Square Online Review: A Free Online Store Builder

Square Online is a site-building company based in San Francisco, the US, with five more locations in Canada, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It is the best choice for sellers with different proficiency: both beginners and experts. It could not be the best fit for people who want a regular web-builder; Square Online is more e-commerce oriented. If you are a blogger or your website is not purposed for selling, then other web-builders could make a better fit for you.
 

Why Square Online?

If you are thinking of establishing your new business, you will get excited to know about Square Online services and why it is a good choice for people with business ideas in mind. From the very beginning, Square Online’s ultimate goal is to empower businesses of all sizes and in all fields by facilitating payment methods for both sellers and customers.

The tools you will get when choosing Square Online are distinguishable and perfectly designed to complement your business; it is oriented to flourish your website and lead to success by the end of the day.

Square Online does not limit your options; it works seamlessly with other third-party technologies like Wix, Woo, and Acuity. Additionally, Square Online builds and designs its tools, which means you can run your business smoothly and with the least effort.

Once you think of creating your website, a question arises: What kind of websites do I need? If you thought of this, let us introduce you to the purposes targeted by Square Online, this might help you define what kind of websites works the best for your purpose:

• Blogging: Blogs tell so much about you, your stories, adventures, and everything you want to share with people. Even big businesses need blogs to attract more people. Blogs are also a great tool to get more public through posting on social media platforms as well.
   
• Small and medium businesses: Grow your business fast and efficiently with easy-to-use tools. You don't even need to know how to code, set your website and take online orders, sell products, and launch your marketing campaigns via email and social media platforms.
   
• Online stores: Your online store is impressively built with customization tools and a decent number of templates and designs. Hit the success with gift cards, shopping carts, memberships, a map to show your customers where your shop or office is, and an intuitive SEO.
   

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Products with Many Options

With many products and options, it is harder to get straight to the point from their website. It doesn’t mean to skip it; it is almost impossible not to be impressed by how charming and catchy the website is.

Fasten your belt and get ready to meet Square Online products:

• Online Selling

Get your online store for free and start a smooth selling that includes shipping orders to customers, offering local delivery, and selling on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

There is no need to pay any fees before a deal is accomplished unless you want to upgrade and get the advanced features mentioned with each plan earlier. Well, is it fully free? Not really, but you won’t need to pay any fees in advance, only pay when you make a sale 2.9% + 36.40 per transaction. 
 

• Point of Sale

Square offers a point of sale software that will support your business; whether you sell products, book appointments, or run your restaurant, they have what you need. Square point of sale can be customized to fit your business and accepts all kinds of payments. 
 

• Online or In-person Payment

Square Online supports every kind of payment:
You can choose In-person payment via the Square POS application that functions seamlessly with every hardware. Or keep it all online, set up a free online store with multiple delivery options, then integrate with their online payment options.

No worries regarding your transactions speed; you can transfer money into your bank account and get it in the next business day or instantly for a fee.
 

• Inviting Templates

Get the traffic you dream of with templates that fit a wide range of businesses: create a privileged website with templates for retailing, restaurants, services, non-profits, and many other options. You can also launch a gifting program and let your customers get their eGift cards online or in-person. With this feature, get ready to welcome crowds of visitors.
 

• Focus On Your Business With Payroll Services

Square Online realizes how important it is to pour all your attention into your business. That’s why it made the heavy lifting and provided a Taxes Filled feature that saves your time and effort. With this feature, your website can automatically fill federal, state, and payroll taxes with zero effort.

Best Deal - $12/Month!

Square Online supports four plans, and these are the Free plan, the Professional plan, the Performance plan, and the Premium plan.

1. Square Online Free plan

This plan comes at no initial cost with $0 per month. However, it bills its user for 2.9%+$0.3 per transaction. This makes it a risk-free way to display your products if you're not confident enough to register with a Pro plan.

It provides multiple features, including unlimited product listing, an automatic inventory that orders and items sync with Square POS, inventory management, order customization. Social media integration is another feature, including Instagram integration and Pinterest integration.

The free SSL security certificate is a requirement for many websites. It lists your website higher in search engines as a secure website. In addition, 500MB storage, order status text alerts, In-store and curbside pickup, sync with Square POS, and an automatic tax calculator working mainly in the US and Canada.

Coupon codes, Square gift cards for customers to encourage using your platform. SEO features, Lead capture and contact forms, support via a community forum, e-mail, chat, and phone.

However, this plan doesn't include a free domain; hence, you will need to purchase a domain before trying it or use an existing one you have.

