Square Store Builder Review [2024] It Might Not Work for You

It’s a Store Builder, But Not Much More

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Square Online is a payment processor company that lets your business take payments from credit cards. Incidentally, that company has made the imaginatively-named “Online Store” app, which is a very simple and highly-focused site builder that lets you create one thing: an online store.

The builder is available in over 10 different languages, but it only works in a select few countries where Square has its payment processing set up (US, Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom). It’s a simple and very streamlined experience, but…

Is Square’s Online Store app right for you? Can it deliver all the features you need, or would you be better off with a more established website builder, like Wix1? I tested it myself, and now I’m here to help you answer just that. Let’s have at it!

No Design Work Required (or Allowed)

This is a product for those who want a store with a website – and that’s all, folks. What does that mean for the design of your website? Well…

There is exactly one template – but it’s a pretty good one. It’s simple, it’s pretty, and it’s mobile-responsive. It also performs well speed-wise, so that’s a bonus.

There are some customization options, too. You can choose from 15 main typefaces for your text and from fifteen colors, which you can use for things like buttons and links. You can also customize the actual content, which is something I’ll address in more detail below. My point is that if you work with the content enough, you can achieve a different-ish design and content layout, but it all appears to be based on the same design system.

A 3.5 out of 5 is the best I can do here. It’s a good template, but it’s just one template doing far more work than it should be doing.

It’s an Online Store, and It Does Everything You’d Hope For

That’s the trouble when writing about products that just do one thing: thinking of stuff to say besides, “Well, it definitely does the thing!” Fortunately, I can say that this was the best part of my whole experience with Square’s Online Store. The actual store builder, while a little simplistic, absolutely benefits from that simplicity.

In fact, what it may lack in hyper-advanced features, it makes up for by making e-commerce easy. You can painlessly:

• Manage your items
• Track the inventory of physical products
• Sell digital products
• Arrange for shipping or local pickup
• Print UPS labels for all your orders
• Create order notifications for up to three different recipients
• Sell food for pickup, in-house delivery, or on-demand delivery
• Collect taxes based on requirements in your location
• Offer sales, discounts, and (single-use) coupon codes

You can even use this platform to do less “store-like” things, such as appointment booking.

The higher-tier plans do come with some compelling features, like being able to send automatic follow-up emails to people who have abandoned their shopping carts. You’ll also enable reviews for individual items, and be able to accept payments via PayPal.

Even though Square is a PayPal competitor in some ways, you can absolutely integrate PayPal into your site.

I should note, though, that Square is more than a payment processor even without the Online Store addon. You can use it to track your sales and inventory separately and synchronize your Square sales information with your site’s sales information. I’m not sure why those are two separate things to begin with, but it’s not too big a deal.

Now that we’ve discussed the basic store features, let’s get on to what makes Square’s Online Store app different. Well, different-ish.

Square Has a Simple, Focused Site Builder

Even though there isn’t much flexibility when it comes to design, the site editor gives you quick access to helpful features. And while the actual “store” part of the site is rather rigid, you can customize the content of every other page quite a bit.

The site builder uses pre-made content blocks where you can insert images, text, photo galleries, and forms, or you can link to your social media feeds, Google Maps, and more. It’s not absolute freedom, or true drag-and-drop design, but you can add as many pages as you’d like. You start with either a template or a blank page and simply add your content.

Built-in Marketing Tools, Analytics Tools, and Third-Party Integrations Galore

Alright, let’s quickly discuss several small-but-important (and very related) features:

First, the Order with Google integration. This is a feature that allows you to claim your business profile on Google (from within the Square dashboard), and lets your customers order directly from SERPs (search engine results pages). It’s especially useful for restaurants, because unlike with third-party apps, you won’t have to pay a commission on orders.

Secondly, the email marketing tool. This is not a part of the Online Store app. It’s a separate offering from Square that you can integrate with your store. From here, you can set up email campaigns and keep track of the leads and sales generated from your mailing list subscribers.

Then there’s the Analytics Suite. It includes all of the traffic, tracking, and sales data you’re likely to need when you’re just starting out. No Google Analytics required. I should note, however, that visitors from the UK and the EU can turn off tracking. That might skew your results if you have a lot of customers from that part of the world.

Lastly, there are a lot of third-party integrations. You can integrate your site with Google Analytics (if you want it after all), Facebook Pixel, Instagram shopping, Facebook Messenger (for chatting directly with customers), G Suite, and even Google/Bing verification.

To get your products in front of a wider audience, you can also turn on the Google Product Listings integration, which will share your item catalog across Google Search and Google Shopping.

You Can Hire a Designer

Square has partnered with 99designs to make professional designers available on the Square Online Store platform. As web design goes, it’s not that expensive, especially when you consider that many web designers will charge thousands of dollars for their services.

Of course, you have to pay a bare minimum of around $100 for small one-page sites, so it’s not dirt-cheap, either. If you have a bit of a budget, and you want someone with a professional eye to get you set up, hiring a designer who knows the platform could be worth it.

There’s Also a Photo Studio Service

If you’re selling physical products, you can actually send the products to Square, and they’ll have photographers take pictures for you (and then send the products back to you). This might not work so well if you’re selling refrigerators, but the prices are pretty low overall. Depending on where you live, it might be cheaper than hiring a local photographer.

Ease of Use Sort of Varies by Country

Okay, so what do I mean by that? Let me start by saying that overall, Square’s Online Store app is easy to learn and easy to use. The relative simplicity of its features and well-designed UI combine to create a beginner-friendly e-commerce experience.

Of course, if you’ve never used any site builder or online store builder before, there will be a learning curve. That can’t be avoided, and it’s fine. As long as you have a general idea of what products you want to display and what you want to charge for them, the rest is a matter of trial and error.

