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Lightspeed has been a prominent player in the POS market for over a decade, providing an intuitive solution for businesses of all sizes. With its cloud-based platform and mobile app capabilities, Lightspeed POS can transform your business operations with its advanced ecommerce features designed for retail, restaurant, and golf.
In this review, we’ll take a look at its pricing, important features, and how it stacks up against other systems.
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What is Lightspeed POS?
Lightspeed is the company behind Lightspeed POS, offering a cloud-based commerce platform that powers approximately 168,000 locations worldwide. Lightspeed POS is a unified POS and payment solutions designed to support businesses in the retail, restaurant, and golf industries.
The POS software operates as a cloud-based point-of-sale system, allowing users to manage their business from any mobile device, anywhere. It integrates various functions such as transaction processing, inventory tracking, and real-time advanced reporting. These tools are designed to streamline operations, enhance customer experience, and support business growth.
Lightspeed POS Pricing & Plans
Lightspeed offers a range of POS plans tailored for both retail and restaurant businesses. With four distinct pricing tiers, with monthly pricing, the company provides flexible solutions to cater to businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises.
| Plans | Lightspeed Restaurant | Lightspeed Retail | Transaction Fee | Recommended For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lean | From $69 | From $119 | 2.6% + $0.10 | Small businesses looking to simplify daily operations |
| Standard | From $189 | From $169 | 2.6% + $0.10 | Ideal for businesses aiming to exceed guest expectations/for omnichannel businesses |
| Advanced | From $399 | From $249 | Custom rates available | Enterprises and businesses looking to connect all departments/Businesses looking to go further |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | Custom pricing | Custom rates available | High-volume merchants and large businesses with complex needs |
Lightspeed POS Key Features
We’ll take a look at the notable features you get with a Lightspeed POS account.
We find Lightspeed’s Inventory Management quite useful. It allows you to track and automate stock levels in real-time. This means that you don’t have to keep manual stock counts and spreadsheets, as inventory is automatically deducted and replenished as menu items are sold and received, providing real-time visibility into your current stock levels and value.
This helps you avoid idle inventory, waste, and spoilage by ordering only what you need. Detailed reporting on all inventory movements—purchases, production, waste, and sales—allows you to identify cost-saving opportunities. This also comes in handy if you’re looking for a retail POS.
Lightspeed’s customizable menu capabilities allow you to build and update your menus quickly and easily, no matter where you are.
We particularly love the ability to display mouthwatering high-resolution photos of dishes and drinks, which, according to customer data, entices customers to order more. The system also keeps your waitstaff informed on key menu details, such as allergens or wine pairings, ensuring they can provide excellent customer service.
Lightspeed’s Order Anywhere feature is a standout, allowing your customers to order and pay directly from their phones, speeding up service and reducing wait times. It integrates directly with the Lightspeed Restaurant POS system, sending online orders straight to the POS and enabling easy menu management across locations.
Customers can order for takeout, curbside pickup, or dine-in and fully customize their orders through the digital menu. The platform also provides valuable customer feedback and data to help restaurant owners improve the ordering experience.
Lightspeed Restaurant’s floor plans allow you to accurately reflect your business’s physical layout, including table arrangements and different seating areas (e.g., Takeaway and Dine-In). These floor plans are important for table service operations, as they help with order management, billing, and customer seating.
Customer profiles allow you to get to know your customers better, track their visits and orders, and provide more personalized service. The customer-facing display shows customers their bills and can promote your menu items, simplifying checkout and building trust.
Credit can be added to customer accounts, orders can be assigned to their tabs, and you can see their visit and payment history.
Lightspeed POS minimizes training needs and empowers staff with intuitive tools, resulting in efficient and satisfied employees. Flexible user permission settings allow you to customize access and capabilities for individual employees or teams, and comprehensive staff reporting gives you visibility into key performance metrics, enabling you to identify top performers and provide targeted incentives.
Lightspeed Payments is a restaurant payments solution that is fully integrated into Lightspeed’s POS platform. It offers powerful payment processing with advanced insights and provides a secure and seamless checkout experience for customers, with features like Pay at Table that streamline the payment process.
