Hi @sheerfaces,
I totally understand how the new subscription model Square is moving to might seem a bit ordinary.
I've just provided my two cents on this in this post: Re: I HATE the new pricing tiers! Free no longer l... - The Seller Community
Personally I think Square offers a lot of features for the low cost they charge us small businesses. Every platform has gaps, trust me, I've investigated them all, but the way I look at it is its an investment in a platform we personally really love using and ultimately we as the users of Square will be benefactors of new features and continuous improvements that come from being part of this. This Seller Community alone is super helpful for other small businesses – I haven't seen any other platform that competes with this alone.
I ran numbers under this new subscription model for our barber shop using our current 1.9% trans fees over the last 2 years vs the new monthly subscription but potentially lower 1.6% transaction fee, and it came out almost identical. It surprised me, but gave me comfort.
I highly recommend you run the same numbers for your business, you might be surprised its actually not a big change. Plus comparing to other non-integrated / messy systems that compete (or barely!) with Square, you'll still be in front by sticking with Square in my opinion, I know we are.
A quick Google to see what options exist shows Timely as a popular contender (which is $$$ by the time you factor in your SMS confirmation blocks they charge for) plus adding on an Eftpos machine (most banks are charging minimum $30 per month just for their crappy hardware, plus a transaction fee + flat fee, and Tyro which is who Timely 'integrates' with, is not much better, plus I don't think anyone has forgotten what Tyro just did to Australian retailers at the end of 2020 with their major outage which affected thousands of small businesses in a really tough time with COVID and bushfires etc.
The devil is in the detail with this stuff (it's like comparing energy providers, one has a peak tariff, and the other charges a daily tariff, one might appear cheaper, but its because they're clever in the way they do the breakdown!).
Hope that helps!
