eHopper Review

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This review refers to an older version of this software.

Overview:

It’s FREE!

I thought I’d start with that seeing as eHopper’s price is the first thing people tend to notice—not the fact that it’s a globally available mobile POS solution, or that it’s easy to use, or the breadth of hardware integrations it offers (including Android, Windows, iOS and Poynt). Nope, we only care about the money.

eHopper was created by B2B Soft co-founders Gary Khabinski and Igor Senchenko in 2012. Though it’s been on the market for a couple of years now, eHopper has yet to make much of a splash in the POS world. This is especially true when compared to B2B Soft, a company with a decade-long reputation for building retail management solutions. Nevertheless, every dog has his day, and I’ve certainly reviewed excellent systems that haven’t quite made it big.

eHopper as a company seems primarily interested in working closely with business owners to develop an ideal POS solution that meets merchants’ needs. However, I say “seems” because although the general language of the website speaks of innovation, modernization, and customization, that’s not the vibe I received when I actually explored the software. Instead, I got the impression from its overall design that the developers don’t have much practical experience with retail or food service businesses. The basic elements of a POS are there, but a lot of the features that really differentiate point of sale software from an old fashion cash register have been left undeveloped.

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Read on to find out more.

Pricing:

eHopper offers a 30-day free trial so you can take it for a spin before going live. There’s no obligation until you actually pick a plan, which means there are no contracts to sign and no need to hand over any credit card information for the trial. Once you’ve given the system a go and decide to move forward, you can pick one of two pricing plans:

• Essential, FREE – This plan grants you access to the entire POS and all of its features. However, you won’t be able to integrate your merchant services, and you won’t have access to phone, email, or chat support. You’re also only allowed one register.
• Freedom, $39.99/month ($34.99/month billed annually) – This plan gives you access to everything the Essential plan doesn’t: phone, chat, and email support, training, and integrated merchant services. You can add unlimited registers to your plan for an additional $39/month/register.

Cloud-Based or Locally-Installed:

eHopper is entirely cloud-based, so all of your business data is stored on external servers and synced to your device via the Internet. However, so your business isn’t entirely dependent on the reliability of your Internet connection, a copy of your data is saved to your web browser every time you open the system. This means you can continue to process sales even if your Wi-Fi goes down, though you won’t be able to accept credit card transactions.

Specific Size of Business:

Offering access to a limited number of reports, eHopper is really only suitable for small businesses, and even then some small businesses will need more functionality than eHopper is able to offer.

Specific Kind of Business:

eHopper is best suited for retail establishments. The system does allow you to sell products by the pound, inch, yard, ounce, etc. and designate the price accordingly at the register. This opens it up for fabric stores or any establishment that sells its wares without a fixed price.

eHopper also advertises itself as a quick service restaurant and bar POS, but I really can’t say it’s equipped for anything bigger than a food truck. You can add product modifiers and tips, but without raw ingredient tracking, table management, or comps it just isn’t ready for most eateries or bars.

Hardware and Operating System Requirements:

eHopper makes it a point to open up its software to run on a variety of operating systems. Currently, the software is recommended for Windows, Android, and Poynt (pictured below), and iOS was recently added as well. You can find exact specifications on the website, but the basic operating system requirements are:

• Android 4.4.2
• Any Windows tablet with Windows 8 or 10
• Chrome browser version 45 and higher
• Requires iOS 8.0 or later

eHopper also offers hardware bundles that you can purchase directly. Otherwise, you can source your own hardware based on the list of compatible hardware found on eHopper’s website.

Ease of Use:

Though not the most intuitive system I’ve ever worked with, the layout is simple enough that you can basically set up your entire business without much help. Everything except for your hardware configuration is set up from the back office (pictured below)—inputting inventory, managing customer accounts, creating employee profiles, etc—and with all of the different areas grouped under their respective headings (inventory, customers, employees), navigation is easy.

I did have some trouble figuring out how to assign a cost price to an item (so I could compare it to my sale price and calculate my margin) since it’s under the “vendor” tab instead of “pricing” in the product setup window. I tried watching the training videos to figure it out, but the videos are limited and only cover the most basic functions of the POS. I eventually figured it all out, but it took a couple rounds with the software and some intuitive leaps to get there.

Recently, eHopper enhanced their “Getting Started” widget in the back office with steps to assist new users in setting up their stores and they are currently working on enhancing the widget even further.

Overall, the phrase “easy to use” can really only be applied to the software because of its general simplicity and not necessarily for its implicit helpfulness. For example, other than the very rudimentary “Getting Started” widget, eHopper doesn’t have any kind of automated guide (like you find in most systems) that walks you through the first few setup steps. It also doesn’t tell you which format you need to use when importing your products. If you try to use the wrong format, it just spits out a confusing error message that doesn’t really help you fix anything. Of course, you could always call or email support for any of this information (so long as you’re on the paid plan), but you shouldn’t have to.

Features:

eHopper doesn’t really offer any outstanding functionality. The most I can say for the software is that it has all the basics. You can take a look at the feature page for an overview of its capabilities, but I’ll be going over the salient points:

• Basic POS Features – As far as the actual front-end register part of the system, you’ve got all the necessary bits. Add items to an order by scanning a barcode, searching for it, or selecting the quick key on screen. Add tips to orders, and assign discounts by individual products or entire transactions. Ring up and then hold multiple orders which you can call up later. Split payments between multiple tender types. Choose to either print or email receipts, and let your customers sign for credit card transactions directly on the POS screen.

