Shopify POS vs Square POS — Which is Better for Point of Sale?

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In this Shopify POS vs Square POS comparison, we put two of the web’s most popular point-of-sale solutions head to head, and help you find out which one is better for your business.

In what follows, I’ll explore how Shopify POS and Square POS stack up in terms of:

and more!

Let’s dive straight in.

Shopify POS vs Square POS — key features

Both Shopify and Square offer a host of solid POS features to help you operate your business at a point of sale. Both platforms let you:

In addition to the features above, which are available on Shopify’s bundled ‘POS Lite’ plan and Square’s ‘Free’ plan, both platforms also provide advanced POS functionality on their premium POS plans — Shopify’s ‘POS Pro’ plan and Square’s ‘Retail’ and ‘Restaurants’ plans.

With both solutions, you’ll need one of these paid-for subscriptions if you want to:

With Square, you’ll need one of its premium POS plans if you want to:

And you’ll need a Shopify ‘POS Pro’ plan in order to do any of the following:

Some of the key differences between Shopify POS and Square’s respective features are as follows:

Pricing and Fees

Shopify POS Pricing

In order to use Shopify POS, you’ll need to have a Shopify subscription. There are five Shopify pricing plans to choose from:

With the exception of Shopify Plus, you can try any of these plans out via a free trial. This normally lasts 3 days, but an extendable version (where you get an additional 30 days for $1) is available via this special link.

Now, there’s a couple of ways to reduce these fees. First, Shopify offers a 25% discount on the ‘Basic,’ ‘Shopify’ and ‘Advanced’ plans if you pay for your first year’s service upfront — doing so brings the costs of these three plans down to $29, $79 and $299 per month respectively.

There’s also the option of using Shopify’s new ‘credits’ system to reduce costs — this lets you put 1% of your monthly sales towards the cost of your subscription. This initiative is a temporary one and not available everywhere — you can check availability in your country here.

Once you’re equipped with one of the Shopify subscriptions listed above, you’ve got two Shopify POS plans to choose from: ‘Shopify POS Lite‘ and ‘Shopify POS Pro‘.

The good news is that ‘POS Lite‘ comes bundled with all Shopify store subscriptions, which means you can get going with Shopify POS from as little as $5 per month via Shopify’s ‘Starter’ plan.

However, if you would like more than one user to be able to log into your POS account, or work with more than two locations for managing inventory, you’ll realistically need to be on a ‘Basic’ Shopify store plan or higher.

Shopify’s ‘POS Pro‘ option — which lets you work with an unlimited number of POS staff, facilitate exchanges and provide custom printed receipts — costs $89 per month, per location when used with Shopify’s ‘Basic,’ ‘Shopify’ and ‘Advanced’ Shopify plans.

(Users on Shopify’s enterprise-grade solution, Shopify Plus, get 20 POS Pro locations bundled with their plan).

However, an 11% discount on a ‘POS Pro’ subscription is available when you pay annually for your plan, which effectively reduces the monthly charge to $79 per month.

Shopify POS credit card fees

When you use Shopify POS to sell your products, you need to connect your account to a ‘payment gateway’ to process credit card transactions.

Shopify provides its own in-house payment gateway — ‘Shopify Payments’ — for just this purpose. It’s currently available in 23 countries, including the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong SAR, Japan and much of the EU.

In the US, when you use Shopify Payments to process in-person credit card sales with either ‘POS Lite’ or ‘POS Pro’, the following credit card fees apply to each sale:

(More competitive rates are available in other countries).

These credit card fees will apply regardless of whether your customer pays with a physical credit card or via a tap payment (using Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay etc.).

Now, it should be noted that Shopify POS doesn’t require you to using Shopify Payments as your credit card payment processor — it can also be integrated with a wide range of 105+ third-party payment gateways too.

This gives you the option to process payments in 175+ countries and to shop around for preferential rates for your business.

By contrast, using Square POS ties you in to using Square as your payment processor — there will be no third party gateways available to you (not even PayPal, which is set to be discontinued as a payment method in October 2024).

So ultimately, Shopify offers a lot more flexibility for merchants when it comes to payment gateway providers.

Square POS Pricing

Unlike Shopify, which requires you to subscribe to a monthly plan to access its POS system, Square gives you basic access to its POS system for free (so long as your annual sales remain below $250k). For most merchants, this represents the key advantage of using Square over Shopify.

As for credit card fees, with the free version of Square these are 2.6% + 10 cents on every sale.

In addition to its free plan, Square also offers a lot of paid plans that give you advanced POS features and additional ecommerce capabilities.

Of these, many merchants will find Square’s ‘Advanced Access’ add-on plan particularly useful. This starts at $35 per month per location and can be used in conjunction with the free version of Square POS. It lets you set staff POS permissions, create staff badges and access advanced reports on your POS team performance.

Some of Square’s other paid plans are listed below:

It’s worth pointing out that Square’s ‘Retail’ and ‘Restaurant’ paid plans provide slightly more favorable credit card fees than the free versions — 2.5%+ 10 cents per sale rather than 2.6% + 10 cents per sale.

Restaurant owners should also note that Square’s $60 per month ‘Plus’ plan only lets you use one countertop POS device per location — using additional Square POS registers cost $40 per device (there is also an additional $50 per month charge for restaurant locations using Square mobile POS for their floor staff).

By contrast, Shopify’s ‘POS Pro’ plan lets you use as many devices as you like in each POS location without any additional charges being involved.

So which is cheaper, Shopify POS or Square POS?

