. 
• Square’s online store builder tool is best for small to medium-sized businesses in the food and drink industry that primarily operate through physical retail stores.

Square Online: The Good and the Bad

Square Online makes it easy for store owners to create an online store without paying a dime to access for access to the platform. Let’s dive into where Square shines and where it falls short. 

Pros

• User-friendly interface

• Built-in inventory management system
• Free domain for paid plans 
• Built-in marketing tools
• Customer support 
• Free plan available 
• Square POS integration
• Advanced reports on top-tier plans
• Lower processing rate on the Premium plan 
• Abandoned cart recovery feature on high-tier plans

Cons 

• High transaction fees without using the Square payment gateway 
• Limited customization options
• Small learning curve 

Square Online Review: A Brief Overview

Square Online is the result of a collaboration between Square, Inc. and Weebly, a website-building tool acquired by Square in 2018. 

The platform combines Square’s payment processing strengths with Weebly’s website creation expertise, offering a tailored e-commerce solution for various industries, including food and drink.

Building Websites with Square Online Cost?

Square lets you use the online store builder to create, design and launch your site – all for free. Your only cost comes when you make a sale – just 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.

You will need to upgrade to one of the three Square Online pricing plans to access advanced ecommerce features. Here are three Square Online pricing plans:

• Free — $0 per month
• Plus — $29 per month
• Premium — $79 per month

All pricing plans give you basic access to its point-of-sale system and online store builder. And the free plan has certain limitations, such as

• You can’t connect a custom domain
• Free plan features ads for Square on it
• You cannot accept PayPal or run Facebook or Google Ads

For a detailed breakdown of the costs and features of each plan, refer to our previous article on Square Online Pricing

Right below here is a comparison table about Square pricing plans, along with transaction fees: 

Is Square Online User-Friendly?

Starting a Square Online store is a breeze with the user-friendly setup wizard. By answering a few questions to set up your brand persona and the platform guides you through customization, ensuring a tailored website for your business type. 

Once you finish the setup wizard, you will see the essential aspects neatly presented in the Square Online dashboard, including order fulfillment, payments, designing, and more. 

If you feel overwhelmed, tutorial videos are available to guide you along the way. Moreover, a progress bar on the dashboard lets you track your setup process.

How Impressive are Square Online Designs provided

Square Online offers a limited range of templates like other website builders. While this might be frustrating for those seeking elaborate creativity or starting from scratch, the approach has its merits. It ensures your site is designed based on the best e-commerce practice specifically for your industry. 

Square Online’s design strategy aims for simplicity and familiarity rather than pushing radical boundaries, aligning to create a seamless user experience. 

Regarding design, Square Online strikes a balance between adhering to best practices and offering customization options. 

Sales Tools & Features

Let’s delve into the assortment of Square Online’s sales tools and features, allowing you to effectively manage orders, inventory, and customer interactions while optimizing your online store’s performance.

Adding Products

Adding products to your store is a breeze, and notably including different versions of these products. You can also incorporate modifiers, which let customers personalize their purchases when selling gifts.

Moreover, setting up new categories is incredibly easy, and Square Online goes a step further by suggesting categories based on similar products online through the Item Library. 

The Item Library offers a straightforward to upload and organize products. For example, if you want to highlight low-on-stock or a sale, you only add item indicators like “Only a few left! or “On Sale“, creating urgency for customers. 

Managing Stock

For small businesses selling both online and in person, Square Online is an ideal solution. It seamlessly integrates with Square POS (Point-of-sale) system, allowing you to manage all inventory from your centralized dashboard and add stock levels available in multiple locations. 

With Square Online, you can update your inventory with the following changes:

• Stock received: Increases the current total of existing stock by the quantity you add and sets the stock number for new items.
• Inventory recount: Substitutes the current stock total with the quantity you provide or sets the stock number for new items.
• Restock return: Increases the current stock total by the quantity you add.
• Damage, Theft & Loss: Reduces the stock quantity by the specified amount you enter. 

Categorizing inventory updates in this manner provides a clear store performance history and simplifies tax return procedures.

Payment Processing & Add-ons

Square Online provides diverse payment choices to cater to various preferences besides its own payment system. The Plus and Premium plans offer PayPal as an additional option, the platform’s main focus is on its POS software.

Customers can conveniently use Cash App Pay for mobile payments, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Afterpay.

Additionally, Square Online supports an application programming interface (API) for developers to build external add-ons and boasts a diverse Square App Marketplace with numerous apps across 16 categories, including Accounting, Booking & Scheduling, and Loyalty & Rewards.

