Pondering Shopify to Square Online Migration.. Thoughts?

[SecretChocolate]

I've been both a Square and Shopify user since pretty much both companies came in to being. Square we took to farmers markets and have kept it when we moved in our retail store over the past 11 years so we've been at it a while. Shopify was always our online cornerstone and it worked.

For both platforms their are always shortcomings. My biggest beef with Shopify of late is the charge structure is punishing to get all the bells and whistles you want while making it affordable. The breaking of the camels back per-say is coming from their street level taxation not capturing our municipalities tax rate for food service properly. They have no manual override except on a state level, not a muni level, which means I am paying taxes on things I shouldn't and not collecting tax on things I should--so it's an extra fee basically. Which Square basically has you define your taxes pretty clearly. I'll take a dumb solution that takes orders vs a smart system that doesn't handle all use cases any day.

I also tire of a two system management with tenuous inventory controls and everything that goes along with two full systems to juggle.

Conversion.. the dreaded conversion. Here we are: https://www.thesecretchocolatier.com/

I've simplified a lot over the years and I feel like moving sites wouldn't be all that difficult in a general sense. What I don't know is things I can't expect. What caveats are there with using Square as your online retailer? Where are the rough edges that I'd only notice after I flip the switch? Who has regrets and what are they, or if no regrets sing some praise.

Other tools we use:

• Shipstation
• Xero
• Judge.me product reviews
• Mailchimp
• Cross Platform Chat

Platforms

• Faire
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Google Merchant/Local

Thanks for words of wisdom.

edit: Oh, another thing is how often is Square updating the online components? I wouldn't have even thought of this migration before they bought Weebly, but if more of that gets in here then it'd be great. I feel some of the sandbox is still limited in parts. It'd be great to see a roadmap.

[DLRosenberg]

Hey There!

We have never used Shopify and have only used Square. Since we are a brick and mortar first before anything else, we sometimes have inventory/sync issues that are bothersome. As we have over 1200 different products, I imagine it's more annoying for us than other merchants with less variety.

What I've noticed from what you've written is working with Square will remove your need for separate tools such as mail chimp and judge.me. We use square for all of our marketing and customer reviews is part of the square "online world"..

It seems that the taxation issue is big.. so I think if Square would solve that pain point, the functionality you've gotten from Shopify may be a little better on the Square end.