Rain POS vs Square Online Comparison

It's integration into our inventory and reports. The ability to customized the interface for my team.

It doesn't work as easily for Canadian companies. I would definitely recommend it 100% if they become more Canadian focused.

Thank you so much Kristen for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

I love that inventory reflects between shopping instore or online.

No is perfect and sometimes there are bug they get worked out.

Thank you so much Christina! We really appreciate your feedback!

Rain POS covers most retail functions in easy, friendly ways, and deep customize.

Rain POS provides a cloud version only which makes some concerns from weak internet areas and more risk in online.

Thank you Emad for your response!

I like the data capture feature and the real time aspect of the online merging with the B&M shop. Knowing that what my customer is seeing online is what is actually available is fabulous.

The sad lack of report query options, particularly in regards to my inventory. I can put notes in if I make an adjustment but can't ever see those notes again. That's a feature I've been asking for for years.

Thank you so much Kathi for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

its comprehensive. online inventory and instore inventory combined...awesome. very intuitive, very good tutorials and help functions.

none, I like the constant improvements. the only issue is the system randomly converts the default printer between the receipt printer and the label printer.

Thank you so much Jana for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

Online and Brick and Mortar integration, extensive customer tracking, easy to customize website, efficient product ordering/receiving system

Updates can be slow to release, lacks a little in the reporting functionality

Thank you so much Allen for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

In store and online use. If someone buys something in store it is automatically removed from the website.

Unable to add shipping charges to individual items that are bulky

Thank you so much Rebecca for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

The comprehensive nature of having a website, an online store, a point of sale terminal, rental/rent to own terminal makes this a great foundational tool to work with.

I love the software, but calling customer support, I often get people who don't seem to enjoy helping me. I've had at least 2-3 calls to different technicians ag in a row where I just felt bad for even calling.

Thank you so much Carolyn for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

We have used Rain POS for many years. I appreciate that I can do so many facets of my business from one platform. POS, online sales, integrated inventory management, emails, and merchant services.

I would really like to have shipping integrated - when an order is placed, that it would be integrated with a shipping service like Shippo, which is what I use. The automatic emails would be useful if I could choose the products that were shown - like what is on sale. The automatic choices were so ridiculous - something old that was worthless in our system - instead of something we really wanted to promote.

Thank you so much Karen for your response! We hope we continue to grow and have the integrations you are wanting:). Thanks!

I am super happy with how my point of sale is integrated with my online sales and inventory. The product is easy for staff to understand and navigate, and errors can be corrected when necessary. The ability to access the software remotely is a huge plus, I can keep track from anywhere, or assist staff with sales or inventory when I am not in the building. The reports are easy to access, and accurate for accounting purposes, and provide us with the tools we need for planning for the future. The customer service is amazing, and I have always been able to solve any problems I’ve had with one phone call!

We are Canadian site, and the cashing in procedure does not allow us to use our coins, and therefore we don’t use the cash in/cash out component. That is my only complaint!

Thank you so much Kim for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

As a small business it is difficult to manage technology without an IT Department. I wanted to take my business online and struggled to find a solution that was affordable, easy to use and had good customer support. RAIN not only met my goals but exceeded them. Their customer support is what sets them ahead of their competition.

There are a couple of features I wish they would improve on. The most important to me are Customer Rewards. It doesn't allow online orders to use their rewards and the accrued reward is a dollar amount they can spend when I need it to be a % off.

Thank you Tee! We appreciate your partnership and we look forward to growing with you!

We've had a great experience thus far using the Rain point of sale program. The initial training was extremely in depth and helped us grasp all of the features before implementation. We love the product integration with Reverb.com and the fact that our inventory remains cohesive across online and in-store platforms. Online & phone support is quick & helpful. Rain has also been very helpful designing and updating our website, which is tied into the point of sale. They are constantly improving, updating and listening to customer suggestions to make their product even better.

One feature that is extremely helpful in our industry (music store) but missing from Rain, is a Maintenance Agreement/Service Contract module. We were disappointed it was not available when we switched to Rain, since we used that feature daily with AIMsi. We have found some halfway workarounds in Rain, but would like a more robust integrated module. Ideal features would be: MA identifier on serialized instruments in Work Orders module, ability to auto-send renewal emails to customers when their annual MA is expiring, MA batch operations for large inventories of instruments (many of the schools we service have 200-400 instruments that we maintain on MA's annually).

