Introduction
There are numerous ecommerce solutions prevailing in the online market amongst which some are reliable solutions for brick-and-mortar stores that are used on countless occasions.
Most of the individuals choose the POS systems. Hybrid entrepreneurs find ways to settle for POS systems. It is not an easy task as there are some problems in building and organizing such a business system. Getting an ideal ecommerce solution itself is a tedious task because many business software is either ecommerce-based or is created to promote point-of-sale systems.
Shopify and Square are the two most powerful sales platform in the online market. When equating Shopify vs. Square, one can find that both proffer tools for small enterprises inclusive of point-of-sale systems, remittance processing solutions, and ecommerce platforms. Square and Shopify are free to use at the initial phase but to access some additional features there are some processing fees. Therefore, when choosing the perfect merchant services for your business, one needs to understand the distinguishing factors of each POS system. Nowadays, there are more than a hundred shopping carts, POS solutions, and mobile apps accessible to the potential merchant, but none are as popular as Square and Shopify.
Overview
It’s difficult to choose the best website builder for the online store. The below-mentioned features of both the POS Systems are helpful in the selection procedure of the right POS system for the business.
Shopify: This merchant service is for thoughtful merchants. It’s the best platform for large industries or stores demanding robust ecommerce tools. Furthermore, it is the top-rated ecommerce website builder specifically designed for online sales. Ergo, no surprise that Shopify POS is thriving on the online sales portal! It is the best ecommerce website builder, even though sometimes it may happen that it might not fit with your business either with your products nor with your working style. The ecommerce functionalities here start with site hosting abilities.
Moreover, one gets limitless bandwidth on this platform, where an infinite number of items can be sold. Besides this, if the seller doesn’t have a domain to migrate than it can be bought through Shopify or also can be purchased from other sources. The best thing about it is that it is customizable extensively.
The designing stage comes after the purchase part. Thankfully, Shopify gives plenty of themes suitable for different industries. And most importantly, all these themes are customizable with the coding skills of the experts. Furthermore, the default themes are efficiently curated, which will also look appealing with minor tweaks.
Square: It is an excellent choice for small scale industries that does one-on-one transactions. Square has a sophisticated POS app that is free to use known as Square Point of Sale. Furthermore, it also gives you an array of attractive templates to adapt to your site. The integration process is simple for ecommerce stores, but one cannot tweak it as done in Shopify.
On the other hand, it is surprising that even if one is not managing the orders, Square comes with automatic data syncing. It also monitors all your items to update the inventory as soon as the sales transactions take place. Although Square does not offer integrations as many as Shopify, still it supports a wide range of reliable party tools.
What to Look for While Selecting POS System
The POS system works through a combination of hardware and software. The software can either run on the hardware for individual transactions or can be operated through specialized hardware for virtual operations.
POS systems can perform a myriad of other operations related to transactions. The following are the features of the POS system that should be considered by choosing the right merchant services for your business.
Process Payments: Receiving payment from major credit card networks like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, & Discover is mandatory. Moreover, one should also learn the different ways credit card transactions are made. Nowadays, people can pay via swipe, via a contactless payment like Apple Pay or by dipping a chip. To boost profits, one needs a POS that can process the purchase in all three ways. Checkout: An ideal POS is the one that handles all the logistics around the checkout. This includes the tax calculations, delivery of receipts, shipping options, and the capacity to practice tips, discounts, and gift cards.
Employee Management: The POS system should make the employee management simple through features like time tracking and tip reconciliation.
Inventory Management: POS systems should help the business people to keep track of where their inventory stands by knowing the nature of processing the outer flow of their business inventory. The best ones will send reminders when you’re running low on the catalog and even will automate the process of ordering new stock.
Customer Relationship Management: A sound POS system will leverage the information for maintaining good clientele relations.
Reporting: By analyzing the transaction history of an individual business, a POS provides the entrepreneurs with valuable insights. This helps boost sales metrics.
