Running a successful business might make you think superpowers are required to pull it off. But rather than fashioning yourself after Clark Kent, all you need is proper technology, Bruce Wayne-style.
And while there might be many business and project management tools available on the market, it’s a double edged sword — there are so many options, it’s enough to make you dizzy.
And the more you delve into the topic, the more you start to wonder should you invest in an all-in-one solution, or a very niche tool that specializes in just one thing?
In this HoneyBook vs Square article, we’ll introduce you to three wildly different solutions that either cover one side of your business, or try to do it all.
What Is Square?
Square is a suite of tools for managing client communication and process payments, both online and in-person. It’s a solution built for brick and mortar businesses as well as for those who prefer the online landscape. The size of the company doesn’t matter — Square can be used by solopreneurs and large chains alike.
The Square suite comes with many additional tools, such as Square Appointments, Square Marketing, Square Invoices, Square Team Communication, Square Messages, and more.
But for those just starting out, there’s the free plan that comes with basic features to get their business off of the ground. One of the downsides is the processing fees that come with each transaction, but for many people, this still may turn out to be a pretty sweet deal.
Another downside lies in the fact that Square, as a suite, is a pretty convoluted solution that’s made of many different parts. Instead of trying to make sense of the whole system on Square’s rather vague website, it’s more convenient to jump on a call with the sales representatives. They’ll listen to your requirements and needs, and then propose the best solution moving forward.
Square Online
All the small and medium-sized business owners that want to focus on selling services online should set their sights on Square Online, which is tailored around creating your very own online store.
What Is HoneyBook?
HoneyBook is a much simpler platform created with freelancers in mind, particularly those delving in photography, interior design, event planning, coaching, consulting, marketing, and more.
While Square’s addressed first and foremost the pain of payment processing in the times where credit cards weren’t the norm, HoneyBook eased the burdens of administrative tasks for freelancers. It comes with premade templates that can be used for all sorts of documents, an easy way of keeping track of your finances, as well as task and project management features.
What Is Zendo?
Now, if you’re looking for something in between — a tool that combines project management with superior selling capabilities — then you should take a look at Zendo.
Zendo is a fairly new platform that allows business owners to sell productized, custom, and subscription-based services. All the workflows are built around clients, who are self-empowered; they can purchase any services themselves, submit their own requests and upload files, as well as manage and look up their projects. And because of the in-built chat, clients can easily communicate with the team anytime they want or need.
Business Needs To Consider
Based on these three introductions, let’s consider several issues that you as a business owner might encounter and see which tool would offer the best solution.
If you want to save time on document preparation…
Pick HoneyBook.
HoneyBook comes with a rich template library that offers many different documents, from brochures and proposals to pricing guides, moodboards, and testimonial requests. All are ready to be adjusted in the drag-and-drop editor, which is intuitive and easy-to-use. This means that you can quickly prepare high-quality documents that stay true to your brand.
But it might seem quite awkward to bombard your clients with all sorts of documents, especially if they’re sent at the same time — for example, when you want to send a questionnaire along with a proposal and contract. Not only the risk of losing the document increases, it also might be considered annoying.
Thankfully, HoneyBook came up with a solution in the form of smart files. In short, they allow you to combine all your documents into one file while introducing more customization options. By setting up your company theme — which includes fonts, colors, and button adjustments — you’ll spend less time on changing the little details every time you make a new document.
Moreover, all the files will be up to your client’s perusal in the HoneyBook’s Client Portal in addition to their email inbox. This way, they’ll be able to check on any past documents and review any files. You won’t have to worry as much about making back-up for your data — HoneyBook will do that for you.
This approach only works for old school freelancers that like exchanging back-and-forth emails, turning their inbox into the main communication channel. And while HoneyBook tries to introduce new features that will make emails unnecessary, it still has a long way to go.
If you want to have your own website…
Pick Square Online.
Square Online allows you to create your own website with the Square subdomain. As long as you’re subscribed to one of the paid plans, the site doesn’t come with any additional costs, besides the transaction fees.
The available themes revolve around eCommerce shops, retail, and restaurants — very few of them are meant for business owners selling productized or custom services, such as designers or web developers.
On the upside, it’s easy to make the website SEO friendly, so that your potential audience can easily find you with the help of proper keywords.
