Square Online, Shopify or a simple website?

Square Online suits businesses that already sell in person with Square, such as cafes, bakeries, market sellers and small shops, and want online orders and pickup to flow into the same system. Shopify suits businesses whose main job online is selling and shipping products, with a catalog that keeps growing. A simple website suits everyone whose customers call, book or ask for a quote first, and it can still carry a few Buy buttons. Many businesses end up with a simple main website plus a store on its own address. Here is how to work out which describes you.

Start from how you sell today

Before comparing features, look at your own business:

Where do most sales happen? At a counter, at the customer's home, at markets, or already online?
What do you sell? Services, made-to-order items, a menu, or ready-made products?
How many items? Five, fifty or five hundred?
Do you ship? Or is it pickup and local delivery?
What do you already use to take payments?

The answers usually point to one of the three before you look at a single feature list.

Square Online: when the till is already Square

Square Online is the website and online store side of Square, the company whose card readers you see on counters and at farmers markets.

What it does well:

One system for in-person and online. Items, prices and stock you set up for your Square point of sale can appear in your online store. Sell the last loaf at the counter and it can show as sold out online.
Pickup and local delivery. Cafes, restaurants, bakeries and delis can take orders for pickup at a time, and Square's kitchen and order tools receive them alongside in-person orders.
A low starting cost. Square has offered a free plan with Square branding and a Square web address, with paid plans for your own domain and more features. Check the current plans; they change.
Payouts and reports in one place with your in-person sales.

Where it is limited:

Design choices are narrower than a fully built website or Shopify.
It is less suited to large catalogs shipped nationwide.
If your website is your Square Online site, your whole web presence lives inside Square's system, so leaving later means rebuilding.

Suits: a coffee shop taking pickup orders, a bakery taking preorders for holidays, a boutique that sells in store and wants to list some stock online, a food truck with a weekly menu.

Shopify: when selling online is the business

Shopify is built around selling products online and shipping them.

What it does well:

Products with options, sizes, colors and variants, with stock tracking for each.
Shipping tools: rates by weight and destination, label printing and order tracking for customers.
Growth. It handles large catalogs, discount codes, abandoned-cart emails, product reviews and many sales channels.
A big app store that adds almost any feature you can think of.
In-person selling too, with Shopify's own point-of-sale system if you also have a shop.

Where it costs you:

A monthly plan, after a trial, with larger plans for more features.
Apps add up. Many useful features are paid apps, each with its own monthly fee, and a store can accumulate several.
It is a lot of store for a business that mostly sells services. The tools assume products are the point.
Time. Product photos, descriptions, shipping settings and customer emails are real work.

Suits: a maker shipping candles or soaps nationwide, a specialty food business with a range of products, a shop that wants online sales to become a real part of revenue.

A simple website: when people get in touch first

Most service businesses and many local shops do not need either store to win customers. A plumber, an accountant, a salon, a landscaper, a photographer or a caterer sells through a conversation: a call, a form, a booking.

For them, a simple website:

puts what you do, where, and how to reach you on the first screen,
shows real photos of your work and real reviews,
has a phone number to tap and a short form,
links to a booking tool if you use one,
can carry a Buy or Pay button for a deposit, a gift card or a couple of products, using a Stripe, PayPal or Square payment link,
costs less to keep and has fewer parts to manage than a store.

If you sell only a few things online, taking payments on a website without an online store explains the payment-link route.

Combining them: a store on its own address

A common and sensible setup for businesses that do sell products is to keep two things separate:

Your main website at yourbusiness.com: who you are, what you do, photos, reviews, contact.
Your store at shop.yourbusiness.com, run on Square Online or Shopify.

The "shop." part is a subdomain, an extra address under your own domain that can point to a different service. Visitors move between the two through a "Shop" link in your menu and a "Back to main site" link in the store. Your main site stays quick and easy to update, while the store does what stores do. Putting your online store on a subdomain explains how the addresses are set up.

A quick way to decide

I sell in person with Square and want online orders for pickup or a few products online: Square Online, possibly as a store beside a simple main site.
I ship ready-made products and want online sales to grow: Shopify, ideally on its own address beside a main site.
Customers call, book or ask for quotes: a simple website, with payment links if you take deposits or sell gift cards.
I sell a few products and mostly services: a simple website with Buy buttons, and revisit once orders grow.

What to do this week

Write down where your sales happen today and what you already use to take payments.
Count the products you would really list online.
If the count is small, set up one payment link and test demand first.
If it is large and you ship, try a store's free trial with five products before moving everything.
Whatever you choose, keep a main website that explains your business clearly.

If your main website is the part that needs work, you can see your site rebuilt first and keep your store where it is, linked from the new menu.