Integrations: The more applications get integrated with the POS, the more you can expand the functionalities of the businesses, respectively.
Mobile application: The POS should provide you with a mobile app that enables you to manage the business from anywhere, at any time.
Shopify comes with different varieties of apps and social media advertising. You can effortlessly add a broad range of marketing, accounting, and shipping apps to make your business extra contoured. Moreover, you can trade beyond ten social media platforms. Shopify accepts more than 2 payments and it also accepts gift cards. Furthermore, it also possesses custom payment options that give a smooth check out process to the customers. Shopify provides discounts to its customers at regular intervals. It provides custom sales, portable registers, and custom receipts. Furthermore, this POS system provides discounts, automatic tax calculations, Store management, product management, and inventory management.
To get more idea about Shopify one to have a glance on the video displayed below -
The below image gives us the idea about the features explained -
On the other hand, Square doesn’t hold an app market, that enables you to do marketing only on Instagram. This means you may discontinue Square if you’re looking forward to scaling big, given the shortage of options. Moreover, Square allows the customer to pay, give a tip, and to do e-sign. Through Square, the business people can get the customers’ feedback easily to enhance their products that ultimately boost the profits of their businesses respectively. Through Square, many online marketers can send their habitues’ invoices by giving them a facility to track their product delivery. Square provides integrated payment processing and email marketing. It also gives them real-time sales data and history. The business people through Square can get the reporting and analytics of their businesses respectively. Users can get the receipts of their purchases via text or emails and they can also provide to users with discounts and refunds through Square POS System. This POS system is compatible with the POS hardware and it also gives the business owners facility to do employee management and product customization. In order to run smoothly and effective business operations, Square gives marketers real-time inventory, customer profiles, and square API.
The below displayed will give the exact idea about the Square POS system works -
Pricing
Well, there are three standard expenses when it comes to POS systems: The processing fee is a small portion of the payment being processed, including an extra flat-rate charge. The software payment is a cost for using the POS software. The hardware fee is what one needs to pay for getting the hardware from the POS provider that enables you to process amounts. For instance, this could be something as tiny as a smartphone plugin or as big as a countertop catalog. The more hardware choices your POS provider gives you more flexibility that allows you to decide an option that makes sense for your business.
Now that we perceive what we are looking for in a POS system, let’s assess Shopify vs. Square on the basis of the charts displayed below and see which system comes out on top -
Shopify
Square
Also, the below-displayed is the chart of comparison stating the different integrations, different devices that support both the POS systems, the size of the company that has been covered by the system, and the support which is offered to the users by using Shopify and Square.
Reviews:
Shopify is not only a simple way to launch and run your online store but it’s geared towards helping store owners in important aspects like opening additional channels giving customer support tools or taking care of the technical hassles.
The below-stated reviews will show the usefulness of the Shopify POS system -
On the other hand, Squarespace is primarily for individual websites, professionals and small online companies making money through products, services, and donations. Brick-and-mortar stores with a big inventory will apparently profit more from retail-focused ecommerce platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.
The following Squarespace reviews would give you an idea about choosing the right POS system for your business.
Verdict:
Square and Shopify both give user-friendly POS, ecommerce, and payment processing solutions. Shopify has more advanced ecommerce tools that make it more suitable for online and multichannel companies. Square renders a free POS and mobile app that is excellent for companies that are primarily doing one-on-one marketing.
Shopify presents a great value to fresh and growing businesses with a modern ecommerce website builder, detailed order tracking and management, and integrated shipping solutions with discounts. They both offer user-friendly POS systems with nearly identical payment processing solutions.
On the other hand, Squarespace does well to keep pace due to its powerful catalog management tools, whereas Shopify offers considerably more payment gateways and stronger shipping peculiarities.
Thus, from the above stated in-depth article, one can get an idea about choosing a perfect match for their respective businesses to stand uniquely on the online portal.
