The 6 Best Retail Software To Help Your Business Thrive in 2022

Whether you’re running a small or large retail company, your business depends upon the point-of-sale (POS) system to manage multiple vital operational functions, such as processing online orders and food delivery, as well as retail management.

There are hundreds of software tools on the market, so choosing the right retail software for your business needs careful evaluation and consideration. To help you shortlist the right tool, we’ve created a list of top-rated retail software solutions that have received great reviews by real software users like you.

This report recognizes six products that stood out among 1000+ applications in six retail-related categories to deliver excellent value, according to feedback from thousands of reviews from software users.

Here’s our list of six products, selected based on their appearance in at least three FrontRunners reports—our annual reports that rate the top software products based on user reviews. The products that appeared in the most FrontRunners reports appear at the top of the list.

• Number of appearances in 2022 FrontRunners reports: 4

Clover is a web-based all-in-one POS system that helps small businesses in accepting payments, sales tracking, online ordering, reporting, customer engagement, and inventory management anytime and anywhere.

Scores for categories in which Clover is listed

Here’s what reviewers on Software Advice say about Clover:

Pros:

• “I like that the business can see your profile once you have ‘checked in’ in order to easily give you the points. It’s also very easy to look on the app for other local businesses that use Clover.”
• “The mobile POS option is great and has made navigating the Pandemic and Curbside orders much easier. Another feature I and my customers love is the ability to check-in.”
• “I like the POS hardware compatibility with my bluetooth/phone data plans, PC/Printing equipment and also as an Inventory management since it provides a built-in scanner on the Clover Flex.”

Cons:

• “Plus size of file is limited to 10MB which for the effort I could have keyed in the few items quickly to get to the file limit size. Customer support was painful to interact with and not helpful.”
• “It is very frustrating because there is no knowledgeable customer support. They all act like they are confused and also tell me their system is down.”
• “Customer service is poor. If you find yourself in a situation like we are in, you will be in a panic and desperate to get help and you will get crickets, nothing.”

Source

FrontRunners reports that listed Clover in 2022: Online Ordering, Retail POS Systems, Retail Management, Bar POS

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• Number of appearances in 2022 FrontRunners reports: 3

CAKE POS is a cloud-based restaurant POS and management system that enhances the dining experience by streamlining operational tasks such as curbside pickup and waitlist management. It helps in guest management, online reservations, payment processing, online ordering, gift cards, and table-side ordering.

Scores for categories in CAKE POS is listed

Here’s what reviewers on Software Advice say about CAKE POS:

Pros:

• “Easy to change user permissions, access reports, and update menu from system, back office, and from any computer or mobile device even offsite. Reporting is clear and easy to use as well.”
• “We don’t spend any time on training new team members to use our POS System (CAKE). Seriously, it’s so easy we show them a few features and they are running it like a pro on day one.”
• “Back end programming is fairly easy to use once you are familiar with it. Online ordering has been fairly easy to implement and has all of the BASIC functions you need.”

Cons:

• “There are very few settings to adjust preparation time for online ordering during peak hours. There is one function that was added to help this problem.”
• “We have a small frustration with how the POS screen aligns the option buttons in ordering windows. It takes us a few minutes to adjust after we change menu items, but is not a big issue.”
• “Sometimes updates would change a feature. After one such change, it became hard for servers to check a little box for “To-Go” to print on kitchen tickets.”

Source

FrontRunners reports that listed CAKE POS in 2022: Online Ordering, Bar POS, Food Delivery

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• Number of appearances in 2022 FrontRunners reports: 3

Epos Now is a cloud-based POS solution for retail and hospitality businesses. It streamlines payments, staff management, table and kitchen management, reporting, stock control, online ordering, and inventory management.

Scores for categories in which Epos Now is listed

Here’s what reviewers on Software Advice say about Epos Now:

Pros:

• “I like the clock in/out features for payroll. And the style of the til is easy to use.”
• “We purchased this software for better inventory control and its MYOB integration function.”
• “Good variety of features and highly customizeable.”

Cons:

• “I can’t get a detailed end of day report that separates my sales types by-products. Lottery redemption is a huge task and customers complain of wait times.”
• “Worst service, you need waste your time at least 2-3 hours to get in touch with support.”
• “Difficult to set up promotions and biggest problem is not the software but constantly trying to add additional charges unlawfully.”

Source

FrontRunners reports that listed Epos Now in 2022: Online Ordering, Retail POS Systems, Retail Management

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• Number of appearances in 2022 FrontRunners reports: 3

Lightspeed Retail is a cloud-based POS solution for retail, eCommerce, restaurants, hospitality and golf merchants. With this solution, you can manage your inventory and stock, customize reports, and manage sales.

Scores for categories in which Lightspeed Retail is listed

Here’s what reviewers on Software Advice say about Lightspeed Retail:

Pros:

• “Lightspeed is very user friendly and easy to teach employees how to use it. The reporting is top-notch and they even can help you create custom reports which was very important to us.”
• “Creating items and managing retail is very easy through Lightspeed Retail. The reporting features allow you to make great decisions for your business based on accurate data.”
• “I like the ease of minimal buttons and options when running through a transaction. It makes it really simple to train new employees on how to use the system.”

