Great simple software, WAY overpriced
We use Lightspeed as our main POS system for our garden centre. We don't do much with the inventory side of things but we do use …
Lightspeed Retail
Lightspeed Retail
Lightspeed Retail
Overview
What is Lightspeed Retail?
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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Pricing
View all pricingBasic
$79.00 ($69.00)
Cloud
per month (when billed annually)
Starter
$119.00 ($99.00)
Cloud
per month (when billed annually)
Standard
$139.00 ($119.00)
Cloud
per month (when billed annually)
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.lightspeedhq.com/pos/retail…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
Product Demos
Discover Lightspeed Retail | Lightspeed HQ
01:47
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Lightspeed Retail?
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.
Lightspeed Retail Video
The Lightspeed family of products is about more than just point of sale. Whether you're a retailer, restaurateur or an eCommerce entrepreneur, our solutions will help you business grow.
Learn more about how our point of sale and eCommerce systems can help your business at https://www.lightspeedhq.com/pos/retail/
Lightspeed Retail Competitors
Lightspeed Retail Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Priority Checkout are common alternatives for Lightspeed Retail.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.6.
The most common users of Lightspeed Retail are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
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October 11, 2022
Great simple software, WAY overpriced
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Lightspeed as our main POS system for our garden centre. We don't do much with the inventory side of things but we do use barcode scanning at the register.
- Very very user friendly.
- Easy iPad interface that is easy to upgrade to new hardware if an iPad breaks, etc.
- On the Advanced plan the reporting is outstanding.
- Very easy to train new employees, especially younger employees raised on phones and tablets.
- We use their payments system and it's a very easy integration. I believe Stripe is their payment provider.
- Incredibly overpriced. We're paying almost $400 a month ($5K a year!!!) for the advanced edition with one extra register. The problem is that you have to have the advanced edition in order to have any proper sales reporting. The entire point of a digital POS is to track sales and specific items etc. You can't do that with lesser editions.
- Online Help is USELESS. You better hope you're tech savvy and can figure stuff out yourself because they will tell you things like "Did you try clicking this button?" Problems can be very complex and the online help has zero idea how to deal with them excpet in infatile terms that are not helpful.
- There's constant room for improvements in all sorts of areas and when you point it out, the best you'll ever get is "Ok, we'll send this recommendation off to our development team". And of course nothing ever happens. It feels almost like an abandoned software that just is what it is.
We use Lightspeed Retail as our point of sale system for our 2,000 sq. ft. retail business, currently carrying over 8,000 active SKUS. As far as basic transactions and inventory management, it does a fantastic job. We also heavily use the customer management features of it, as well as heavy use of the special order features.
- Great for scanning in items
- Master Orders for generating purchase orders across multiple vendors at once
- Ability to track multiple vendor costs
- 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.
May 06, 2021
Lightspeed POS
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Lightspeed retail as our main interface with customer purchases. It is used in all of my locations. It creates more business problems than solves them.
- Robust matrix system
- 24/7 support
- They have not had major updates to their system in years. The inventory system is stagnant. Although their inventory system is robust, it is outdated.
- They do have 24-hour support, however, wait times are excessive and representatives have challenges understanding your issues.
- Trying to get issues resolved can take months or never at all. Management is non-existent. Trying to reach a supervisor is impossible.
- They have a culture of telling you what you want to hear but have no intentions of actually following through.
- Lightspeed is a great solution if you are a small business just getting started. But if you are intending to grow and expand, Lightspeed will become detrimental to your growth.
- The reporting/analytics is basic at best. They do offer paid options that are very expensive, but it is very robust. The basic reporting is very minimal.
November 08, 2020
Great POS software for any small business
We use Lightspeed Retail to complete transactions for retail, grooming, and lodging. We now have the analytics to track purchase history so we can make better decisions with what we offer in the future. The inventory control side is very useful for year-end inventory and sending product from location to location.
- Inventory control
- Analytics
- Ease of use
- Some equipment is expensive
- “Lightspeed payments” needs a lot of work
- Wish they had a few mor plug ins
November 19, 2019
It's good enough.
It's used across the entire organization, and it's the source of truth for inventory, orders, and customers.
- Inventory management: it's not great but it's the best in class. Think "the least bad option."
- Sales: it works well here, but don't use their payments system. It's overpriced and doesn't offer chip/pin.
- Reporting: if you buy the advanced reporting package, it can work well, but is still limited, as all canned reports are.