Lightspeed Payments also enables you to diversify your revenue streams with online and contactless payments, like Order Anywhere with QR codes.
The end-of-day reports offer you detailed breakdowns of sales, revenue, tips, peak hours, and customer payment preferences. We noticed that the staff reports track employee shifts, productivity metrics, and sales performance to identify top servers.
Lightspeed’s cloud-based POS system enables mobile access to real-time reports on any device, ensuring you always have up-to-date insights into your operations.
Lightspeed POS Integrations and Add-Ons
Lightspeed POS integrations cover a wide range of business needs, including retail, hospitality, e-commerce, and golf management. The available integrations are particularly strong in areas such as payment processing, marketing, and enterprise resource planning (ERP).
Notable integrations include loyalty programs like AppCard and TapMango, email marketing through Mailchimp, HR through Push Operations, Accounting through leading software like QuickBooks and Xero, and various rental and reservation systems.
Lightspeed POS Security Features
Lightspeed prioritizes the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of its services through various technical and organizational safeguards. These include continuous system monitoring, logging, and alerting, as well as protection against Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. Additionally, Lightspeed ensures secure data handling and transfer, even across international borders, adhering to the latest data protection frameworks and standards.
Lightspeed POS Hardware
Lightspeed offers a versatile range of hardware solutions tailored for retail environments. Their offerings include iPad kits for mobile or counter use, desktop kits for a stationary setup, and individual components like label printers, cash drawers, and scanners.
The hardware is designed to integrate seamlessly with Lightspeed’s software, ensuring a smooth and efficient point-of-sale experience. Whether you prefer a wireless, mobile setup, or a more traditional desktop arrangement, Lightspeed provides the necessary tools to build a POS system that fits the unique needs of your business.
Lightspeed POS Alternatives & Competition
Lightspeed is a well-known POS brand, but it’s not the only option on the market. Let’s see how it compares to its leading competitors.
| Best For | Free Version | Monthly Starting Price | Transaction Fee | Hardware Cost | Built-in Payment Processing | Inventory Management | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lightspeed POS | Cafes | No | From $69/month | From 2.6% + 10 cents | Quote-based | Yes | Yes for higher tiers |
| Epos Now | Retail and Hospitality Businesses | No | From $99 + subscription | Quote-Based | From $349 for a complete POS solution | Yes | Yes |
| Square | Small Businesses | Yes | From $60/month | From 2.6% + 10 cents | $10 for card reader, terminals start at $299 | Yes | Yes |
| Lavu | Food Trucks | No | From $59/month | From 2.6% + 10 cents | Included in monthly fee | Yes | Yes |
| Vend | Retail | No | From $69/month | The cost varies based on your choice of payment processor | From $99 | No. It offers integrations instead. | Yes |
| Clover | Reports and Analytics | No | From $14.95 for professional services | From 2.3% + 10 cents | From $49 | Yes | Yes |
| SpotOn | Multi-location restaurants | Yes | From $99/month +$3 per employee | From 1.99% + 25 cents | Included in monthly fee | Yes | Yes |
| Cake | Customer Experience | No | From $69 per month | From 2.5% + 15 cents | Included in monthly fee | Yes | Yes |
Lightspeed POS Customer Reviews
Customers have expressed a high level of satisfaction with Lightspeed POS, as reflected in its excellent rating of 4.4 on Trustpilot. The POS solution is seen as a versatile “all-round solution” with a comprehensive suite of sales, inventory, and data management features that make day-to-day running and monitoring of businesses effortless and accessible from anywhere.
There’ve also been some negative remarks about its pricing methods, third-party integrations, and occasional software glitches.
“Lightspeed is excellent throughout their array of positions and teams that you work with. From sales, to management, to marketing, everyone on their team strives to put your company in the most profitable and successful position possible. Would recommend to anyone within the Food, Retail or Golf Industry!”
Customer review collected from Trustpilot
“The communication with representatives has been very efficient and helpful, especially with Sophie. We also super appreciate all of the features that the Retail X app and Lightspeed have to offer in reference to sales/inventory data. We are still learning how to use the system to its fullest potential, but so far the everything has been very intuitive.”
