About Lightspeed Retail
Lightspeed Retail pricing
Lightspeed Retail does not have a free version but does offer a free trial. Lightspeed Retail paid version starts at US$79.00/month.
Alternatives to Lightspeed Retail
Lightspeed Retail Reviews
Feature rating
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Great integrated system
Lightspeed has been great. We have been using it for over a year and it has met my expectations. Whenever I request help, which isn't that often anymore they are quick to respond.
Pros
The best feature of LIghtspeed is the analytics package. As a senior manager you can spend a lot of time calculating your performance manually in excel. But the Analytics package takes care of all of that. It's easy to see the performance of your inventory, employees and marketing at any time. There are also a lot of apps that work with Lightspeed that make it the most functional POS system I've used. The fact that the ecommerce is integrated as well makes it a great fully integrated system. You could pay a lot more to piece together all the of the systems you need. Or you could spend a huge amount of money creating a custom system.
Cons
There are some small idiosyncrasies like not adjusting sync times for your local time zone. So, yesterday is never accurate you have to wait for the next days sync to get have accurate information. I would also like to be able to have our time management app sync employee time to Lightspeed so we don't have to enter it manually. I've given up on tracking employee hourly performance for this reason. Or if they offered a better time clock management natively that would help. I'd also like them to include the previous year comparisons in their dashboard. And, I'd like to look at seasonal performance rather than just month to month and week to week.
Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail
I wanted a cloud based integrated systemReasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail
I looked at a couple of others too that I can't remember. A lot of them had great features, but none of them had all of the features to have a fully integrated system for our customers to shop online or in person. And, none of them had the analytics tools that Lightspeed has.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
A great all-inclusive system
Our industry was using a server-based software which was cumbersome and VERY outdated. Switching to Lightspeed has allowed me to more easily fulfil online orders, process transactions remotely, and communicate with our customer base more effectively.
Pros
Integration across POS, eCommerce, Accounting, Data Analytics is excellent. We have been able to increase both sales and efficiency with this system. The accounting feature and its daily export to QuickBooks allows me to spend only a few minutes each day keeping books up to date. It certainly makes year-end a breeze. Lightspeed Analytics is an invaluable resource for forecasting and identifying areas of opportunity. Customer support is available 24/7 and if they aren't able to answer my question immediately, I have received a timely follow-up within a day or two.
Cons
There are some work-arounds that I have implemented. It would be nice to have the option for recurring billing and serial number tracking (not just adding a serial number to an item) as well as a better protocol for backordered items on Purchase Orders.
Alternatives Considered
Rain POSReasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail
Easy choice. Transitioning from a local server based software to a cloud based system was the first priority. After seeing what else Lightspeed had to offer, I immediately made the change.Switched From
AIMReasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail
When I was ready to purchase Rain, the sales team kept putting me off time and time again. If that was indicative of their customer service, I knew it wouldn't be the right fit for me.- Industry: Hospitality
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Massive improvements and proactive customer support
n/a
Pros
Initially we had problems getting support because they were very short-staffed. However they have done a lot to improve this aspect and I am confident that every time we call our support person will respond quickly and be able to solve our problem.
Cons
It was a little more difficult to implement than some other systems, so more of a learning curve for users. Also there are some product features that have some limitations at the moment but I think they will be resolved.
- Industry: Restaurants
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Not for restaurants
We had purchased the system for 3 of our establishments, and only installed it in 1 of them as a trial. Because of how bad it was, we decided to cancel our service. Even though we had not installed the other 2 locations and had used the product for 3 month in the one installed, they are forcing us to abide by our 3 year contract and pay the full amounts.
Even with having to cover that cost, which is completely unreasonable because 2 of the services were not installed, it is still much better and efficient for us to switch to another more functional service such as Cluster or Maitre-D.
I would not recommend this to anyone who has a restaurant.
Pros
Looks nice if you spend the time to set it up
Cons
Lightspeed has been a horror for us since the start. What we were presented at during the sales meeting made us very excited and happy, but the second the contract was signed, for our 3 locations everything went down hill. I had to pull teeth and send multiple messages and to get our installation done on time. And even at that they finished doing it opening day, and were debugging while we had to serve clients. And that is a whole other story.
The product itself looks good but really does not work for a restaurant. Little things like having a single client pay without closing the full table is not possible. Servers need to figure out all these ways/trick to speed up service without being slowed down by Lightspeed. Items cannot be sent to multiple locations at ones (if something come from both the kitchen and bar like a Caeser with bacon)
The reports are terrible. Items are split up in ways were the they are split if clients have payed 1/2 or 1/3 of the amount. So items like Natchos that are group type items, to no how many have been sold you need to add the full one, the 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, .... amounts. So extracting any information takes a long time. Many of the reports have numerical errors in them, and as such they cannot be trusted. Also, tyring to export hourly sales or receipts all have wrong times on them (our restaurant closes at 1am, yet it still show receipts until 5am)
It is not possible to use the inventory option in bar because they can only have units, it
Response from Lightspeed
Hi Derrick,
We apologize that you are disappointed with your Lightspeed Restaurant experience. We see that have been speaking with a senior member of our Customer Success team who is working with you to addressing your concerns. We would be happy to continue to work with you in resolving the matter, and coming to an amicable solution.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Invest in your pos
If you want you compagny to work, invest in a pos that does what it need to be done, that is what I did with lightspeed and I enjoy every second of it. Many feature save me several hours of work per week and they realy did a superb reserchs jobs on building a software that work with retail and its not a additional feature to a restaurant pos.
Pros
The inventory management feature is juste great, it does everything it need to be whit minimal restriction, import feature for large supplier order is a must. Save me several hours a week
Cons
The restriction in UPC digit make some of my item UPC useless (item from China with irregular upc) and I have to create a upc myself
