Shopify POS VS Square: Which POS is Better

With extreme digitization, no one likes to carry cash around. If you are a business owner, dealing in cash can restrict a lot of your opportunities, as nowadays, people carry lesser cash and more credit/debit cards. Such cards have all the money in their accounts, and they can directly use them for any transaction without needing to withdraw cash from an ATM first.

The number of business owners who are accepting cards as payment methods is increasing rapidly, and if you don’t accept such payments, your revenues will take a hit.

If you are gearing toward increasing your business, you surely need a POS system. To develop a custom POS for your business, Shopify and Square are two of the best techs in the market. While each has its upsides, this article aims at Shopify POS vs Square to help you decide between the two.

Before we dive into the comparison, let's understand what a POS is and its benefits to your business.

What is a POS?

A Point-of-sale or commonly known as a POS system is a hardware and/or software configuration that allows you to take payments. It processes retail transactions and accepts several types of cards, cash, and coupons.

POS is no longer just a piece of software that collects payments and gives a confirmation or declination answer. It has evolved into a more intuitive and insightful digital payment solution. Business owners may now accomplish a lot of things directly from a POS device without using anything else.

Having known about POS, let’s understand the benefits you can enjoy by having one for your business.

What are the benefits of a POS Machine?

Optimized Checkout

Using a POS system, you can significantly improve the in-store checkout procedure. You may scan all of the goods in the customer's cart by pairing the system with a barcode scanner. The POS system will get their pricing from the database and add the amounts.

Additionally, the POS system may create the bill as well as a payment link or QR code once the quantities are determined. You may send the payment link or QR code to your consumer to receive payment right away.

Waiting time for customers is substantially decreased with a POS system, and personnel may be more efficient in processing transactions.

Better Security

Your sales data is critical, and it must be safeguarded. Such data should not be accessible to everyone other than the authorized people. Your data is safer from unknown intrusion with a POS system.

Most POS systems support two-factor authentication. This decreases the likelihood of malicious people infiltrating your system. Furthermore, the administrator can also swiftly allow or deny data access to users.

Choose a POS system that connects to the cloud if you want comprehensive backup and protection for your POS data. As a result, as soon as your sales data is created, you may move it to a secure cloud environment.

Better Employee Tracking

The POS system may record any activities taken by employees for further review. Each employee is assigned to a specific transaction. Also,  it allows you to track sales per employee, the number of transactions performed, the kind of transactions, and so on.

With this data, you can see which staff are working well, which are not, and when the store is busiest. Also, this would make it easy to create timetables, optimize staff time on the floor, and provide continuous training. As a result, it will be easier for you to encourage fair competition in your firm.

Accurate Reports

POS will automatically extract point-of-sale reports containing crucial information based on the history of store transactions. Such elements help management understand their company's performance. Reports, for example, might highlight sales trends or reveal areas of needless overspending, allowing management to take appropriate action.

Reduced Costs

With a POS system in place, you may save money in a big way. A survey conducted to understand the benefits of POS among vendors showed that several merchants have saved up to 10% of their annual expenditures by deploying a robust POS solution for their organization.

Having known the different benefits of POS systems, you might be excited to add one to your business. Before you get a POS system, you should compare the top two POS providers - Shopify and Square.

So let’s understand each of these in detail and do a Shopify POS vs Square to find the best POS machine for your business.

What is Shopify POS?

Shopify is an eCommerce giant, and if you have ever sold products online as a business, you have surely come across Shopify. It has one of the biggest market shares in the eCommerce platform. It provides retailers with a platform where they can host their store, sell products, accept payments, and manage the entire business.

As it is an online eCommerce platform, it was important for the company to dive into the payments business, and that is when Shopify POS was introduced. Shopify POS is the primary POS system offered by this company. With this POS system, you can accept payments across your stores and channels pretty easily.

There are various benefits to using this system, and it comes with a starting plan of $5 per month. Whether you accept payments from the POS or not, Shopify takes $5 every month as a subscription fee for its POS system.

Let's have a look at a few of the features offered by this intelligent POS solution.

