Lightspeed Retail

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

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Pros

The main reason I signed up for Lightspeed Retail was so that I could keep my e-commerce website's stock properly synced up with my in-store retail stock.

Cons

Overall, it's a large service and there are a lot of configurations to be set up. I also had to get a separate plugin (from a 3rd-party) in order to fully get my POS and website to sync.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Pros

I like the inventory tracking and categorising your products. It helps to give you a better view and analysis of your sales reports.

Cons

I didn’t like the download button only has 1 option. It’s good to add pdf option too.

Pros

Fairly functional, but they'll make changes with no regard to how it affects your operation, putting your register & receiving department in turmoil at the worst times.

Cons

Extortion! A sudden "policy change" and now we're getting a additional $400 per month charge on top of our subscription fee until we switch to their merchant card service. `Wonder why it's so hard to leave a review for Lightspeed? I had an issue with the POS service - it took 3 months just to get a response! Use ANY other POS service!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Pros

It's simple to set up. With the credit payment system integrated, it avoids dealing with a third party system.

Cons

The down time when their service fails on their end. We've had transactions completely disappear after the customer already left, thus losing not an insignificant amount of money.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Pros

Easy to create promotions for certain products. Helpful that the platform can also be used for inventory management and restock levels can be set. Also good that it syncs with Shopify.

Cons

The reporting mobile app could be improved. The app sometimes glitches and is slow to update.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Pros

Light speed offers some of the best Retail software on the market.

Cons

I wish we had chosen this software earlier and not wasted money trying out others.

Pros

like the ability to add and change products easily,

Cons

Very hard to set up events in the system

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

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

Reasons for Choosing Lightspeed Retail

Reasons for Switching to Lightspeed Retail

Pros

I was originally a customer with Vend and since Lightspeed purchased the company I can not see any Pros.

Cons

Too many to list, but the company ethics are poor and I am not sure how they get away with the anti-competition methods.

Pros

Importing spreadsheets and not having to create individual items to prepare for the PO.

Cons

CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! Unless you have a very small company with maybe 2 employees and 30 products, the representatives won't be able to help.

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!!!

Pros

I wanted to share my recent experience with Lightspeed POS and their customer support

Cons

Nothing but a nightmare since we signed the contract. Some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Haven’t even been able to get the POS up and running. Support is no help, and our onboarding person is non communitive. Less than a month in and we have no working POS systems. When I reached out to cancel my contract they threatened me with a $4k fine for breaking contract.

Pros

It integrates with several systems and card payment terminals which allows you to use it easier

Cons

Nothing I can complain about as it a great product

Pros

Honestly, not a lot of pros.
Its simple enough if you know how to dink around and look for things.

Cons

Features are not up to par
The way ecomm is set up for connecting to retail is a mess

Pros

The support staff, while unelpful, are friendly

Cons

The entire system was over promised, and entirely under delivered

Pros

Sounded good when they pitched their product.

Cons

Not intuitiveToo many stupid reductant boxes need to be checked when adding inventory and epically laborNot honest about their company and focusAn absolute waste of time to try and get any tech support. Lightspeed auto increased our rate 300% do to credit card processing Extortion is how they opporate

Pros

Easy to learn and how integrates with Stayntouch PMS system

Cons

Nothing really

Pros

Nothing. Absolutely nothing!!!!! Never used it

Cons

Wasn't POS based. Was web based and I apparently didn't understand that

Pros

Originally, ease of use. Now is not the case.

Cons

We have had Shopkeep/Lightspeed for 9 years. It does not make doing inventory easy at all. We have nothing bur problems with the chip reader/swiper, continuously disconnects. Cannot make sales. Have spent many calls to fix, they make us buy new card readers every time. Also multiple problems with scanners not working! Problem has not been resolved in 9 years! Our other stores using another POS does not have these problems. Looking to switch.

Pros

Ease of training - So simple a caveman could use it

Cons

Customer supportPayments not applyingCustomer support

Pros

nothing ITS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!

Cons

the customer service is completely horrible. I have been trying to cancel my subscription with the for 2 months now and still no luck. They just have me jumping through hoops sending me from one person to the next.

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.

Pros

Ease of using the system and the accuracy of sales reports

Cons

Improve on the turnaround time for support when contacted using email.

Pros

I think it makes accepting online sales easy but that's about it for me.