The only potential trouble comes from the poor implementation of region-locking. Like I said in the Overview, Square is a payment processing company first and foremost. This store builder is just an add-on to Square’s main business of taking money from one bank account and putting it into another.

That payment processing service is available internationally, but it’s not available in every country. Specifically, it’s not available in Mexico, where I live. Because the Online Store app is tied to the payment processing, it’s not available in Mexico either. Square never made that clear on the app’s sign-up page.

Confusingly, you can start a business on Square that’s registered in Mexico, and use Square’s general sales-tracking features, without payment processing. With me so far?

I was able to open an account, but the online store app was nowhere to be seen. When I tried to go to Support, the support pages never fully loaded, and neither did the Contact page. Eventually, I was able to get to the Contact page after several tries, but make no mistake: Square’s entire support site is more or less region-locked.

It was only after I made a test account with a “business” that was registered in the United States, that I was able to access the Online Store builder. What’s more, the support pages all started loading properly. So yeah… just keep that in mind.

This poor implementation of region-locking is why the official Ease of Use score takes a pretty large hit. If Square Online Store isn’t available in your country, you should check out an alternative like Wix1.

Clear Instructions Everywhere

Luckily, once you finally do create an account and register it properly, the user interface is very intuitive. Almost all of its functions are clearly labelled. There are also tooltips and little starting guides that can help you get going.

In short, you are not left entirely to your own devices.

Extensive Knowledge Base

If the user interface is still a little confusing, Square’s Support Center is there for you. Well, if you’re in the right country. There’s an extensive knowledge base that covers all of Square’s features, including the Online Store builder. If you’re stumped, you should start there.

Small Quality-of-Life Features

A site builder this simple might try to get away with ignoring the smaller details, but Square didn’t do that. For instance, it provides a mobile device preview for your website. Things like Undo and Redo buttons are always appreciated, too.

Support Was Mostly Prompt and Helpful

I am very happy to report that Square’s support team is on top of things, and they’re generally ready to answer your questions. I was able to contact them via email, chat, and their phone line. Keep in mind that support operates during fairly standard business hours: 8 AM – 8 PM US Central Time on weekdays, 10 AM – 7 PM US Central on weekends.

Despite multiple warnings that they were experiencing a high volume of calls and live chats, I was able to reach a person in about half an hour or less for each mode of communication (email, chat, phone). That’s pretty impressive.

Email

I asked a simple question that was immediately on my mind: when will the Online Store be available in Mexico? The response I got 31 minutes later was pretty generic.

It read, “[Employee] here with Weebly Customer Success, here to help! Square Point of Sale and online store is available for free in most countries listed in the App Store and Google Play.

While Square can be used internationally to record payments, track inventory, and grow your business – payment processing, including processing through Square’s API, is only available in specific countries. View the list of countries with payment processing. Payment card processing isn’t supported outside of the countries on this list.

We are looking to bring payment processing to other countries, and we’ll be sure to announce any further expansion. Please let me know if there is anything else that I can help you with!

Basically, I needed specific information about my country, and got a generic answer with, “Go look!”

Support is generally strong, but I did have to click an “I’ll keep waiting for help” button three times

Chat

This was a shorter wait, and I got lucky with a clear, concise answer. I asked what the limits were for the Online Store’s free plan, and about 20 minutes later (high volume, remember?), I got the answer you can see in the screenshot above.

To reiterate, you can sell up to 25 products for free. That’s pretty good.

Phone

So I dusted off my Skype account and called the support hotline. Once again, recorded messages repeatedly said there would be longer than average wait times, but I was only on hold for about fifteen minutes. Believe me, I’ve had worse.

Once I got through to an actual human being, I had a few questions. I asked about the ETA for getting the Online Store app in Mexico (again), and I asked about Square’s refund policies, which I get into below.

I am happy to report that I got clear, concise answers this time, too. Specifically, there’s no ETA for Mexico getting service. At least, there’s none that the support rep could give me. She just said, “Sorry, I don’t know. There’s not an ETA that I know of.”

That is a completely acceptable answer. Just telling me she didn’t have the information was better than giving me vague suggestions.

Overall, I think that the pricing for the Online Store app is pretty great, especially if you’re actually making money off your site. The cheapest paid plan is about $12.00 per month (if you pay annually), although that only lets you connect a custom domain.

More expensive plans also remove the Square ads from your site, provide unlimited storage, give you access to advanced site stats, allow customers to review your products, and offer many more advanced features. Unless you’re planning to run an enterprise-level store here (and I wouldn’t – I’d use one of these builders instead), the most expensive plan you should go for is the Performance plan. Anything more probably isn’t worth it.

Even if you’re not ready to lay down some money yet, the free plan is reasonable if your catalog is small. 25 products with 10 product variations is nothing to sneeze at, and maybe you don’t want anyone reviewing your products just yet. Wait ‘til you see how they sell.

As you’d expect from a credit card processor, Square accepts pretty much all credit cards. It has to. Oh, and you can pay via PayPal.

One more thing to note is that I couldn’t make any payments until I logged into the site from a US server using a VPN (Virtual Private Network). So, keep that in mind. Even if your business is based in the US, you’ll also need to be virtually present in the US to complete the payment process.

Cancellations & Refunds

The refund policy is simple: if you pay for the annual plan, you can cancel from the dashboard at any time, within the first 30 days. You get all your money back.

If you pay by the month, however, you’ll have to cancel by contacting support. They’ll do it, and they’ll refund you the remaining balance for the month. So if you use your plan for two weeks before cancelling, you’ll get roughly half the money you spent back.

I cancelled by email because I signed up for the monthly plan on this test. It was simple: I sent the email from the on-site email form, and they cancelled my account with minimal fuss.