TL;DR: Square’s website builder, Square Online, is included free with Square Free, but you publish on a square.site address and pay 3.3% + 30¢ per online card sale. To use your own domain you need Square Plus at $49 a month per location, which also lowers online card fees to 2.9% + 30¢ (Square, checked November 9, 2026). It’s a good choice if you sell food or products and already use Square. If you run a service business and mostly need the phone to ring, WebZum builds a finished multi-page site for you in about five minutes. You see it free first, then it’s $19/mo (Basic) or $34/mo (Professional, your own domain), month to month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee on every plan.
See your finished site free before you pay →
Disclosure: WebZum publishes this blog and makes a competing website builder. Square’s prices and rules come from Square’s own pages, linked inline. The 24-site test is our own work.
Prices checked November 9, 2026. US list prices in USD, before tax. They can change.
How much does the Square website builder cost?
$0 on Square Free, $49 a month on Square Plus, or $149 a month on Square Premium, each per location. Square doesn’t sell the website builder on its own anymore. It comes inside Square’s three company-wide plans (Square online store plans):
| Square plan | Monthly fee | Online card fee | In-person card fee | Your own domain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square Free | $0 per location | 3.3% + 30¢ | 2.6% + 15¢ | No (square.site address) |
| Square Plus | $49 per location | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.5% + 15¢ | Yes |
| Square Premium | $149 per location | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.4% + 15¢ | Yes |
Square switched to these plans on October 6, 2025. Its announcement says the three tiers replace “18 different à la carte subscriptions” (Square press release). That’s why older reviews quote Square Online prices that don’t exist anymore.
Plus and Premium each come with a free 30-day trial, and Square says you can “cancel or switch plans anytime” (same plans page). A custom domain from Square starts at “as low as $19.95 a year” (Square website builder).
What do you get on the free plan?
A real website with online ordering, pickup and delivery, on Square’s address. The plans page lists a “website builder with SEO tools,” pickup, local delivery and shipping, and an online booking website on Square Free. Hosting and SSL are included, and Square says you get “unlimited bandwidth at no extra cost” (Square website builder).
What’s missing on Free, per Square’s own feature table (plans page):
- Your own domain. “Custom domain connect” is marked Plus and Premium only.
- Video and embeds. “Custom code and native video embed,” which is how you’d add an OpenTable or Eventbrite widget, needs Plus.
- Most design control. “Expanded site customization” (custom fonts, video, animations, premium stock photos) needs Plus.
- Booking protections. Cancellation policies and no-show fees for appointments need Plus.
- Phone support after 90 days. Free gets phone help “6am–6pm PT M–F for the first 90 days.” Plus keeps those hours, and Premium is 24/7.
When is Square Plus worth $49 a month?
When you want your own domain, or when you sell enough online for the lower fee to pay for itself. The fee math is simple. Plus cuts the online rate from 3.3% to 2.9%, a 0.4-point drop, and the 30¢ stays the same. So the fee savings alone cover $49 once you process about $12,250 a month in online card sales ($49 ÷ 0.004).
Most neighborhood shops don’t sell that much online, so for them Plus is really a $49-a-month fee for a domain and more design options. In a year that’s $588 per location, before the domain itself.
If you already pay for Plus for other reasons, like loyalty, staff tools or advanced POS features that Square lists on that plan (Square press release), the website part is effectively included.
What did we find when we tested 24 Square websites?
Most of them showed almost no readable text to a crawler that doesn’t run JavaScript, and none had business structured data. That matters for AI answers. Vercel’s study of AI crawler traffic found that “none of the major AI crawlers currently render JavaScript,” including OpenAI’s GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, Anthropic’s ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot (Vercel, December 2024). Google is different: it renders pages with “an evergreen version of Chromium” (Google Search Central).
How we tested (November 9, 2026): we found 24 public Square Online homepages through web searches of square.site with local trade words (bakery, cafe, BBQ, handyman, lawn, pet grooming and more), skipping two in Canada. We fetched each homepage once with a plain request using GPTBot’s user agent, the way a non-JavaScript crawler sees it, and counted what was in the HTML. Then we ran the same test on 9 of WebZum’s own demo sites.
| What the raw HTML had | Square Online (24 sites) | WebZum demo sites (9) |
|---|---|---|
| Readable page text (outside scripts) | 5 of 24 (all restaurant order menus); the other 19 had under 110 characters | 9 of 9 |
| A page title | 17 of 24 (7 were blank) | 9 of 9 |
| A meta description | 7 of 24 | 9 of 9 |
| Business structured data (JSON-LD) | 0 of 24 | 9 of 9 (Bakery, Plumber, AutoRepair and similar types) |
| A tap-to-call (tel:) link | 0 of 24 | 9 of 9 (7 to 9 per homepage) |
| Homepage size | 42 KB to 1.5 MB | 33 KB to 40 KB |
What that means in plain words: on 19 of the 24 sites, a bot that doesn’t run JavaScript gets a loading screen. The business name and details are in there, but inside a JavaScript data blob rather than on the page. Vercel notes that AI models may still pick up data like that, so it isn’t invisible, just harder to read. Google renders these pages, so they can still rank on Google. And the phone links may well appear after the page loads in a browser. We only measured what the first download contains.