Square also comes with its own payment processor, so that you don’t have to integrate with Stripe, PayPal, Lemon Squeezy, or other gateways. This is especially good news to business owners living in countries where the most popular solutions are unavailable. And because of that, you can also forget about any additional fees that come with these integrations.
And if you’d rather uphold your professional image by investing in a custom domain, you’d have to pay at least $19.95 a year on top of your subscription.
If all you care about is a brand new order page, without the hassle of managing and maintaining your website, you can still use Square to do just that.
But you can also consider Zendo, which has its own Service Catalog. There, you can show off your free, custom, productized, and subscription-based services. Thanks to customizable Order Forms, your clients can quickly describe their needs and requirements, and then proceed to checkout, where they can pay for the order services at once.
If you want to collaborate with clients…
Pick Zendo or HoneyBook.
The key to the success of custom orders is communication. After all, your clients will count on you to share with them any updates, as well as request changes — staying on the same page has never been more important. In the case of Square, which focuses on eCommerce and retail, communication features are a little neglected; but both Zendo and HoneyBook decided to polish them.
Both Zendo and HoneyBook offer Client Portals along with an internal communication channel. Let’s see how they differ.
In Zendo, all clients get their own workspaces, where they can see their submitted requests, invoices and files, as well as subscriptions. In short, they can view all their transactions and shared data throughout the whole business relationship.
Moreover, clients can communicate with the team using the real-time chat. With the option to reach out anytime they need, you ensure your clients are well-taken care of every step of the way. If your clients have any doubts or questions, they don’t have to fire off emails and wait for an answer — they can communicate much faster using chat.
And if your client is a company representative that would like to invite their team members on board, they can do so by creating an Organization. This will result in a shared space, where all organization members can partake in discussions and exchange files without worrying about introducing any middlemen.
It’s up to you to decide how your client’s workspace looks. You have the control over the elements that are visible — if you want to get rid of the Documents tab entirely you can do so — and add new ones. For example, if you’d like to embed any YouTube or Loom videos, or present your Figma board, or any other platforms that can be embedded, you can go wild.
In short, Zendo prepares the perfect space for your clients to not only keep track of what’s going on with their projects, but also to take an active part in their development.
Let’s see now how HoneyBook compares.
In HoneyBook, you can create a Client Portal for each client. But it doesn’t resemble a workspace at all — rather, it’s a separate site that’s fairly simple in terms of both looks and functionality.
Clients can access five tabs: activity, files, payments, notes, and details. This means that your clients can read and write messages, download and upload any files, view invoices and contributors. Sadly, there’s no way to buy any new services or manage the existing ones — here, the client is more passive, being more of a voyeur instead of a real collaborator.
And the messaging is, unfortunately, quite clunky. Instead of a modern-looking and intuitive chat, we get a format resembling emails or old forum posts. And the more replies there are, the more you’ll have to scroll through.
In this case, Zendo looks and fares much better; it doesn’t only have one feature that eases client-vendor interaction, but a whole system that revolves around it.
If you want to measure your website’s performance…
Pick Square.
If you like to get into the nitty gritty of your website’s guts to measure the number of page views, unique visits, conversion rate, add to cart rate, and more, then Square will make that possible.
You can also track which websites refer to yours and what kind of keywords people entered into a search engine to find your site, which is immensely helpful in improving your SEO efforts.
Armed with that information, you’ll be able to make better informed decisions concerning your business. You won’t have to count on guesses and intuition, but real, hard data.
If you want to sell subscriptions…
Pick Zendo.
Subscription-based services are a nice compromise between delegating tasks to a third-party and hiring someone in house. You can partner up for as long as you want and part ways just as fast — which is impossible to do when working in house — while enjoying the benefits of working with someone that truly understands your brand and goals.
That’s why your potential clients might be over the moon to see that you offer this type of service. Sadly, most common business and project management tools don’t take into account this rising trend.
Thankfully Zendo, which is a much newer tool, made subscriptions one of its key features. Through them, vendors can build longer and stronger business relationships, reducing churn and stabilizing the revenue.
And there’s a lot of flexibility to be found in such a service type.
First of all, you can decide the available billing cycles — weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly — and then let your clients pick whichever is most convenient to them. And once they purchase your subscription plan, they can submit any requests they might need.
