Shopify POS vs Square: Which Should You Use to Sell Candles at Markets?

If you already run your online store on Shopify and you are wondering whether to use Shopify POS or Square at your next market, here is the short answer: both work, and neither one is going to make or break your booth. Use Shopify POS when you want your market sales and your online inventory living in one system automatically. Use Square when you want the cheapest, most bulletproof card reader that just works when you have a line of people and shaky venue wifi. At Garsnett Beacon we actually run Square at our markets and both of our brick and mortar registers, and I will explain exactly why below.

This question comes up a lot, especially from makers getting ready for their first fall and holiday markets. It is a good one to sort out before you are standing at a booth fumbling with a card reader that will not connect. If you are earlier in the journey and still setting the whole thing up, our guide on how to start a candle business covers the bigger picture, and this post zooms in on the one piece of taking payments in person.

What a point of sale actually needs to do at a candle booth

Before you compare the two, get clear on what you actually need a point of sale system to do at a market. It is less than you think. You need to take a card fast, you need it to work even when the venue wifi is terrible, and you need the sale to land somewhere you can look at later. Everything else is a nice to have.

The things that actually matter at a busy booth are reader reliability, how fast checkout is, whether it works on cell data instead of wifi, and whether you can hand someone a receipt or capture their email. The things makers obsess over, like loyalty programs and fancy dashboards, almost never matter on day one. Keep the bar simple and you will choose well.

Square: the setup we actually run at our markets

We use Square for every market and for both of our storefront registers in West Michigan. The reader is cheap, the app is free, and it syncs every sale to one dashboard I can check from my phone. When you are standing at a packed craft fair booth with people waiting, that reliability matters more than saving a few cents per swipe.

Here is what makes Square the easy default for most makers. The basic reader costs almost nothing to get started, so you are not out much to test whether you even like it. It runs on your phone over cell data, which has saved us more than once when a venue promised wifi and did not deliver. And the free tier is genuinely enough to run a real booth: inventory, sales reports, and tap or dip payments with no monthly bill. For a maker doing markets and pop ups who has not built a huge catalog yet, Square gets you selling in about ten minutes.

The tradeoff is that if you sell online on a different platform, your Square inventory and your website inventory are two separate lists. You either keep them in sync by hand or you let them drift. For a lot of makers that is totally fine, because market stock and online stock are often different anyway. We go deeper on the full market experience in our post on what selling candles at craft fairs really taught us.

Shopify POS: the case for keeping everything in one system

If your whole business already lives on Shopify, Shopify POS has one real advantage, and it is a good one: your in person sales and your online store share the same products, the same inventory count, and the same customer list. Sell three of your pumpkin candles at a market and your website stock drops by three automatically. No double entry, no guessing why your online shop oversold something you already moved at a booth.

That matters most once you are carrying real inventory across both channels and you are tired of reconciling two systems. If you are shipping steady online orders and doing regular markets with the same products, Shopify POS can save you a surprising amount of fiddly admin. It also keeps all of your customer and sales data in one place, which makes your email list and your reporting cleaner. Shopify does sell and connect domains too, so if you are building the website side, your store, your checkout, and your in person sales can all sit under one roof.

The catch is that the free version of Shopify POS is built for lighter in person selling, and the more advanced in person features live on a paid add on. You also need the Shopify POS card reader rather than any generic one. So the real question is not which is better in a vacuum. It is whether the one system convenience is worth it for how you sell.

How to choose if you already have a Shopify store

Here is how I would decide. If markets are an occasional thing and most of your energy is online, or if you are brand new and just want to start taking cards without overthinking it, go with Square. It is cheaper to start, it is forgiving, and you will not resent a monthly fee for a few events a year.

If you do markets or pop ups regularly, carry the same products online and in person, and you are already deep in the Shopify ecosystem, Shopify POS starts to earn its keep because of the inventory sync alone. The time you save not reconciling two stock lists is real money once you are busy. For most makers reading this who are still finding their footing, I would start with Square and only move to Shopify POS when the two separate inventory lists genuinely start to annoy you. Let the business tell you when to upgrade instead of buying the fancy thing first. That is the same philosophy behind the whole stack we use, which I broke down in our post on the tools and software we actually use.

The fees, and why they should not be the deciding factor

Both systems charge a processing fee on every in person card sale, and for most makers the two land in roughly the same neighborhood, somewhere in the high 2 percent range plus a small flat amount per transaction. Rates change and depend on your plan, so check the current numbers before you commit. But do not let a tiny fee difference drive this decision.

Run the math on a real day. If you do 600 dollars at a market, the difference between the two processors is usually a dollar or two for the entire event. That is not the thing to optimize. What actually moves your numbers is knowing your true cost per candle and pricing with real margin, which you can figure out fast with our free candle business calculators. If you want your pricing, cost of goods, and inventory in one place as you grow, that is exactly why we built Makers Manager, and you can use code CBP7DAYS at checkout for 7 days free.

Common questions

Can I use both Square and Shopify?

Yes, and plenty of makers do. You can run your online store on Shopify and still use a Square reader at markets. The only downside is that your in person inventory and your online inventory will not sync on their own, so you track market stock separately. For a lot of makers that separation is not a problem at all.

Does Shopify POS cost extra?

There is a free version included with a Shopify plan that covers basic in person selling, and a paid add on with the more advanced retail features. If you only do a handful of markets a year, the free version is usually plenty. Check Shopify's current plans, since the details shift over time.

What card reader do I need to get started?

For Square, the inexpensive tap and chip reader that pairs with your phone is all you need for a booth. For Shopify POS you need Shopify's own reader. Either way, bring a charged phone or tablet, a backup battery, and do a test transaction at home before the event so you are not learning the app in front of a customer. And do not forget to capture emails while people are at your booth, which we cover in our guide on how to collect emails at markets.

At the end of the day, the best point of sale is the one that gets you taking cards confidently without becoming a project. Pick one, run a test sale at your kitchen table, and go sell some candles. If you want a room full of makers to compare setups with before your next market, come join our free Facebook community. We would love to hear how your booth goes.