POS systems act as a nervous system of any retail store or small business. It unifies multiple business processes at a singular platform to manage efficiently.
It centralizes the payment processing, manages inventory & accounting,, tracks and records sales and much more.
POS systems are crucial for the success of any brick-and-mortar store or small business.
Whether you are all new to this or just looking for the best POS systems to buy for your small businesses, you get the best options here.
Here are the best POS Systems along with its features, pricing, strengths and weaknesses to determine what suits your business the best.
What is a POS System?
The Point-Of-Sales System helps you manage sales and accept payments. It acts as a cash register but is more sophisticated and intelligent.
You can identify a POS system by its three primary components :
Hardware : It is physical technology that allows to accept payment through different mediums such as cash, debit card, credit card, wallets etc.
Depending upon your business, the hardware is also capable of printing receipts, store cash, scan barcodes and other features as well.
Software: It is user-friendly interface software and management tool to record payments, transactions, sales and other activities.
It further sync and streamline administration tasks. The POS software provides tools for sales reporting, customer engagement, order management, inventory management and much more.
Payment : All the transactions and funds routing in or out to your bank account after every sale.
Best POS System To Buy For Small Businesses
Shopify POS : Good Value For Small Businesses
Shopify has held great reputation in the retail market space for a long time. It is evidently one of the premier and high-potential web-based POS systems.
The brand hosts more than 1 million businesses worldwide offering their e-commerce services.
Shopify also excels in providing the Amazon marketplace and other various POS services you require.
Their powerful and efficient e-commerce integrated system enables businesses to optimize their online sales for greater targets.
For small businesses aspiring to transcend their brick-and-mortar stores for online point-of-sale solutions, it is a great POS platform to adapt.
The best advantage with Shopify is being easy to setup and provides great customization options to the business customers.
Features
- It offers efficient inventory management.
- Recorded database and profiling of customers
- Allow you to offer different variations of the product
- Detailed product and retail reports
- Assigning barcodes to customers
Pricing
Shopify Lite – $9 per month
Basic Shopify – $29 per month
Shopify – $79 per month
Advanced Shopify – $299 per month
Strengths
- Basic subscription is highly affordable
- Provide good value for small businesses
- Free 14-day trial
- Easy to setup and customize
- Robust & efficient e-commerce tools
Weaknesses
- No free subscription plans
- Glitches in offline mode
- Limited customizations on the basic plan
- Advance subscription plans are costly
- Additional cost for third-party payment providers
Square POS : Best POS System Overall
Square POS is certainly among the best choices for POS systems for small businesses to pick.
The advantages of this POS system is – you get this system free of cost, it is easy to start and offers tons of helpful features, making the best choice for small business owners.
It is commonly seen as favourite amongst businesses like boutique retail stores and food trucks.
They have an mPOS system which can be integrated with their primary system to make payments wherever you customers are.
Their mobility payment system is really strong where you customers can pay through various payment modes on the go.
Small business owners also get freedom to manage the payments through their mobile devices only.
Square POS in general, is free to use for business owners. However, you will be paying 2.7% per swipe when you payment is received from readers and stands.
If payment is taken on the Square terminal, then it will cost 2.6% + 10 cents, whereas it will be 2.5% + 10 cents if taken on Square Register.
Features
- Square POS offers strict data security and protection against any fraudulency.
- You get detailed reports on sales as well as real-time analysis.
- It allows you to view, track, manage, edit, and update the item quantity.
- Whenever you get low on your stocks, you will receive alerts.
- The Square POS dashboard helps you manage administration tasks without any hassle reducing paperwork and time and preventing any billing mistakes.
Pricing
- No monthly fees
- All the tapped and swiped payments cost 2.6% + 10 cents
- Card-on file and key-in payments cost 3.5% + 15 cents
- Square register payments purchased before 8/20/19 cost 2.5% + 10 cents.