2. Square Professional plan

It includes everything in the Free plan and adds a few features, including a custom domain and product badges. It also removes the storage limit, making it unlimited, and removes the Square Online branding ads. The transaction fees are the same for 2.9%+ $0.3 per transaction, but it adds a $12 per month fee billed annually.

3. Square Performance plan

The previous features included in the Professional plan, besides abandoned cart e-mails, discount shipping labels, and allows customers to write reviews on your website. This, however, increases the monthly payment price to $26 per month. The transaction fee stays the same at 2.9% +$0.3 per transaction.

4. Square Premium plan

It upgrades the Performance plan by adding a real-time shipping rate calculator to avoid getting overcharged for shipping, provides the best discounts on shipping rates, and reduces the transaction fee rate by 0.3%, making it 2.6% + $0.3 per transaction. The monthly price for this bundle is $72 per month. It is meant for large businesses.
 

Best Offer - $12/Month

The free plan has a $0 per month cost and a per-transaction cost of 2.9%+ $0.3. This is increased to $12/mo with the Professional bundle, $26/mo with the Performance plan, and $72/mo with the Premium plan. The transaction fee stays the same throughout the bundles at 2.9% + $0.3 per transaction except with the Premium plan as it goes down to 2.6% + $0.3 per transaction.

Square Online provides many payment options include:

• PayPal
• Mastercard
• American Express
• Discover

Using Square Online starts with signing up an account, which is an easy process. You don't need to download anything as it's cloud-based, with everything saved on the cloud. The designing process has a guide option that can take you through the options and teaches you how to use them, it has a slight learning curve you'll have to go through, but it's easy to get there.

Customer service on Square Online is available in three main forms. The first is a library database with many resources and information, including guides and video tutorials. The second is a live chat feature to contact support personnel who can help you and answer any lingering questions. The third is a seller community with many Q&A forms to ask previous Square Online users for advice.

You don't need to know coding or website designing to use Square Online. The tradeoff compared to custom-made websites is the limited customization to the available templates. However, if you are a new business trying to set up an online store, the cost is much more efficient using a free web builder that can be upgraded later on.

Square Online's library is relatively smaller compared to other designing websites, though it's more designed and specialized for e-commerce stores.

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Your information security is essential, but it gets more serious when creating an online store or e-commerce website. In that case, you need to make sure that your customers' information and sensitive data like credit card and account numbers are safe too. Square Online offers some of the security tools you will appreciate, like SSL certificate and TLS 1.2.
 

SSL certificate

This is one of the essential security features when you want to create a website. It protects the data traffic by encrypting it. Encryption makes your data look like gibberish to third parties. SSL certificate is also important if you want to get more traffic since Google flags your website as secure when it has an SSL certificate, and the opposite happens when it is flagged as insecure.
 

TLS 1.2

To keep your transactions safe and private, Square Online provides you with a TLS 1.2. You'll feel safer if you're creating an online store.

Best Offer - $12/Month!

Using Square Online provides you with multiple features to make sure you build the website of your dreams. These include:
 

Stock management

It is a feature provided to users to make sure your stock doesn't run out at a surprising time. This works by setting Square online as your point of sale (POS) in your physical shop. Your inventory can be managed using a centralized dashboard, allowing you to update your stock levels with increased or decreased amounts.
 

Payment processing

With Squared Online is mainly available through Square. For online payments, the options of credit card/debit card, Google Pay, and Apple Pay can be added. PayPal payment can also be added with the Performance and Premium plans.
 

Automatic Tax. Calculator

It is a useful feature for those in the US and Canada. It automatically calculates the tax when sending a product from one state to another or even inside the same state. However, outside of the US and Canada, you'll need to calculate the tax manually. On their website, Square Online recommends checking if the tax values are right or not.
 

Build an Online Store for $12/Month!

Square Online SEO

Square Online features a search engine optimization (SEO) tool. This works by tweaking minor details such as image names search engines such as Google uses to list results in its pages. The better SEO you have on your website, the more Google algorithms will recognize your website resulting in your website appearing higher on the list of a Google search. This exposes more customers to your product, resulting in more sales.

Social Media Integration

Square Online offers social media integration with three platforms: Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook. This extension into social media can help your business grow by expanding your exposed audience to include high-traffic social media users. This means when someone clicks to buy something on a social media website; they are sent directly to a Square checkout.

Conclusion

Should I try Square Online? Well, you can never go wrong with a free product that offers free migration. Square Online is flexible enough to allow you to upgrade this unlimited Free plan anytime you want, expanding your business just enough to grow without unwanted extra costs. That being said, the Free plan doesn't offer a free domain, so if you are a starting business without an existing domain, then the free domain provided by the professional bundle might be the best choice for you. 

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