Shipping Options

When setting up your shipping, Square Online gives you multiple options. You’ll have to decide how to calculate the shipping cost for each area you’re delivering to. This can be done using the following ways:

• Flat rate: Apply a consistent shipping cost regardless of order size.
• Order weight: Adjust the cost for heavier items.
• Order total: Increase or decrease the delivery rate based on order value.
• Item quantity: Adjust the delivery charge according to the number of items ordered.
• Real-time rates*: Automatically calculate shipping costs based on destination, weight, and current shipping rates (only available with a Premium plan).

Moreover, Square Online uses your “Shipping From” address to verify carriers and availability. Especially in Plus and Premium accounts, you can print shipping labels and manually update pending orders as shipped, easily simplifying order tracking. 

Tax Calculations

When shipping across different states, Square Online automatically controls taxes for both states. If you’re shipping within your own state, only one rate will be accounted.

For shipments to Canada, the 5% country tax and any additional territory-specific taxes are added automatically.

However, outside of the US and Canada, you’ll need to manually add tax rates. This might seem a bit inconvenient, but it’s a common practice across e-commerce platforms.

SEO & Marketing Tools

To improve conversion rates and boost website traffic, using SEO & Marketing tools plays a pivotal role in enhancing your online presence and driving targeted audience engagement.

SEO

Square Onile offers a decent array of SEO tools to boost your online visibility. The notable advantage is that these tools are available in all plans, including SEO page titles, meta descriptions, and permalinks. 

Moreover, Square automatically makes your page mobile-friendly by default, a crucial aspect for achieving higher Google rankings

Email & Text Message 

Square Email Marketing seamlessly connects with your Square POS system, enabling you to effortlessly expand your contact list, craft engaging campaigns, and track outcomes – all from one account. 

Moreover, text message marketing offers an approach to get your offers, promotions, and discounts directly to your customers. It ensures timely communication of time-sensitive deals, preventing missed sales. You can also integrate text message campaigns with email campaigns for a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Additionally, Square Online’s “Stories Overview” functionality resembles a blogging tool. This feature aids in traffic to your website and product promotion by creating informative and captivating posts or sharing updates with customers. 

Help & Support 

So how does Square Online support customers? Square Online offers multiple support to users, whether you are on a Free plan or a paid one. You can easily access this support via phone, live chat, email, or the help center. 

Here’s a full list of support options:

• Phone: Phone support is available from Monday to Friday, 6 am to 6 pm, PST. However, you have to wait a long time, so please try other options before phoning.
• Email: You can get support via email 24/7 and then receive responses in two days.
• Live Chat: Live Chat is available Monday – Friday 6:am – 6:pm PST and Saturday – Sunday 8:am – 5:pm PST. 
• In-Software Help: Within the Square Online dashboard, it helps users reduce the learning curve and boost confidence by offering step-by-step instructions, ensuring a smooth and productive experience for customers. 
• Square Seller Community: The community forum is a space to collaborate with and learn with other Square sellers. You can join this community to find out how other businesses are using Square, connect with them facing similar challenges, and also pose questions to an online community when you need advice.
• Videos: If you prefer to watch a video tutorial, Square’s Youtube Channel is a library of rich resources dedicated to assisting you. These videos provide comprehensive guidance, making it easy to grasp various aspects of using the Square Online dashboard effectively.
• Help Center: Square Support Center gives you instant access to search Square’s up-to-date support resources by questions, keywords, and topics. 
• Blog: Square’s Town Square blog posts regular updates on payment processing and business management, providing timely tips, and inspirational stories for merchants using Square. It serves as a comprehensive resource hub, fostering community engagement, problem-solving, and continuous learning to improve businesses’ utilization of the Square platform.
• Social Media: With an active presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, Square offers users a direct channel to receive updates, engage in discussions, enhancing their understanding and usage of Square’s services. 

Who is Square Website Builder best for?

The Square website builder is a great tool for launching your business, offering a user-friendly and minimalistic layout. It also provides functional features and third-party integration that cater to the e-commerce requirements of small and medium-sized businesses. 

Although it can’t be compared to high-volume and more customizable platforms like Shopify, Square Online is an ideal choice for businesses with modest order volumes aiming for consistent revenue within a smaller scope.

How Square Online Compares to Other Website Builders

So the question arises: “How is Square Online different from website builders?” Below is a comparison table of the 4 most popular website builders based on the main 6 factors.

Square Online: FAQs

Bottom Line 

Square website builder offers a range of website solutions for businesses and different individuals to create and manage their online stores. It provides a user-friendly interface, and integration with Square’s other services, making their business management easy and effective.