- Special orders are poorly organized.
- SQL connectivity is non-existent if you just want to dump to a SQL instance somewhere to do your own reporting.
- Open connectivity to e-commerce platforms: they want to force you to use their e-com platform, which is awful and non-standard.
November 14, 2019
Has made our retail life much more easy and efficient!
- Extremely good customer service.
- Constant cloud-based improvements.
- Easy to integrate other programs.
- Great online sales integration.
- Would love to be able to offer our gift cards in LS Ecom.
October 28, 2019
Lightspeed Retail - Get your store moving!
Lightspeed Retail is being used in our brick and mortar store. It's currently tied in with our warehouse and BigCommerce to keep inventory and pricing accurate. We have it set up on 2 iPads that we have set up with our register. It addresses the need for a separate way for customers to ring up their purchase in house since many of our customers don't like to buy things online.
- Cash drops
- Inventory item searches
- Discount management
- I feel it needs the ability to charge a "restocking fee"
- I would also like to be notified ahead of time before updates are made
- The work flow when using the "pin before each sale" feature could be a little cleaner
April 01, 2019
Great POS System for all Applications
We use it across the whole company. It makes a lot of issues quicker to resolve and easier to complete! The best part about it are the reports and analytics that it provides us. Great tools to use to further our business and to grow our business. I love that it is is cloud based and not server based.
- 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.
- I would like to have it where returns are easier to do.
- I would like if the inventory was not automatically added when an item is rung up and not in stock.
March 29, 2019
Lightspeed Retail
We use it as our Point of Sale system, and to keep records. We also use it to reconcile Inventory levels every 6 months. It is only used in the retail area of our Animal Shelter. LightSpeed keeps us much more in tune with our stock and sales, and we no longer have to have an outside Inventory company.
- Easy to use for sales.
- Simple stock check-in.
- Great Inventory interface.
- Sometimes goes down at inopportune times.
- Has more features than we use.
March 19, 2019
Great but could fix one big thing
We use Lightspeed in our bike shop and have for a few years now. We use it for all aspects and the integrations are really nice. It has fixed so many of the previous business problems and since it is cloud-based we can access it from anywhere. We use to just have one computer up in the front and because everything was done on that one computer, the bookkeeper was always getting in the way of us trying to run sales and what not. Its been great and easy to work with when doing inventory, and the support of being able to add iPads and other stations is great. The one big issues, however, is the auto-add feature, which I wish SO BADLY they would fix or disable. If we sell a product that has to be ordered, the product is automatically put into inventory. Then, when it actually comes into the store, it gets checked in, and added AGAIN, therefore, making it look like we have more than we do. At the end of the year, this is a huge problem, and I just wish at some point they would fix it. My old QB POS from 1998 did this better.
- Cloud-based function
- Additional iPads
- Customer information storage
- Integrations
- Auto-add feature
- Inventory
- Every now and then it's really slow
At LIJ retail group, which has several brick and mortar and ecom stores, uses Lightspeed across all channels. From point of sale to warehousing and CRM (with the help of Salesforce API), Lightspeed is single-handedly running our organization. We use the platform across all channels and would be lost in the sauce without it.
- Inventory management.
- eComm and retail synchronization
- Mutli-store organization
- Payment processing
- CUSTOMER SERVICE: LITERALLY THE BEST COMPANY TO WORK WITH
- The only issue I have had personally is with the mobile app for Ipads. It works but has some basic crashes that can prove to be annoying especially when your store is busy. But as I said, they are all easy to troubleshoot.
- My account has a little bit of issue getting help. It's semi-understandable because lightspeed shouldn't have to take any responsibility for accounting however, a little guidance from time to time would be nice for her. It works well though.
June 27, 2018
Lightspeed is a pretty good POS system
It is the Point of Sale system used at our brick/mortar Pet Supply Store.
- Tracks inventory
- Calculates COGS
- Manages daily sales
- Tracks employee hours
- Easy to create POs and returns
- Individuals can't make large inventory adjustments. It needs to be sent to Lightspeed for an associate to input. However, the take between the actual physical count and the data input is several days, if not weeks. The count is not accurate, and defeat the entire point of a physical count
- Employees need to enter their pin several times between transactions, creating a bottleneck at the register. The pin should be required to be entered only once before each transaction
- The product description is listed without the brand names on both the POS screen and the customer receipts. Brands are also not listed on purchase orders or returns, only the product description. It is confusing and time-consuming.