Alternatives
Square Online alternative: when the free plan is not the whole story
Square Online has a genuinely free plan: $0 per month, and you pay only Square's processing (3.3% + 30 cents online on the free plan). On raw per-order cost, that is cheaper than Delitero, and this page says so plainly. What you trade is control: Square is your processor, your money settles through Square, and your store lives inside Square's ecosystem. Delitero costs 5% per order on top of Stripe's processing, and in exchange the payments run through your own Stripe account on your own website.
What Square Online is
Square Online is the e-commerce arm of Square: a site builder with ordering pages for pickup and delivery, tied into Square's POS, hardware, and payments ecosystem. If you already run Square POS, your menu, orders, and payments live in one system, and that integration is the strongest reason to use it. It is a mature product from one of the largest players in small-business payments.
What Square Online costs
Verified 2026-07-11 against Square's own help center.
- Square Free: $0 per month · online processing 3.3% + 30 cents
- Square Plus: $49 per location per month · online processing 2.9% + 30 cents
- Square Premium: $149 per location per month · online processing 2.9% + 30 cents
- In-person processing runs lower (2.6% + 15 cents on the free plan)
- Square's October 2025 pricing change raised the free plan's online rate from 2.9% + 30 cents to 3.3% + 30 cents
Where Delitero differs
- Your own Stripe account. Payments settle directly into your Stripe account through Stripe Connect. Delitero never holds your money, and your Stripe account is yours if you leave.
- Your own site. Delitero's widget embeds into any website you already have: WordPress, Squarespace, a custom build, anything that can host a script tag. You are not building your store inside a platform's site builder.
- Restaurant-shaped out of the box: a kitchen display app, an escalating alert chain for unaccepted orders (a repush after 60 seconds, a text after 2 minutes, a phone call after 4), a courier app for your own drivers, scheduled pickup, and one-click 86ing.
- Pay only when you sell. 5% per order, only when you sell. No subscription, no setup fee, no contract. Nothing else. Card processing is Stripe's standard rate (2.9% + $0.30, varies by card), paid to Stripe, not us.
The honest math
Per $100 order: Square Free takes $3.60 in processing. Delitero takes $5.00, and Stripe takes $3.20. Square's free plan is cheaper per order, roughly $4.60 per $100. That is the real price of Delitero's model, and the reasons to pay it are ownership (your Stripe, your site, your data) and the restaurant tooling above, not fee arithmetic.
The full percentage-versus-subscription math, with assumptions stated, is in what online ordering actually costs; how the wider field compares is in the best online ordering systems.
Who should pick Square Online
- Restaurants already on Square POS: the integration does what Delitero cannot, since Delitero has no POS integrations
- Owners who want the lowest possible per-order cost and are comfortable with Square as their processor
- Anyone who needs a website built for them: Square Online includes a site builder, Delitero does not
- Restaurants that want in-person and online payments in one system
Who should pick Delitero
- Restaurants with their own website that want ordering embedded in it rather than a store on a platform subdomain
- Owners who want funds settling in their own Stripe account, independent of any single vendor
- Restaurants running their own delivery drivers: Delitero includes a courier app for dispatching them
- Owners who value the kitchen display plus the watchdog escalation chain for missed orders
Side by side
| Square Online | Delitero | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | $0, $49, or $149 per location | $0 |
| Per-order platform fee | None | 5% per order, only when you sell |
| Online processing | 3.3% + 30 cents (free plan) or 2.9% + 30 cents (paid plans), via Square | Stripe's standard rate (2.9% + $0.30, varies by card), paid to Stripe |
| Where money settles | Your Square account | Your own Stripe account |
| Ordering on your existing site | No embed: Square hosts the ordering page (square.site or a custom subdomain) and your site links out to it | Embed widget on any site, plus a hosted page |
| POS integration | Native (Square POS) | None |
| Website builder | Yes | No |
| Kitchen display | Yes, in the Square ecosystem | Yes, included |
| Courier app for own drivers | No driver app; in-house delivery is settings only (zones, fees), on-demand couriers via DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Nash | Yes, included |
Pricing above was verified on 2026-07-11 against Square's own help center. Vendors change pricing; check squareup.com for current terms. Delitero is not affiliated with Square.