Adobe Lightroom is a very good tool to organize and edit your photos and videos. We’re big fans of Adobe’s professional photography software - you can see what we thought in our Adobe Lightroom review - but can you really slim down that feature-rich experience for mobile devices? 

We put Lightroom for iOS and Android to the test to see if it’s the best photo editor for photographers using phones and tablets.  

Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Pricing & plans

• A free sample is good, but the best tools are always hidden behind a paywall. Still, the full features come bundled with a subscription to the desktop version of Lightroom, so that’s got to be a plus.

The good news is Lightroom Mobile can be downloaded for free, but its feature-set is limited. You have the ability to organize and share your photos, as well as use most editing tools, but the juiciest ones are restricted behind a paywall.

Any Adobe subscription that includes the main Lightroom application includes the mobile version too, and unlocks all of its features. $10 a month on a yearly contract gets you either Lightroom with 1TB of online storage, or 20GB bundled with Photoshop, while $20 a month includes everything: Lightroom, Photoshop and 1TB cloud storage. 

Alternatively, you can subscribe to the Creative Cloud All Apps plan, which bundles Lightroom for mobile and desktop alongside Photoshop, premiere Pro, InDesign, and more. For an individual, this costs $60 a month on a one-year contract. However, prices vary if you're an individual, student, business, or university, and whether you pay monthly or annually. 

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Accessing media

• It’s easy to choose how much of your device’s media to share with Lightroom, all your shots saved on Adobe’s servers are but a tap away, and you can get inspiration via the community tab.

As with all mobile apps, Lightroom needs to ask you for permission to access the images stored on your device. You’re free to deny this, grant it full access or limit it to just a select few, safe in the knowledge you’re able to grow or shrink that list in the future.

In addition to that, any media you have saved on Adobe's servers can be accessed via the ‘Lightroom' tab at the bottom of the interface when browsing through your collection. This integrates perfectly with all versions of Lightroom, meaning you can effortlessly bring in media from any device, knowing you'll be able to work on it on any machine logged in to the same Adobe ID. This is a huge plus, and can be a wonderful time saver, giving you great flexibility with your workflow.

Finally, there's the Community tab, which not only lets you explore other people’s work, follow specific artists, and grab inspiration from them, but you can also save their color correction parameters as presets, which you can use for your own images, and customize them to suit your needs.

• Score: 4/5

Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Interface & experience

• A great interface, well designed, simple to use, with a wealth of powerful tools at your fingertips. What’s not to love?

Lightroom Mobile's interface is incredibly polished and easy to understand. Once you've selected an image to work on, the majority of the screen will be taken up by it, with a sidebar on the right offering you a list of tools broken down by category: edit, presets, crop & rotate, remove, masking, lens blur, and version history.

Essentially, anything you can do on the desktop version of Lightroom, you can do on a phone or tablet, offering you immense versatility. Let's just take a look at a handful of features that really impressed us.

Let’s start with some well thought out interface touches: when you’re in the process of changing a parameter, the whole editing sidebar disappears, allowing you to focus on the image while dragging that slider left or right. Release the slider and all the tools reappear instantly. It’s subtle, well implemented, and a great way to remove any distraction from precision work.

The Presets are a nice inclusion, although there are so many to choose from. What we liked was that the software analyzes your photo and offers you a choice it thinks would suit your composition well. You don’t need to go with that selection of course, but considering the sheer volume of available presets, it’s nice there’s a feature that can help you narrow down your search, should you want it. It’s also possible for you to create your own presets, defining a unique look which you can use again and again.

The mask tools are, for us, probably the most impressive in the range. Making particular changes to a specific part of an image was something you most likely would’ve gone to Photoshop to perform, but no longer. With these masks, you can perform such alterations without needing to leave Lightroom. Yes, Photoshop is included with certain subscription packages, including Photoshop for iPad, but isn’t it better if you can just remain in a single app and keep on working uninterrupted? We think so, and clearly, so does Adobe.

You get to add as many masks as you need to an image, and make use of special algorithms to automatically select the sky, a person, a specific color range, or the shot’s luminance. Then, any changes you make will only affect the area selected by the mask. Adding or removing sections is as easy as tapping on the relevant menu. You can create incredibly unique looks that way, and it’s so easy to use, it’s almost effortless.

And finally a quick word on the Lens Blur: it uses AI algorithms to create an artificial depth of field to your image, blurring our sections while keeping others in sharp focus. Again, the interface is very easy to master, with a graphic slider to help you select how much of the foreground or the background to keep in focus, a crosshair to be more specific about your selection, a slider to select the amount of blur, and a choice of five lenses. It’s as easy as pointing and clicking.

• Score: 5/5

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You like to edit your images on the go, enjoy a clean, easy to use interface that’s quick to master, love being able to work on the same image both on your mobile device, and your computer.

Don't buy it if...

The power Lightroom Mobile offers is too much for your needs, you don't want to subscribe, or you just want the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives. 

We tested the best photo editing PCs and the best laptops for photo editing and these are our top picks for photographers. 

Adobe Lightroom is a tool designed to organize and edit your photos. This might make it sound like it’s nothing more than a souped up organizational app that comes bundled with your computer, but as you’d expect from Adobe, it’s much more powerful than that. We wanted to see what one of the best photo editors offers professional photographers today - so, we put it to the test.  

