Lightspeed Retail Reviews

Great integrated system

Comments: 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.

Alternatives Considered: Clover and Shopify POS

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail: I wanted a cloud based integrated system

Switched From: Clover and Shopify POS

Reasons 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.

Over promise, under deliver

Comments: Overall, I have had a really negative experience with Lightspeed. Their account managers are not helpful and rarely answer. The company is focused on sales and add ons and not improving the product or ensuring the system does what retailers want / need

Pros:

Lightspeed has the basics complete. Matrixes, easy sku set up and fairly intuitive POS.

Cons:

The customer service is terrible. The team is constantly selling new add ons that don't work and then no one every responds. Overall, I have felt the system does not do what they say it does. For example, we were sold on a shopify integration, which is not true. We were also sold that their reporting is great. It is not only terrible, but you have to pay a lot more for any reports that give you actual information (like inventory valuations).

Customer Review

Comments: Overall I have spend way more time on the help desk waiting the 24-48 hours for technical support and I have had to invest more money and time into additional products I didnt expect. Overall the experience has been a mixed bag, but the latest integrations issues has left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Pros:

The fact it could do the basics well. i.e. take payment of an order.

Cons:

The integration issues, added costs of including so many additional applications and the delayed payment over the weekend, where lightspeed invoices did not match bank account inputs due to when the eftpos fee is attributed. This adds a lot of manual effort when reconciling.

Lightspeed for Small Business

Comments: Our overall experience has been very good - I have much more control over inventory, discounts, more robust reporting, and human error estimated.

Pros:

Inventory, POS, Reports, and discount features are all easy to configure and use.

Cons:

When completing an End of Year inventory count, you must submit the entire count before seeing the total cost of products counted.

Lightspeed Retail - User Friendly & Great Customer Service

Comments: The cost is a bit high in comparison to other retail POS systems. I may have considered an alternate provider based on the cost alone, but we wanted to get our store opened right away, and Lightspeed came very highly rated.
Over and above customer service is so very important, and this alone keeps us on-line. I would recommend Lightspeed to any new user considering them.

Pros:

I enjoy using Lightspeed. The features are easy to navigate, learn and train. There is a newsletter that alerts us to new features and interests. We were offered a significant start up discount for the first year, and the terminal was free. Once we set up the system, it has been clear sailing. Any time we have had a question, on-line customer service has been wonderful! We have never not had an issue unresolved. Lightspeed offers capital advances after a certain period of time, based on sales. This could be useful to help with additional expenses as they come along.

Cons:

I do not love the monthly fees now that our yearly discounted rate has come to an end. That is really the only thing I dislike about the entire system. I do wish that Lightspeed would partner up with Faire, the wholesale platform we often use, to integrate the inventory and invoicing.

Alternatives Considered: Square Point of Sale

Worst pos system

Comments: Not recommended, and I will cancel subscription, also , they force to use their payment process other wise would charge you which is not fair

Pros:

Help desk , they answer soon but for my case couldn’t help at all , just referred to higher level with no result

Cons:

Inventory management , huge inventory deduction with no reason

Satisfactory Product

Comments: customer service not good, very hard to get a hold of them

Pros:

like the ability to add and change products easily,

Cons:

Very hard to set up events in the system

Alternatives Considered: Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail: suppose to be integrated with hotel software and its ease of use

Not compatible with existing WooCommerce / Terrible Customer Service

Comments: A true business interruption costing us significant time and money!

Pros:

It was so dumbed down that anyone could use it, sadly this also makes it vulnerable to security breaches and theft

Cons:

Almost everything, from being totally mislead in the sales process, squeezed into their processing, ignored and dismissed on support tickets. Terrible service overall.

Alternatives Considered: Square Point of Sale, Clover, KORONA POS and Hike

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail: QB POS End of life

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail: The salesman was relentless and lied to me about it's capabilities even with detail Q&A. I was mislead by their white papers and sales process only to be dropped like a hot potato and bounced from department to department with no resolution or solutions. They refuse to escalate anything to a management member.

Stay away!

Comments: Horrible! Costly! Nightmare!
Business killer! Profit Stealer!

Pros:

When it was Shopkeep. It has only gotten worse with every update.

Cons:

They buy out the competition and change the system to a new hybrid version every other year.

Not The Same Company It Once Was

Comments: We loved Lightspeed and advocated for them in the beginning. The disappointment in their customer service and the system breakages and downtime was devastating to our business. The customer service we received when their system was crashing was the worst customers service I have experienced in any industry. They denied system crashes or feature breakages, for days before acknowledging them. We tolerated alot from them because they used to be so good! But, it started to cost us a lot of lost sales, and when they couldn't process credit cards for days, that was the end...

Pros:

Good foundation. Simple to use POS with valuable connected integrations.

Cons:

Customer service used to be outstanding. In a few short years, it provided some of the worst customers service I have experience in any industry. I can confidently saw even our basic employees/user understood the system better than ANY of the customer service reps from Lightspeed.

Alternatives Considered: NCR Voyix POS

Switched From: NCR Voyix POS

light speed review

Comments: very good, easy to use, learn and very quick to take guests orders, course meals, and send to Kitchen. our restaurant menu is always changing so its easy to add and remove items

Pros:

its easy to use and train other servers on, you can colour coordinate and organize items how ever you'd like with drop down tabs

Cons:

nothing it worked great for us. I would recommend to anyone

No upgrades since 2015 with their R-Series POS.

Comments: It's been a struggle. I didn't want to take the time and effort to switch but after they charged me $650 per location with out notice...I'm OUT!