Well, when it comes to getting started with point of sale in a cost-efficient way, Square wins. This is because it lets you use its POS system for free, while using Shopify always involves subscribing to a paid-for plan.

This makes Square a very affordable option for small businesses that are focused on in-person sales — there are no upfront expenses involved with using it and the only costs that you have to worry about are credit card fees.

However, Shopify and Square costs are very similar if you want to connect your POS system to an online store on a custom domain.

Doing so with Square requires a $29 per month Square Online ‘Plus’ plan; this is the same price as an annual Shopify ‘Basic’ plan (which includes Shopify’s ‘POS Lite’ functionality).

However, the online store functionality that you get with Shopify is considerably stronger — its store design, marketing, checkout and international selling features are all light years ahead of what’s available from Square.

(You can find out why in my full Shopify vs Square comparison).

The bottom line here is that if you only envisage yourself selling in physical locations, and you’re on a low budget, there’s a lot to be said for using Square — simply because you can get going with it for free (but watch out for the additional countertop device costs!).

However, if you’re intending to run an online store and a POS system in conjunction with each other, the hands down winner is Shopify — it gives you much better bang for your buck.

You’ll find a summary of Square POS vs Shopify POS pricing in the table below:

POS hardware

Both Square and Shopify let you use a good range of POS hardware — card readers, barcode scanners, tills, receipt printers etc. — to help you sell in physical locations. These are available from both companies’ respective hardware stores.

Square has an immediate advantage over Shopify when it comes to accessing basic POS hardware. This is because all Square users can get their hands on a free magstripe card reader worth $10 from the company when they sign up for an account.

(Shopify users will always have to purchase POS hardware).

Another plus point of Square’s POS hardware offering is that it lets you buy a two-display register device (one display for the salesperson and another for the customer).

Shopify doesn’t yet have a comparable product on offer — instead, you’ll have to use an iPad or Android tablet as your register screen when selling at point of sale.

In terms of the pricing for POS hardware essentials, the two companies are fairly evenly matched.

For example, a contactless card reader will set you back $59 with Square, and $49 with Shopify; and a bluetooth barcode scanner costs $299 from both companies.

As for pricing for the two companies’ flagship POS hardware devices, ‘Square Terminal’ and ‘Shopify POS Terminal’ respectively, these are similarly priced. ‘Square Terminal’ costs $299, or $349 if you want to use it with a wired connection; ‘Shopify POS Terminal’ costs $349.

One thing to note here is that Shopify’s device can only be used as a wired device. If you want to do wireless handheld selling, you’ll need to resort to ‘Tap to Pay’ on an iPhone.

Here’s a table giving a side-by-side comparison on POS hardware costs from Shopify and Square.

Extending your POS via apps

Shopify POS is a clear winner over Square POS when it comes to extending the possibilities of point of sale via apps and integrations. Its overall app ecosystem contains 13,000+ apps, dwarfing the equivalent offering from Square, which has a much slimmer portfolio of around 350 apps.

With regard to apps that focus exclusively on point of sale, I counted 694 POS apps in the Shopify app store, 115 of which were specifically designed to extend the capabilities of Shopify POS.

Examples of the extra functionality provided by these apps include appointment scheduling, loyalty program provision, product bundling and bespoke pickups of products.

Worth a particular mention however is the Shopify-made ‘Stocky’ app, which is available to users with a ‘POS Pro’ subscription. This lets you add quite a bit of functionality to the native Shopify POS features.

You can use Stocky to manage purchase orders and send messages to suppliers; conduct stock takes and perform stock adjustments; get product recommendations based on profit margins; and transfer stock between inventory locations.

Square’s app offering for extending its POS capabilities is significantly smaller — my search for the term ‘POS’ in Square’s app library surfaced around 250 apps.

Now, it’s worth noting that a particularly large number of Square’s POS apps are focused on providing features to food and dining businesses.

This reflects the fact that Square generally tailors its app offering to very specific industry sectors. For example, there’s a POS app available for running a flower shop; another for running a jeweller’s; and several designed for use by repair shops.

The table below spells out the quantities of apps available from both Shopify and Square to cater for specific POS tasks.

Conclusion

If your sole aim is to sell goods in person (and you don’t need an online store), then of the two platforms here, I’d argue that Square is the better option. Its POS system is easy to use, takes care of the key tasks and can be used without a monthly subscription.

Square is also the winner if you’re looking for a POS system for a restaurant or food business. Its ‘Square for Restaurant’ POS subscription is purpose-built for the restaurant sector, providing excellent features for table management, creating menus, customer ordering and managing restaurant floor plans.

However, if you want to run both an online store and a POS system, then Shopify is unquestionably the better platform. It lets you create much more bespoke and sophisticated online stores than Square, and it gives you a lot more options to expand your online and in-person sales via its massive range of apps and integrations.

Shopify’s POS interface is also more customizable than Square’s. While Square allows for layout personalization through a new tile-based system, Shopify POS software’s ‘smart grid’ feature gives you significantly more options for designing a custom POS layout tailored to your store.

Below you’ll find my lists of the key reasons why you might pick one of these platforms over the other; and if you’d like to learn more about how Shopify and Square compare in even more detail (and especially from an ‘online store building’ point of view) please check out our full Shopify vs Square platform comparison.

If you’d like to try either tool out, you can access trials of both using the following links:

Finally, if you have any thoughts or questions on Square or Shopify POS, please do leave them in the comments section — we read them all and will do our best to help.

Pros and cons of Shopify POS vs Square POS

At-a-glance feature comparison