Miva vs. Square Online

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Miva
Score 5.7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Miva Merchant is a point-and-click, online store development and management system that allows merchants to build their online store through a web browser, and lets developers provide aftermarket enhancements for the online store.N/A
Square Online
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Square Online (formerly Weebly) is a basic content management system with blogging and eCommerce features. It can be utilized for building standard websites or specialized webpages for online stores.
$6
per month
Pricing
MivaSquare Online
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Personal
$9.00
per month
Professional
$16.00
per month
Performance
$29.00
per month
Free
Free
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MivaSquare Online
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMiva employs a revenue-based pricing model. The Miva platform is best suited to growing mid-size and enterprise merchants that have complex business needs and are making (or planning to make) $1 million or more in annual online revenue.Pricing decreases when paid annually: Personal - $6/Month Professional$12/Month Performance - $26/Month
More Pricing Information
Features
MivaSquare Online
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
Miva
8.3
2 Ratings
8% above category average
Square Online
-
Ratings
Product catalog & listings8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Product management8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk product upload9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Branding8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile storefront9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Product variations8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Website integration7.82 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual customization8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
CMS5.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
Miva
7.5
2 Ratings
1% below category average
Square Online
-
Ratings
Abandoned cart recovery7.32 Ratings00 Ratings
Checkout user experience7.82 Ratings00 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
Miva
7.7
2 Ratings
8% below category average
Square Online
-
Ratings
eCommerce security7.72 Ratings00 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Miva
7.3
2 Ratings
2% below category average
Square Online
-
Ratings
Promotions & discounts8.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Personalized recommendations6.82 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO6.82 Ratings00 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
Miva
8.0
6 Ratings
3% above category average
Square Online
-
Ratings
Multi-site management9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
Order processing7.86 Ratings00 Ratings
Inventory management7.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Shipping7.72 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom functionality8.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Miva
-
Ratings
Square Online
7.0
28 Ratings
14% below category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings7.028 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Miva
-
Ratings
Square Online
7.9
19 Ratings
3% above category average
API00 Ratings6.014 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings9.915 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Miva
-
Ratings
Square Online
7.1
40 Ratings
7% below category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings9.033 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings9.036 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings9.736 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings2.040 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings2.040 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings9.039 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings7.032 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings9.033 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Miva
-
Ratings
Square Online
6.6
37 Ratings
10% below category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings7.123 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings4.033 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings4.018 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings9.030 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings9.027 Ratings
Best Alternatives
MivaSquare Online
Small Businesses
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
MivaSquare Online
Likelihood to Recommend
5.2
(22 ratings)
9.0
(41 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(16 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
6.7
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MivaSquare Online
Likelihood to Recommend
Miva
I feel that in the manufacturing and B2B space, Miva excels. They have the right talent on their team to ensure the technology works and scales with your business. From my experiences, Miva works with you to ensure that there is a fit. They are looking to build a partnership, and they have the ability to really understand your needs and uses. If you have a complex use case, or website need - Miva is the fit. There has not been anything that we have thrown at the platform that it cannot handle in some function. Their API library is constantly expanding, and we have even been able to improve tools that we wrote when we first started with Miva in the new API to get more function and speed. If you are simply looking to dropship goods, offer a very small product catalog, or not customize a template for different types of users, Miva may not be a great fit. Miva can do those things, but it really shines when you are working with large datasets of both customers, orders, products, and images.
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Block, Inc (Square)
If you are having students create websites or information pages about something they are studying in class, this is a great option. The fact that students can spend less time getting situated and learning the app and get right to work researching and creating their pages is great. For middle to high school, this is a fantastic app to use. However, if you want more nuanced analytics or want students to focus on blogging more than webpage building, this is limited.
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Pros
Miva
  • The ability to quickly change the look and feel of any given page in the store. The storefront, category, product description, and all checkout pages are easily customize-able using simple HTML language.
  • With minimal effort, more sophisticated changes and behaviors of the store can be modified using MivaScript, the language Miva Merchant is built upon.
  • New features are very easy to add using a huge selection of 3rd party feature modules that typically sell for less that $100. Miva has so many features already built in, but if there is a major common feature not already in the code, it's almost a sure bet that there is a affordable and easy to install module that will meet your e-commerce business requirements.
  • Miva corporation provides a high level of free support 7 days a week and 24 hours a day.
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Block, Inc (Square)
  • Drag and drop interface makes it very easy to add all types of content, including images, text, video (and YouTube videos), embeddable applications and more.
  • It's very easy to set up navigation features like cascading menus and sticky navigation (where the menu stays put - may depend on the template chosen though).
  • A technical backend is fairly straight-forward for setting up a fav icon, 301 redirects, SEO, Google Analytics, etc.