Two fixes are in your hands on Square: Square’s help center shows where to add an SEO title and description for the site and for each page (Square Support), and 17 of the 24 sites we checked hadn’t filled in the description. Square also warns that SEO changes can take “anywhere between a few days to several weeks” to show up in search results (same page).
Caveat: 24 sites found through search isn’t a random sample of every Square site, and WebZum’s demos are our own. Treat this as a spot check, not a study.
I’m on an old Square Online plan. What changes?
You can move to Square Plus or Premium yourself, and Square refunds the unused part of your old plan. Square’s help center says that when you migrate, “your legacy Square Online hosting plan is automatically cancelled and you receive a pro-rated refund for any remaining days.” Domains you bought through Square and Google Workspace “continue to be billed separately” (Square Support). The self-serve switch is for US sellers on legacy Square Online Plus or Premium.
When should you pick Square Online?
Pick it if you take payments with Square and want customers to order or book online. That’s what it’s built for: your item library, online orders, pickup and delivery, gift cards and appointments all live in one Square account. For a bakery, cafe, food truck or shop already on Square, the free plan is a fast, honest way to start taking orders. Square’s plans page now even lists a “Sync Wix online store” option for sellers who want Wix’s design tools on top of a Square catalog.
It’s a weaker fit if your website’s job is to get calls and quote requests, like a plumber, cleaner or roofer. Then the parts you’d pay $49 a month for are your own domain and design control, and you still write every page yourself.
How is WebZum different?
WebZum builds the site for you, written around your trade and your town, and you change it by typing. It’s built for local businesses, and it isn’t trying to be the cheapest. Here’s what you get:
- A finished site in about five minutes. Describe your business or paste your Google Business link, answer about four questions, and WebZum builds several pages with copy, photos, a logo and a short video header on the home page.
- A visitor chatbot, included. It answers visitors with your hours and tap-to-call number and offers to take their name and number for a callback.
- SEO and AEO built in. Every site gets structured data (LocalBusiness and more specific types like Bakery or Plumber, plus FAQPage), a sitemap, and a plain-English summary written for AI tools, on both plans. The page text is in the HTML, as the test above shows.
- Unlimited edits. Ask the editor for a new page, new photos or new colors in plain words. There are no AI credits to count.
- A Google ad already written. When your site is done, Promote on Google has a ready search ad based on your site. You fund it with Pay and WebZum pays Google for you. Once the site is published, you also get a free short video ad of your site to share with customers.
- Your own domain on Professional. WebZum registers it for you (we cover registration up to $20 a year), or you connect one you already own.
The honest limits: WebZum doesn’t take payments or online orders itself, and it isn’t built for a big online store. If you sell on Square, you can keep Square for orders and ask the WebZum editor to add an outside booking or payment widget, like your Square ordering page. WebZum adds no transaction fees of its own.
Pricing: you get a free 30-day preview, then Basic is $19 a month or Professional is $34 a month, month to month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee on every plan. For other builders, see Wix pricing, Webflow pricing, the cheapest website builders in 2026, our guide to a restaurant website, how to buy a domain name, or WebZum for restaurants.
FAQ
Is the Square website builder free?
Yes, on Square Free. You get a site on a square.site address with online ordering and an online booking page, and you pay 3.3% + 30¢ per online card sale. Your own domain needs Square Plus at $49 a month per location (Square, checked November 9, 2026).
Can I use my own domain with Square Online for free?
No. Square’s plans page marks “custom domain connect” as Plus and Premium only. Square sells domains from $19.95 a year, on top of the plan.
Is Square Online the same as Weebly?
They’re related. Square bought Weebly in 2018 (Square press release), and Square Online sites still load their files from Weebly’s servers (editmysite.com) in the pages we tested. But Square Online is sold and supported as part of Square’s plans.
Is Square Online good for SEO?
It has the basics: page titles, descriptions and image alt text you can edit (Square Support). In our spot check of 24 Square sites, most served almost no page text to crawlers that don’t run JavaScript, and none had business structured data. Google can still read them; most AI crawlers can’t run the JavaScript.
What’s the difference between Square Online and Squarespace?
They’re different companies. Square Online is the website builder inside Square, the payments company. Squarespace is a separate website builder; see our Squarespace pricing breakdown.
What’s an easier option for a service business?
If you’d rather get a finished site than build one, WebZum writes the copy, makes the pages and photos, and adds a visitor chatbot in about five minutes. You see it free first, then it’s $19/mo or $34/mo, month to month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Curious what yours would look like? Get your free WebZum preview. It takes about five minutes.