Vend vs Retail Express Comparison

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.

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.

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.

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.