Adobe Lightroom: Pricing & plans

• Adobe offers a good number of Lightroom subscriptions - but no local storage on the standalone 1TB plan

Lightroom used to be an app you paid for, before adding a complementary subscription plan. Now, as with most of Adobe’s professional offerings, you only have the option of subscribing - either as a standalone plan or as part of the Creative Cloud All Apps package, which bundled in Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and more. 

The CC All Apps prices vary depending on whether you opt for a yearly contract, choose to go on a month by month basis, and if you’re an individual, student, teacher, or business. Taking the individual as an example, this will cost you $60 a month on a one-year contract.

A single subscription to Lightroom is $10 a month, which includes 1TB of online storage. And you’ll also find a Lightroom and Photoshop combo for the same price, although your online storage would drop to 20GB unless you opt for the terabyte subscription. 

There’s one thing you need to be aware of though: the 1TB Lightroom-only subscription option doesn’t allow you to work with photos stored locally. It’s cloud-based all the way. The other options include an offline facility.

• Pricing & plans: 3.5/5

Adobe Lightroom: What is It?

• An excellent and versatile application designed to help you organize, catalog, edit and share your work.

The reason why Adobe includes so much bundled storage with a Lightroom subscription is because it’s primarily designed to work online: you upload your media and work from there. This has the advantage of granting you access to your library wherever you might be, and on whichever machine you happen to be logged into. This is undeniably an advantage, but you can also opt to keep your data safely on your own machine should you prefer, by switching from ‘Cloud’ to ‘Local’ on the left sidebar (and you’ve chosen the proper subscription of course). Even better, you can choose which photos or videos to keep locally, and which to send to the cloud, giving you the most control over your work, and offering you the best of both worlds.

The Local side of things grants you access to your entire hard drive, so if you’ve organized anything into specific folders there, you’ll find it all replicated within Lightroom. Click on a folder from the sidebar and if it contains any images, they’ll show up at the bottom of the interface.

To the right are all the tools available to you to make alterations to your photos. Everything is neatly divided by category, including a large selection of presets, the usual colour adjustment curves and parameters, cropping, healing brushes, masking, and a very handy version history of all the changes you made to an image, enabling you to roll back the clock if needed.

All of this is fantastic, and makes for an extremely powerful cataloging and editing application. It’s safe to say that most of the tweaks you need to make can be done without ever having to leave Lightroom, although Photoshop is but a click away (as long as you subscribe to it as well).

The left sidebar also gives you access to the ‘Community’, where you can see other people’s works, follow your favorite photographers, and even contribute yourself. It’s a great way to draw inspiration from others, or just ignore it completely if that’s not your kind of thing. Above it, is ‘Learn’, a place filled with tutorials to help you make the most of Lightroom.

In addition to that, there’s an app for mobile use (for both Android and iOS), as well as a web version, so wherever you are, as long as your photos are stored online, you can view, edit and share your work with ease. You can see what we thought of the app in our Adobe Lightroom Mobile review.

• Score: 4.5/5

Adobe Lightroom: What’s new?

• Lightroom is constantly being updated, offering ever more useful and advanced tools to your arsenal.

As it’s been a while since we last looked at Lightroom, a lot has changed, and the pricing structure mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg. We thought we’d highlight a handful we found interesting and useful.

We discussed the Masking tool’s location in the interface earlier, but being able to make changes to specific areas while leaving the rest untouched is one more reason not to have to pay a visit to Photoshop!

You’ll find a series of different ‘adaptive’ presets available. These use AI to analyze and modify a specific portion of your photo, such as the sky, someone’s clothes, their teeth, etc. and make pre-defined alterations to them. The seven blur presets are designed to help you subtly blur your image’s background, for instance. You also have control over your presets as they now have sliders to allow you to tweak the intensity of the effect you’re adding.

Cameras can do more than taking photos: they can also record videos, and Lightroom’s been able to edit those since 2022, from the basics, such as trimming, flipping and rotating, to color correction. As of May 2024, you can also make use of curves when altering your clips. You also have the ability to extract and export still frames.

Would it surprise you to know that AI is creeping more and more into the tools you use everyday? The Denoise feature is AI-driven for instance (only available if you’re working with Bayer and X-Trans mosaic RAW files), and the content-aware heal tool can do some moderately interesting work, but it’s nothing next to the new Generative Remove (currently in Early Access). It does an incredible job not only at removing an unwanted part of an image (the standard heal tool could do that already), but the generated background fill is truly incredible. We tried it on a person in front of the sea, or flecks of bamboo off of fur, and the results were astounding. We also went a little too far by trying to remove the entire foreground and those results were more comical than anything else, so use it in moderation. For an early access feature, and for detailed work, we were most impressed.

• Score: 4.5/5

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You’re a photographer, you need advanced tools to alter your images and videos, you need to be able to access a community, and work on your computer, tablet and the web.

Don't buy it if...

You're not interested in a subscription or you're ideally looking for the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives. 

We tested out the best photo editing PCs and the best laptops for photo editing and these are our top picks. 

Adobe Fresco is a fun app for iPad and Microsoft Surface tablets. It’s all about simulating the real-world painting process - so expect to go to town on your digital canvas with the stylus as paintbrush. 

We’ve tried out a number of the best digital art and drawing software, and Adobe’s graphic design set has always impressed us. We liked Fresco last time we reviewed the painting app. But how does Adobe Fresco hold up in 2024? We wanted to find out.  