- For specific restaurant businesses: $60 per month per location
- Retail plans : $60 per month per locations & 2.5% + 10 cents ( in-person payment)
Strengths
- Free POS, value for small businesses
- Transparency in transaction cost
- Faster to set up, use and manage
- Easy to setup and use
- No monthly cost on their basic plan
- It can grow with your business
Weaknesses
- Transactions fees are costly as compared to other major processors
- Not ideal for high-risk small businesses
- Costlier fees for manual entries
- You get limited control on inventory
QuickBooks POS – Best For Integrated Accounting
This is certainly the best POS system serving the accounting system of businesses for a long time.
If you are looking for a POS system specifically designed to cater the accounting aspect of your business, Intuit QuickBooks compacts a powerful set of tools to do so.
Multiple price points exist to utilize full access to this integrated account management POS.
Lot of their high-end services fall into their expensive plans, which is a bit of a disadvantage for budget-constraint small businesses.
Features
- QuickBooks primarily equip your business to accept payments, track income and expenses, send invoices and much more.
- You also get more account management tools such as cash flow management, maximizing tax deductions, track time, miles and inventory.
- Lot of additional advanced features like tracking sales and taxes, accounting, bookkeeping and much more are also provided.
- It also integrates with QuickBooks e-commerce, where you can list and manage products from different platforms.
- The account management with QuickBook POS is very easy to use due to its user-friendly interface. It also offers easy-to-read and accessible reports and analyses on the dashboard.
Pricing
- Basic One-time purchase : $960
- Pro One-time purchase : $1,360
- Multi-store one-time purchase : $1,520
Strengths
- One-time purchase with no monthly charges
- No need to be account expert to manage the POS
- Easy and quick integration with Intuit accounting software
- Easy compatibility with Windows & Tablets
Weaknesses
- Expensive for all features
- Not compatible with iPads
- Lack of advanced options in inventory management
LightSpeed Retail POS – Ideal For High-end Inventory Management
If you are a small business looking for a POS system that can efficiently manage complex or huge inventories, LightSpeed Retail POS can be a great choice.
This particular POS system is the best for high-end inventory management. Even in the case of specialty shops, it can help you manage customer orders.
You can create product bundles and categorize your inventory according to different variants. The built-in catalog allows you to manage all the purchase orders.
Features
- It offers a flexible and robust cloud-based POS system that can be easily run on a desktop as well as on iPad.
- Best inventory management service offering to create bundles, track unit costs, manage layaways, variants and custom orders.
- The inventory management feature allows you to streamline purchase orders along with their in-built product catalog.
- It offers extensive, powerful and detailed analytics including over 40 different types of reports, visual data such as charts and graphs and suggestions on how to improve it.
- You get more than 50 professional efficient themes with all order and shipping management tools, SEO tools, CRM, etc.
Pricing
- Basic plan : $69 per month
- Starter plan : $99 per month (+ e-commerce)
- Standard plan: $199 per month ( + accounting features)
- Advanced plan : $169 per month ( + loyalty program)
- Pro plan: $229 per month (+ analytics)
- Additional registers : $29 per month
- Payment processing charge for cards per transactions : 2.6% + 10 cents
Strengths
- Free payment terminal
- Efficient, Robust & Effective E-commerce platform
- Offering more than 40 retail analytical reports
- Detailed inventory management and analytic tools
- Multiple choices for iPad equipment
- 24/7 support
Weaknesses
- Could be a bit on the expensive side, especially for small businesses
- Need to make a call to get complete info about plan features
- The user-interface is a bit complex to navigate
- No offline mode
PayPal Here PO
PayPal Here is a free mobile POS brought by finance giant PayPal. It allows small businesses to accept payments from their customers and clients.
The system allows you to send invoices remotely. More importantly, it is the only mobile POS that directly accepts PayPal payments.
It is great for service-based small businesses and agencies primarily use PayPal for their transactions.
It is also a great alternative for mobile vendors in comparison to Square POS.
Features
- You can download mobile POS applications on any mobile device where it can accept all kinds of payments including debit, credit and PayPal.
- It allows you to create invoices, customized receipts, calculate sales tax and also, manage product listings.
- The tool also allows to track sales with detailed reports and analysis. It provides a simple tool to process occasional payments.
