Square has three e-commerce tiers: Free, Plus, and Premium. The Free tier is good if you want to test the e-commerce waters and don’t mind the inability to apply your company’s brand. Free subscribers get SEO tools, and the ability to sync with Square POS terminals, sell on social media, and accept card payments. However, Free lacks Square’s robust website themes, meaning you’re locked to its default aesthetic. Strangely, Free subscribers cannot set item quantity limits, so a single customer can clear your stock.
(Credit: Square/PCMag)
Despite Square’s Free tier being fairly lightweight regarding features, it stands apart from the competition by simply existing. The cheapest tiers for Shopify and Wix start at $29 and $27, respectively, per month. Neither has a free version.
Next is the Plus tier, which costs $29 per month. This plan lets you leverage Square’s website design tools and themes to give your online shop a unique visual identity. In addition, you can create customer accounts, whip up QR codes for items like menus and pre-orders, or create subscriptions. Helpful analytics and statistics are available when you need a deep dive into sales data.
Building upon Plus, the Premium tier costs $79 per month and offers real-time shipping rates. It’s also the tier where the walled-off 24/7 customer support kicks in (more on that in a bit). Premium has unlimited storage and monthly data transfers like every other Square tier.
Square charges 2.9% and 30 cents per transaction. The Premium tier drops the rate to 2.6% plus 20 cents per transaction.
You can sample the Free plan using Square’s 14-day trial. However, the trial isn’t available with paid plans unless you do a workaround by signing up for Free and then upgrading. The trial requires you to keep a credit card on file.
