Square: Best overall POS software for small business

Square is a payment service company based in California, USA. Entering the POS market is a big step for Square to compete with other financial competitors. Square is the best overall POS system for small business because of its price point and ease of use with options designed for general-purpose, retail, restaurants, and appointment-based businesses. In addition, each option has a free plan that includes unlimited sales and products on the online store. Here are some outstanding features of Square POS:

• Work great on phones, Android devices, or iPads
• Accept contactless payments
• Have no interruption of payment when your internet is lost
• Connect with Square hardware (cash drawers, receipt printers, and scales)
• Provide curbside pickup
• Come with inventory management and loyalty program

Shopify: Best POS for eCommerce retailers

Shopify is an eCommerce platform company of the same name, based in Ontario, Canada. Shopify POS was released in 2013, helping their retailers run both physical and online retail stores on their Shopify platform. Shopify POS is the perfect choice for small and medium businesses in any industry. Free POS software to sell on the go or at events. Shopify plans all store sales, inventory, and customer data in one place, making it the best choice for sellers using Shopify as an eCommerce platform. The features this POS offers include:

• Provide in-store or curbside pickup and local delivery for social distance during COVID-19
• Manage inventory across all channels
• Include mobile POS application to help staff flexibly serve customers anywhere in the store
• Provide store performance and reporting via Shopify POS mobile app

Vend by Lightspeed: Best retail POS for brick-and-mortar business

Vend POS is a cloud solution located in New Zealand. Vend is a simple POS system designed strictly for brick-and-mortar retailers. Aside from Magestore POS, Vend is one of the few best small business POS systems that come with loyalty programs, store credits, sorting tools, offline processing, and product catalog management. In addition, Vend integrates with many different payment processors and payment options like PayPal to suit your financial ability. It provides an excellent direct point of sale software for small business thanks to the following notable features:

• Include a duo-display for customers to increase transaction transparency
• Accept partial and split payment methods, including cash, bank cards, gift cards, mobile contactless payments.
• Support a wide range of devices including Mac or PC at the same time (you can use one to consult the customer and the other for the customer to enter their email and receive the goods)
• Provide inventory management functionality
• Integrate sales, product, and employee reports

Magestore POS: Best small business POS system for omnichannel

Magestore was founded in 2009 and has served more than 10,000 retailers globally. The leading industries using Magestore solution include fashion, sports, outdoor, hobby and toys, home appliances, furniture, food, and beverage. Magestore POS is the perfect choice for businesses that want to expand online to offline, drive sales, and maintain smooth operations with an omnichannel strategy. It extends the power of Magento to your brick-and-mortar stores, streamlines your business, and delivers a better customer experience. Notable features of this retail Magestore POS include:

• Work well on all browsers, and the interface is responsive to different devices
• Accept all popular forms of payment
• Manage orders of online websites and offline stores right on the POS screen
• Provide store pickup and curbside pickup
• Offer offline mode for uninterrupted retail operations with unstable internet
• Sync and run promotions, rewards points, gift cards, and credits both live and offline
• Visualize real-time POS reports on sales, inventory, and employee performance

In addition, Magestore also provides Operation Service to maintain the system and ensure your POS and website are continuously operating stably with the highest performance. As a result, store owners can focus on growing business.

Toast: Best restaurant POS system

Toast is one of the best restaurant POS software specifically designed for food service and industry-specific hardware. With Toast’s wired-connected terminals, you’ll no longer worry about Wi-fi and internet connection drops. Most importantly, Toast has some of the best customer service with a thorough onboarding and training process that guides you through every setup step, and it doesn’t end there. Even after you’re up and running, Toast customer support is available 24/7/365 via chat, email, or call. Therefore, it becomes the best POS system for most restaurants. Outstanding features of Toast POS include:

• Offer contactless solutions, including mobile ordering and payments, mobile and touch wallets, and QR codes
• Enable table-side ordering and payment with portable, pocket-sized terminals
• Map and manage tables, collect real-time customer feedback
• Send tickets to kitchen screens and order notifications automatically
• Provide detailed menu management with ingredient level tracking, recipe costs, waste and COGS reports, payroll management, sales data, and performance
• Integrate with online ordering and delivery
• Come with automated payroll and recruiting features, including HR paperwork, employee scheduling, in-depth labor reporting

Lightspeed Retail: Best value for Inventory Management feature

Lightspeed is a retail POS system provider based in Canada. The Lightspeed POS system focuses on many retail industries such as groceries, toys, and hobbies with small to medium scale. It includes the following salient features:

• Accept all popular payment methods
• Integrate customer retention features such as membership fees and rewards
• Create and manage store pickup orders
• Provide inventory tracking and vendor management portal right on POS
• Offer 50 built-in retail reports on sales, inventory, and employee performance

Also read: 12 Best Restaurant POS Systems in 2022

What is a point of sale system?

A POS system is a solution to process customer payments for products and services. However, a modern POS solution does more than just process payments. It serves as the important business hub handling everything from sales, inventory management, customers, and employees to accounting, payroll, and shipping services. It’s known by other terms such as retail ePOS, retailer POS software, or retail POS software.

What are the components of a POS system?

Components of a POS system include POS hardware and software. This combination will create a complete POS system solution for growing merchants. Typical small POS system devices include:

• Cash drawer,
• Receipt printers,
• Credit card reader,
• Barcode scanners.

However, you can add customer displays, mobile devices, and self-service kiosks to enhance the shopping experience.

What are different types of POS systems?

There are 2 main types of POS systems for retail: on-premise POS and cloud-based POS. On-premises POS operates in an intranet and stores data in local servers, while cloud-based POS works on cloud technology. So you can access cloud-based POS with different devices from anywhere in your store or from home and whenever you want. According to research by Capterra, 79% of users of cloud-based POS systems are SMEs with less than $10 million in revenue. So U.S. retailers are saying goodbye to traditional POS systems with bulky counters and opting for a simple POS system that runs on tablets. And the iPad is the most popular hardware choice.

In addition, based on mobility, there are stand-alone POS systems, mobile POS, and self-service kiosks. The latter two are particularly important for curbside sales or contactless payments, so many business owners incorporate them into their stores.

How much does a POS system cost?

A POS system cost can range from free to $200 per month for a full package. Read on our latest POS price guide to understand more about its following components:

• POS monthly software: $0–299 per month
• Basic hardware: $299–899
• Payment processing fee: $0.10–0.30 per transaction

How to choose the best POS system for your business?

To choose the best small business POS system, you need to consider 5 factors: price and subscription fees, hardware type and cost, payment processing options, features, and ease of use. In this article, we’ve narrowed down the winners in specific categories with the best POS software for small business in retail (eCommerce and inventory management are the most crucial features).

Those are the 6 best POS systems for small business that we would like to recommend to you. We understand that it’s never easy to decide which POS is suitable for your business. However, remember, the best POS combines ease of use and an affordable price. 

• Square POS and Magestore POS both have free versions. Their core features are powerful enough so you don’t need optional add-ons to build a retail POS system. If you choose to include inventory management, loyalty programs, and employee management, you may still pay less than other POS systems.
• However, Square can’t handle the complex problems of multi-location retailers, high-volume omnichannel sellers, and businesses with large amounts of complex inventory. In that case, you should consider Magestore system, LightSpeed ​​Retail, or Shopify.
• Also, if you don’t sell online and are looking for a retail POS that doesn’t require an eCommerce registration, then Vend and Magestore are better simple POS systems.