Clover Flex Review

Pros

• Works for countertop and mobile POS setups
• Supports multiple payment types
• Built-in receipt printer
• Runs full Clover POS

Cons

• Large, somewhat clunky design
• Pricing and contract terms vary by provider
• Inconsistent customer support

What Is Clover Flex?

Clover Flex is point of sale (POS) hardware that doubles as a countertop POS device and mobile card reader. It is compatible only with Clover POS software and other Clover hardware, and you can only use a Fiserv merchant account for payment processing. With Clover Flex, you can take card and mobile wallet payments on the go, print receipts, manage inventory, and more.

Businesses That Would Benefit From Clover Flex

Clover Flex is suitable for just about any small business that wants a mobile smart terminal with POS features and a merchant contract for payment processing. Restaurants or retailers that use a Clover Station as their main register may also want to add a Clover Flex for mobile payments at the table or on the floor.

Pricing

Clover Flex earned an above-average score in the Pricing category thanks to its affordable hardware costs and processing fees. However, the vendor lost some points here for requiring a long-term processing contract.

If you go through Clover.com, Clover Flex will cost you $599. You may be able to find different prices through other vendors, but those may also come with varying processing fees. When purchasing from Clover directly, you can get competitive flat-rate processing fees, but you will also have to sign a long-term service contract.

Note that you can purchase the hardware outright or pay one monthly fee for your hardware and software.

As for software, you’ll have a choice of several monthly plans with Clover Flex. Payment processing is also an additional fee to consider, with rates starting at 2.3% + $0.10 per transaction. If you purchase your equipment from Clover.com. Clover offers 36-month and 48-month payment processing contracts. If you decide to cancel your Clover contract, you will pay an early termination fee equal to the amount you would have paid for the remainder of your contract. Again, different Clover resellers may have different terms.

You can find the best Clover pricing and contract by working with one of these best Clover resellers.

Extra Clover Flex Costs & Fees

Learn more about Clover POS costs.

Overall Design

Unlike the Clover Station and Clover Mini, which are designed to sit on countertops, the Clover Flex is a handheld device meant to be mobile.

In addition to the Clover Flex itself, you’ll also get a separate “starter kit” that contains essential accessories — namely, the Flex charging base, cable, and power brick, the starter manual, a roll of receipt paper, and a screwdriver for replacing the SIM card.

Around the edge of the Flex, you’ll find the card readers, various buttons, and some secondary features: a power button, a barcode scanner, speakers, an audio jack, and even a USB Type C port. Placement of these features is pretty standard if you’re familiar with a smartphone — just on a larger scale. The Clover Flex manual and online help materials include a neat little graphic that shows what everything is.

Let’s talk about the biggest design-related issue: The Clover Flex is much bigger than a mobile device should be. It’s about the size of an early 90s brick cell phone but with a 6-inch smartphone screen instead of buttons. It’s also top-heavy, thanks to the receipt printer at the top of the device, making it a bit unwieldy.

The Clover Flex also includes a charging dock — the base is contoured to fit the handgrip on the Flex. The charging cable is about three feet long, so it can definitely sit on a counter.

Device Specs

Here’s a rundown of the specs of the Clover Flex 3:

• Overall Dimensions: 7.3″ H x 3.2″ W x 2.1″ D
• Display: 5.99″, 720×1440 XHDPI display
• Payment Types: Magnetic stripe cards, EMV chip cards, NFC cards, contactless payments
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi and 4G/LTE
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 octa-core CPU
• Memory: 2 GB RAM, 16 GB Flash

As you might expect from a device called Flex, Clover throws in magstripe, chip card, and contactless payment support.

The current version, Flex 3, features a larger 5.99-inch screen protected by Gorilla Glass, the same stuff used by most Android smartphones. The newest version of the Flex is slightly more compact than previous versions. It also has a faster processor and more memory than Clover Flex 2.

Loading a roll of receipt paper is quite simple. The drawer pops open easily but also seems to latch securely. However, the receipt paper roll does rattle about a bit.

Clover Flex comes with a 2100 mAh battery, which is a little bit weaker than what you’ll find in most high-end smartphones. However, 2100 mAh is robust enough to run a device like the Flex for a standard business day (eight hours). Keep in mind that your mileage may vary depending on whether your shop is busy and you rely heavily on the Flex, you keep it on the dock when not in use, or you just use it for line busting or occasional tableside ordering.

Ease Of Use

The Clover Flex is fairly simple to set up, and actually using the POS and hardware is intuitive as well. Our Ease of Use score for Clover Flex reflects how easy it is to set up and use the device, though a few points were lost for some quirks with settings, battery life, and software bugs (see User Reviews section for more information on bugs and battery issues).

