PayPal Zettle vs. Square POS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
PayPal Zettle
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
PayPal Zettle (formerly PayPal Here) is a POS and payment processing system that includes either a mobile card reader or a chip reader (hardware), and is powered by the mobile PayPal Here app. Admins can add up to 1,000 users per account, and the app also includes invoicing, reporting, and inventory management features. The pricing structure for payment processing is: 2.7% per US card swipe. 3.5% + $0.15 to key in cards. 2.9% + $0.30 to invoice. 1% for cross-border transfers.N/A
Square POS
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Square POS is a point-of-sale software solution with features such as accept credit cards with your iPhone, Android, and iPad along with the flexibility to accept credit card payments anywhere, from Square headquartered in San Francisco, California.
$10
per each additional reader; first reader free
Pricing
PayPal ZettleSquare POS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Each Transaction
2.6% + $0.10
per transaction
Square Reader for magstripe
$10
per each additional reader; first reader free
Square Stand for contactless and chip
$16
per month
Square Terminal
$27
per month
Square Register
$39
per 24 months
Square Reader for contactless and chip
$49
per reader
Square Point of Sale
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PayPal ZettleSquare POS
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PayPal ZettleSquare POS
Best Alternatives
PayPal ZettleSquare POS
Small Businesses
Square POS
Square POS
Score 10.0 out of 10
Shopify
Shopify
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Epicor Eagle
Epicor Eagle
Score 7.9 out of 10
Epicor Eagle
Epicor Eagle
Score 7.9 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PayPal ZettleSquare POS
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
PayPal ZettleSquare POS
Likelihood to Recommend
Despite the time that you have to wait to be able to receive the money for each transaction made through the PayPal Here POS system, I consider that it is a system that has a lot of potential and that, without a doubt, allows companies to obtain a lot of POS system cheaper, no need to pay for a bank POS system that is much more expensive and requires a more complex process to configure and register at the bank branch. I would definitely recommend PayPal Here for any small, medium or large company, it has excellent potential, the reading of the NFC chips is instantaneous and allows each credit or debit card to be recognized immediately and the transaction to be completed in a few seconds. It is a very advanced system, easy to use and very easy to configure, if you are looking for a system that is not so complicated to add a POS to your company, PayPal Here is the best option.
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Square was absolutely fantastic when I first started using it. Easy to set up, use, changing settings, and the like. It has evolved over the years, almost too much, to an insane amount of options, apps, settings, et cetera. I would like to see options for just utilizing specific parts, such as invoices, versus the entire system being set up for daily sales. It makes the tracking side of things a little wonky when you only send 2-5 invoices/month for larger projects. Overall, I like that it’s familiar to me, which is why I continue to use it
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Pros
  • Our customers can check out no matter where we are.
  • It is incredibly easy to use. Training new retail employees and volunteers takes almost no time.
  • When we were shopping around for solutions, Paypal Here was very cost effective.
  • Implementation with our current systems went very smoothly. The Paypal support team was great.
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  • After you set a daily processing deadline time, charges processed by that time are deposited the next business day.
  • The reporting dash board looks overwhelming but that's because it has all of the the information that you've processed before. That was invaluable when we recently went to look at the detail on a two year old transaction and were able to find the information by ourselves.
  • The ability to use multiple devices is great. We can process charges on a computer, a tablet, or even a smartphone.
  • Receipts are automatically sent to the customer's preferred email or texted to their phone.
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Cons
  • The fees are a little bit high, although all POS and payment systems do charge fees.
  • Sometimes signing in and getting things to connect through our web store can be a challenge. It is great once it is set up but downloading plug ins and setting up initially is a challenge.
  • We have in-store pick up items that customers pay for at pick up and shipped items which customers pay for through the PayPal Zettle portal at checkout. This was very confusing to set up. I wish there was an easier way to mark items as payment upfront and payment later.
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  • The cost of the hardware (specific scanners and receipt printers) was prohibitive for my company, and whilst we managed without them, they would have been nice to have. The range of scanners and printers that integrate with Square is small, so despite our devices' capabilities to read barcodes (we used ipads) and the Zebra receipt/label printers we had, we couldn't use either as the system wouldn't integrate with them.
  • Whilst Square's credit card reader is nifty in design, it's a bit small and lacking substance to have as a customer-facing reader so it really needs the dock the company offers. The dock is awkward to open to reset or pair the reader. We often found pairing the reader with the device running the system tricky and confusing, relying on pressing one button and then interpreting a sequence of lights that often caused confusion. The pairing process might have been clearer presented through the device rather than the reader.
  • Truly can't think of any more!
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Likelihood to Renew
There are no monthly costs, the only expense is the card processing fee which is lower than nearly everyone else out there.
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I don't really foresee anything being able to dislodge Square from our organization—we're not evangelists or anything like that—it's just the best solution we've found for our use case. Being able to quickly handle transactions from customers and then track all of those sales for analysis/bookkeeping later on.
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Usability
The overall usability was good for our organization. We rarely experienced much downtime or errors when using PayPal Zettle for business transactions. Some of our IPhone users had login and security issues a few times. That was the exception to the rule and we have been able to operate consistently for the majority of the time.
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We find Square POS is very user friendly. Its interface is customizable to our needs and very easy to use. Before we adopted Square POS, we used a combination of solutions from different manufacturer to try and achieve a portion of the functionality that Square POS provides under only 1 login
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Reliability and Availability
Adding skus was down for 1hr one day, otherwise have never experienced an outage.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Everything is very fast. Adding products, selling products, processing cards, and receiving funds.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Support hasn't been needed in the 2 years of using PayPal but I have received calls from the company in the past asking about my experience with the device that was sent to me and they were pretty helpful with advice. Support is all over the internet if needed but for emergencies, so it is best to contact them during business hours.
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Square POS support is good, I would not say they are great. There is a good knowledge base that you can access and there are other service providers who support Square POS who can assist you, but I find that the lack of help and support for setting it up for different industries is a let down. We had to research for hours just to find a solution to fix our need for a billing option for services for example. It would be great if Square POS broadened its support and solutions for various industries.
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Implementation Rating
It went very smoothly.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Square has good software and is relatively easy to use. The Square payment screen is more advanced than the basic model that PayPal uses. However, PayPal was a service that I already used-- and the company made it easy to integrate it into our business. Convenience and ease of use were key.
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Square POS is just the easiest to use and therefore the easiest to onboard new users to. I'd also like to point out, that if you're missing or lost one of the readers it's so easy to buy one at an Apple store or even other merchants like T-mobile or Verizon. WePay had less fees but was harder to onboard new users to. Eventbrite had really high fees.
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Scalability
Have not run into any limitations as of yet, with 500 SKUs entered and counting.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • One positive impact that PayPal here has had on our business is the ability to accept credit card payments which in itself increases our customer basis by 50%.
  • When PayPal fails, we have to pay higher fees to other processors, although I don't have an exact dollar impact.
  • When we struggle to take a payment using PayPal Here it makes our customers uneasy.
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  • The transaction fees and charge rates are much higher than other options available. We only used this system for a short time while we were switching to a MUCH cheaper option (Authorize.net).
  • I have also used this system with a charity that I volunteer with who only uses it during a couple of fundraisers a year when they have a small gift shop set up to sell donated goods to raise money. For such low volume, the fees aren't as big of a deal and the convenience of being able to take cards no matter where the event is located makes it worth it.
  • This is a system your average consumer will recognize and trust, so there's that.
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ScreenShots