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Square Online is ideal for small businesses looking to establish an online presence with an all-in-one solution.
As a point-of-sale (POS) system, Square has a range of tools to help businesses grow. One of these tools is Square Online, a web builder and robust ecommerce platform. The seamless integration with Square POS makes it an attractive choice for managing sales on multiple online and in-person channels.
However, Square Online does have limitations for business owners just testing the waters. The free plan only offers an online website, a POS app, invoicing and booking, and deposits to your bank account. But online stores that opt for the Plus and Premium plans will find lower transaction fees along with more robust ecommerce and marketing tools to help launch and manage their growing business.
Overall, Square Online is best suited for small businesses looking to quickly create an online storefront, even if they don't have extensive technical knowledge. Learn more about our experience testing Square Online and whether it's the best website builder for your business.
- Seamless integration with the Square POS
- Robust ecommerce features
- Transparent pricing
- Free plan is limited
- Transaction fees for sales
Our experience
Prices and subscriptions
Features
Security and bandwidth
Customer support
Top alternatives
Bottom line: Is Square Online good?
FAQs
Square Online review at a glance
| Price | $49.00-$149.00/mo |
| Free plan | Yes, with Square branding |
| Free trial | Yes — 30 days |
| Money-back guarantee | No |
| Storage space | Unlimited |
| Custom domain | Free for one year for paid plans |
| Site analytics | Starting with Plus plan |
| Ecommerce tools | Yes, for all plans |
| AI tools | Yes, for all plans |
| Learn more | Get Square Online |
How we test web builders
We use our proprietary grading rubric in all of our testing, which considers ease-of-use, design, price, compatibility, and features (among other metrics).
Our testing process is designed to ensure that the product isn't too confusing, delivers on its claims, and offers you a lot for a reasonable price. We sign up for each option ourselves, just like you would. Our ratings reflect the real-world performance of the product, which allows us to give our best advice on whether or not it's worthwhile.
To learn more about how we test, check out our full testing methodology here.
Star rating summary
Square Online earned a high star rating of 4.7 due to its user-friendly design, wide range of pricing, and various ways to contact customer support.
Square Online received a lower score in the experience category because it has a limited number of templates for web building. It also received a lower score in the features category because it doesn't offer a professional email or a photo editor.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 45% | 4.33 |
| Value | 5% | 5.0 |
| Features | 45% | 4.40 |
| Support | 5% | 5.0 |
Our experience
Although the advanced ecommerce features may intimidate a new entrepreneur, Square can help your business grow. The paid plans have several built-in ecommerce and marketing tools to make visitors happy and create repeat customers.
Signing up for Square involved answering a few basic questions about your business and how customers will receive their orders. (In the past, we were asked to choose between moving forward with Square Online or Weebly. Weebly was acquired by Square in 2018. Square announced its intentions to move all Weebly accounts to Square, but it was still allowing for new customers to use the Weebly web builder for basic portfolio sites.)
After signing up, we were directed right to the sleek dashboard.
It took navigating to Online > Websites to find the website builder. We were immediately directed to a waiting screen, then prompted for details.
The first step is to select a theme for our test website. Square Online offers many contemporary template designs. You can choose a blank template if none of the designs work for your business. We were hoping for an AI prompt to get us started, but Square Online only offers the traditional web-building experience (i.e., manual website building).
After choosing a template, you can start customizing the layout and design. Square makes an interesting choice by making the mobile view the default editor. Other web builders use a desktop view, and you can see how it responds on other devices in previews. But Square makes the case that most people shop on their phones, so its mobile-first design can help boost conversions.
It can feel a bit overwhelming to start Square Online because there are so many features. Beyond designing a website, there are also several tools to help manage an online store, including fulfillment and multiple sales channels.
We appreciate that Square Online covers all the bases, though, offering a seamless way to accept payments and coordinate product fulfillment. You can easily connect third-party apps to help get your product from your location to your customers.
With a breadth of ecommerce solutions, we were happy to see that Square Online offers a step-by-step guide to launching our online business. The tutorials help make creating and running an online storefront more manageable.
Overall, Square Online is a robust platform for selling products online and in person. It's easy to create inventory, sell items, market your products, and collect payments. If you don't plan to sell products or subscriptions, Square Online may have too many unnecessary features for your needs.
