New Square Paid Plans: Square Plus and Square Premium - Help me understand them!

[dokidoki]

Square just announced their new Paid Plans but there's a lot of vagueness that I couldn't get answered through Customer Service. 

Right now I pay for Square for Retail and Square Online separately! It doesn't make it clear if the new paid plans combine them. 

This support page says you can compare your current plan to a new plan and gives instructions on how to, but it doesn't work. The Compare Your Current Plan button doesn't exist. 
https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/8569-switch-to-the-new-square-subscription-plans

It also seems like we are going to be forced to switch to one of these plans in the future? 

Anyone able to offer clarity on how to compare what we have now to the new plans? 

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

Thank you everyone for sharing your feedback and questions around the new Square plans. I've surfaced this thread to our team and want to share some of the insights from them.

About the Compare Your Plan button: This is currently being rolled out to all sellers and should be available in your Dashboard by the end of this week. For the moment, the best way to understand how your current plan is compared to the new plan is to visit our website. You can also use our Fee Calculator to understand how your processing fees may change under each plan. I want to note that right now, it is not a requirement to switch to the new pricing plan, so please take all the time you need to make the right decision for your business.

About refunds: You should get a refund for the unused days on your cancelled subscriptions. If you pay with a bank account, it can take up to 7 business days for the refunds to reflect in your account. If there are any services where you have paid for close to the date when you switched, it is possible that the payment is pending but once it cleared, it will be refunded back to you. Some services, such as Text Message Marketing for example, is post-pay, so if you received a bill on Oct 1 for example, it's likely for the month previous. We are unable to check for account specific details on the Community so if you encounter any issue with refunds from your cancellation, the best thing is to contact our Support team directly. 

About features included in the plan: There have been a couple of questions around what features are included in each plan. This site has a handy comparison table — for example, under Reportings & analytics, you'll see that features such as sales insights, sales summary email, reconcilliation report, or AI-powered insights are available across all plans, but paid plans have more options for in-depth analytics such as Cost of Good Sold, inventory-sell through (which have typically been available only with Square for Retail Plus & Premium), and others.

I hope this help addressed some of the questions raised in this thread. If there's anything I can help to clarify, please let me know!

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

@dokidoki @samanthor @Fetched-Up Thank you for flagging the issue with Square Online subscription. I'm going back to the team and asking them to look into this further. Once I have more information, I'll share here.

@Random1 From what I understand, the following reports are currently available with paid versions of Square for Retail:

• Cost of goods sold
• Project profit sold
• Vendor sales
• Inventory by category
• Inventory sell-through

All of these are included within Square Plus.

[CindyX]

Thank you for asking this question - I was so confused by the email I received. I have two separate businesses using square (one on square for retail and one on regular square POS), and only one received this notification. At first glance it looks like this will save me money, but that just seems too good to be true. And I wasn't sure if this would be offered to all accounts, or only select accounts. 

[anniemcg]

Thanks for raising this, especially about the missing "Compare Your Current Plan" link! We currently use Appointments Plus, Shifts Plus, Payroll, and Messages Plus and the communication so far has been way too vague.

[Heartsonfiber]

I was just typing a new forum post that said exactly this. I can’t tell what will come over with the new plan and what I may still need to pay for. I’m so confused. 

[dokidoki]

Trying to talk to Support is a nightmare. They have no idea how to answer any of my questions. They told me it was my browser (it's not). I've tried every browser and nothing shows that button. They also had no idea how to answer questions about the new plans. I asked them if it included Square Online and they didn't know! 

[Fetched-Up]

I actually migrated over yesterday to Square Premium.  I previously had Retail Plus, Square Loyalty,  Square Email Marketing, Square Text Message Marketing, Messages Plus.  That came to $165, so $149 seems like a better deal, especially with the processing fees. I also have square online for $384 a year. I have not seen a prorated credit for that; my impression is that it is included.