Adobe Fresco: Pricing & plans

• Free for a few brushes and some online storage, but it’s more than enough to get started. Subscriptions are available and Fresco is also bundled in with other Adobe  plans. 

You can download and install Adobe Fresco for free, which will allow you to work with about a hundred brushes, and be offered 2GB of online storage. You’ll need an Adobe account to take advantage of this - which is also free (save for a few minutes of your time).

This is the basic Fresco app, but you can choose to subscribe to it for around $10 a month to gain access to over 1,000 additional brushes, more online storage, additional shapes, and access to Adobe’s premium fonts. However, if you already subscribe to the Adobe Design Mobile Bundle, the Adobe Photoshop Single Plan, or the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan, then you already have access to the full version of Fresco. Subscription prices vary depending on whether you’re an individual, in education, or a business, and whether you choose to pay on a month by month basis or opt for a yearly plan, but as a guide, an individual person can expect to pay between around $23 and $60 a month for the Photoshop Single Plan and the Creative Cloud All App respectively.

Whichever option you decide to go with, Fresco will broadly look the same, so let’s install it and take it for a spin.

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe Fresco: How it works

• A compact interface has tools that appear as you need them, with an interesting rotating feature.

If you’re familiar with other Adobe software, you’ll feel right at home in Fresco. From the home page’s style, to the layout of the various sidebars, you’re in no doubt you’re working with an Adobe product.

To the left are the various brushes available to you. Tap on one of them for that menu to expand, offering you further options. On the right is a series of parameters affecting your entire document. This is where you can access your layers (on by default), see various layer properties, enable options such as snapping, add comments, and even expose more layer-related tools. Top right of the interface are sharing options, and undo and redo buttons among others. It’s a very compact yet very full featured interface.  

Obviously, the bulk of the screen is devoted to your artwork. As it’s an app designed for a tablet, you can turn your device in any orientation and the toolbars will rotate in kind - but your artwork won’t. This might feel a little disconcerting at first, but it does allow you to work on your project from any angle. Plus, if that doesn’t suit you, all it takes is a simple two finger rotate gesture to bring your canvas into the ‘right’ orientation.

• Score: 4/5

Adobe Fresco: What it does

• Painting and drawing on a portable digital device is smooth and easy, coupled the advantage of digital convenience and capabilities.

From the sound of it, Fresco feels like a portable version of Adobe Photoshop, but the fact there is a version of Photoshop for mobile devices shows that it’s more than that. Its focus is on trying to replicate the real world experience of drawing and painting.  For that to work, Fresco offers a wealth of different brushes whose strokes can interact with others.

Take the watercolours for instance. They come with a ‘watercolour flow’ parameter, which is there to determine just how much bleed you’ll get when using them, ie, just how wet is the brush and how much will the new colour you’re using interact and mix with surrounding colours already on your canvas. This makes for a fun, versatile and highly interactive simulation, which is far removed from how too many digital image compositors work (not all, mind - Corel Painter is a notable example of software trying to replicate how paint behaves in the real world, only this time on a computer)

Combine this with layer work, the ability to use and customise so many different brushes, and compatibility with a stylus, allows you to get pretty close to real world painting - without the mess, or running out of paint. It’s an attempt to blend the physical with the virtual in what we felt to be a very enjoyable experience.

Add to that your ability to export your work as a PSD file, so you can work on it further in Photoshop on your computer, increasing your workflow possibilities immensely.

• Score: 4/5

Adobe Fresco: What’s new?

• Motion paths and rotation. It may not sound like much, but it’s well implemented and easy to use.

 On top of all this great art creation tool, Fresco also lets you animate portions of your artwork, and these capabilities have been improved in the latest version. You can now create motion paths. 

This in part due to an easy to control floating toolbar at the bottom of the screen, with various additional parameters available on the sidebar to the right, once that option is triggered. From there, you’ll also find a new feature to either rotate or sway your chosen layer. It’s all incredibly easy to use, adding additional dynamism to your project. 

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You enjoy creating digital artwork but would like to replicate the feel of the real painting experience. Fresco is a great app for working on the go, and linking to other Adobe apps across your devices.

Don't buy it if...

You're not an artist or painter, and you especially don't like free painting apps. 

• For more Adobe-style options, we've reviewed the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives and the best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

When you think of Adobe, you’re likely imagining high end professional creative apps, be they image compositing, video editing, desktop publishing, and more besides, but would ‘word processing’ spring to mind? And yet, there is one available, which integrates perfectly with what we consider the best desktop publishing software going: Adobe InCopy. 

With it, writers and editors are able to style text, track changes and make simple layout alterations, while at the same time, designers seamlessly work on the same document in InDesign. Sounds cool, right? We tried it out to see how it helps the design workflow. 

And you can see what we thought of the latest improvements to the main app in our Adobe InDesign review.  

Adobe InCopy: Pricing & plans

• The cheapest individual subscription in Adobe’s portfolio, and also comes free when you grab the full All Apps package.

As with any professional Adobe product, you only gain access to InCopy through a subscription. Your cheapest option is to get it on its own for almost $5 per month (that’s with an annual plan). It’s actually the cheapest subscription you can get with Adobe. You can choose to pay for the year upfront, but this is a rare occasion where you don’t get any discount for doing so, not even a cent. Alternatively, it’s $7.50 per month on no contract.

Access to Adobe Fonts, Portfolio, Creative Cloud Libraries, 100GB of online storage and 25 monthly generative credits (for AI creations) are included in the price.