But wouldn’t that get too overwhelming for the vendor, getting buried under an unlimited number of requests?
Not when we add the request limits into the equation!
With that set in place, you control the number of requests a client can submit per week, month, quarter, and a year, as well as how many of them you’re willing to complete in the specified time period. You can also decide the total maximum number of both active and pending requests.
And if you really want to take the world by the storm, you can settle for unlimited requests entirely.
We saved the cherry on top for the last part — get ready to wow your clients with subscription pause. If there comes a time when your clients want to stop doing business for a short while, they don’t have to cancel their subscription; they can simply pause it. It only takes a few clicks and a few seconds!
If you want to have self-checkouts…
Pick Zendo or Square.
Self-checkouts are one of the extremely convenient ways of making purchases for both sides, clients and vendors. Customers don’t have to wait for the vendors to send payment details or confirm the scope of the work ordered, while vendors don’t have to care about speed of reply. Clients can make purchases in the middle of the night or during the weekend, and the vendors don’t have to worry about different time zones.
It’s a win for everyone!
In the case of Zendo, clients can access the fully customizable Service Catalog any time they want, where they can check out all your displayed services. Custom, productized, service-based, and free inquiries are all available for their perusal.
With rich descriptions supported by images, you can go into detail about the possible collaboration, scope of work, terms and conditions, as well as all the stages of the process. You may include links to your portfolio, case studies, success stories, and other social proof to convince your audience to give you a shot.
And what about a scenario where clients want to adjust their orders and shake things up, demanding changes? Do they have to contact you through email? Not at all — you can freely include add-ons to your services and make specific items quantifiable, allowing clients to order a precise number of items. With the upper and lower limits you can ensure the changes aren’t too much.
Last but not least, if your service type comes with an upfront payment, your clients can pay for their purchase at once, all while staying on the platform. They’ll be smoothly moved along the sales process until they can log in to their own workspace and keep track of the ordered project.
Other service types, which may require an estimation first and later payment, your clients will be able to pay within the platform. You can create new quotes, send invoices, and finalize payments within the chat that’s connected to a request.
In Square, the self-checkout resembles a standard eCommerce one, with products and items that you can simply add to cart and then pay for the purchase. Note though that Square doesn’t really cover services — its self-checkout will be all about retail and selling physical products, which will include shipping settings.
What Should Small Business Owners Pick?
Now that we went over hypothetical scenarios, the purpose of all three tools seem much clearer now:
- Square is more suited to selling physical products through not only an online shop, but also a brick and mortar. If you only want to sell services, you won’t use many of Square’s advanced features, which leads to a loss of money and waste of your time;
- HoneyBook was created by freelancers for freelancers, who like to make their email inbox the main communication channel, while their business is built around documents and files (such as proposals, questionnaires, forms, and more);
- Zendo is an all-in-one solution for service-based businesses that like to stay in close contact with their clients. Zendo will also delight those that prefer modern looks and clean interfaces with some fancy customization options.
Remember that you don’t have to jump right into these tools and invest everything you have; they all come with their own trial plans or — like in the case of Zendo — they have an entirely free plan, allowing you to truly get to know the platform and make better informed decisions.
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Frequently Asked Questions: HoneyBook vs Square vs Zendo
What Is Square?
Square is a suite of tools that can help small and big businesses thrive and grow in different directions. Thanks to its own payment processing system you don’t need to integrate with PayPal or Stripe, while expense management features will help you control your finances. Just a heads up though — Square works best for eCommerce and retail.
What Is HoneyBook?
HoneyBook is a business and client management tool where freelancers can delegate many of their administrative tasks to technology — for example, through automations. HoneyBook offers a whole library of templates that can be freely edited in an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, helping you prepare any documents you frequently use.
What Is Zendo?
Zendo is a Client Portal tool that helps small to medium teams sell and deliver custom and productized services, along with subscriptions. With its own client communication channel and in-app payments, you can not only offer an excellent customer experience, but also priority support that will make you stand out from the competition.
Can You Sell Subscriptions In Zendo?
In Zendo, you can sell subscriptions thanks to advanced payment systems that enable seamless online payments with flexible monthly payment options. With the capacity to handle unlimited clients, your business can scale effortlessly.
