Shopify vs Square: Which One Fits A Brand With Stores

Shopify vs Square comes down to which side of your business leads. If your shop counter makes the money and your website is a simple add-on, Square fits, and you can run it with no monthly software bill. If your online store carries real weight, or you mean for it to, Shopify fits better.

Card fees won’t settle this for you, because Shopify and Square are close on rate. The differences that decide it are how each one bills you for more locations, how much online selling you get before you pay more, and what you’d give up by moving. We’re a Shopify agency, so weigh our verdict with that in mind. The math below is ours, worked from each company’s published US list prices.

A store-first seller wants a register that works, a basic site for local customers, and as few bills as possible. Square fits that seller well. Square Free costs $0 a month (opens in new tab), and you only pay when you take a payment (opens in new tab). Shopify always charges for a store plan, so there’s no $0 version of Shopify to compare it with.

A brand with real online sales wants its online rate to fall as it grows. Shopify’s online card rate falls from 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic to 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced (opens in new tab). Square’s best hosted online rate is 2.9% + 30¢ (opens in new tab), and it stays there on Square Plus and Square Premium.

Are you choosing between just these two? If you don’t have a physical store, your shortlist should include other platforms. An online-first store with someone to own hosting and updates may also look at WooCommerce. If selling is a small part of your website and your catalog is small, compare Squarespace, which is a different company from Square.

Here are the Shopify POS vs Square rates side by side. All of Shopify’s rates below assume you use Shopify Payments. If you use another payment provider, Shopify adds a third-party fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus (opens in new tab), on top of what that provider charges.

Square charges 2.6% + 15¢ on Free, 2.5% + 15¢ on Plus and 2.4% + 15¢ on Premium (opens in new tab) for a tap, dip or swipe. Shopify charges 2.6% + 10¢ on Basic, 2.5% + 10¢ on Grow and 2.4% + 10¢ on Advanced (opens in new tab), so the percentages match tier for tier. Shopify is 5¢ cheaper per sale, which comes to $50 on every 1,000 in-store sales. Shopify Plus goes lower, at 2.3% + 10¢.

Typed-in card numbers cost more on both. Square charges 3.5% + 15¢ (opens in new tab) for keyed sales and cards on file on all three plans. Shopify charges 3.5% + 10¢ on Basic through Advanced. Square’s rates can vary by plan type, so check your Square Dashboard for the rate you actually pay.

Online is where the free Square plan costs you. Square Free charges 3.3% + 30¢ (opens in new tab) online, against Shopify Basic’s 2.9% + 30¢. Paying for Square Plus or Premium gets you to 2.9% + 30¢, which matches Basic. Shopify Grow and Advanced then beat both at 2.7% and 2.5%, plus 30¢.

Square has one edge here. Shopify charges a higher online rate for premium cards (opens in new tab): 3.5% + 30¢ on Basic, 3.3% + 30¢ on Grow and 3.1% + 30¢ on Advanced. If lots of your customers pay with premium cards, your real Shopify rate will sit above the standard figures in the table.

The two bill you in different ways. Square’s Plus plan is $49 a month and Premium is $149 a month (opens in new tab), and both are priced per active location (opens in new tab). Square Free lets you create multiple locations at no extra cost. Sellers processing over $250,000 a year can also ask Square about Square Pro (opens in new tab), a custom-priced tier.

Shopify charges one store plan: Basic is $39 a month, or $29 a month billed yearly, and Grow is $105 a month, or $79 billed yearly (opens in new tab). Advanced is $299 a month billed yearly, and Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a three-year term. Every plan includes in-person selling (opens in new tab) with limited staff access, simple customer profiles and returns at the original location. You’ll also see this tier called POS Lite, a name that’s gone from Shopify’s pricing.

POS Pro is the paid upgrade, at $89 a month per location, billed yearly (opens in new tab). It adds unlimited staff access, staff roles and permissions, inventory management in POS, retail reports, and returns and exchanges at any location. Preparing pickup orders in POS (opens in new tab) also needs POS Pro at that location. You can always prepare and fulfill pickup orders from the Shopify admin or app (opens in new tab), so buy online, pick up in store only costs you POS Pro if you want that work done at the register.

That table shows monthly software with Shopify billed yearly, and it compares fees, not features. Square Plus and POS Pro don’t include the same things, and Shopify’s figure covers a full online store. Hardware is extra on both.

Paying for Square Plus only saves you money on rates at a certain volume. At one location, the $49 pays for itself at $12,250 a month in online sales, or at $49,000 a month in in-person sales. Moving from Plus to Premium takes $100,000 a month in in-person sales per location to pay for itself on rate alone, so you’d buy Premium for its features.

Here’s how the whole bill looks at two sizes, using a $50 average sale, standard card rates and Shopify billed yearly.

The gaps are small. At one store, Shopify Basic without POS Pro, Square Free and Square Plus land within $20 of each other. At two stores, Shopify Grow with POS Pro and Square Plus sit $19 apart on $100,000 in monthly sales. Neither Shopify nor Square wins this on fees, so choose on what each one lets you do.

Both handle a retail chain’s location count. Square allows 300 locations per master account (opens in new tab). Shopify allows 10 locations on Basic, Grow and Advanced, and 200 on Plus (opens in new tab), and deactivated locations don’t count. POS Pro on Plus includes 20 locations (opens in new tab), with up to 200 when you use Shopify Payments.

The more useful comparison is which plan unlocks running your stores as one business. On Square, inventory management, stock intake and purchase orders sit on Plus (opens in new tab), and returns and fulfillment across locations and transfer orders sit on Premium. On Shopify, every paid plan tracks inventory across locations in the admin. POS Pro adds inventory management inside POS and returns at any location.