Pros:

Can hold a large inventory amount...we have 3000+ products

Cons:

They never seemed to upgrade there system. Its been the same for 8 years!!!

Appalling should not be legal

Comments: Appalled

Pros:

Used to like the use abilities of the POS but to be forced to move to their payment processing or pay the fine of almost $7000.00 per year as an ADDITIONAL charge has been a disgraceful decision from them.

Cons:

The rip off decision to push existing users to use their high priced payment system.

Worse customer service

Comments: Absolutely awful
In my 20 years in business, I have never met a worse company

Pros:

I am a credit card processor that recommended Lightspeed to my clients None of my clients are able to get custom service It’s so bad that I personally been trying to email light speed and call for the last 5 days The only response I got is “how can we help” Once I wrote what I needed , no one ever got back to me I’m going to recommend to all my clients to leave lighspeed I’m even going to buy them new pos systems just not to deal with lighspeed anymore Non of my retail or restaurants were able to get customer service I’m writing this review to help other in their pos decision Please save yourself a lot of headache and not to use this POS system I have nothing to gain by telling you this

Cons:

Customer Service is beyond horrible I’ve been calling them and emailing them with no success

Bs money grab don't use this system.

Comments: Terrible

Pros:

This was an amazing system until they showed their true colors by forcing me (and others) to pay them $400 more a month if you don't use their payment system. After comparing their prices to my current rates it is cheaper to pay them $400.

Cons:

This company has no ethics. They forced their user base to switch to them to do payment processing. They said it made it easier to do it that way. Complete lie. I pull my sales from them to quick ooms them pull my banking from eleven I to quick books. At no time.e does their system need me to use their payment system but they still are foing to charge an extra $400/month if I don't move to their higher rates. One way or another they decided that they needed more of money.

So Many Problems

Comments: I want to like this software, I really do. I have even reached out to our account manager (the 3rd one we have had) to try and see if there is something else we can do, even avoid the app all together and pay for a new wired system (since ours isn't working) and I have been on a wild goose chase just to speak to "our new rep" who I have no idea how to contact now since the email I was given doesn't work. This is the most frustrated I have ever been with a company we do business with. BEWARE.

Pros:

The system itself is wonderful. The invoicing and product management helps us stay organized and keep track of product that has not yet arrived.

Cons:

I can't even explain how frustrating their POS app on an ipad is. The app crashes at the worst times. I have a panicked call from an employee multiple times a month. The card processing is slow, which is particularly frustrating at Christmas when we have a line to the door. The bluetooth cc reader is constantly disconnecting or not able to even be found. When we reach out for help we either don't get a reply for days from our rep and I am sent to one specialist after another, no one with a direct explanation on what is happening or why.

A major detriment to our stores function.

Comments: I wish I didn't buy all the hardware because I have come to hate Lightspeed. Don't expect help getting set up and really long hold time, and useless AI chat it's more like artificial stupidity.

Pros:

I'm so angry and annoyed at speed right now that I have nothing positive to say.

Cons:

Lightspeed has been high maintenance and extremely picky to set up our account and completely useless in making things function on their end.

Dishonest, misrepresented and lack of response from customer service

Comments: Upset we spent all of these hours to watch their onboarding videos (3 of our staff one day and 4 on another). What a waste of payroll, time and effort. Biggest conflict is they never respond to email once you get signed up.

Pros:

That it would allow us to put our inventory online

Cons:

They [sensitive content hidden] misrepresented the product claiming we could store our inventory in bin locations which is not true. Upon reaching out to cancel, they make it hard by ghosting our emails.

Customizable POS solution

Comments: Overall Lightspeed has been a pleasant experience. Pricing is affordable for small business. Some bug fixes, and added features are slow to come to fruition. Integrated vendor catalogues save a tonne of time.

Pros:

Ease of implementation Multi location abilityPortabilityLinks to e-commerce optionAbility to use multiple terminals to access data and input sales/work orders/purchase orders etc over cloud

Cons:

Lacking in some reporting function, is available at added costNew fee structure for users not interested in Lightspeed payments

User friendly

Pros:

Easy to learn and how integrates with Stayntouch PMS system

Cons:

Nothing really

So far so good. I like it.

Pros:

Ease of use and easy to track sales. Payment processing is good.

Cons:

Nothing of great concern. Good for high sales

Nonintuitive and lack of customer support

Comments: It is a nonintuitive program that bogs down our time for a sale.Customer support is nonexistent. When using the chat, we are only passed along articles that have nothing to do with the questions and or concerns we have. We can not get a human on the phone or any email response.

Pros:

nothing, absolutely nothing. The company gives us zero confidence.

Cons:

every part of it as well as the lack of customer service

What customer support?

Comments: It is not a user friendly system.

Pros:

There isn't much I like about the systems ease of use.

Cons:

It is impossible to speak to any customer service representatives. All they do as an attempt for customer service is to send you articles to read which have nothing to do with the issue you are having.

Waste of time for e-comm / multi channel businesses

Pros:

Nothing at all, if I could leave 0 reviews I would. Total waste of time if you have an e-commerce business that needs POS integration.

Cons:

Avoid! Representatives promise the world and the software does not deliver. Charged us for the full contract term up front and are refusing to apply refund even though we cooled off within 24 hours of sign up - once we realised what had been promised was not at all functional. Don’t waste your time or money.

Good Retail POS solution

Pros:

Integration with external services, ease of use

Cons:

User interface / experience could be improved