Read full review
Cons
Miva
  • The Miva admin area hasn't been the most user-friendly in the past. However, the admin in the the upcoming new Miva Merchant 9 Release has been completely revamped, is VERY user-friendly, and is formatted for desktop as well as mobile devices.
  • Some fairly standard ecommerce functionality like Gift Certificates, Coupons, Sale Prices, etc have previously required third-party modules or template customization. However, many of these features are being built into Miva Merchant upcoming releases.
Read full review
Block, Inc (Square)
  • Weebly doesn't have a lot of templates to choose from, so if you don't have any experience with CSS or HTML, it's hard to customize your site to an extent.
  • Weebly isn't fully SEO friendly. They don't allow you to add H1 tags to pages out of the box.
  • You can't create folder structures when it comes to web page URLs. You can put web pages under a main menu dropdown, but they don't allow you to put all sub-menu items in a structured folder (like site.com/folder/page-1 and site.com/folder/page-2).
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Likelihood to Renew
Miva
For most clients, the MIVA Merchant platform, in combination with 3rd party plugins from ADS, Emporium Plus, eMediaSales and Sebenza, has all of the bells and whistles they need. While MIVA is lacking in a mobile friendly option and the ability to easily sell soft goods like mp3's or eBooks, these additions are coming to MIVA soon. The lack of connectivity to popular POS systems is also a negative for us. We will certainly continue to offer MIVA Merchant to clients.
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Block, Inc (Square)
Weebly is consistently adding features that line up with our needs. The ease of use makes it the perfect program for us since we have users of multiple age brackets and knowledge of web design. We love that we can give users access to only the pages they are affiliated with
Read full review
Usability
Miva
I won't say usability is all bad with Miva; basic product configuration isn't complicated and assigning products to categories works well. However, when you go beyond the most elementary tasks, things almost always become needlessly cumbersome and the information stored by the platform is inherently poorly organized. They've really hyped that Miva 9 released last year features a re-worked admin interface, but from our perspective they've simply given it a fresh coat of paint, made the layout passably mobile friendly, but yet still have not in a substantive way addressed the glaring deficiencies at the core of the platform itself. Adding custom admin area bookmarks is a band aid, not a proper fix.
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Block, Inc (Square)
It is simple to use and offers enough customization to make a website that is personalized. Templates are pretty standard and the help section is laid out well by topic with frequently asked questions. Some design knowledge is helpful, but through trial and error anyone can get a hold of the reins fairly quickly.
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Reliability and Availability
Miva
I work with multiple Miva sites daily, and uptime is fantastic. Outages are rare from my experience, and any issues have generally been short and handled quickly.
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Block, Inc (Square)
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Miva
I would give 10, but there were a couple of times when I was misinformed and I had to do some unnecessary work. When you have to work on every product individually and then you discover you could have done it in bulk it kind of makes you roll your eyes back. I also have an issue still with some shipping settings that no one seems to understand. But the support team is super friendly, they are trying
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Block, Inc (Square)
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Miva
Creating the Miva store originally took a reasonable amount of time, 2-3 months, but we were unable to migrate our orders and customer accounts from the old platform. Additional refinements were required over the following 6 months to refine the functionality and features so that they worked properly for our store and fulfillment process.
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Block, Inc (Square)
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Miva
Versatility and customer service. There is nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of a task and having to do tech support via a computer-generated chat box. Miva Merchant gives you a live tech support engineer 24/7.
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Block, Inc (Square)
Weebly's designs, plugins, and customization options are a little more advanced in some cases than other similar programs. WordPress requires a different level of expertise and knowledge of code, keywording, and plugins, so I wouldn't even compare them. Wix is a little more user-friendly because you can drag and drop your design, which was very convenient for customizing your site. I didn't personally select Weebly, but it is user-friendly and nearly anyone comfortable with a computer could figure it out. Weebly support is also pretty good.
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Scalability
Miva
Miva has proven to be a great solution for smaller mom-and-pop stores through large enterprise-class businesses with tens of thousands of products. Performance is just as strong on enterprise-class stores as on considerably smaller stores, and an increasing number of marketing/sales tools are continually being added to the core Miva functionality to keep up with current marketplace demands.
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Block, Inc (Square)
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Miva
  • Running a business in general (and this applies to e-commerce of course) involves not enough time to do too many things. Any place one can automate/streamline/ simplify some of these myriad things, you gain more time to focus on high value activities. We have found that the more we have been able to leverage Miva's capabilities (often with our own tools), the more time we can spend on marketing, sales and product development.
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Block, Inc (Square)
  • Weebly has allowed our business to create a connection with our customers by offering home decor, cooking and styling tips.
  • Weebly gives us the chance to relay information to customers regarding merchandise, current sales and promotions, store hours and locations etc. Which has helped increase business.
  • Weebly has given our not very tech savvy business the opportunity to have a website and stay relevant with our competitors.
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ScreenShots