Lightspeed Retail

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.

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.

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.

Thank you Lightspeed

Comments: Super simple and easy for my consumers transactions.

Pros:

the amazing POS and Inventory management offered from Lightspeed.

Cons:

That we didnt start using Lightspeed earlier.

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

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

Lightspeed Retail

Pros:

User-friendly and makes it easy to manage inventory, process sales, and check stock quickly. Helps speed up transactions and reduce errors. The system’s ability to handle multiple payment methods is also a big plus.

Cons:

The system can sometimes be slow, especially during busy times, which can frustrate customers. There’s also a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using some of the more advanced features.

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 customer service

Comments: Terrible. The POS X-series card reader that was delivered was faulty, wouldn’t stay charged and would give error messages when trying to process transactions. The additional equipment wasn’t comparable with our iPads. I left two voicemails asking for support with the faulty ready, never got a call back. Canceled my account and asked for a refund for the card reader and the subscription fee for the month we couldn’t process anything through them (Square stepped in and took care of us). Lightspeed never even responded. I called and spoke with a rep asking for a refund, it took a month for a response and the email was generic with no explanation for declining my request for refund. The company is not for small businesses and doesn’t care about clients.

Pros:

There’s nothing I like about the company.

Cons:

Customer service and support is nonexistent. Management only communicates through email (absurd). Messages and voicemails aren’t returned. Emails are automated blanket emails.

Customer support non existent

Comments: Mediocre as it lack the attention to the customer which is the most important for developing a relationship

Pros:

Poor, poor and nothing less than poor customer support. You are on your own.

Cons:

Functionality of the system and the look of the product on the pos

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.

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.

Solid system for retail

Comments: It is capable software system can handle your small retail shop with ease. inventory management, barcoding, point of sale, price tracking, reports etc all work well. It is bit hard to reach for customer service and lots of training required.

Pros:

Software is intact, does not give random errors. you can count on

Cons:

it is a bit hard to settle if you have an inventory at some other software. it would be better to have more sync options.

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