Vend vs Lightspeed Retail Comparison

Simple execution. Very intuitive setup and operation. I merged data from a .CSV file without any difficulty. Out of the box easy to implement system.

Some limitations. Requires strong WIFI connection - otherwise you will have some lag when ringing up or general system use. Not a great multi store solution.

Good feature set for the retail environment.

Support is AWFUL. And I mean truly AWFUL. Today for example, VEND is having problems with credit card authorization. The authorizer, Worldpay from FIS sees the transaction and approves it but VEND fumbles the transaction and doesn't accept the payment. Attempts at getting support from VEND have not been fruitful. Ever try to run a retail store when you can't accept card payments? VEND uses a BOT to try to front-end support requests. They need to invest in HUMANS to provide support. Yes, humans are expensive, but so is VEND's software.

Front end is clean and simple for employees to use. Fine for a very small or beginning business.

Reporting functions are terrible. System was not designed by anyone with any understanding of accounting or running a B&M retail business. Only capable of working for a very small retail business.

Simple to use. Flexible, and can cover multiple locations. Very easy inventory management, and can do inventory counts right online, and you can break up products into categories.

There isn't much. The only thing that I wish it could do is easily sync inventory with Enterprise desktop editions of Quickbooks. It does support Xero and Online Quickbooks.

This is the most bulletproof POS for the money. Everything that works, works better than other platforms.

They kept raining the price of the pos until they were sold to Lightspeed. Lightspeed is making changes so quickly that their own documentation is pretty worthless. Vendors they work with will call you with sales calls. I also don't like the continued removal of features (sorting by qty, eccomerce, sales ledger)

It has all the bells and whistles when it comes to setting up your retail store. It allows more than one register and many users.

The inventory management was terrible. I had one brick and mortar and an online store and the inventory was constantly off. Also you have to pay extra for customer support if you need to call and solve a problem immediately (register not working during business hours etc.)

Hi Brianne, Sorry to hear you've had a negative experience with Vend - not what we like to hear at all! If you were using Vend Ecommerce or an ecommerce integration built by Vend (like Shopify) our experienced team are here to help 24/7 with inventory management. If you were using a third party ecommerce integration that wasn't built by Vend, we recommend retailers get in touch with that...

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Simple enough to use and can perform most functions needed by small retail operarions!

Not seamless enough integration to Shopify. I think Vend have released their own ecommerce solution so try exploring that. Must be better.

It integrates the online and retail inventory at the same time. Like the basic website template and all that you can do to make it look like a real website with other information besides a shopping cart!

Does not support coupon codes! Thought about leaving Vend POS several times because of this problem.

Hey there, thanks for taking the time to review Vend POS! Apologies that we don't currently have a feature to generate coupon or promo codes. This is a highly requested feature we're aware retailers would love to see on Vend. If this feature is added to Vend, we'll be sure to send out an update. Thank you for your feedback. Best, Lucia (Vend's Community Manager)

Great product for running a retail store! The product works very well and set up is quite easy.

Depending on merchant account, the software doesn't always allow refunds to be performed at the till (iPad).

Vend has a very versatile and flexible workflow, with lots of features and options to work for most any retail scenario your business may face.

With all the features and options, many of them are tucked away in submenus, and therefore provides a steep learning curve if you lack someone to tutor you.

Eady to use if you're only operating a retail store and need a POS system and have an accounting system that can be integrated

Cant handle complex inventory costing so all the costing per SKU must be outside vend. It would be be great to have a better costing system

Great cost effective software for our retail business. Our associates find it easy to use and has regular updates that are easy to implement.

Needs more enterprise like features for the back-end inventory management. Some more mobile functionality with payment options would be better.

Hey Jim, thanks for taking the time to review Vend POS. Appreciate your feedback and happy to hear that you and your associates are finding Vend easy to use! If you have any specific feature requests around inventory or would like to let us know what kind of mobile functionality you'd like to see with payment options, please let us know using this link https://support.vendhq.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=1375. Best, Lucia (Vend's Community Manager)

Ease of Use. Easy install and data entry. Handles all the basic POS functions. Easy to manuvere through software and customer service was very good.

Does not handle our needs. We are a furniture business and need customizable invoices, customer databases, and the ability to special order products with depsoits. System is not as robust as more expensive solutions but you get what you pay for.

We used this for a small retail clothing store. It was managed remotely and easily updated within the shop. It was easy to see analytics for sales

Our CC processor wasn't accepted at the time, so we had to input our credit card sales manually. This was a hassle but was eventually fixed.

The user-friendliness and intuitiveness of Vend was great for us in our start-up phase at our brewery. We operated a retail store and taproom/bar using Vend for about six months.

Ultimately, there was a lack of complexity in the software for running a bar/taproom in terms of being able to use tabs. There is a 'tab' / layaway function we used as a workaround but it is not meant for this purpose.

Vend is an excellent and fail-safe POS for small businesses. While data entry and inventory search functionality is generally a breeze, depending on the nature of your business or inventory, you may run into difficulties keeping categories of products isolated from one another. Stock orders are a breeze and staff is very helpful.

I only wish the interface was a little more malleable and user customizable as it seems that it's slowly being tailored to best suit its most standard applications, rather than oriented towards creative retail pursuits with singular demands.

It has a lot of functionality. Which is a must in a high paced retail environment? It also works in a cloud meaning you can access it anywhere from any device - perfect for keeping a close eye on your sales going up!

