Square for Retail vs. Vend

Square for Retail is simple, easy to account for, and serves most purposes that a business like ours needs. There are very few drawbacks once it's up and running. For a company like ours who wants to emphasize experience from the time the customer walks in the door to the time they walk out, and where cost is important, Square for Retail provides an awesome interface for the customer, with attractive, easy to use terminals, and a very accessible price point where we can get set up with a clean, attractive, and functional point of sale system while starting up. We have no intentions of moving away from Square for Retail as long as it maintains its quality and support.

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

• ease of collecting payments
• transfer money collected to other accounts
• using Square card to access money collected as payments on my website

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• This may just be me, but I want some additional customizations for our biggest annual fundraiser, so that we can differentiate between donations, chance drawings, etc.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Stripe is more suited for internet or online order forms and businesses for which it integrates. It works well and same as Square with similar fees. Stripe however does not send a physical card reader by default and is not as large of a company. We chose Square due to the integrations it offers, ease of use, and familiarity clients have with existing card readers to make them more comfortable.

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

• Simplicity: Integration of appointment management and billing
• Time saving: Quick management of billable services
• Time Management: Integration of Google calendar and customer-facing appointment calendar

Incentivized

• 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