That changes the Square vs Shopify math for a chain. If you need returns across stores, compare Square Premium with Shopify Basic plus POS Pro. Two stores run $298 against $207 a month, and ten stores run $1,490 against $919, with Shopify on yearly billing. Square Premium’s in-person rate is 2.4% + 15¢ against Basic’s 2.6% + 10¢, though, so a high-volume chain should run its own sales through both before deciding.

Each Shopify location keeps its own stock count, and routing rules decide which location fills an online order. Our guide to inventory across locations covers how that routing can oversell an item and how to set it up. Whichever one you choose, confirm how it handles your stock counts with a test order before you commit a chain to it.

Square Free includes a website builder with SEO tools, pickup, local delivery, shipping, and selling on search and social (opens in new tab). For a shop that wants local customers to order ahead, that may be all you need. Square Plus adds more site customization, advanced item settings, QR code ordering and subscriptions.

Shipping is where Square’s plans start to cost an online brand more. Real-time shipping rates (opens in new tab), which keep you from undercharging or overcharging customers for shipping, sit on Square Premium at $149 a month per location. On Shopify, live third-party carrier rates (opens in new tab) aren’t included on Basic, are an add-on on Grow, and are included on Advanced and Plus.

Square Online’s standalone hosting plans are now labeled legacy. Sellers on the old Square Online Plus and Premium (opens in new tab) can move to the new Square Plus or Premium, which bill by active location and also include loyalty, marketing, staff management and advanced POS features. Square Plus isn’t the same thing as the old Square Online Plus, so check which one you’re on before you compare prices.

Can you run Square in the store and Shopify online? You can connect them, though Shopify advises against it, and Shopify sells the competing POS, so factor that in. If you keep both, decide which system holds your true stock count and test how orders from the other one reach it. If you’re paying for two systems to cover one business, that’s a good moment to price consolidating on Shopify or Square.

The Square Reader for contactless and chip is $59, Square Stand is $149, Square Terminal is $299, Square Handheld is $399, Square Register is $899 and Square Kiosk is $1,999 with its counter stand (opens in new tab). Square sells these separately from its plans.

Shopify’s lineup includes POS Hub, POS Terminal, Verifone Victa Mobile, the Engage 2D G2 Scanner, the Eddy Tablet Stand and Tap to Pay (opens in new tab). Price those from Shopify’s hardware store before you budget. Shopify has also offered free hardware with a year of POS Pro (opens in new tab), so ask what’s running when you buy.

If you’re on Square now, count your hardware as a moving cost. Square’s card readers don’t work with Shopify, so every reader gets replaced.

The case for Shopify gets stronger when customers shop both your store and your site. Shopify POS reads and writes the same products, customers, orders and inventory records as your online store, rather than keeping a separate copy. Square’s Customer Directory (opens in new tab) also syncs customer information across in-person and online sales, so test how each one handles a customer who shops both before you count this as a reason to move.

Recent carts (opens in new tab) let any associate pick up a sale that another started on a different device. It needs POS Pro and works within one location. A recent cart doesn’t reserve inventory, and by default it deletes after 24 hours. Staff can also see an identified customer’s abandoned online checkout in POS (opens in new tab), given the right permission.

In-store customer recognition (opens in new tab) uses a network of people who’ve checked out at Shopify Payments stores to identify more of your returning customers. Shopify claims a known in-store customer has over 60% higher lifetime value than an unknown one. That compares two groups of customers, so it doesn’t prove that recognizing someone raises what they spend.

The move runs on exported files, so plan it as a project with a set switch-over date. Shopify gives you five ways to move (opens in new tab): copy and paste by hand, its free Store Migration app, CSV import, third-party apps, or a Shopify Partner. The Store Migration app brings over products and customers from a Square CSV export.

Some things take more work. CSV import can’t bring over order history, so you’ll need an app such as Matrixify, LitExtension, EZ Importer or Cart2Cart. You can export Square’s online orders to CSV, while in-person transactions need Square’s reporting tools if you want to keep a record. Saved payment cards only move if you make a request to Square Support.

You can’t export or migrate reviews from Square to Shopify, but you can bring them in by hand with a review app such as Judge.me, Loox or Yotpo.

If you import by CSV instead of using the app, the Square files need cleaning. Customer exports don’t include a country code column, so you’ll add one by hand, weights have to be converted to grams, and a chain needs a separate inventory file. The app matches stock to Shopify locations by name, but it imports products with more than 3 options or more than 100 variations without their variants and at a price of $0.

Stay on Square if you run one or a few stores, most sales happen at the counter, and your site handles simple orders. Moving won’t pay for itself on fees. Shopify Basic billed yearly beats Square Free by $13 a month on the one-store example above, and you’d still have to buy new readers. On the online rate alone, Basic’s $29 takes $7,250 a month in online sales to cover.

Don’t move to save on card fees alone. Going from Square Plus to Shopify Basic with POS Pro adds $69 a month in software at one store, and card fees won’t win it back. Basic’s 2.6% + 10¢ and Plus’s 2.5% + 15¢ both come to $1.40 on a $50 sale, and Basic costs more on anything larger. Going from Square Plus to Shopify Grow with POS Pro adds $119, which takes $59,500 a month in online sales to cover on the online rate alone.

Move to Shopify when one of these is true for your business:

Replacing readers, cleaning up exports and re-entering your reviews are one-time costs, so weigh them against where your sales are headed over the next few years. If your online store is meant to carry the business, pay those costs now while your catalog and order history are small.

If your numbers land on moving, moving the store to Shopify is work we take on: product, customer and order data, URL mapping with one-to-one 301 redirects, and a custom theme built alongside the data work. That page also has the free Growth Audit, which looks at why your site isn’t getting found or converting and gives you a plan to fix it.