Choosing a POS System: What Small Retailers Actually Need to Know
Ask a retailer which point-of-sale system to buy and you will get a brand war. Square versus Clover, argued like sports teams. The actual question underneath is simpler: where do you sell, and what does each sale cost you?
The fee math decides most of it
On Square's free plan, in-person sales cost 2.6% plus 15 cents per transaction. A $20 sale costs you 67 cents. Online, the same sale costs 3.3% plus 30 cents, because the plan that keeps in-person rates low does not extend them to the web. Those are the current 2026 free-plan rates, and they make Square's cheapest plan the right answer only for businesses that sell mostly in person.
The online gap matters more than it looks. Square's own $49-a-month Plus plan drops online to 2.9% plus 30 cents. On $100,000 a year of online sales, that 0.4% difference is about $400 a year, which is real money for a small shop and also the entire decision: if you sell mostly online, Stripe's 2.9% plus 30 cents with no monthly fee undercuts Square's free plan at the same checkout. Square's convenience has a real price, and that is the number it is priced in.
Hardware is the lock-in
Square's hardware only processes Square payments. The reader is free, the terminal is not, and none of it follows you if you leave. That is fine if you picked Square for the right reasons and a trap if you picked Square because the vendor at the next booth had one. Clover works the same way from the other direction: the hardware usually arrives through a reseller bundled with a processing contract, and the contract is where the money is. Month-to-month on the paper, auto-renewing in practice. Read the cancellation clause before you sign anything that arrives in a box.
The flat per-transaction fee is also why small tickets deserve their own look. On a $5 sale, Square's online rate works out to about 9% of the sale. That is not a rounding error for a coffee shop or a bakery. If your average ticket is under $10 and you sell online, the percentage rate is the least interesting number on the page. The flat fee is the one eating you.
What to check besides the fee
Two things separate a point-of-sale system from a card reader with ambitions. Offline mode: if the internet drops mid-market-day, does the sale still go through? And inventory sync: when you sell the last one in person, does the online store know? Ask both questions before you care about loyalty programs, gift cards, or any add-on with its own monthly fee.
And read the add-on pricing like it is the real pricing, because it is. The free POS app covers sales. Payroll, marketing, appointments, and the nicer reporting tiers each carry their own monthly charge. A system that costs nothing to start can cost serious money to run, one checkbox at a time.
So the honest answer, the one I would give a Missoula retailer asking me this week: in person with no monthly fee and no contract, Square's free plan is hard to beat. Online, run the Stripe comparison first. And if a Clover reseller offers you free hardware, ask what the processing contract costs, because the hardware was never free. The cheapest POS is the one you can leave.