When I renewed, they charged me $19.23 for the remaining days of October.  However, I did not receive a credit for the previous service, which was kind of crappy; they are double dipping.  They also renewed square text messaging for $20, which I already paid for on Oct 1.

I will deal with it in November when the full billing begins.

Oh, and there were some bugs.  The register needed to reboot.  After the reboot, the saved carts I had, I couldn't do a price adjustment.  I had to remove the product (it then asks for a reason why it was removed, that is new) and re-add back in.  

[anniemcg]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Since it looks like we have two months to decide, I'll wait for some of these issues to be resolved before committing to a new plan. Hopefully, Square can give better guidance soon. Their bulleted feature list comparisons are not sufficiently detailed or comprehensive enough for our business to rely on.

[Herbs712]

Thank you for sharing, I found the comparison at the bottom under “compare by industry “ https://squareup.com/us/en/pricing

I also have Square Online and Squore for Retail . My concern is that this $49 only covers online because the comparison doesn’t mention the features that come with Square for Retail in the comparison chart. If the cost was combined, that would be awesome and saving money. But  right now it seems as of the price has just increased for Square online . The POS pricing will probably increase soon after. 

[IndoorFins]

I've been using the free plan, but it looks like I'll loose the basic analysis tools I've had? Can anyone else tell if that's the case? They list business insights under the middle tier. 

[drenn]

I just took the leap … I was using the Free Online Plan + Email Marketing + Loyalty. 

This set up was $91 a month. 

I made the switch today to the new $49 Online Plus Plan. 

Right now it looks like I still have access to both email marketing and loyalty and text messaging marketing was added to my services. 

Tomorrow I’ll be charged my new rate … so I’m expecting just one charge of $49 to hit my account and loyalty and email marketing to continue (I do my newsletters on Fridays so I’ll have to wait a week to see how that shakes out). 

In a week I’ll throw out an update. 

[drenn]

Update: 

So I was Charged $49 + tax Saturday 

I did get two refunds deposited to my checking account, one for email marketing and one for loyalty. 

My Loyalty is working. I can still see reporting on my marketing page for emails sent. My newletter won't go out till Friday, but everything looks the same with email marketing. 

I've gotten Text Msg Marketing added, Square automatically set up two automated text msg related to Loyalty. 

I went from $91 a month to $53 with the same services plus text msg and who knows what else I haven't stumbled across. 

[dokidoki]

UPDATE:
I took the leap on October 31st to see how it would go since from what I understand, these new plans INCLUDE Square Online and you don't need to pay for it separately. It did cancel my Square for Retail Plus subscription immediately and switched me over to Square Plus. And on November 1st, I was correctly charged $49 and not the $60 I used to pay for Square for Retail Plus. But it did NOT automatically cancel my Square Online Subscription despite the claim that all subscriptions would be immediately cancelled. I wonder if it's because that is in a totally separate area. It's super hidden so I had a hard time finding it. If you're paying for Square Online, you can go to Dashboard > Online > Online Store > Click your Account Name on the Top Right Corner > Account Settings > My Services. I paid for a year ($348) and it is supposed to renew on November 7th for another year, so I cancelled it manually. I'll update if I still have access to Square Online like it seems I'm supposed to as part of the Square Plus plan after the cancellation date of November 7th. I'm curious if I'll get a refund for the difference since it did not automatically cancel. 

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

Thank you everyone for sharing your feedback and questions around the new Square plans. I've surfaced this thread to our team and want to share some of the insights from them.

About the Compare Your Plan button: This is currently being rolled out to all sellers and should be available in your Dashboard by the end of this week. For the moment, the best way to understand how your current plan is compared to the new plan is to visit our website. You can also use our Fee Calculator to understand how your processing fees may change under each plan. I want to note that right now, it is not a requirement to switch to the new pricing plan, so please take all the time you need to make the right decision for your business.