Alternatively, you can opt for the Creative Cloud All Apps package which comes with the whole enchilada, including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, for $60 per month on an annual plan. As with the single app above, prices fluctuate depending if you pay on a month by month basis, or for a yearly plan. In addition to that, students and teachers get a hefty discount for the full package ($20 a month), and there are specific deals for businesses and academic institutes.

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe InCopy: How it works

• The concept of being able to work on a document and have it updated in the InDesign project is a very attractive one. But it’s not instantaneous, and was sadly prone to crashing when we tested it.

InCopy was created to speed up the process of getting a design project done and dusted. Usually a writer would submit their copy to the designer who then turns it into an article/poster/book etc, which then gets sent back to the writer, the editor, both, or more, for review and changes, which the designer then has to integrate back into their version in InDesign. And this cycle repeats until everyone involved is happy with the results.

There’s a lot of redundant work involved, with the potential of one revision being lost or mislaid along the flow of information. InCopy’s aim is to streamline all of this, making the whole concept much more of a collaboration tool, which allows writers and designers to work on the same document - although not at the same time: only one user can alter the text at any one time.

A designer can submit a text box to an InCopy file, for its content to be reviewed or altered, or a writer can produce an InCopy document which will then be incorporated into a designer’s InDesign file. However you prefer to work, the link between the two documents will be made, enabling anyone who has access to either of them, to make changes.

The process isn’t automatic: making some changes in InCopy will not make them appear in InDesign, for instance. Instead you need to click on ‘update content’ from the contextual menu. Also, while someone’s altering the content, everyone else is locked out of it. The person making the changes has to manually ‘check in’ in order to release the document, allowing others to make their own modifications.

It’s not as seamless as it could be, but it works well… until it doesn’t. Although we could easily make changes in InCopy, and update our version in InDesign as advertised, our version of InCopy (19.3), crashed every time we tried to update the content after someone had made changes in InDesign, which forced us to either use it as a one-way system, or check the changes once we relaunched the app, which was far from ideal.

• Score: 3/5

Adobe InCopy: Interface

• An easy interface to get to grips with, offering you just the tools you need to limit distractions.

As you’d suspect, the InCopy interface looks like a vastly simplified version of InDesign, paring down the tools to solely what you need for writing. The toolbar at the top contains all the basic word processing options, such as alignment, font, size, style, etc.

The sidebar to the left is where you’ll find some search and navigation tools, as well as a comments option, so you can easily communicate with others working on the same document. Those notes can be seen on the page itself, or in a floating window which can be accessed in InDesign. The same applies for being able to track changes, although this isn’t switched on by default.

The document’s content can be viewed in three different ways: ‘Galley’ strips the text of its style, which is displayed in a sidebar to the left for each line. The ‘design’ visual left in the body of the text are the page breaks. ‘Story’ is virtually identical to ‘Galley’, except even the page breaks are removed, letting you focus on what needs to be written or altered. 

Finally, there’s ‘Layout’ which shows you your document’s style as it would appear in InDesign, although again, only the text is shown. If the designer has laced the page with images in InDesign or instance, those will not be seen in InCopy. In addition, this assumes the writer has the same fonts installed on their machine as the designer has on theirs, which is why it’s important to make sure all those potential hiccups are sorted out ahead of time. It’s also possible to import styles, thereby limiting any additional work between computers.

Overall, when it works, InCopy does what it sets out to do: streamline the document creation process between the writer, editor and designer. Such a shame our copy kept crashing when trying to update the document’s content.

• Interface: 4/5

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You or your designer use InDesign to create projects, and need a way to communicate more seamlessly when making changes.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t need to work with a designer as you do it all yourself, or you don’t create your projects in InDesign.

Branching out in page design? We checked out the best Adobe InDesign alternatives

• ^ Back to top

Fonts! We all love fonts. Whether it’s to write a letter with something more unique than Helvetica, Arial or Times New Roman, or you’re looking for a defining new brand identity, fonts are crucial to our designing lives. 

We’ve tried out many of the best font resources free and paid, reviewed the best fonts for websites. Can’t get enough of ‘em. Even Google has its own selection of fonts, easily accessible and usable - so it’s little surprise Adobe would also have a selection available to its subscribers. But how does it compare? We put Adobe Fonts to the test.  

Adobe Fonts: Pricing & plans

• Over 20,000 typefaces are bundled with most Adobe subscription packages, but there’s also a free option to gain access to around 1,500 fonts

As with most Adobe products, you’ll need a subscription to use Fonts - if you’re already a subscriber, there’s a good chance you already have access to it, as it’s included in many of Creative Cloud packages. As a rule of thumb, as long as you subscribe to at least one app (not a collection of models or stock for instance), you should have Fonts bundled in. You can check this by clicking on the subscription’s ‘see plan & pricing details’ link.

However, there is a free option. By signing in with an Adobe ID (if you haven’t already), you gain access to 1,500 of Adobe’s fonts at no extra charge. Yes, that’s around 7.5% of the entire collection, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe Fonts: The website

• A busy interface with many ways to find the exact font you’re after, either following the latest trends, using keywords, searching through specific foundries, the choice is vast

Adobe Fonts have their own dedicated website - you can check it out by clicking here. 

The home page displays the latest releases, along with a list of currently popular fonts, other interesting categories, and of course, a blog. There’s also a menu tab at the top and a search field. Everything you need to find the right typeface you’re looking for. 