Features of Shopify POS

• Shopify POS allows you to accept payments at various channels. Whether your customer is purchasing from the online store, offline store, or any other channel, you can still accept payments for your sales through the Shopify POS.
• Also, it offers robust staff management features wherein you can add and delete staff members for POS access anytime. Moreover, it also assigns sales to the staff members as and when they make a sale and provides special approvals to apply for some extra discounts.
• The primary checkout process with Shopify POS is quite effortless. Customers can quickly get a printed receipt of the transaction, and the bill can be customized as per local taxation laws and other charges.
• It also helps to apply discount codes at checkout and track cash transactions pretty efficiently.
• Shopify POS comes with good reporting and analytics features. Using this feature, you can get a daily sales report, have a quick look at the dashboard, track the business's cash flow, and even find the top-selling products.

What is Square?

Square is another top POS software provider in the market. Just like Shopify, Square also provides customers an option to set up their eCommerce store using this platform. It has different versions of POS software aimed at different industries and business lines.

Square offers customized POS software for retail businesses, restaurants, appointment-scheduling businesses, and general-use POS software.

Below are some of the features of Square POS.

Features of Square

• Square provides payment acceptance from a variety of payment channels, including credit/debit cards, Apple and Google Pay, and even plastic gift cards.
• Moreover, Square POS comes with an in-built fraud protection and monitoring module that keeps your business secure. If you ever face a dispute, Square helps in solving the dispute by actively working on it instantly.
• It also has customizable checkout options and pricing calculators for easy and fast billing.
• Apart from the POS services, you can even add team management, marketing, and payroll processing services into your POS system for seamless workflows.

Knowing about both these POS providers now is the perfect time to compare them head to head and understand which is better.

Shopify POS vs Square: Which of the Two POS is Better?

We will look at the most important criteria of Shopify POS vs Square to help us understand which of the two POS is better.

Target Audience

Shopify - Shopify is a leader in eCommerce with a large number of e-stores built on the platform. It is aimed at large online retailers or offline merchants and people who do social media sales. Thus, it is natural that when there is a proprietary solution available, business owners will prefer it over any third-party integration.

Square - On the other hand, Square is relatively newer. Hence, its target audience comprises newer eCommerce stores, small merchants, and food and hospitality businesses with growing databases.

Winner - There is no clear winner in this segment in the Shopify POS vs Square debate, and it all boils down to individual needs. If you are a small business who is just starting its eCommerce journey, Square can be a good choice. On the other hand, if you are an established business owner with a blend of online and offline sales, shopify will fit your needs better.

Pricing

Pricing is a key point that helps you decide which POS software you can use.

Shopify - Using the Shopify POS will cost you $5 per month at minimum, and the company will charge up to 2.9% for each online transaction.

Square - Compared to Shopify, Square POS is free, to begin with. However, it takes the same 2.9% charge on online transactions while it takes only a 2.6% charge on offline transactions. If you are looking to save money while enjoying POS benefits, Square POS is a better choice.

Winner - If you are looking to save money while enjoying POS benefits, Square POS is a better choice.

Integrations

If you have an established software and platform for your business, you'd often want to add a POS system with as many integrations as possible. This will make managing the entire system relatively easy.

Shopify - Shopify POS comes with 2000+ integrations that can help you automate and manage many of the business workflows.

Square -Comparatively, Square's POS offers only 300 integrations.

If you are looking to add a POS system with better integrations, you should go with Shopify POS.

Winner - If you are looking to add a POS system with better integrations, you should go with Shopify POS.

Shopify POS vs Square: When to Use

Shopify POS vs Square is a question that a lot of business owners have, and in this section we are going to drill down based on which to use and when.

If you have a large inventory with lots of individual items, Shopify POS will be a good addition to your business as it provides a robust inventory management module which is quite better than Square.

Comparing these both POS systems, Square offers an attractive pricing structure, and if your aim is to save money while enjoying POS benefits you should surely get Square POS.

End Note

In this article we have covered a head to head comparison of Shopify POS vs SquareBy and have explored both POS systems. With the comparison listed above, you should be able to make a decision on which POS system you can use. If you still need clarification, study these platforms in more detail or start with a basic plan for both these POS systems, and explore them with your business.