Square Online prices and subscriptions
Square Online has a vast range of plans from $49.00-$149.00/mo. Each tier provides additional features, including advanced site analytics, ecommerce tools, and built-in marketing tools. As your business grows, an upgraded plan is necessary to manage demand and ensure a positive customer experience.
| Features | Free | Plus | Premium |
| Price | Free | $49.00/mo | $149.00/mo |
| Storage space | Yes, unlimited | Yes, unlimited | Yes, unlimited |
| Ecommerce tools | |||
| Marketing tools | |||
| AI tools | |||
| Custom domain | |||
| Site analytics | |||
| Customer accounts | |||
| Sell subscriptions | |||
| Abandoned cart emails | |||
| Display real-time shipping | |||
| 24/7 priority support | Email support only | Phone support only | |
| Learn more | View plan | View plan | View plan |
The Free plan can give you some insights into whether Square Online is the right choice for you, but you won’t get many core features. Square Online Free includes:
- Square Online website builder
- POS app for payments
- Invoicing and booking features
- Deposits to your bank account
The biggest drawback to the Square Online Free plan is the processing fees: Tap, dip, or swipe (2.6% + 15¢) and Online (3.3% + 30¢).
The Plus plan adds more advanced POS features, marketing and loyalty programs, staff management, business insights, and phone support. The processing fees are lower (2.6% for POS and 2.9% for Online).
Many online stores may find the Plus plan sufficient for their business operations. It contains nearly all the same features as the Premium plan.
The main difference between the two plans is that Premium adds the following:
- Reservation integrations
- 24/7 priority support
- Advanced analytics for deeper business insights
- Ability to assign team permission levels
- 2,500 free marketing texts to start
- Displays real-time shipping
- No in-house delivery fees
- Lower monthly fees for the Square Kiosk app and Square KDS app
- No gift card fees
- Online payment fees are 2.4% + 30¢ per transaction
Premium plans may be suitable for high-volume online stores, as lower fees can yield greater overall savings.
Square Online features
Square Online’s main highlight is its compatibility with other Square tools, like the POS system. It makes it easy to record all your online and in-person transactions in a single system. There are also several built-in marketing tools to help grow your audience and retain customers.
Free plan
Square Online offers a free plan suitable for new store owners who aren't ready for a full commitment yet.
However, the free plan lacks many crucial features to help you manage your online storefront. It doesn't have basic analytics on metrics, like which pages were visited. It also won't let you connect to a custom domain; your free site will contain noticeable Square branding.
If you want to create a professional website or are already an established company, the free plan doesn't have what it takes to establish a strong online presence. However, we've found that Square Online is still one of the most affordable web builders for ecommerce, thanks to its free plan.
Building a website
Square Online offers beautiful, functional website templates. I picked one and was immediately impressed by how easy it was to customize. The drag-and-drop builder is clearly labeled, and you can quickly navigate each section to adjust layouts, colors, images, and text.
I also liked that you could choose a template when building a new page, or create a blank page and add sections yourself. It gave me the flexibility to design the web pages the way I envisioned, without or with the aid of templates.
Square Online also has an "Embed Code" section so you can install third-party applications, such as OpenTable reservations.
The builder is intuitive, but Square Online has an "Editor Tips" button to help you create and edit your website. The guides were extensive and easy to follow, which is a huge plus for beginners.
Using and editing media
Square Online can host videos up to 100 MB. Alternatively, you can insert a YouTube video. You can also upload images, but there isn't a robust built-in photo editor. You can only crop, rotate, and adjust the brightness or saturation of images. There is an AI feature that lets you separate products from the background to create a clean product image, but there aren't the advanced editing tools you'd find in Wix Studio.
You could use Square's Photo Studio app to create product images for your online store. It works only on iOS, so this isn't a great option for everyone.
Widget library
One of the most important aspects of running an ecommerce store is the ability to integrate with other third-party applications. Third parties can add overall functionality to your store that web builders don't have intuitively.
While Square has many ecommerce and marketing tools by default, you still have the flexibility to work with other applications. Square has an app store with several extensions that add significant value to your site.
Most apps involve the behind-the-scenes functionality of ecommerce, such as fulfillment and shipping. You may need to pay extra for these apps, but it could be worth it in the long run.
Ecommerce tools
Square Online is set up to help you sell anything from subscriptions to physical products. Since the web builder is part of the overall Square product suite, it's easy to have an all-in-one solution for online and in-person sales with the Square POS.
The platform has everything you need to set up shop through multiple sales channels and market your products. There are even advanced analytical tools to collect data on your sales.
When adding new product items, Square Online provides several tools to customize them for your business operations. For example, I could add multiple options for the same product (like different colors) and add low-stock alerts. Sometimes, web builders make these additional modifications a premium feature, but Square Online includes them in all of its paid plans.