If you have a subscription, the process is very simple: browse, look for what you like, then click on the font’s ‘add family’ button. This will make the font available in the Creative Cloud (CC) app. 

Without a subscription, you can still browse through Adobe’s collection but you might get frustrated seeing rows after rows of fonts which are ‘available in CC’, so make sure you untick ‘Show fonts available with Creative Cloud’, top left of the interface, to only be shown what’s free.

In either situation, once you’ve added the font, it’s yours to use in any Adobe app you have installed on your computer instantly. However, if you need to make it available to all software you use, there’s one more step that’s needed. It’s time to venture to the Creative Cloud app.

• The website: 4/5

Adobe Fonts: The app

• Creative Cloud is the hub of everything Adobe on your computer, including its fonts; you can uninstall them from there and make them available to all software, not just the Adobe titles

The Creative Cloud app is the control center for all of Adobe’s apps installed on your computer. You can check which ones you have from there, uninstall those you no longer need, install new ones, update others, and of course, as is the focus of this review, this is where you get to see all the Adobe fonts you have on your machine.

All those you’ve added from the website are instantly shown here, but as mentioned above, can only be used with Adobe apps - for now. Click on each font’s download button to install it in such a way that other apps can now take advantage of them.

There is however a major difference between these fonts and those you might get from elsewhere: take the Mac as an example. All fonts usually get installed and managed via the Font Book app, except for the Adobe ones. These reside elsewhere, likely due to their permanent link to your subscription status, so a little trip to Font Book would not reveal those newly installed fonts, even though other apps can use them as expected. If you like to know where everything goes on your machine, that can be a bit frustrating, but on the plus side, the system works, and it works well: all fonts are instantly available, and you don’t even need to restart the apps you use to take advantage of them.

• The app: 4/5

Adobe Fonts: Rights & licensing

• You can use Adobe Fonts for personal and commercial projects - as long as you keep your subscription active

So, now that you’ve got Adobe Fonts installed on your computer, what can you do with them? Put simply, as long as your subscription is still active, you can use them in as many personal and commercial projects as you please. Cancel your subscription however, and as you’d expect, those rights go away.

If you download a lot of fonts and use them in non-Adobe apps, it’s also worth checking Creative Cloud every now and then to see if they’re still installed: every few months the app runs checks on your installed fonts, and if it decides they haven’t been used in a while, they’re quietly uninstalled during the background clean up process. So, if all of a sudden your favorite font no longer works in third party apps, that will probably be the reason why.

If that sounds like a bit of a pain, that’s because it is, but shrinking your font collection is done to optimize performance. Plus, you don’t need to venture back to the website to get them again: just take a look in Creative Clouds’ ‘Previously Added’ tab, where all uninstalled fonts will be. Adobe Fonts cannot be shared between users, unless of course those users have their own Adobe subscription.

• Rights & licensing: 4/5

Adobe Fonts: Scorecard

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You’re looking for new and original fonts curated by Adobe, through a well designed system that hasn’t glitched on us once.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t use Adobe apps and would rather get your fonts from other companies, likely those that don’t force you to subscribe to use their typefaces. 

• Not sure if Adobe's for you? We tested out the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives and the best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

Square Online stands out as one of the best website builders, offering a hassle-free solution for setting up and managing an online store. Created from the fusion of Square point of sale (POS) software and Weebly in 2018, Square Online stands out as a rock-solid fit for small businesses seeking a powerful online presence without the headache of hefty monthly fees.

With its intuitive setup process and simple-to-use interface, even novices can navigate it without much effort. Whether you're a traditional retailer stepping into the digital world or a service-based business expanding your reach, Square Online can support you.

What makes Square Online stand out among many competitors is its ease of use. Seamlessly integrating with Square POS, it caters to businesses needing both an online store and a point-of-sale system. Plus, with its simple and functional store layout, you can start selling online in minutes - no coding skills needed. While it may lack some advanced features, Square storefront builder provides everything you need to launch your online store journey swiftly. 

In our Square Online review, based on extensive research and hands-on experience, we'll delve into key features, including the setup process, interface, integration with Square POS, and overall usability. We'll explore its strengths and weaknesses to help you make the right choice for your business.

Square Online stores: Ecommerce tools

Square Online has become a popular choice among online sellers for its user-friendly interface and pocket-friendly plans, including the Square’s free online store option. 

The platform's forever-free edition allows you to start selling online without upfront costs, although transaction fees apply. While there are no restrictions on the number of products you can sell, the free plan limits you to a Square-branded site or social media platforms. Plus, bandwidth and storage are capped at 500 MB, which will cripple the scale of your online operations sooner or later.

Square Online's seamless integration with Square payment processing is a standout feature, ensuring smooth transactions for sellers. However, it's important to note that, unlike many other of the best ecommerce platforms, that offer a whole variety of popular payment processing options, Square Online primarily relies on Square for payment processing.

So, while Square is a reliable choice for handling online transactions, the limited choice of payment processors may be a drawback for some users. Fortunately, Square Online users can integrate PayPal and Google Pay into their payment options if they have the “Plus” or “Premium” plan, providing a bit more flexibility in payment processing.

Square offers a complete set of features fit for small online stores, including unlimited item listings, multiple product types, age confirmation, password-protected pages, and item quick view. For those seeking more advanced features, such as product reviews and abandoned cart recovery, higher-tier plans are available.