Cons:

• “Hard to learn and need a lot of time to work and enter the information, So You must have someone specialist to work. For my business, It doesn’t make sense to hire someone just entering data in software.”
• “Online documentation is wrong about 80% of the time. Importing products, customer data, etc is chaotic at best.”
• “The reporting could be more thorough. There are some missed opportunities for lightspeed to be a “one stop shop” software.”

Source

FrontRunners reports that listed Lightspeed Retail in 2022: Ecommerce, Retail POS Systems, Retail Management

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• Number of appearances in 2022 FrontRunners reports: 3

Rain POS is a web-based is an all-in-one retail POS, ecommerce, and marketing solution for small businesses. It simplifies inventory management, online ordering, boost sales, reporting, email marketing, and more.

Scores for categories in which Rain POS is listed

Here’s what reviewers on Software Advice say about Rain POS:

Pros:

• “I love that Rain POS integrates with a website. I also love that RAIN continues to listen to suggestions and strives to add new features.”
• “I appreciate that I can do so many facets of my business from one platform. POS, online sales, integrated inventory management, emails, and merchant services.
• “I love being able to see what inventory we have, what our customers are buying, being to look back and tell a customer what a fabric was that they purchased.””

Cons:

• “One feature that is extremely helpful in our industry (music store) but missing from Rain, is a Maintenance Agreement/Service Contract module.”
• “At times the system has quirks that are an annoyance to the user and is a low priority fix for developers.”
• “Lack of support and woeful capabilities for multi-store operations.”

Source

FrontRunners reports that listed Rain POS in 2022: Ecommerce, Retail POS Systems, Retail Management

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• Number of appearances in 2022 FrontRunners reports: 3

SpotOn is a cloud-based restaurant POS system designed for small businesses that helps them to tableside payments, customer retention, online delivery, accept online payments, portable POS for food trucks, and QR ordering.

Scores for categories in which SpotOn is listed

Here’s what reviewers on Software Advice say about SpotOn:

Pros:

• “The online ordering system is pretty neat; didn’t have to install any apps on either customer or the storefront. Inventory management is simple and easy to maintain.”
• “The SpotOn Software is intuitive, flexible, and easily updated in real-time. Love the marketing features and integration of 3rd Party Delivery Apps.”
• “Backend of system is easy to use, I have more control over my stores now. Also the add on features of Reserve which I will start using soon, loyalty programs and integrations are a plus.”

Cons:

• “It is somewhat difficult to update items quickly on the back end.”
• “There is no audit trail and things are to easy to change. As soon as you change something there is no going back.”
• “Can be difficult to type on keyboard & with that comes some time wasted ensuring the message is typed properly.”

Source

FrontRunners Reports that listed SpotOn in 2022: Food Delivery, Bar POS, Online Ordering

Find the best retail software to help your business thrive in 2022

For companies setting up their first retail business or they’re an experienced merchant, a good retail POS system is critical to their success. A retail POS system helps retailers with contactless payments and online sales, while also improving customer experience and making it easier for them to track sales, employee performance and inventory. In fact, these tools nurture relationships with customers by providing customer relationship management (CRM) tools.

Learn more about Software Advice FrontRunners

To come up with this top-rated product list, we looked at all the FrontRunners reports for each retail related category published over the first half of 2022 (January 2022 to June 2022). From there, we noted which products have appeared in multiple FrontRunners reports across the multiple categories.

For qualification, each product must have been featured in at least three of the following categories FrontRunners report: Bar POS, Ecommerce, Food Delivery, Online Ordering, Retail Management, and Retail POS Systems. In the event that two or more products were featured in an equal number of software categories, we listed them alphabetically.

Software Advice’s FrontRunners data play a vital role in creating this report. To produce our FrontRunners reports, we consider recent, published user reviews for individual software products in order to rank and score them based on their usability and customer satisfaction scores.

The data we collect for FrontRunners reports falls within a set time frame and is not updated after publication (in this case, as of July 14, 2022). For that reason, FrontRunners reports should be interpreted as a snapshot of reviews data.

To learn more about FrontRunners methodology, you can find our current version and explanations for inclusion criteria and scoring here.

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Methodology

Note: Product profile information and review snippets were picked from the product’s Software Advice profile as of July 14, 2022.

Review excerpts are passages extracted from longer reviews written by verified reviewers. We obtain these excerpts by applying an algorithm that considers factors including, but not limited to, word count and topic coverage. Excerpts are evaluated for positive or negative sentiment and receive a sentiment score. We are only highlighting excerpts with the highest positive sentiment scores in this document.

Excerpts represent user opinion and do not represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by Software Advice or its affiliates. Excerpts are not edited for clarity or grammar.

Disclaimer: The full text of the reviews excerpted are from published reviews on SoftwareAdvice.com for the associated product in the listed category on the date this content was published. Software Advice makes no guarantee that the reviews will remain posted for the entire period this report is active.