Pros
The set up was easy with great support from the staff at Lightspeed. Great ability to handle multiple floor plans, products, users and reporting. Very full featured software that should be able to handle any restaurant's business.
Cons
It can be a little confusing when first starting to use the ordering piece on the ipad, a bigger learning curve than some other POS systems, but once you practice with it a bit, it makes sense.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
!!WARNING!!! THIS COMPANY IS NOT FAIR! They bundled in the loyalty program in our automatic renewal. We were looking into the addition to see if it fits our business. Another $800 was tacked on to our renewal for the Loyalty program that I did not authorize. They are refusing to refund the Loyalty program fee say that we are in a contract and they have a phone recording committing to the contract (they won't actual share the recording though). We have no need for this extra program at the moment, have not used it and do not plan to use it at this time as our business volume has a ceiling and the margins do not support it at this time. We understand the value in the loyalty program by cannot presently justify it. I have not worked for or worked with a company that does not work fairly with their customers. I do not recommend LightSpeed and am stuck with them for another 11 months and plan to find a better POS partner.
Pros
The software is comprehensive. Many add-ons are available at high costs.
Cons
It can get complicated and takes some effort to train new staff.
Support is good for the software although I have found that are led down the wrong path and wast time. Some of the representatives are not knowledgeable enough.
Hello Vaughn,
We would like to apologize for your recent experience with Lightspeed and hope that we can work with you in order to get things moving in the right direction. We see that you have been in touch with our Customer Success team and we encourage you to continue working with them.
Thank you,
Lightspeed POS
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 0/10
Overall, it is a good experience. The customer service is suitable and helpful. The system itself is easy to figure out.
Pros
I most like the "easiness" it has on the eye. For service, the floor plans, menus, and payment buttons are all easy to see and use. Makes for a faster and more efficient service every night.
The reporting is in-depth and also easy to find/consume. The reports are visual and make it easy to "at-a'glance" understand how the service is performing.
Cons
The difficult components were in the initial set up of the floor plans for us. In order to make our floor plans look professional and aseptically pleasing we had to reach out to an outsourced consultant for aid in designing.
Also, we integrated Lightspeed with our PMS (for our hotel) so that guests could seamlessly add products from the bar to their hotel reservations. This set up process was early in the stages for both companies - it may be more figured out - but the process took many months. Back and forth conversations with both companies. We are successfully using it though as of now - and the systems are interfacing seamlessly.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Implementation was terrible. The salesman made onboarding sound very simple, but when I was putting my items into the system, it was no better than square to do. The company's idea of helping you seems to be to create videos for you to figure out their software so that they don't really have to help you. The few times I called to try to get help with items, the support staff was very short and seemed more interested in just getting you off the phone and moving on. Perhaps there performance reviews are based on quantity of clients "helped". I was very clear with the sales team about what I needed for my business. I messed up when I quickly glanced at the invoice of equipment they sent me and didn't see the discrepancy in the quantities. Also, I came to find out that their claim that none of the equipment that I already had with square would be compatible with lightspeed is completely false. They basically sent me the same star printers that I had with square and cash drawers that I could have used with my current printers as well. While the pricing online says the monthly fees, their salesman knew that I needed more registers than they sent me. Some time later, I requested that they send me the rest of the registers that I needed as I had originally requested and chalked the wrong number up to a mistake. They sent me the hardware and threw a bunch of additional software charges in the mix without even mentioning them. All charges were made before I even saw an invoice. I confronted them about it and the initial response was "all sales are final". At that point, I told them that they had two weeks to get back to me on how would reconcile the mistakes made by their company to retain me as a customer and mend our relationship. I didn't hear from them at all during that time. When they finally got back to me, I told them that I did not want to continue my relationship with them anymore, and and that I understood that I'd incur some costs in severing the partnership, but I thought it should be fair. I'd eat all shipping costs and hardware from the first order, but I wanted a refund on the unauthorized charges and for software to be prorated to time elapsed only. I understood I would be out several thousand dollars. I was told "there is nothing we can do" by multiple managers. Finally, just today I received an invoice concerning my refund for the second order of hardware and the refund did not include any of the software as discussed with their managers, and they want to charge me a 20% restocking fee for hardware that never even made it to my place of business. The refund that they are supposedly giving me for absolutely no services rendered. This company is totally crooked. Do not make the same mistakes that I have. I will likely be perusing legal action against this company if they do not respond appropriately.
Pros
I thought this product was going to be a great way to more easily keep my books up to date and get pricing and inventory dialed in as compared to square. It has a lot of functionality compared to a product like shop keep or square.
Cons
Service - Limited concern for the customer's problems. No effort to actually work through and understand a client's business.
Sales Team - Arrogant and dishonest
Billing - Sly and deceitful. Invoices serve as contracts as they contain fine print at the bottom that refers a client to the company's actual contract and product terms that the client must hunt down for themselves.
Management - No concern for clientele.
Rating breakdown
Lightspeed was, is, and will continue to be great for us. Staff loves the ease of use of the front end. I love the simplicity of updating the online site, the data available for export in the office, and the full integration with our other software.
Pros
We had the highest expectations for Lightspeed POS and have been ecstatic about the choice.
Staff appreciates the ease of use and the quick customization (once familiar with back office which does not take that long).
We have continued to appreciate the helpful 24 hour customer service team. Even when they did not have answers for our unique problems, they always did their best to figure out a workaround.
The ability to export raw data of every receipt item for every receipt entered has proven invaluable. With knowledge of Excel, data analytics have been insightful and highly beneficial.
Since the pandemic began, Lightspeed has continued to innovate and has improved their product which has allowed us to create an online ordering site for pickup and delivery.
And the best part is full integration with our online site, POS, accounting software, and scheduling software.
Cons
First, no POS is perfect, including Lightspeed. Understanding the back end has allowed us to create work arounds for things the software is currently incapable of doing as intended at this time. One thing has been problems with combos, which we resolved with a workaround.
The biggest con is the process used for some software upgrades. Understandably, when a request is made often, it is pushed up the programmer's priority list. There are however some upgrades that, although not highly requested, can definitely improve the product. I have several requests into the programmers at this time.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Lightspeed Restaurant pricing starts at € 79/month/store (on an annual plan). Contact Lightspeed for custom plans.
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