Additionally, Square has recently introduced a new feature that allows customers to use Afterpay for their purchases. Now, customers can buy now and pay later in four interest-free installments, while sellers receive payment right away. It's a win-win situation that adds a new level of flexibility for both sellers and buyers.

Moreover, Square simplifies shipping management with customizable shipping rates, free shipping options, local delivery, and pickup services. The platform also provides reporting and analytics tools to track site performance and customer behavior, helping businesses make better decisions to boost their online presence. With Square's efficient shipping label printing capabilities, sellers can simplify their shipping processes and deliver products promptly to customers across the world.

Square also offers a set of convenient AI-powered tools within its online store features. These tools are made to simplify marketing tasks by automatically generating copy for various campaigns, such as emails, and even suggesting replies to customers via Square Messages. So, whether you need catchy email subject lines, engaging website content, or compelling product descriptions, Square's AI features have you covered.

Other ecommerce features locked behind Square Online's paid plans include customer accounts, password-protected pages, and custom site icons - all created to upgrade your online store's functionality. With customer accounts, your clientele is encouraged to sign in, access their order history, redeem loyalty rewards, and manage gift card balances seamlessly. Password-protected pages provide added security by concealing specific sections of your site from public view. 

Additionally, the option to create a custom site icon ensures your online store remains easily accessible to customers, allowing them to place orders with just a couple of clicks from their smartphone screens.

Other Square Online features and tools

Beyond its ecommerce capabilities, Square Online offers a wide variety of features and tools to enhance your website-building experience. Let's explore some of these below:

Square Online themes

As we write, Square Online offers a range of 28 free themes to choose from, with three of them available on the free plan, while others are accessible through free trials. When you first start with Square Online, picking a theme is your first step in tailoring your website using the editor. While you can't switch themes once you've made your choice, you have the freedom to tweak any part of your site post-selection. To further simplify the customization after picking out a theme, you can explore selecting styles that suit your site.

Once you've settled on a theme, you can dive into customization. You can tweak colors, fonts, shapes, images, individual elements, and section and page layouts to your liking. While you can't change the theme of an existing site on Square Online, you still have the freedom to alter its overall appearance by updating multiple design elements simultaneously through site style updates.

While Square Online provides an alright selection of themes to choose from, we must note that there aren't a massive number of templates overall. Also, upon exploring the themes, you may notice that many of them share similar layouts, with variations primarily in color schemes and font styles.

The platform offers both desktop and smartphone previews for themes, giving you the ability to visualize your website across different devices and ensure an enjoyable browsing experience for your visitors.

Square Online website editor

Square Online's block-based editor, powered by its acquisition of Weebly, offers a hassle-free setup process with helpful video tutorials and step-by-step guides. While the drag-and-drop functionality is extremely limited, it's super easy for beginners to dive in and start building. However, if you're aiming for complete customization, you'll likely find the options rather restrictive.

Unsurprisingly, tinkering with the code is mostly off-limits, which means you can't make any complex custom changes. Still, Square's editor provides a sufficient range of pre-made content blocks that you can easily plop onto your pages, from images and text to galleries and forms. Plus, integrating social media feeds and Google Maps is only a few clicks away.

Although Square's selection of themes is a bit on the slim side, the theme customizer packs a solid punch, giving you plenty of control over your site's look and feel. You can play around with colors, fonts, headers, footers, and more to make it look truly yours. Plus, you can create custom pages using the available sections to add that personal touch.

Let's not forget about the blog feature, or as Square likes to call it, "stories." It's surprisingly easy to add and customize your posts right within the site editor. Plus, there are built-in SEO tools to help boost your site's visibility across search engines.

While Square's design palette might feel a bit constrained, its website editor is equipped with practical features that can swiftly spruce up your site's appearance.

Domains

With Square Online's forever-free plan, you're stuck with Square Online advertising on your site's footer and a domain ending in “.square.site“. So, if you're eyeing a custom domain and advanced features, you'll want to consider upgrading to one of Square Online's paid plans.

Registering a new domain on Square Online happens on a yearly basis, with no monthly options available. To purchase your perfect domain, navigate from your Square Online Overview page to “Website“ and then to “Domains“. Next, select “Connect“ domain and then “Find a custom domain”. Enter the domain name you want into the search box to kick off the purchase process.

Custom domains start at $19.95 annually, and with annual plans, you even get a free domain for the first year. But if you're aiming for a fully-branded online store free from Square branding, you'll need to opt for the “Plus“ or “Premium“ plan. Considering this step is essential for driving sustained business growth and building a recognizable online brand.

Square Online app marketplace

Square Online offers an extensive App Marketplace, where you can choose from over 200 third-party apps to add some serious power to your website. These apps cover everything from keeping your books to running marketing campaigns and managing your schedule.

Now, while some of these apps are built to supercharge your online store, others are designed to work seamlessly with the POS system. You'll find a whole lot of options in there, from apps that pep up Square's core features (such as Mailchimp's marketing automation) to ones that connect you with external platforms and services (like Shippo for easy end-to-end shipping). 

Adding apps to your website is as easy as it gets. Just browse through the marketplace, find the ones you like, and with a few clicks, you're good to go. However, keep in mind that some apps might ask you to upgrade to a paid plan before you can unlock all their features. Also, since Square's central feature is handling payments, you might not find every payment gateway under the sun in the app marketplace.