Customer review collected from Trustpilot
In terms of support, Lightspeed offers multiple channels to assist its users. Customers can access 24/7 support during weekdays, with extended hours on weekends.
How to use Lightspeed POS - Quick Guide
Here's a more concise step-by-step guide on getting started with Lightspeed POS:
Sign Up and Choose Your Business Type
Head to the Lightspeed website and click on the “Free Trial” button. On the sign-up page, select the type of business you have – in this case, we can pick “Retail”. Provide details about your business, such as the types of products you sell, the number of locations, and your contact information.
Set Up Your Product Catalog
Once you’ve created your Lightspeed account, navigate to the “Products” section via the “Sell” option on your dashboard’s sidebar. Here, you can add your product details, including names, descriptions, variants (e.g., sizes and colors), supplier information, pricing, and inventory levels. Organize your products into categories and subcategories to make them easy to find and manage.
Configure Your Point of Sale
In the “Sell” section, you can set up your point of sale system. This includes adding payment methods, configuring your cash register, and setting up your receipt printer and barcode scanner. You can customize your POS settings to match your specific retail needs.
Integrate with E-commerce
Lightspeed offers an e-commerce platform called Lightspeed eCom (E-Series) that provides a range of tools for managing products, sales, and settings. It can also integrate with various website builders and content management systems. You can use this to connect your online store to social media platforms and sell on popular marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
After completing the setup steps, you’re ready to start using Lightspeed to manage your retail operations, from in-store sales to inventory and reporting.
Remember, Lightspeed offers a 14-day free trial, allowing you to explore the platform and ensure it meets your business needs before committing to a paid subscription plan.
How We Review and Test POS Software
To provide our readers with accurate and well-informed recommendations, we test the most popular POS products on the market to find the best options for you. Our methodology consists of the following criteria:
- Features: We examine the features offered by each POS software, how useful those features are, and how they compare to others on the market.
- Scalability: We look at how many users can be added to a platform and how easy it is to do so to ensure companies can easily add more employees to their payroll as they scale their operations.
- Integrations: We evaluate each piece of software’s integrations to determine how well it fits in with other key pieces in a business’s software stack and whether its functionality can be expanded as required.
- User Experience: We get hands-on with each product to put ourselves in the shoes of a new user, testing each platform to gain an understanding if the platform is easy to use or requires onboarding.
- Total Cost: Transaction fees, hardware costs, and additional costs. We look at the features, integrations, customer service, and extras to determine if the price of the software matches the value it provides. We score a product higher if it offers customers a free trial and is upfront and transparent about its pricing plans.
- Security: We delve into the security protocols of each company, assessing the measures in place to safeguard user data.
- Customer Reviews: We consider customer reviews from reputable third-party websites as a crucial aspect of our evaluation process.
How to Choose the Best POS Software
When it comes to selecting the best POS software for your business, there are several key factors to consider:
Evaluate the POS software’s pricing plans, considering both your budget and the feature-to-price value. Ensure that the plan you choose meets your current and future needs.
Carefully review the features offered by the POS software. Determine if all the features you require are available in the plan you can afford, as some advanced features may be restricted to higher-tier plans.
Consider the cost and availability of additional functionality as your business grows. Ensure that the POS software can scale with your needs without significantly increasing your expenses.
A user-friendly interface and intuitive design can significantly reduce the time and effort required for training employees and streamline daily operations. Look for POS systems with a clean, straightforward layout and customizable features to meet your specific workflow needs.
Examine the available integrations with other business tools and software. Some integrations may only be accessible on higher-tier plans, so make sure the essential integrations you need are included.
Evaluate the quality and availability of the POS software provider’s customer support. Consider factors such as support hours, communication channels, and user reviews to ensure you’ll have the assistance you need when it’s required.
Our Other POS Guides
Now that you have gone through our Lightspeed review, here are some more detailed POS guides from our network:
- Best POS System
- Best POS System for Restaurants
- Best POS System for Bars
- Clover POS Review
- Square POS Review
- Best Restaurant Accounting Software