As it is a SaaS software, sometimes you have to wait a long time for a new functionality that you wish it had.

The UI and layout is clear and simple.

buggy when adding products. Cannot add products on the fly or do special orders. Cannot do work orders.

Inventory tracking features. Being able to see all outlets inventory at the same time. Inventory transfers are very intuitive and easy to perform, same with stock orders.

Pricing and sale discount features aren't easy to apply for a membership type of system. Updating Price Books is a hassle as its current layout for each price book is not easy to navigate if one product's price needs to be changed inside of a price book with hundreds of products.

Hey there, thanks for your review of Vend POS. We agree Vend's the best point of sale for businesses looking to grow! If you're wanting to add extra staff management functionality, check out the Vend + Deputy integration. Deputy is a cloud based all-in-one employee scheduling, time & attendance, tasking and communication platform that you can connect to Vend for greater insight on sales trends and...

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The customer service is out of this world. They NEVER leave you hanging & always resolve my issues in the one phone call. These guys truly understand retail & the time pressures involved & have never let me down. They're generally good, fun peeps to deal with as well.

I have a pretty demanding list of requirements for reporting & some of them require a bit of excel manipulation, HOWEVER - the data has always been there, I've just needed to massage it a bit.

For our retail clothing business, we have been using Vend POS in our shop to manage inventory and run in-store sales. The integrations we rely on are Shopify for e-commerce as well as Xero for accounting. Vend POS has been a generally pleasant experience and they have improved the web-based POS platform tremendously over the course of the past five years and continue to do so. The Vend Register...

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There have been various bugs, issues, and UI inconveniences over the years. Generally customer support is very responsive to tickets we create however it is usually a long turnaround to actually address any software improvements we have asked to be made.

Vend is easy to get going, but has a learning curve. It has a design that is geared towards more specialty retail with lower volume sales. Installed in a resale clothing store, and it worked great, it has multiple picture features and offer integration with ecommerce. The level of options is great for stores like clothing, toy stores, hobby shops, etc.

The user register screen was hard to get us too. Its not layout in a standard cash register layout. Their was no use of a virtual number keypad. Which is hard to get use too. There are work arounds for it. They really need to redo the user register interface to be more streamlined.

Simplicity (or so it seemed), multi-outlet.

It's simple because it doesn't work. We literally have buggy issues every week, and it's been a year of using it. And we're not attempting difficult or creative issues. Very basic retail tils, on hardware recommended by Vend, setup according to their specs. It just constantly has problems. Dropped sales, problems with software, reporting issues... you would think these are our issues (Vend blames...

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It's easy to set up, easy to use and intuitive (even for some of my more tech-challenged staff), and perfect for a small-to-medium retail operation. It handles multiple outlets easily, as well as our wholesale business, and we're about to begin using the Vend eCommerce platform for our online store. And the price is very reasonable, which is one of the reasons it's such a good solution for a smaller business.

It can be difficult to find hardware that works with Vend. For example, we purchased the label maker that Vend recommends, and it was cheap and awful and broke twice before we decided to use something better. Unfortunately, Vend doesn't talk to that label printer, so our IT genius created a workaround that gets the job done. There are also some functions that Vend doesn't have yet (a single report that shows sales AND current inventory on one screen, for example, and better reporting for sales tax purposes) but we've always been able to work around these gaps, and Vend seems to be constantly updating and adding functionality.

We have absolutely loved the simplicity of the system both at the counter and in the warehouse. The interface is pleasant to the eye and really easy to navigate. Their support during our assessment and migration was exceptional. We love Vend for their progressive approach to giving us at retail level a positive experience. Vend has certainly become a well-loved solution within our company and has exceeded expectation in all aspects. Thank you Vend.

When printing labels, the two step process to get them to print is a bit annoying, however if that is its only fault we have a winner in POS systems.

compared to my last system? nothing there is nothing that makes it stand out.

50% of our business are account customers. VEND/LIGHTSPEED handles account customers like a hamster handled crack

Hi Martin, We would like to sincerely apologize for your recent experience with Lightspeed. It is our utmost priority to provide products and services that allow our customers to focus on running their businesses with ease. We value all feedback and would like to learn more about your specific experience, to have the opportunity to address your needs and concerns. As we are unable to identify your account within our records, please feel free to contact our Customer Success team should you wish to provide further feedback. You may reach us via email at engage@lightspeedhq.com. Thank you, Lightspeed Commerce

It doesn’t have enough Pros . It doesn’t stand out as better than NCR Stiver or Vend. They all can do the same even though I was told differently.

I am in Bermuda and they set me up wrong from the beginning I get most messages etc in Dutch not English. My currency wasn’t available and finally it was sorted after months. Accepting deposits is critical to my business and this solution is too cumbersome. Discounts,If a client buys 2 of the same item and I want to discount one of thembecuae of a flaw it doesn’t work. I have to calculate the discount and divide it by 2 pain is you know what.

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- Excellent Purchase Order Workflow - Easy tool to do inventory counts quickly - (Beta) Import Tool makes it easy to bulk load new items, or update existing ones - Supports custom fields to add additional information to items (Release Dates, for example) - Phone and online support is fantastic

- May seem pricey if you aren't leveraging all the features - Limited barcode scanner compatibly - Custom fields are not currently searchable