In short, Clover Flex and other Clover devices will feel intuitive if you’ve ever used an Android device before. And even if you’ve only ever used an iPhone, you should be able to master Clover Flex’s app-based functionality in no time.

However, you could be a little frustrated as you flip through multiple apps to find the right one to modify a particular setting. Settings are available within the individual apps rather than from a single settings menu.

There’s no centralized control for any of the settings.

The Setup app focuses more on Clover POS settings, particularly payment-related features.

Getting Started With Clover Flex

Setup starts with powering up the device and choosing your default language. After that, the real setup process begins, starting with your data connection settings. Clover Flex comes with a mobile data connection (for an additional monthly cost), but you can also set the Flex up to work with Wi-Fi or an Ethernet connection. You can complete the setup process using any of these three connections.

Once you’re connected and Flex has downloaded any software updates, Clover will ask you to enter your activation code. Clover will send you the code via email when your device ships, but you can also access it in your online portal at Clover.com.

After you enter the activation code, Clover will download your apps for you. Then, you’ll need to set up the receipt printer, which really is as simple as popping the roll of paper in and closing the Flex up. You can print a test receipt to make sure the printer is working as it should.

The second-to-last step in setting up your Clover Flex is deciding what software plan you want. Once you’ve decided what plan you want to start with, Clover will also ask you to opt into the Wireless Manager add-on, which allows you to have cellular data in addition to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. If you don’t opt-in, you won’t have a backup data option if your internet goes down, but the Wireless Manager isn’t mandatory.

Finally, you’ll be asked to enable a couple of settings before your Flex is fully set up. For starters, you can require users to enter a passcode to unlock the device. You can also specify whether you want to accept tips and collect signatures on printed receipts or the Clover Flex screen.

The entire setup process shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes to complete (unless you need to research the software plans or your data connection is unbelievably slow).

Features

Clover refers to its features (inventory tools, customer database, reporting tools, etc.)  as “apps.” That is, Clover POS isn’t a single app with many components; it’s an entire mobile OS. For example, inventory isn’t in a separate tab or buried in a menu within an app—it’s an entirely different app that you open.

The main screen of the Clover Flex. You can swipe left or right to access more screens with more features.

Overall, Clover Flex earns strong marks in the Features category, as this system packs a lot of functionality into its smart terminal (and accompanying online dashboard).

The Clover Flex runs the full Clover POS and is compatible with the Clover Station and Clover Mini. If you need a full-fledged register/countertop POS system, you can get that and use the Flex devices as a supplement. That means orders created on one device can be completed on the other, which is very important if you’re dealing with mobile hardware and mobile staff.

Inventory Management With Clover Flex

Because the Clover Flex POS is meant to be mobile, it doesn’t support a few of the inventory features that the Clover Station and Mini do. For example, you can’t connect a scale to weigh products. However, you can create items (with variants), categories, and modifiers from Flex. You can also adjust the settings for Clover to track stock counts and costs, but this feature isn’t enabled automatically.

The Clover Inventory app populates all of your inventory when you open it and indicates what kind of pricing each item uses.

Clover Flex lets you create fixed-price, per-unit, and variable-price items. Fixed price is for standard wares, whereas per-unit pricing will ask you to specify a unit and a price per unit. When you select the item to ring up, you’ll need to enter the quantity.

With variable-price items, you’ll simply enter the cost when you add the item to an order. This feature could be helpful for, say, art galleries that have a rotating inventory of paintings by a select few artists. You could set the item up as “NAME painting” and plug in the price of that particular painting. But there are many other uses as well.

The Flex has a built-in barcode scanner, which you can use to load inventory into the app. Scan the barcode, and Flex will import that data into the POS. This could be a major time-saver for some businesses.

Other Features

Clover’s additional POS features include a customer database, fairly comprehensive in-app reporting, and employee management features, among many others. (There’s a rewards program add-on, timekeeping and payroll, and more, all available from the “More Tools” button on the Flex.)

I like that you can create custom roles for your employees, set individual logins and restrict which features an employee can access on Clover devices based on their role. This is included at no extra charge, and it’s fairly advanced.

I wouldn’t want to use the Flex as my primary device for analyzing reports, but the features are a bit more robust than what you’d find on your average mobile device. You can specify the hourly range, the total timeframe (today, yesterday, the past week, the past 30 days, or a custom range), and filter reports by all devices or just your Clover handheld.

The customer database lets you link transactions to customers and keep a database with their name, contact information, and even their birthdays.

This is a good foundation for the add-on CRM and loyalty programs that Clover offers.

Customer Service & Support

Clover’s customer service has mixed reviews. Overall, though, Clover Flex still earns a strong score in this area thanks to offering 24/7 support and lots of helpful self-support resources.