Thank you so much Travis for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

Once you learn the system and features, it's pretty easy and intuitive. I like how integrated everything is - purchasing, receiving inventory, online and in-store transactions. Adding new products through almost any of my vendors is fast and easy.

The software is under constant development which is good, but also challenging. I like that they are continually working to improve the product, but it can be time consuming to keep up with constant changes.

Thank you so much Lori for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

I liked that the website and the inventory were combined. That people could see in real time what we had in stock and purchase online. That was nice and was one of the main features of why we went with Rain originally.

We spent a lot of time and money on Rain POS. It was the first online computer software company we ever used for point of sale. I spent an entire year in 2017 logging our entire inventory, coming up with pricing and pictures and history on every item. We went live in 2018 and by April 2019 we were done with the contract side and we closed out the point of sale side by the end of that year. Their inconsistences within the contract module were too high. And every time we called in to tech support, all they could tell us what that there was a "glitch" in the system and they couldn't fix it within a timely manner. I really felt like I was losing the trust of my customers because of Rain's mistakes.

Holly, thank you for taking time to share your experience with our POS software. Here at Rain, our main objective is helping small businesses like yours succeed, so the fact that you found us to be detrimental to your store is disheartening. We've been busy in the 12 months since you cancelled and have greatly improved our rent-to-own module. If you like, please contact us to see those enhancements.

It manages the inventory in real time between store and online purchases. Now that I have learned how to manage the website, it is easy to frequently change the home page, add new inventory and create promotions. The inventory catalog is a major time saver.

There are some surprising disconnects: although a customer is set up with 10% discount, the discount will only apply automatically when purchasing in the store. Somehow the store customer and the (same) web customer are not connected. Lack of integration with shipping companies. Cumbersome uploads to QuickBooks.

Thank you so much Dagmar for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

The ease of this software is very important. Being a small business i really don't have an I.T department so you guessed it we all become the I.T department in our office. The templates are easy to fill out and get your online presence ready for your clients.

The con is not a Rain problem it's not having the time on our side to complete at this moment.

Thank you so much Noel for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

Rain was sold to me and my music store as an all in one solution for POS, website, online sales, marketing, job orders, repairs, rentals, the whole nine. I love the POS and inventory part. The site is a little laggy to start and then everything works super fast. Most things in this realm are intuitive.

The onboarding cost was kind of high and I don't feel like I got that much out of it. The trainings were unnecessary and could have easily been done with a video. I really, really, really hate the website builder. They set up my website as close as they could match to my previous one from Wix and they did a pretty good job (although I discovered some mistakes that were pretty bad, such as the wrong phone number for my store, they were easily fixed by me) but I am frightened of doing anything to it beyond changing the text. I would say their web builder UI/UX is straight out of the 90s but that even the 90s had the concept of draft and publish. EVERYTHING you do on the website builder is IMMEDIATELY live and there is no way to revert to an early version without contacting them.

Thank you Aurora for your feedback! We are reviewing your response as it we are striving to always improve. Thank you!

Rain POS was surprisingly easy to set up and integrate into my exsiting website, it really opened up a lot of doors to help sell things in my store that have been sitting a while. We do a lot of lawaway orders, so it was nice to be able to set up a lawaway option on our online store.

The only thing I wish I was able to do is have the option to add multiple products at a time to help streamline the inventory process. Other than that, I have had zero issues!

Thank you so much Nic for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

I was using another online web service when I heard about Rain (Like Sew). I like what they were offering and the price was great compared to what I was paying. We signed up in 2013/14 and have not regretted it for a minute. I love being able to see what inventory we have, what our customers are buying, being to look back and tell a customer what a fabric was that they purchased.

There are always features and issues that could be improved upon but right now I'm happy with what we have.

Thank you so much Sherry for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

It is easy to use and update, so I can create and modify my own products, and add products from the integrated industry catalogs. It provides me with useful information about my customers and sales transactions, data which really helps me keep and attract new customers. I especially like the batch product update feature so I can change a group of products at a time without having to individually...

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I am disappointed that I am unable to integrate my email marketing with the website. In my opinion, The Marketing package is not as useful to online-only stores as it is to POS customers. The newsletter module is clunky and hard to work with. The email feature is useful, but since my email list is on a different service and not integrated, it is not as useful as it could be. It took awhile for my site to get up and running well, and to work out all the bugs. I had to be persistent in following up to get problems fixed and clear in my communication to be sure they understood what I was asking for.

