Mousepad vs Square Online: Restaurant websites and orders
Should a restaurant use Mousepad or Square Online?
Choose Mousepad when your website and its order or catering forms should follow your own process, and you want to change them by chatting. Customers pay through your own Stripe account. Square is the better choice when the register runs your day: it says orders placed online or in person come through Square Point of Sale and go straight to the kitchen. Mousepad has no point of sale or kitchen hardware.
We make Mousepad. This guide is based on product documentation, not hands-on testing.
Use case: Restaurants and cafés
Why we'd choose Mousepad
Your online orders and requests follow rules of your own, such as a pickup cutoff or a staff review of catering orders, and you want to shape them by chatting. Customers pay through your own Stripe account.
When to consider Square Online
You take orders at a counter or at tables and want in-person and online orders, menus, and customer data in one system. Square lists a restaurant point of sale with its own hardware, a kitchen display, and team scheduling and payroll. Mousepad offers none of these.
| Decision | Mousepad | Square Online |
|---|---|---|
| Online orders | An order form with pickup or local delivery, paid on Stripe's checkout page. | Pickup, local delivery, and shipping, chosen in the website builder. |
| In the kitchen | A staff page behind sign-in, built to your description. | Square's online ordering profiles send orders to Square Point of Sale and the kitchen printer or Square KDS. |
| At the counter | No point of sale or card readers. | Square Point of Sale, which Square's websites connect to: Register, Terminal, Handheld, and Kiosk. |
| Website | Pages designed for your kind of business, with your own domain on Plus and Pro. | A website builder with themes, free hosting, and a custom domain. |
Start with how an order reaches your kitchen
A café that sells at the counter all day needs the register and the website to agree. Square is built around that. Its ordering profile and Square POS stay connected, so menus and orders sit in one system, and online orders show on the point of sale and in the kitchen.
If online orders are a smaller part of the business, or follow rules of their own, the website can do more of the work. In Mousepad, describe the menu, the pickup times, and who marks an order ready. Use Sign in as… in the preview to place an order as a customer and handle it as staff before you publish.
Requests that need a person first
Square's ordering settings cover pickup, delivery, prep times, and business hours. Some requests need someone to look at them first, such as a catering order for forty people or a celebration cake. In Mousepad, ask for a request form with the date, headcount, and budget, and a staff list where each request moves from new to booked.
Payments go through Stripe Checkout into your own Stripe account, and an order is marked paid only after Stripe confirms. If you already use Square at the counter, decide which system keeps the menu before you add a second place to order.
What will it cost?
Mousepad has a Free plan. With monthly billing, Plus costs $25/month and Pro costs $100/month. See the pricing page for credits, site types, custom domains, and usage limits.
For both tools, add up the services your app needs. Check hosting, data usage, and any paid integrations, then include domain registration and payment fees if they apply. Use the same billing period and expected usage for each estimate.
Start with this in Mousepad
Build a pickup order form for a café in Mousepad. Place a test order as a customer, mark it ready from the staff page, then ask for a pickup cutoff time and check the form again.
Build a website and pickup order form for a fictional café called Tin Cup Café. Include a menu, opening hours, an order form with pickup times and online payment, a catering request form, and a staff page where orders are marked ready. Use synthetic menu items and orders.
This example uses a fictional business. The button carries this brief into signup. Free plan limits apply.
Common questions
Why choose Mousepad over Square Online?
Your online orders and requests follow rules of your own, such as a pickup cutoff or a staff review of catering orders, and you want to shape them by chatting. Customers pay through your own Stripe account.
What happened to Square Online?
Square says it renamed Square Online to websites to highlight the product's website-building tools, and that its features and capabilities stayed the same.
Does Square connect online orders to its point of sale?
Yes. Square says orders placed online or in person come through Square Point of Sale and go to the kitchen, with menus, orders, and customer data kept in one system.
Sources
Official product documentation used for this comparison:
Build your restaurant's website and order form.
Try Mousepad free