To some extent, your customer support options will depend on which processor you choose to sign up with. Your merchant account provider will often be your front line for all account-related questions. However, for technical support, Clover is the go-to source. (If you sign up with Clover directly, it will be your point of contact for account-specific issues, too.)

Clover offers 24/7 phone support, which is always nice to see. However, many Clover users report long phone wait times, unhelpful interactions, and having to deal with generally misleading customer service representatives.

You can also access customer support resources such as a knowledgebase and tutorials from your Clover dashboard and download PDF guides/support videos on your Clover device directly.

User Reviews

Our less-than-perfect User Reviews score for Clover Flex is due to the provider’s rather mixed online review profile which trends slightly positive overall.

One of the challenges we have always faced with reviewing Clover products is user reviews. Parsing all of the data and getting a feel for what merchants love and hate about any piece of software (or hardware) is a big undertaking. Clover is extra challenging because Fiserv has such a massively huge network of resellers offering the Clover suite, and, unfortunately, some of them are completely terrible.

Most Clover reviews tend to be extremely negative and usually focus on payment processing or hardware leases. Even good reviews tend to primarily focus on the software element — being vague about the hardware, if it’s mentioned at all. With that said, reviews have been slowly trickling in over a variety of places online, enough that a few recurring themes have emerged, albeit still from a small sample size.

Negative Reviews & Complaints

• Customers Given Poor Information: More than one reviewer complained that they specifically asked Clover if certain software would be compatible with the Clover Flex, such as a gift card or a third-party app, and were told it wouldn’t be a problem, only to find out that it doesn’t work.
• Bugs & Restarts: Multiple customers reported similar-sounding issues about bugs that would shut down the Flex or cause a restart right in the middle of processing. There are multiple instances of the hardware either freezing up or becoming unresponsive, forcing a hard restart.
• Connection Issues: A few users reported that the machines would often process in offline mode even when connected to wireless, making for slower connection speeds. Similarly, a few reviewers complained that the range on the devices was sub-par, often dropping connectivity from one end of a store to another.
• Battery Life: More than one reviewer noted that the Flex started to have difficulty charging earlier than they would have anticipated, and the battery life got progressively weaker with time.

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

• Processing Speed: A good portion of the customers who were happy with the device felt particularly pleased with how quickly it processed payments and the speed at which they received funds.
• Ease Of Use: Most customers appreciated how easy the device is to set up and use for both employees and customers.
• Intuitive Design: A few reviewers liked the device’s feel and found it simple for their employees and customers to use.

How Clover Flex Compares To Other Handheld POS

Some other mobile smart terminals in the same class as Clover Flex include Square Terminal and Poynt Smart Terminal. At $299, Square Terminal costs less than Clover Flex and has a fully featured free plan; however, Flex offers more features and potentially cheaper processing. Poynt has similar pricing to Clover Flex, but doesn’t come pre-loaded with POS features.

Final Verdict

Overall, the Clover Flex earns a strong overall rating for its functionality and — pun fully intended here, folks — flexibility. The Clover Flex makes the most sense if you already have a Clover setup and want to take it mobile. Clover’s software is versatile and flexible as well, with uses for multiple industries, and accordingly, we recommend Clover POS as one of the best POS systems for small businesses.

The single biggest concern with any Clover product is making sure you sign up with a reputable processor. If you go through Clover directly, you’ll get the lowest hardware pricing and a month-to-month agreement with clear, simplified rates. However, other reputable resellers for Clover exist, including Dharma Merchant Services, National Processing, and Payment Depot.

If you decide that Clover POS isn’t for you at all, read up on the best Clover alternatives to find the POS hardware and software for your business.

Clover Flex FAQs

POS Hardware & Mobile Credit Card Reader Rating Methodology

We spend hours researching and evaluating each POS hardware and mobile payments device that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing special emphasis on key characteristics to generate our product ratings.

When rating POS hardware (which might include registers, mobile card readers, and other similar devices), we use a 38-point rubric that looks at pricing, ease of use, features, customer service, and user reviews. We weigh each section differently to calculate the total star rating.

• Pricing: 40% of the total star rating
• Ease of Use: 20% of the total star rating
• Features: 25% of the total star rating
• Customer Service: 10% of the total star rating
• User Reviews: 5% of the total star rating

Each section is further broken down into granular, weighted subsections, in which we look at specific attributes, like whether reduced fees are available for multiple terminals, which payment processing options are available, and how well the hardware integrates with POS or payment processing software apps. We’re also paying careful attention to hardware’s relative cost, any associated fees, and whether financing is available, among other things.

Learn more about how we rate POS hardware.

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Clover Flex	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Clover Flex for yourself.

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Clover Flex	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Clover Flex for yourself.