Website security

Square Online has your back with security measures like Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, ensuring that your data transfers are encrypted and safe from prying eyes. Additionally, when you use Square Online, your credit card payments are encrypted too, providing an extra layer of protection. As expected, Square meets Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance standards across the board, ensuring secure handling of your payment information.

Square Online provides free SSL certificates for all the domains you add to your site. Whether you're on their free plan or a paid subscription, your payments are kept secure. For added peace of mind, you can set up two-step verification for an extra layer of security, control who has access to your account, and receive tips on creating a strong password.

All in all, you can trust that your online store and transactions are in good hands, allowing you to focus on growing your business.

Square Online pricing and plans: Is Square Online good value for money?

Square Online’s pricing structure is simple to understand with options to suit different business needs and budgets. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale up, Square has you covered with a forever-free plan that includes essential features like site-building tools and integration with Square POS. To get the best deal, go with annual billing, which includes perks like a free domain.

As shown above, there are three main Square Online pricing tiers: “Free“, “Plus“, and “Premium“, each tailored to different business needs. The “Free“ plan is a solid choice for those starting out, but keep in mind it comes with transaction fees and severely limited customization. 

If you're eyeing an introductory rate, remember it may only last for a limited time.

Free plan

Perfect for getting started without breaking the bank, the “Free“ plan provides essential website-building tools, integration with Square POS, and options for pickup, local delivery, and shipping. However, customization options are seriously limited, and standard transaction fees apply.

Plus plan

The next in line is the “Plus“ plan. Designed to drive online growth and streamline operations, it provides expanded site customization, self-serve ordering, customer accounts, personalized ordering experiences, and much more.

Premium plan

Tailored for high-volume businesses, the “Premium“ plan includes somewhat lower processing rates, real-time shipping rates, premium customer support, and waived in-house delivery fees.

Restaurant Essentials Bundle

In addition to these three plans, Square offers a so-called “Square Restaurant Essentials Bundle“. This comprehensive, cloud-based solution is designed to streamline operations and enhance customer experience for restaurant businesses. With tools like Square Payroll, Square for Restaurants Plus, and Square Online Ordering Premium, you can efficiently manage payroll, streamline in-person and online ordering, and optimize scheduling for your team. Also, you can currently take advantage of this special offer and save 20% as a new Square customer.

Square Online: Help and support

Square Online has your back with a solid support system in place to help you tackle any technical issues or questions you may encounter along the way. Whether you're a well-versed user or just getting started, Square has enough self-service resources to guide you through troubleshooting and problem-solving.

You can reach out to Square's support team via phone, email, or live chat during specific hours on weekdays. However, response times for email inquiries may take up to 48 hours. Additionally, there's an active community forum where you can seek advice from fellow sellers.

During our experience with Square's live chat support, we found the process to be pretty smooth. After a quick chat with a helpful chatbot, we were connected with a support expert in about five minutes, and they took the time to address our questions and even threw in some handy resources for good measure.

Before signing in, however, don't expect expedited support. All in all, while there are some limitations to Square's customer support options, the help we received was pretty satisfactory.

Square Online: What’s not included? What could be better?

Despite its user-friendly design, Square Online still has room for improvement in certain aspects.

First, users could find themselves unable to access code for custom changes on Square Online. While some customization is possible with paid plans, editing template code to modify CSS is off-limits. Design flexibility is also severely limited compared to platforms like Shopify, and Square branding is unavoidable on the site footer for those on the free edition.

You can read our full Shopify review here. 

Another notable drawback lies in its selection of themes, which, while functional, may lack the visual flair and diversity found in other platforms. While this may not be a deal-breaker for some, businesses seeking a unique, eye-catching design may find themselves wanting more.

Additionally, the transaction fees associated with Square Online can quickly accumulate, especially for businesses with high sales volumes. While the platform offers convenience and ease of use, the cost-effectiveness of Square Online may decline over time as these fees begin to take a toll on profitability.

If these limitations are a deal-breaker for you, consider Shopify, which offers a free three-day trial and is ideal for businesses seeking an all-in-one solution with POS, social selling, and inventory management. Still, some will prefer Square Online due to its ease of setup compared to Shopify's more complex customization process. BigCommerce, another alternative, lacks a point-of-sale system but offers powerful analytics, terrific marketing tools, and interconnected sales channels.

You can read our full BigCommerce review here. 

In short, while Square Online is a solid choice for businesses needing a simple payment solution without long-term contracts, users seeking more comprehensive features and customization options may want to check alternatives like Shopify and BigCommerce.

Square Online review: Final thoughts

After conducting an in-depth Square Online review, it's clear that this platform is designed for beginners and small businesses venturing into the online world. Its simplicity and budget-friendly plans make it a solid choice, but there's still room for improvement.

While it stands out with seamless payment processing integration and multichannel tools, its scanty customization options and transaction fees may give some users pause. However, if you give priority to ease of use and straightforward payment solutions, Square Online could be the full-on fit.

For those ready to get started, the next step is to sign up and explore Square Online's features firsthand. Take advantage of the free plan to get a feel for the platform and see if it lives up to your expectations. If you require more advanced features and a bit higher level of customization, consider upgrading to one of Square Online's paid plans or exploring alternatives like Shopify or BigCommerce.

Ultimately, it all boils down to what suits your business best.

Square Online review: FAQs

Adobe Express might not have the name recognition of Photoshop or Illustrator, but when it comes to graphic design, it’s a strong tool with a unique set of skills. It’s a lot less complex than many in the Creative Cloud toolbox, and much more relaxed in its interface and experience. 

