Lightspeed Retail is a retail PoS system from Lightspeed headquartered in Quebec. Core retail POS features are expanded on higher service tiers with ecommerce option and payments gateway, an accounting system, and a customer loyalty program.
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Aloha Cloud
Score 7.2 out of 10
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Aloha POS is a point-of-sale software solution with features such as highest market share in the industry and streamline food preparation and delivery.
It is perfect for any small business looking for inventory control, Tracking purchase history, and just an all round easy to use software for retail and beyond. I would not use it if I have only a few hundred items or was a larger company that can afford to build my own POS software.
Aloha POS is well suited for any kind of full-service restaurant, from high volume establishments to low volume, intimate fine dining settings. The universality to the system makes it an asset for any operation. I don't see much need for Aloha POS when it comes to fast casual, or fast food establishments, as Aloha POS is geared more toward constant communication and planning between the front of house service and back of house prep. For counter service, I believe this would be underutilized, and these establishments would be fine with a simpler service.
Lightspeed Retail has great reports that are very easy to read and understand.
Lightspeed Retail is great to train new employees on because of its ease of use. There are not lots of different things that you have to learn just basics.
Extremely user-friendly. The layout and simplicity of the program made for fast, accurate transactions. This was an easy system to learn for all of our users and made training a much more streamlined process.
Versatility - even in the largest of transactions, my options for payment were wide-ranging (from charging to house accounts to accepting check, cash, or card). My ability to update price keys and users was extremely helpful where other systems have proven to be difficult to navigate.
Great support. As we transitioned to newer versions of Aloha, we always had a great line of communication with customer support, and fast, friendly service.
With a larger SKU assortment size, the software really starts to struggle with doing physical inventory after scanning in a few hundred items.
Several times throughout each year Lightspeed went down on us (not our internet connection but actually Lightspeed verified).
Special order system could use a lot of modern improvements (ability to schedule ahead of time, etc.)
Reports are very basic, and will likely require there Lightspeed Analytics to actually get reports useful for day to day operations.
Weak system for receiving purchase orders.
Does not handle items and cases for reordering very well. Have used multiple Point of Sale systems in the past 10 years that allow to set reorder points based on single items, but reorder the case automatically, Lightspeed has no support for this.
Overall, Aloha POS's usability is phenomenal. The interface is extremely easy to navigate through. All buttons and tabs are easy to add or delete. Having a piece of software that is easy to toggle through creates a much more efficient workplace. I love the ease of use. A brand new employee can jump right into the system and use it with no issues.
I gave the rating of a 9 because ninety percent of the time when I talk to their support they're very helpful. One of the only real issues I have is there are times where the queue will be 7-9 people deep. When you have an error you don't know how to fix, sometimes this is very troubling. But overall their support is usually quick and friendly.
Lightspeed is faster, sleeker and more modern than our previous POS system. I can’t express enough how easy the online store portion of Lightspeed is - it just intuitive and sometimes, is TOO easy, I feel like I have to be forgetting something. Lightspeed is staying modern and current where our previous POS was not
Aloha is much better than Revel and MICROS. Revel is not set up to handle very large volume of transactions & use. Aloha has many more features than the other two, with more thorough reports, etc. I personally have used ALOHA at several restaurants through the years, but I have never been a part of the implementation process.
