The short version: Square Online has a genuinely free plan and publishes every rate: 3.3% + 30¢ online on Free, 2.9% + 30¢ on its $49 and $149 tiers. Cococart starts at $19 a month for an online store, offers a 7-day trial, and does not publish any transaction or processing fee at all. Its pricing page has a FAQ item titled "What fees are there?" whose answer does not render. The other thing to understand about Cococart is that it is modular: the store is $19, but POS Pro, loyalty, email, CRM, QR ordering, kitchen display, and bookings are each a separate monthly line, which is why its bundles run $99, $199, and $249.
Figures came from each company's own pricing pages, Square in July 2026 and Cococart verified again on 23 July 2026.
They are priced on completely different philosophies, and that is the whole comparison.
Square Online is one plan with everything in it. Free, Plus, or Premium, and each tier is a bundle. You do not assemble it. What you pay is a subscription plus a published card rate, and the free tier is a real product rather than a trial.
Cococart is a set of modules. Online Store is $19 a month, or $59 for Pro. Then POS Pro is $59, QR Ordering $39, Loyalty $39, Email Marketing $19, Bookings $29, Kitchen Display $39, and CRM $19, each billed separately. The bundles exist because the pieces add up quickly.
The differences that decide most cases:
One publishes its rate and one does not, which for a fee comparison is nearly the whole story. What we could verify about the quieter one is in our Cococart alternative guide.
Same four disclosures on both. Where a figure is not published, this says so rather than guessing.
| Square Online | Cococart | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Free $0 · Plus $49/mo · Premium $149/mo, each per location | Online Store $19/mo · Online Store Pro $59/mo. Add-on modules $19 to $59 each. Bundles: Value $99, Essentials $199, Premium $249. Annual billing gives 2 months free |
| Free trial | Not needed. The Free plan has no time limit | 7 days free, cancel anytime |
| Platform fee | $0. No commission on any plan | Not published. The pricing page lists plans only; the "What fees are there?" FAQ answer does not render |
| Card processing | 3.3% + 30¢ online on Free · 2.9% + 30¢ on Plus and Premium | Not published. Do not assume a standard rate |
Those two blank cells are the single most important thing on this page. Not because Cococart is hiding something sinister, but because you cannot compare total cost against a platform that does not publish half of it, and anyone presenting a side-by-side total for these two has filled in a number they do not have.
Because at any realistic volume, processing is larger than the subscription.
Take $2,000 a month in sales across 80 orders. On Square Online Free, that is 3.3% plus 80 × 30¢, or $90 a month in processing against a $0 subscription. The subscription is not the cost. The rate is.
Now run the same month on Cococart's $19 store plan. The subscription is $228 a year, which is cheap. But if the processing rate is 2.9%, your annual cost is roughly $1,116. If it is 3.5%, it is roughly $1,260. That $144 swing is larger than the entire subscription, and nothing on the pricing page lets you work out which it is.
So the practical advice is simple and slightly annoying: start the 7-day trial and find the rate before you build anything. It is in the product, in a help article, or in a reply from support, and it is the number that decides whether $19 a month is cheap or not.
Six questions, and the first two are the ones that matter.
Question three is worth asking directly. If you connect your own processor, the rate is between you and them and Cococart's silence makes more sense. If Cococart processes the payments, the rate is theirs to publish and its absence from a detailed pricing page is a choice.
Our look at Cococart for small food sellers covers the product itself in more detail.
It depends entirely on how much you switch on, and the answer flips fast.
Compare that to Square Online, where Free is $0 and Plus is $49, and Square's own point-of-sale app is free to use with a card reader. A vendor who wants a store, a POS, and email marketing is looking at $199 a month on Cococart against something much closer to $49 on Square.
Modular pricing is honest when you use two modules. It becomes expensive quickly, which is exactly why the bundles exist. Price the setup you will actually run in six months, not the one you are starting with.
The fair counterpoint is that modules you never switch on cost you nothing, and that is not true of a bundled plan. A vendor who needs a store and QR ordering and nothing else pays $58 a month on Cococart. On Square, QR ordering is not the same product and the closest equivalent involves a paid tier, so the modular version can genuinely win when your needs are narrow and specific. The trap is not the model, it is the drift: each module looks like a small addition on the day you add it, and nobody re-totals the bill until renewal.