Pricing
- Mobile POS application : Free
- Swipe/Chip payment fees : 2.7%
- Invoice payment fees : 2.9% + 30 cents ( per transaction)
- Keyed-in payment fees : 3.5% + 15 cents ( per transaction)
Strengths
- No Monthly Fees
- Ideal for accepting mobile payments
- Easy to quick to setup on multiple devices
- Predictable transaction fees, no hidden charges
Weaknesses
- Lack of account stability
- Not a full-featured POS system
- Not ideal for large transactions
Revel Systems POS : Known For Its Customer Loyalty
The Revel System POS is primarily built for quick-service restaurants, food chains, restaurants, bars and coffee shops.
It offers CRM ( Customer relationship Management) tools which helps you to automate the system.
The POS focuses on turning inconsistent buyers into loyal customers for your small business.
Also, mobile operations go perfectly with the iPad running restaurant POS system.
It has an in-built system boosting front-of-house orders or car takeaways seamlessly efficient.
You also get an adapted mobile order-taker system which is well-connected to various stations and mobile control devices.
Features
- Back-of-house features such as integrated online ordering, menu-building tools, centralized multi-location management and more.
- Front-of-house features such as detailed permission settings, customizable settings on table mapping and management, and more.
- Customer-interface features such as self-order kiosks, contactless service, discount tools, customer display system and more
- You also get comprehensive reporting and management tools such as real-time integrated inventory tracking, analysis, performance metrics, etc.
Pricing
- Software : Minimum $99 per month per terminal
- Installation & Onboarding fees : Minimum $649
Strengths
- Tons of software integrations
- Detailed reporting tools
- Highly customizable customer loyalty management services
- Perfect for food & beverage small businesses
- Ideal for mobile management
- Easy back office management accessibility
Weaknesses
- Lack of transparency in pricing
- Bit on Expensive side
- No free trials
- Not much user-friendly as compared to others
- More complex setup as compared to others
Vend POS: Known For POS With Loyalty Program
Vend offers web and iPad-based POS systems specifically designed for brick-and-mortar retail stores only.
The best part about Vend POS is the in-built loyal program along with other extensive features such as store credit, layaway and product catalog management.
Due to the varied range of integration to payment processors, small business owners can go for the lowest rates on transactional fees.
Features
- It offers comprehensive inventory tools where you can track variants and bundles.
- It offers a centralized product catalog with custom low-stock alert services.
- The POS system features a user-friendly cloud system with utmost customization, flexible configuration and various tools.
- It comes with a mobile barcode scanning application to process quick inventory counts, check product details and manage shipments.
- It offers the best customer loyalty program with integration for third-party tools.
Pricing
- Free Trial : For 14 days
- Monthly Fees : $99 for turnover limit of $20,000 | $129 for unlimited turnover
- Additional charges : $49 per month
- Setup & Installation Fees : Based on Quote
Strengths
- User-friendly system
- Easy to run on all operating systems
- Flexibility in checkout process
- 24/7 support
Weaknesses
- Reporting tools are basic, not advanced
- Ecommerce integration is weak
- Lack of integrated email marketing
ShopKeep POS : Ideal For Specialty Shops & Boutiques
It is a cloud-based POS system ideal for specialty shops and boutiques runs on iPad.
You get this easy to understand user-friendly dashboard with integrated marketing tools and payment processing tools.
The POS system helps your small business to manage online directory listing with utmost efficiency and limited customization.
Features
- You get efficient variant-level inventory management services with barcode printing, bulk product upload and low-stock alerts.
- The ShopKeep POS comes with a pocket app to view all the real-time reports and analysis while moving.
- There are plenty of marketing tools including email lists, customer loyalty programs etc are there to optimize business listing.
- You can integrate ShopKeep POS to your online store or business website along with tools such as ecommerce orders and much more.
- It offers a user-friendly cloud-based interface or dashboard with easy configuration.
Pricing
- Monthly Fees : $49-$179 (for annual billings)
- Monthly Fees : $69-$199 ( for monthly billings)
- Payment processing charges: 2.5% + 10 cents ( in-person sales) & 3.5% ( online & invoice payment)
Strengths
- Easy to set up, configure and use
- Efficient back-office applications
- User-friendly interface
- 24 X 7 support
Weaknesses
- Limitation with customization
- No free trials
- Few reports of software glitches
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