Cons

I didn't realize how much I LOVED Lightspeed On-Site until we switched to Retail.
We were recommended to move to Lightspeed Retail because On-Site is old technology, however this program is way inferior for small businesses. Once we were contacted to move to Retail coincidentally our On-Site started having issues like our subscription wasn't renewed and our e-Com store was turned off randomly. Not really knowing what was going on... it made sense to change to the cloud based program they were really encouraging us to move to. Now that we have gone live I realize this program is not as complex regarding small businesses, and offers very little customizations for our personal style. I was told the Analytics feature for $1000 would give me the options I need to customize the program to our business such as implementing sales targets our staff could see and a customizable dashboard.... don't think it can. It really just gives you more reports than a one brick & mortar plus online store needs. It's not relevant. Also....we thought moving to retail with our physical and eCom store would run smoother and that gift cards would work between both platforms. Again... not the case. Gift cards are not available online nor can in store cards be used online without a lot of effort in making that happen. I think if you owned multiple stores that just reordered the same inventory and didn't care about labels or gift cards this would be the perfect system for you!

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

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.

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

Switched From

Pros

Inventory management was easy. The retail system is fairly easy, but the api from retail to ecom is one way, which is a major flaw.

Cons

Their ecom is terrible. Only thing worse than their ecom is their customer service. You can’t call anyone. Tickets take weeks to get worked. Only option is online chat. Try explaining a complex situation in a chat.

Pros

I like how easy it is to pull data on Lightspeed Back office and how easy it is to have it communicate to your POS device.

Cons

Connection to the card reader goes in and out frequently and it Lightspeed only works with certain processing companies.

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).

Pros

Nothing. Wasted my time and energy with false promises of functionality. Total fail. Terrible experience

Cons

Questions I asked at demo:
Does it include integrations with Woo and Amazon? Told it did. It does not! Demands additional software to integrate with Woo, Amazon, and Shipstation.
Where is support? Told North America. It is not. 4-6 days to get email response. Phone support has no answers, creates email chain.

Pros

Appears simple and easy to use, simple to set up and cost effective.

Cons

Be very wary. Lightspeed will take you on to use their epos system but once you have settled in, they will penalise if you do not use their payment services in conjunction. The monthly penalty for not using their payment gateway is huge. Support is limited to non existent and the account manager's primary objective to sell you their services, and if this is not accepted, they will pressurise you to take the services regardless by way of charging you £335 per month as penalty.

I would highly recommend you look into other Epos providers before committing to Lightspeed. As you will then be faced with the pressure of moving away from them quickly. Note they only give you 18 days to pay for the penalty invoices before suspending service.

Pros

Fast, all online, easy to import and export between excel

Cons

Basic functions simply do not work and have not been fixed after months to years

Pros

Canned reports were good, Intuitive for the most part.

Cons

Very lacking in customer service. Unwillingness to meet specific requirements, dismissive.

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

Pros

Easy to use, however Merchant allows debit card to proceed with a chargeback without returning the merchandise , scary and dangerous for any business.

Cons

Merchant allows debit card to proceed with a chargeback without returning the merchandise , scary and dangerous for any business.

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

Pros

the amazing POS and Inventory management offered from Lightspeed.

Cons

That we didnt start using Lightspeed earlier.

Pros

NOTHING

Cons

THEY SELL YOU THE WRONG PLAN AND THEN WHEN YOU FIND OUT THERE IS ANOTHER SERIES THAT WAS THE PLAN YOU WANTED THEY THEN TELL YOU TO PAY ALL THESE EXTRA ADD ONS WHICH IS MORE EXPENSIVE AND WILL NOT EVEN ALLOW YOU TO CHANGE TO THE RIGHT SERIES. THEY ARE LYING THEIFS AND USELESS. HIS IS IN SOUTH AFRICA. SO I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS FOR ANY SOUTH AFRICANS

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.

Pros

Deffinelty not the customer service. Very poor.

Cons

Definitely the customer service was the worst. Basically forced to use Lightspeed payments otherwise high monthly fee. Can't pass on bank fees to customers still! Extremely poor customer service. Been trying to speak with someone for Months.

Pros

The software itself was ok, but fairly clunky to use.

Cons

The support team are very poor and extremely slow to respond and remediate issues

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.

Pros

Ease of use. And CustomerService the way they used to do it.

Cons

Credit Card processing customer service.

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.

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.

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

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

Pros

The first contact was great but then when you take the cheapest plan they don't help you after it and almost try to make it harder, this app its a joke

Cons

Impossible to call them, texted them like everyday all day to resolve problems, I could open for my first service because of them also havent got my money back after 2 weeks, they lost my documents and pretend to never have it, be ready to talk to 60 différents peoples, go with square really !