About refunds: You should get a refund for the unused days on your cancelled subscriptions. If you pay with a bank account, it can take up to 7 business days for the refunds to reflect in your account. If there are any services where you have paid for close to the date when you switched, it is possible that the payment is pending but once it cleared, it will be refunded back to you. Some services, such as Text Message Marketing for example, is post-pay, so if you received a bill on Oct 1 for example, it's likely for the month previous. We are unable to check for account specific details on the Community so if you encounter any issue with refunds from your cancellation, the best thing is to contact our Support team directly. 

About features included in the plan: There have been a couple of questions around what features are included in each plan. This site has a handy comparison table — for example, under Reportings & analytics, you'll see that features such as sales insights, sales summary email, reconcilliation report, or AI-powered insights are available across all plans, but paid plans have more options for in-depth analytics such as Cost of Good Sold, inventory-sell through (which have typically been available only with Square for Retail Plus & Premium), and others.

I hope this help addressed some of the questions raised in this thread. If there's anything I can help to clarify, please let me know!

[dokidoki]

Do the new plans include Square Online? I switched over from Square for Retail Plus and my Square Online subscription was not automatically cancelled. Does that mean it’s not included? 

[Random1]

Is it possible to answer the question - if you have Retail Plus for $60/mo added to your free Square POS - will moving to the new Square Plus subscription for $49/mo give you all the SAME reporting services as Retail Plus?  Is there a chart for comparison on that?

[samanthor]

I switched from Retail Plus to Square Plus today. When I went to check my online site - as referenced by other users in this thread - I got a message saying that I needed a qualifying plan to keep my custom domain. After chatting online with several Square support members, it seems you DO still need your Online Plus for your website - IF you use your own domain name. So whilst I did save $10 going from Retail to Square, I do still need my $348/year plan for online. I wish Square were more forthcoming with their information. If I have been misinformed and you figured this out, please let us know!!

[dokidoki]

I'm pretty sure Square Support is wrong. They seem completely misinformed about the plans to be honest. My attempts at talking to them have been a nightmare.  I got that message too but it seems it's a generic message sent to everyone even if it doesn't apply. I'm not able to upload a screenshot but if you go here: https://squareup.com/us/en/online-store/plans and scroll down to the Website section, expand it, you'll see it says Square Plus includes custom domain! 

[Fetched-Up]

Yeah, I am not sure there is a consistent message being communicated.  In this thread, people have said we don't have to do anything for a couple of months.

However, I logged into the Online Editor and this message is now at the top:

I am already subscribed to Square Premium.  My online subscription (directs to the old weebly portal) was just renewed at $348 on 10/26.  I also get my domain through Square.  I have not seen a credit for this.  I have received credit for my old Square subscription for the last few days of October.

[tranguyen]

Again, thanks for flagging that pop-up @Fetched-Up! Our team are working to remove it now.

I know you, @samanthor and @dokidoki mentioned you still saw your old Square Online subscriptions showing as active. The cancellation for those should completed processing now. Depending on how many days you have left on your subscription, you'll either receive a refund or a credit for the unused day to your account. 

If you notice any issue still, let me know and I'm happy to dig into it a bit more! 

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

@dokidoki @samanthor @Fetched-Up Thank you for flagging the issue with Square Online subscription. I'm going back to the team and asking them to look into this further. Once I have more information, I'll share here.

@Random1 From what I understand, the following reports are currently available with paid versions of Square for Retail:

• Cost of goods sold
• Project profit sold
• Vendor sales
• Inventory by category
• Inventory sell-through

All of these are included within Square Plus.

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

@dokidoki is right — thank you again for sharing the resource! 

@samanthor to confirm, Square Online Plus is included in Square Plus, along with the ability to connect and use custom domain.

We are currently processing cancellation & refunds for unused Square Online Plus subscription, so it can take a few business days for this to reflect on your account.

Let me know if there are any other questions I can answer about the new pricing plan.