Worth separating, because Cococart's module list gives away who it is really for.
QR code ordering, kitchen display, bookings, and a point-of-sale tier describe a venue: tables, a kitchen line, staff, and people ordering while sitting down. That is a coherent product and it is not what a cottage food seller needs.
A home baker with a Saturday pickup window uses one of those eight modules. Square Online's free plan covers the same ground at $0 with a published rate, and the gap only opens up if you serve people at tables.
So the honest sort is by business type rather than by price. Cafés, food trucks with a window, and small restaurants get real value from Cococart's stack. Vendors selling pre-made batches for collection are paying for a venue's toolkit, and a flat-fee storefront built for pickup prices that shape more directly than either.
Our breakdown of what Square Online's free plan really costs works the 3.3% through properly, and Square Online vs Shopify compares it against the other obvious generalist.
The unpublished rate is the tie-breaker. Between two similar tools, take the one whose costs you can read before you commit; surprises in processing rates only ever run one direction.
That third point is a real differentiator. A vendor serving a bilingual community gets something from Cococart that Square does not offer at all, and no amount of fee transparency substitutes for a storefront your customers can read.
Both are built around a store or a counter. A vendor selling at markets and from home is a different shape.
That first point causes the most day-to-day friction. Three selling days with three cutoffs turns into three stores, or into rules typed into an order note that half your customers do not read.
If that is your week, Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually with 0% commission and 2.9% plus $0.30 processing published up front, and it handles pickup at each place you sell with its own schedule and cutoff, local delivery with a radius and a route, and sales tax calculated, filed, and remitted in all 50 states. The honest bounds: it does not ship nationally, has no point-of-sale, no QR table ordering, no kitchen display, no loyalty program, and no drop windows. If you run table service or need a POS, both platforms on this page do things it does not. You can put a week of real orders through it and see which set of problems you actually have.
This comes up more than it should, and there is a reasonable way through it.
That last point deserves care. Unpublished pricing usually means a sales process rather than anything worse, and plenty of good software is sold that way. What it does mean is that comparison costs you time, which is a real price you are paying before you have paid anything.
If you are handling card payments either way, the security obligations are yours regardless of who processes them. The FTC's guidance on privacy and data security for businesses covers what that involves, and the FDIC's consumer resource center is a plain-language reference for how payments and payouts actually move.
Online Store is $19 a month, Online Store Pro is $59. Add-on modules run $19 to $59 each. Bundles are $99 Value, $199 Essentials, and $249 Premium. Annual billing gives two months free, and there is a 7-day trial.
Not published. The pricing page lists plans and modules but no transaction or processing rate, and its "What fees are there?" FAQ answer does not render on the page. Ask during the trial before building anything.
Yes, the Free plan is $0 a month with no time limit. What you pay is a higher card rate: 3.3% plus 30¢ online, against 2.9% plus 30¢ on the paid plans. On $2,000 a month that is about $90 in processing.
Square Online, on published evidence, because its free plan is $0 and Cococart's cheapest is $19 a month. A full total comparison is not possible while Cococart's processing rate is unpublished.
Yes, as a separate module. POS Pro is $59 a month, and it appears in the $199 Essentials bundle. Square's point-of-sale app is free to use with a compatible card reader.
Cococart, with English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. That is a genuine advantage for a vendor serving a community that does not read English comfortably.
Not automatically. Unpublished pricing usually reflects a sales-led approach rather than anything worse. It does mean you should get the number in writing before you commit, since at any real volume it is the largest line on the bill.
Square Online publishes everything: $0, $49, or $149, with 3.3% or 2.9% plus 30¢ depending on tier. You can model your yearly cost before signing up, which is worth something in a category where most competitors want a call.
Cococart offers something Square does not, particularly QR ordering, kitchen display, bookings, and five languages, and its $19 store plan is genuinely cheap for what it is. What it does not offer is a published fee, which means you cannot compare totals until you ask.
So the sequence is straightforward. Start Cococart's 7-day trial, get the processing rate in writing, and only then compare it against Square's published numbers. If the modules you need are only on Cococart, that answer may hold regardless. But do not choose on a $19 headline against a $0 one when the number that actually decides it is missing from the page.