Thank you so much Reeze for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

Ease of use, and integration with our e-commerce site.

There are a few features that I'm waiting on that will tailor the system more for the music industry.

Thank you so much Jeremy for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

We have used Rain POS (Like Sew) for over five years and are very satisfied with it. We love that our website (recently upgraded by Rain) integrates with our POS, keeping our inventory numbers accurate. The Point of Sale is very user friendly. Reporting is decent. The website is simple to update.

While there are sometimes reporting issues or technical issues, Rain has an easy process in place to report problems online or by phone, and they are generally responsive in a timely manner. Rain also has a method to make suggestions on how to change or update the POS/website. I appreciate that they are willing to take our suggestions! I do wish there was a report for Items Received; it would be...

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Thank you so much Laura for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

Ease of use even for a person not formally trained in computer technology.

Just a few small glitches here and there, but they continue to make improvements and they are quickly resolved.

Thank you so much Todd for your response! We appreciate your feedback!

1. Integrates with POS. 2. Category creation is easy.

Terrible set of features for a business with > 100 products 1. If you set products up with Variations (think Red/Blue/Green shirts) you cannot archive a variation if its no longer available. 2. There is no import/export of images. All images must be manually uploaded and their meta data entered manually. 3. You cannot split an item (product) that has variations, into two products via import/export...

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Ease of use was crucial for us, and the integration was okay

Integration could be better, full integration with the square POS would be nice.

We love that all of our items are in this software to make it easy for tracking and reporting. We use reports almost daily to ensure we are focusing on the right areas of our business.

I wish we could make tickets in the app on our phone or on the computer and have them show up on our POS. Sometimes we need pre-made tickets and it's easier to do them on the computer when our POS is tied up.

I live that it keeps track of my inventory.

I wish the items and sales that your enter into the POS would sync up with the website.

Easy to set up and use and it syncs with your Square POS system. You can offer shipping, pick up, or delivery.

It’s missing some features that would be helpful like more coupon variety, an ability to print a packing slip prior to purchasing shipping. But overall it’s great for a small business getting their feet wet in e-commerce.

This pos allows me to take payments anywhere. The website design is easy to use and I get orders, results from it.

I think Square has covered all gases to help grow my business. No negative comments here.

Easy to use - love the integration with my POS in-store. I don't have to worry about purchasing an additional app to manage inventory.

I wish they had a gift registry option - that would make this almost perfect!

Very easy to use. Affordable. Good customer support.

The price for their POS subscription, on top of taking a processing fee is a bit much. Sometimes customer service isn't available during major issues.

Ease of use and an excellent support team makes Square Online a fabulous option. The templates are designed to look good on both desktops and mobile devices. Very modern and intuitive. Super easy to set up and learn. Integration with Square Retail catalog is good.

I wish I could copy design elements from one web page to another. The template layouts are also a bit restrictive. Would be nice to have CSS access to fully customize. Would also like the item description to sync with Square Retail without losing the design elements.

The overall ease of use is pretty simple. I also love having everything I need in one place. Payroll, POS, website, Google integration and so much more!

There is currently no pay in 4 option, which I feel hurts a retail business like mine.

Creating our website through Square Online was pretty easy, especially for someone without a background in web design. The inventory management features and integration with Square POS is great!

Just beware, there seem to be a lot of bugs with Square Online and getting ahold of customer service via phone is not easy. You have to jump through several hoops before they will give you a phone number to call. This can be very frustrating when the website is having an issue that needs immediate attention. Once you do get ahold of customer service, if your issue is not deemed 'high priority' it can take them weeks/months to fix it, if they ever do at all.

Overall, they offer a robust service suite with sleek POS tools, a clean end-user UI, strong inventory management, and offer a strong, trusted brand name in the market.

I get the impression Square is best suited for rather "single-dimensional" businesses -- when you start to get into more dynamic and multi-faceted distribution channels, order types, variable inventory and order process flows, etc., it starts to feel a bit clunky.

I love that everything is integrated! The POS, mobile and website it is a GREAT value for the cost! I also love that the software is continually improved upon to make the systems even more seamless.

Amazingly, the con is also all of the integration. It took me several phone calls to figure out how I could allow a 3rd party to help me with the SEO aspect without giving them the keys to the ship! I did finally reach someone that helped me with that but in the end, I decided that putting so much thought into SEO is slightly overrated and I decided to just utilize the default and write great descriptions in the first place.