Why all of the price increases for square? -_-

[ajcuriel]

What's with all of the price increases lately? Square is considerably late to the show in terms of squeezing the small business. Earlier in the year you guys decided to screw the small business by not refunding merchant fees when a refund is processed. You guys introduced price increases for square teams and removed certain features to make them paid. Now I just got an email saying that you are removing a lot of features from square online and making these paid as well..

Honestly is it even worth it to do business with square anymore when those guys at clover call me literally once a week to ask me to switch.

🤔

[Donnie-M]

@ajcuriel It really does stink to watch costs to do business go up.  I hate what has happened with pricing across the board from food costs to labor costs, unfortunately, square isn't immune to labor costs.  When you say square is late, I agree they didn't come first or even second to the ball game of not refunding transaction fees, paypud and stripe did that a long time ago, so square actually helped us out by waiting so long.

The changes to features are just the way business is now.  You get the core features for free, but if you want the more robust bells and whistles, then I am not going to say square doesn't deserve something for the cost and development.  I know some here will say it is easy, but I am on several beta test groups and there are teams and months of work that go into one feature.  Because of all of the interoperable systems, there is a ton of design and quality control to make sure something is ready.  If you don't think that matters, just look at the forums when something has a bug or goes down.  Lots of complaining.

I still think that paying some for even the online is great and worth it compared to competitors. Don't discount having all of your data in one ecosystem.  Clovur isn't a bad company, but there are things there that are not at face value.  Most of the time there is a monthly fee for their stuff to get the "free" stuff.  Ultimately you have to look at what you get for the money you spend.

Go and try to find the clovur forums with helpful people and a knowledge base like square's if you want to have a place to start comparing.

I wish you the best, but in my humble opinion, Square is worth the cost.

[Stacelyn24]

I understand how price increases are frustrating...but take it from someone who has seen plenty of business owners switch from Clover...cheaper isn't always better!!!  Check the features that you need then allocate your prices in your business to reflect them so that they don't cut too much into your profits.  We all have to make the adjustments at this point with inflation.

[TheRealChipA]

@ajcuriel I can’t add much to what @Stacelyn24 and @Donnie-M said. Square is a business with shareholders. Prices go up. It’s a cost of doing business. 

I’ll make an offer though. I have a spreadsheet that tells me how much each year all processing fees and subscriptions cost me — per dollar and per transaction on average. I use that to adjust my prices each year so that I don’t fall behind. Since everything needs to be in my COGS calculations, this helps insure I’m charging enough to cover my Square costs. Let me know if you’d like me to send it to you. 

Currently my subscriptions this year have cost me $0.022 cents per total dollar in sales, and $0.028 per card dollar of sales. I pass that on to my guests in my prices. It works!

In closing, I left Square a few years ago for one of those promised better deals. It took me a year to realize I’d been had, and another year to undo the damage I did to my cash flow. Caution and lots of research is advised. 

[Anthem]

@TheRealChipA 🙋‍oh oh oh, I wanna see it. Total nerd for a good spreadsheet and more for one that helps me better under and my business. Please do share!