SEO and blogging tools
Since Square Online is primarily an ecommerce platform, I was surprised to find a blogging feature. Square Online also has guides on basic SEO. Overall, though, Square Online isn't a good option if you want to focus on blogging and SEO. It lacks the advanced features needed to succeed in this area.
Marketing tools
Many of the marketing tools in Square Online are designed to promote your products and attract loyal, repeat customers. Some tools you can use include creating gift cards, running affiliate programs, and issuing discount codes.
It also provides automated email campaigns to share these promotions with your audience. And there’s a valuable abandoned cart email campaign to connect with customers who didn't finish their purchase.
Security and bandwidth
Square handles customer payment information and other personal information. Before you use any ecommerce store, you should ensure they have the necessary security protocols to protect customer data from malicious threats.
The industry standard is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Square Online claims it complies with this protocol, which is designed to reduce data breaches and protect consumer data. Square also provides services like:
- Expert dispute assistance with payments.
- Account protection with two-factor authentication, account permissions, and strong passwords.
- Monitoring payments for fraudulent purchases.
Create a free cookie policy for your ecommerce business
As a business owner, you need a cookie policy to disclose how you use user data. You also need privacy policies, a refund policy, and others. With TermsFeed, you can quickly create legal provisions for GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, and more.
Square Online customer support
| Support type | Square Online |
| Email or live chat | Yes — both live chat and email are available |
| Phone | Yes — (855) 700-6000. You need to provide your customer code to verify a Square account. |
| Online guides or forums | Yes — both online guides and forums are available |
All plans offer email, live chat, and phone support. You also have access to extensive online guides. I found the guides easy to follow, and they answered a lot of my questions as I used Square Online. I also appreciate the forums where I can connect with other users and find answers to more niche questions.
24/7 support is available only on the Premium plan by phone. The live chat continues to operate during business hours, regardless of your plan.
Top alternatives
If you’re an online entrepreneur or want to focus mainly on ecommerce, then Square Online is a good platform. You can even test out the service using the free plan.
But if you prefer a more hands-off experience and want to launch quickly with a complete AI web builder, consider one of the other web-building platforms we’ve reviewed. The best ones feature intuitive AI tools, ecommerce options, and a variety of design options, allowing you to create exactly what you want.
![]() Wix |
![]() Hostinger |
![]() IONOS |
|
| Best for | Best overall | Best for ease-of-use | Best value |
| Starting price | Free or $17.00/mo | $1.99/mo | $1.00/mo |
| Custom domain | Free for one year with premium plans | Free for one year with all plans | Free for one year with all plans |
| AI tools | AI tools included with all plans | Additional AI tools start with Business plan | Additional AI tools start with Plus plan |
| Drag and drop editor + AI builder | Yes, plus WordPress builder | Yes, plus WordPress builder | |
| View plans | Get Wix | Get Hostinger | Get IONOS |
Bottom line: Is Square Online good?
Overall, Square Online is a good choice for stores that already use the Square POS and want to launch an online store quickly. Small businesses that need to create an ecommerce site should also consider Square Online. It offers all the features you'd need to create, launch, and manage an online store. You can even use Square POS for in-person sales, so you don't miss out on live events. The platform isn't as complicated as Shopify, but you still get access to multiple sales channels.
The biggest downside is that Square Online doesn't offer a complete AI web builder, like Wix. However, its drag-and-drop editor is user-friendly and tailored for mobile sales. Plus, Square Online provides extensive step-by-step support to help you add your items and manage your site.
FAQs
Is Square Online a good website builder?
Square Online is an excellent web builder with contemporary templates and an easy-to-use editor. Combined with robust ecommerce tools, it's a great choice for selling products online.
What are the disadvantages of Square Online?
Some users may not like the per transaction fees. It's also not a great platform if you want to invest in SEO or affiliate marketing since the blog feature is limited. People looking to create a basic site may also find Square Online too complicated for their needs.
Is Square Online free?
Square Online does have a free plan. While it does provide a lot of value (and is one of the best free website builders for ecommerce), it lacks some core features. It doesn't offer any analytics on your site, which can make it difficult to gauge visitor interactions. The free plan also lacks advanced features to help your business grow.
Is Weebly being discontinued?
Weebly was acquired by Square in 2018. At the time, Square announced plans to convert Weebly accounts to the Square platform. When I signed up to use Square Online, it did give me the opportunity to use the Weebly website builder if I was looking for a basic site. Weebly still exists, but it might not stay that way for long.