It’s part free logo maker, part graphic design software, part video maker. Like Canva, its closest competitor, Express is an all-in-one content marketing hub for creating social media content, flyers, and other visual assets. 

Last time we tested out the tool, we were impressed - but a lot’s changed in the content creation game. Now, we’re reviewing the latest version, which has seen major improvements and, because it’s Adobe, plenty of AI tools to sink your teeth into. 

Adobe Express: Pricing & plans

• The free option is most welcome and quite extensive when you look into it. Express is included in most of Adobe packages, or as a standalone subscription. 

Adobe Express is free - well, mostly. Much like Canva, there are loads of features on offer. But certain assets, elements, and other options are locked behind a paywall. 

Still, there is a lot you can do for free and it’s a great way to explore how Adobe Express would work for you. If you do opt for a subscription, it’s available for $9.99 a month, or $99.99 a year. Express is also bundled into Adobe Creative Cloud packages as standard - so you may already have access to it.  

• Pricing & plans: 4.5/5

Adobe Express: What is It?

• An ideal service if you’re looking to quickly create various projects based off of templates, but nothing’s stopping you from starting with a blank canvas should you prefer. The social media scheduling could prove to be a powerful asset.

Adobe Express is a service designed to help you create artwork, posts for social media, marketing, documents, and video editing. This is a vast canvas, but thankfully, the interface is well designed and easy to understand.

Top of the page is a menu guiding you to the above mentioned options. To the left is a sidebar from which you can access any previously created project via ‘Your Stuff’, set up your own ‘Brand’ (for paying customers only), ‘Explore' a vast library of templates which you can use and customise at will (some are considered premium only - anything with a purple crown lower right of the thumbnail isn’t free), ‘Schedule’ lets you post your artwork directly to social media, and ‘Learn’ provides tutorials to help you understand the workings of this service.

With the built-in social media management tools and content marketing tools, this is a much better feature-set than we had before. The scheduling feature alone should attract many potential new customers. You can connect to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok. Only one account of each is available for free, but those who pay can have up to 3. Essentially, with it, Adobe Express can be your social media creative hub. 

Adobe Express: Tools

• Very well-organised interface with a surprisingly good number of tools whether you’re working on an image or making a short video. 

Exploring Adobe Express now is like working with an entirely new service.  Everything has been expanded, from the options in the Home section, to the available editing tools for each category.

We’ve already explored some of the basic features in our previous review, so we thought we’d chat about other areas we hadn’t touched on, or simply didn’t exist back then. One thing worth noting though, previously you could use a basic background remover tool (fine tuning was a premium feature). Now it seems the background remover is only free “for a limited time”, which is obviously a downside. 

On a more positive note, let’s check out the editing features. You can begin with a blank canvas or choose from a wide gamut of templates. All editing tools are on the left, while tutorials can be found on the right, with the central section devoted to your project.

Click on an object or layer to reveal all available tools for it. You can also group objects together to make it easier to move them around or edit them in one go.

When it comes to videos, even though you can only hook up to TikTok on the ‘Schedule’ side of things , templates for YouTube videos (ie, those in the 16:9 aspect ratio with 1920x1080 pixels) are also available.

All the photos and videos you can browse through in the Media menu can be used in your project, and you’re free to upload your own clips. You’re even allowed to use ‘premium’ media in your video, but you won’t be able to download the finished product unless you pay to subscribe, or replace them with free alternatives instead.

As you’d expect, clips can be moved around and trimmed, but what surprised us for what’s supposed to be a simple video editor, was the ability to work with multiple layers of video, turning this casual online video editor into a surprisingly advanced one. Stacked clips will then also appear as thumbnails to the right of your project, which you can reorder to make sure the right one is always on top and visible, for instance.

We found Adobe Express to be very capable, whatever type of project we were working on. If you’ve used these kinds of services before, you’ll find this one easy to master, intuitive, and surprisingly versatile.

• Tools: 4/5

Adobe Express: Firefly AI

• Create images, insert objects in an existing image, create templates and font styles, all based on text input.

As with most Adobe products, Firefly AI has made its way to Express. Heavily promoted on the homepage, it also has its own dedicated menu along the ribbon. Here, you can create images from scratch (Text to Image), add objects to an existing photo (Generative Fill), create brand new editable templates (Text to Template), and what has to be our favourite: create brand new Text Effects based on a brief description. 

As with everything to do with Generative AI, your mileage will vary. When it comes to AI tools, it’s well-implemented - as you’d expect, given it’s a star feature in the likes of Photoshop. However, we’d like to see improvements here, as we had a hard time getting ‘Generative Fill’ to properly work at times. 

Still, when the AI comes through, you’re given four options, with the freedom to generate additional ones if you’re not happy with the output. You have a handful of different styles to choose from, and of course you can go back to the text input and alter it until you’re happy with what you’re getting. You can spend a lot of time playing around with various descriptions to see what the software will come up with or fine-tuning an artistic vision. It’s a lot of fun. 

• Firefly AI: 4/5

Adobe Creative Cloud: Scorecard

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You’re looking for a quick and versatile way to create new images, videos, and documents, to be used either online or printed. You like stuff that’s free, and might be tempted to pay for the premium content.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t like the idea of a helping hand, and would rather work through your creativity without being guided with templates and tutorials.

• Avoiding Adobe? Try the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives and the best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop