Kounta vs. Lightspeed Retail vs. Vend

Kounta is particularly well suited to small to medium sized hospitality businesses. It has a great many number of add-ons and integrations that enhance the user experience and its general usefulness from a back end perspective. For example, there is the ability to program automatic menu surcharges for certain circumstances, such as public holidays. It also handles bill-splitting well. It could possibly be less appropriate for venues that need extremely detailed sales data, or for those venues that have very complicated menus or ordering options.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Vend was great fit for this dry cleaner/laundry that had high traffic volume with customers stopping in before and after work. Things need to be done quickly.

Incentivized

• Streamlines Kitchen Dockets
• Automatic billing
• Can add items to suit business needs
• Quick & Easy to set up

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Retail sales
• Inventory management
• Sales and promotions
• Reporting

Incentivized

• An easier to modify table plan
• A dedicated 'print receipt' button
• Improved sync times

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• It would be nice to have alternate ways to adjust prices

Incentivized

Simply well designed with obvious icons per component, making it easy to interface with.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Not much support needed but they were fast and helpful when it was.

Incentivized

We moved from Vend to Kounta because of Kounta's enhanced functionality for the hospitality domain. Vend was, at the time, more oriented towards the retail industry and so it lacked key features that would have allowed our business to grow and become more efficient. Over time, Kounta has continually improved and adapted to better suit its customers' needs.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Vend is much more capable than Square POS for product management and inventory control. ShopKeep is fairly similar to Vend but is a more closed ecosystem with fewer third-party integrations and less frequent updates.

Incentivized

• I find the program expensive to use

Incentivized

• Certainly has saved money on cash-outs/ accounting due to QuickBooks integration.
• Faster processing through tills means happier customers and more sales per hour.
• Expensive product at $5K a year has taken away some profitability for this small business. It's way, way over priced.

• Correct inventory levels has been a game-changer. We use to oversell because of inconsistencies between POS and e-commerce sales.
• The built-in loyalty program has been very useful and was much more appealing to customers than we originally predicted.

Incentivized