Shopify POS vs Square POS (2023) — Which System is Better?

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

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An introduction to POS

Before diving into the specifics of Shopify POS vs Square POS, it’s worth taking a quick look at what a POS or ‘point of sale’ system actually is these days.

Until recently, a POS system was a programa and hardware combination that was fairly exclusively used for conducting in-person transactions — in a retail store, in a lugar de comidas, at a market stall, etcétera.

But with the rising popularity of ecommerce, many POS systems now provide tools that let you sell not just in person, but vía an en línea store too.

Modern POS systems typically allow you to:

In this comparison, we will look at how Shopify POS and Square POS let you handle all of the above (and more).

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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 ‘Restoranes’ 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:

You perro get a side-by-side view of how Shopify POS and Square POS compare in some key areas in the table below:

POS feature	Shopify POS	Square POS
Payment gateways	105+	2
Payment processing availability	23 countries with Shopify Payments; 175+ countries vía third-party payment providers	8 countries
Inventory locations	Up to 1,000 locations on most Shopify plans	Up to 300 on paid Square plans
POS layout customization	Excellent	Good
POS Reporting	Excellent	Good
Hardware devices	Excellent	Excellent
Exchanges	Available on paid plan only	Included with free plan
Sin conexión payments	Cash only	Cash and credit card
POS staff permissions	Available on paid plan only	Available on paid plan only
Discounts	Available on free plan	Available on free plan
Supported languages on mobile aplicación	21 languages	4 languages
Customer support	24/7 on all paid plans	Monday to Friday on most paid plans

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:

(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.)

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 perro get going with Shopify POS from as little as $5 per month vía Shopify’s ‘Starter’ plan.

However, if you would like more than one usuario 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 Agregado, 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 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 vía a tap payment (using Google plus Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay etcétera.).

Now, it should be noted that Shopify POS doesn’t require you to using Shopify Payments as your credit card payment processor — it perro 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 either Square or PayPal as your payment processors (with the latter being available on paid Square plans only). So 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 ‘Team Agregado’ add-on plan particularly useful. This starts at $35 per month and cánido be used in conjunction with the free version of Square POS. It lets you equipo 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 ‘Lugar de comidas’ plans provide slightly more conveniente credit card fees than the free version — 2.5%+ 10 cents per sale rather than 2.6% + 10 cents per sale.

Lugar de comidas owners should also note that Square’s $60 per month ‘Agregado’ 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 lugar de comidas 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 afín if you want to connect your POS system to an en línea store on a custom domain.

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

However, the en línea 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 perro find out why in our 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 cánido get going with it for free (but watch out for the additional countertop device costs!).

However, if you’re intending to run an en línea 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:

	Shopify POS	Square POS
Monthly POS subscription	$0 — $89 per month	$0 — $88 per month
Additional countertop devices	No additional charge	$40 per plus device (Square for Restoranes plan)
Using mobile POS for floor staff	No additional charge	$50 per month per location
Monthly ecommerce store subscription	$5 — $399	$0 — $88
In person credit card fees	2.4% + 0 cents — 2.7% 0 cents per transaction	2.5% + 10 cents —2.6% + 10 cents
En línea credit card fees	2.4 + 30 cents — 2.7% + 30 cents per transaction	2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
Tap to Pay with iPhone fee	2.4 + 30 cents — 2.7% + 30 cents per transaction	2.6% + 10 cents per transaction

POS hardware

Both Square and Shopify let you use a good range of POS hardware — card readers, barcode scanners, tills, receipt printers etcétera. — 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 perro 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 agregado 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 equipo you back $59 with Square, and $49 with Shopify;and a bluetooth barcode scanner costs $229 from both companies.

As for pricing for both companies’ flagship handheld POS hardware devices, the Square POS terminal costs $299, which is $100 less than Shopify’s all-in-one ‘POS Go’ device ($399).

That said, Shopify’s ‘POS Go’ includes complete access to Shopify’s POS capabilities, while oddly the Square Terminal isn’t fully coincidente with some of the advanced functions in some of Square’s ‘Square for Retail’ and ‘Square for Restoranes’ POS programa.

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

POS hardware device	Shopify POS	Square POS
‘All-in-one’ POS terminal	$399	$299
Card reader	$49	$59
Integrated cash register	None (iPad or tablet only)	$799
POS device stands	$149 — $185	$19 — $349
Barcode scanners	$229 — $269	None
Barcode and label printers	$119 — $399	$299 — $549
Receipt printer paper	$29 — $109	$29 — $89
Cash drawers	$139 — $159	$129 — $549

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Extending your POS vía aplicaciones

Shopify POS is a clear winner over Square POS when it comes to extending the possibilities of point of sale vía aplicaciones and integrations.

Shopify’s overall aplicación ecosystem contains 8,000+ aplicaciones, dwarfing the equivalent offering from Square, which has a much slimmer portfolio of around 350 aplicaciones.

With regard to aplicaciones that focus exclusively on point of sale, Shopify’s aplicación store features 500+ POS aplicaciones, over 90 of which were specifically designed to extend the capabilities of Shopify POS.

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

Worth a especial mention however is the Shopify-made ‘Stocky’ aplicación, 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 perro use Stocky to manage purchase orders and send messages to suppliers; conduct depósito takes and perform depósito adjustments; get product recommendations based on profit margins; and transfer depósito between inventory locations.

Square’s aplicación offering for extending its POS capabilities is significantly smaller — a quick search for the term ‘POS’ in Square’s aplicación library surfaces around 130 aplicaciones.

It’s worth noting that a particularly large number of these are focused on providing features to food and dining businesses.

This reflects the fact that Square generally tailors its aplicación offering to very specific industry sectors. For example, there is a POS aplicación available for running a flower shop, another for running a jeweller’s and several aplicaciones that provide POS solutions for repair shops.

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

	Shopify POS	Square POS
Total aplicaciones available	8,000+	450+
POS aplicaciones	550+ aplicaciones available	130+ aplicaciones available
Inventory management aplicaciones	1,019 aplicaciones	84 aplicaciones
Staff POS aplicaciones	401 aplicaciones	185 aplicaciones
Customer loyalty aplicaciones	456 aplicaciones	52 aplicaciones
Pickup aplicaciones	325 aplicaciones	40 aplicaciones

Conclusion

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

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

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

Shopify POS is also the better option for big retail businesses with a large number of real-world stores. While Square doesn’t let you operate beyond 300 locations, Shopify POS is much more scalable, letting you track and manage inventory for up to 1,000 locations.

I’ll leave you with a list of the key reasons why you might pick one of these platforms over the other; and if you would like to learn more about how Shopify and Square compare in even more detail (and especially from an ecommerce point of view) please check out our full Shopify vs Square platform comparison.

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Pros and cons of Shopify POS vs Square POS

Now: over to you. Got anything to add? Or any questions about Square and Shopify? If so, leave a comment below!