Square POS Review: Is Square Right for You?

If you’re a small business owner, retailer, or restauranteur, then Square may just be the powerful and user-friendly POS system you’ve been looking for. From its free software and cheap hardware to its paid-for options – read on to find out why our independent research team gives it a solid score of 4.8/5 and ranks it as our best restaurant POS system.

In this article, you’ll see the findings of our research on Square. We looked into features related to business development, stock management and ease of use – things you should be looking for when buying a POS system. Square tops our research ranking – and we’ll discuss what prompted this result below.

How Much Does Square Cost?

In its main iteration, Square’s software is free, but the provider charges transaction fees: 1.75% for in-store payments, and 2.5% for card not present ones. This makes it cheaper than Clover, which, depending on your plan, charges between 2.3% +10c and 2.6% +10c for in-store payments, and 3.5% +10c for card not present ones.

However, Square’s fees are higher than Shopify’s, which charges between 1.5% and 1.7% for in-store payments and 1.5% and 2% for card not present ones (again, depending on your plan). On its top plan (Plus), Shopify even waives the fee if you use its native payment platform and charges 0.3% if you use a third-party one.

Like Shopify, it doubles as an ecommerce platform and its transaction fees are slightly higher on their websites, which is worth bearing in mind.

Comparing different quotes will give you a better overview of what you could pay in total, and what for. By using our free quote tool, we will match you with the companies best suited to your needs so you can get started – it only takes a minute!

Square’s Pros and Cons

Pro: Growth Add-Ons

Square offers helpful add-ons designed to drive sales and expand clientele. Square Marketing costs $11, $23, or $24 per month, depending on the number of contacts, and it enables the creation and monitoring of email campaigns.

Square Loyalty, costs $30, $53, or $77 per month, per location, depending on number of contacts. This can further deepen your relationship with regulars by offering a rewards programme.

You can also use Square to create a webstore and integrate it with your POS system – a great feature to have if you want to grow online. This is a service offered in four tiers, but  one of them is free.

Pro: Cheap Price

For what it packs into its main software suite – which is free – Square has solid cost-benefit. Not coincidentally, it scores a perfect 5/5 for price in our research. This ties it with Zettle, which also scores 5/5, and puts it in a better position than 10 other providers we surveyed, including Toast and Spoton.

If you have a compatible smartphone and one of its readers, Square allows you to start selling immediately with a low investment.. Plus, Square offers the cheapest reader among the companies we surveyed: it costs $19. All this makes it a great choice for small businesses.

Con: Till Could Be Better

While Square offers plenty of gear (four main pieces of hardware plus accessories), it’s not as varied when it comes to combining them. It only offers four hardware kits for you to assemble your till and, unlike Vend and Toast, it doesn’t offer a training mode.

While Square boasts being easy to use, a training feature would help with the introduction of new staff, especially in restaurants – an industry known for high turnovers.

It also only accepts seven major UK card types – three less than Zettle. Due to this, Square scored 4/5 on till in our research, one of the lowest scores this provider receives.

Con: Fee Build-up

When it comes to business owners using its free software, Square’s income relies on transaction fees.

As your business expands and deals with more sales, the fee build-up can become a hefty expense. For that reason, Square is not suitable for large businesses, which might benefit from having a merchant account and set up with custom rates.

This issue somewhat compromises Square’s scalability and should be paid attention to if you’re browsing for a POS system when your business is already large.

Square’s Key Features Explained

Business Development

Square’s main business development tools – Square Marketing and Square Loyalty – are not available with its free software, and require a monthly subscription. They do only cost  $11 and $29 per location, per month, respectively, they offer great value for money and are poised to drive growth.

Square Marketing allows you to choose from email templates and it can run on-brand campaigns, which you can also automate. Combined with the information from the POS system, you can even track campaign performance.

With Square Loyalty, you can create a database of your regular customers and automate contacts with them, offering rewards and pushing new sales. Vend has similar tools, but it charges more for this option: $46 per location, per month.

Stock Management

Square’s inventory control features are resourceful, even if not as extensive as the competition’s, and they come with the provider’s free software. With them, you can keep track of your stock level, modify items straight from the program’s dashboard and schedule automatic restocks.

You can easily import your inventory spreadsheets into the app (and also export it), and it’ll tell you when you’re running low on items via a daily report.

Shopify offers more granular reports – you can see the history of adjustments to an item, for example – but it doesn’t offer a free plan like Square.

Ease of Use

Square’s intuitive layout is a major selling point for the provider. The set up can be completed by the user, without the need to call in a technician. An added plus is that the software updates automatically.

The interface is clear and makes it easy for new users to grasp the system. Most operations involving inventory are picture-assisted and the dashboard – crucial for managers – is all based on clear graphs, so information is available at a glance. Plus, the hardware is also straightforward – although this is in keeping with industry standards.

What Kind of Business Is Square Best For?

Small Businesses

Small businesses are poised to benefit from Square’s free software, their low-cost hardware, and the plentiful features that come with them. With a compatible smartphone in hand, you could invest as little as $19 + VAT by using its cheapest card reader. This will allow you to take payments, create invoices, issue gift cards, and access detailed reports on your sales.

Should you own an iPad and want a more accomplished, big-screen experience, you can purchase the Square Stand (2nd gen) for $99 +VAT. It offers an easy-to-use setup for iPads, with integrated contactless and chip payment options and a swiveling design for customer-facing transactions.

In our research into the best POS systems for small businesses, Square came out on top, scoring 4.8/5. This was a result anchored by its price and predictable flat-rate fees – features beneficial to startups and new businesses testing the waters.

Retail

Retailers will be appeased by Square for Retail – a variation of Square’s main software that is tailored to their needs. As it befits this type of business, it’s very focused on stock and inventory control.

While it has a free version, the bulk of its features are only offered if you sign up for the Plus ($57/month per location) or Premium (tailored pricing) plans.

These include barcode label printing, inventory counting, and auto-generated purchase orders to replenish low stock. If you’re running a business across multiple locations, it allows you to move stock across them.

Restaurants

Square also has its own hospitality-focused variation – Square for Restaurants – which makes it a pretty good match for restauranteurs. Scoring 4.7/5, it topped our ranking of best POS systems for the restaurant industry.

Like its retail counterpart, the features that make it worth it are absent from the free version, only appearing on its Plus ($80 per month, per location) and Premium (tailored pricing) plans.

The paid versions allow you to link an unlimited number of devices to the Square Kitchen Display System, which manages orders via digital back-of-house tickets. Also, its online ordering integration makes it a great POS for food truck owners keen on selling online.

In addition to this, you’ll gain access to the advanced version of Square’s team management platform, allowing you to track the activity and performance of your staff.

How Does Square Compare to Its Competitors?

Price

Square is one of the cheapest and best POS systems out there, which is something that showed up consistently in our research.

Its $0 price tag for its software puts it in the same league as Toast and Zettle, but makes it cheaper than all the other nine companies we surveyed, like Epos Now, which charges $39/month. Plus, it greatly reduces the overall cost of the POS system.

Even in its paid variations, Square still offers great value for money. For instance, Square for Restaurant’s Plus costs $69/month, the same as TouchBistro, but it includes features like the Kitchen Display System, which TouchBistro charges extra for.

Features

When it comes to features, Square offers a lot of industry standards, but it does so in an extensive way.

Its reports, which include sales summary, employee sales, and payment trends, are comprehensive when compared to that of Lightspeed and Talech.

It also has more staff performance tracking tools than Epos Now and Toast, although they don’t include payroll details, like TouchBistro’s do.

For a monthly fee, you can develop a loyalty programme on Square, something that Toast and Zettle lack.

In addition, Square allows you to build an online store from scratch and integrate it with its POS system. Among the 12 companies we surveyed, this trait is only shared with Shopify.

Does Square Have Good Customer Reviews?

Square ranks consistently high among several customer review databases, scoring 4.1/5 on Trustpilot, for example.

However, customers did report issues when trying to integrate with pre-existing websites. A few recent reviews on Trustpilot also mention Square’s alleged seizing of funds.

That said, Square consistently replies to reviews, both good and bad, and its response to the one quoted above was this:

The majority of reviews on all the databases we looked into was positive, praising Square’s ease of use and quick set up. Its ability to create and send invoices was also highlighted.

How We Reviewed Square POS