• Cash Management – Though not something I would rave about, I have certainly seen worse cash management features. You can perform a starting till count when you open the register, make any pay-ins or payouts, and do a final till count when you close the register. Generate a z-report with a comprehensive overview of tender counts, net sales with tips and taxes, any variance in your till counts, etc. You can also designate which sales people (the lowest role level) have access to each register. A new feature they have added is the ability to edit prices directly in the shopping cart.

• Settings – eHopper offers a couple of different currency and language options, which is nice, but all the other settings are fairly basic. You can set more than one tax level, and eHopper just added the ability to include taxes in your product price, to set up multiline taxes, and create tax exemptions. After that, the only thing left to do is customize your receipt header/footer and decide how the date and time should be displayed.
• Employee Management – You can create individual employee profiles with designated roles and unique login pins. There are four roles (sales person, sales manager, back office operator, and administrator), each with different access permissions. These roles are not customizable, but you can take a look at what each one has access to.

• Reporting – Again, very basic, because there are only about 15 reports. The Tips report displays the basic transaction information of any order processed with a credit card so you know how much each server has earned in tips. The z-report displays a tender breakdown, your net sales with taxes and tips, any pay-ins and payouts, and data about who opened and closed the register, along with some other more detailed information. The Product Mix report is essentially the only access you have to your most important data. From it you can view each item, its ID number, department, category, register, employee, quantity on hand, quantity sold, and gross sales. This report can be filtered by a specified date range, register, employee, department, and category. That’s it. Though you can get a brief overview of basic information via the dashboard. The Tax report displays tax collected based on the tax rate and taxable amount. It also gives an account of total sales and non-taxable amount accumulated. The Transactions report displays a summary of the transactions that have occurred. eHopper has recently added an Inventory Aging report, a Serial Item Tracking report, and an Adjustment report. With eHopper, you also have the ability to export your reports.

• Customer Management – You may assign customers to a transaction by looking them up in the database or creating a new profile with their name and basic contact information. A customer’s orders will be recorded for later access, though this information doesn’t factor into any of the reports. You also can’t view any of this information from the back office, only the front-end register.
• Stock Control – You have the option of tracking your stock levels by indicating the current quantity, recommended quantity, and minimum quantity of each product, but the system doesn’t do much with this information. The Product Mix report will allow you to see what you still have in stock and how many you sold, but there’s no indicator saying “Low Stock” when it gets below your designated minimum. As I understand it, it’s just there as a note you can see when you’re generating purchase orders (something else that can’t be done within the system) and you want to know how much of something to order.

• Item Creation – eHopper allows you to name your products, write descriptions, nest each item in a department and category, upload an image, and note whether a product is taxable and discountable. They have recently enhanced the ability to add images to products – now users can upload any picture size. You can choose from a list of units (inch, ounce, pound, gram) by which to sell each product, and designate whether the price should be fixed or manually calculated when you ring the item up. It’s also possible to record the sale price, cost price, and vendor for each item, along with pertinent vendor information such as contact info, tax ID, and vendor type.
• Control Number – If you are a merchant who works in Puerto Rico, you are in luck. eHopper just added a control number option for Puerto Rican merchants who are required to display a control number on every receipt.
• Multi-Location – eHopper recently implemented the ability to sell from multiple locations.

I feel it is important to note that when asked what features they have planned for the future, eHopper was quite willing to share what’s in store. Raw Ingredient Tracking, an open API, EBT support, purchase ordering, and a new user interface are all set to come out soon. Beyond that, they plan on adding smartphone support, integration with scales and age verification systems, a menu builder, loyalty points, layaways, and recurring payment. So even though the available features are still on the minimal side as of now, there are plans for expansion in the near future.

Compatible Credit Card Processors

Because eHopper is available internationally, your payment processing options are pretty open. You can choose to integrate with USAePay (one of the major gateways) or TSYS. Or you can use the PAX EMV-enable terminal, which integrates with First Data. Between First Data, TSYS, and USAePay, almost any processor you want to go through should be covered.

Integrations and Add-Ons:

eHopper integrates with the following:

• MarketingBox – As evidenced in the name, this integration allows business owners to easily market to their customers via email or mobile phones.
• QuickBooks – eHopper’s ability to integrate with QuickBooks Online is a recent addition.

eHopper also offers an app store that allows users to select more extensive features. These apps mostly apply to the Freedom plan.

An open API that would allow you to design your own integrations is said to be in the works as well.

Customer Service and Support:

If you’re using eHopper on the Essential plan (the free version) you won’t have access to all of eHopper’s support avenues, but here are your options:

• Training Videos – The training videos cover basic POS functions and don’t offer much information beyond what you can discover for yourself by simply tooling around in the software for an hour or so.
• Knowledgebase – The searchable knowledgebase is the most recent addition to eHopper’s support, and it certainly contains the most information about the system.
• Community Forum – Another brand new feature, there’s not much on the community forum yet, except for a couple posts from eHopper employees explaining how to use the forum.

If you end up going with the Freedom plan (the paid version), these are the extra support channels available to you:

• Phone – You can call customer service seven days a week between 6AM and 1AM EST.
• Email – Email is available 24/7, though I can’t really commend eHopper’s response time since I sent four emails to four different support agents in the middle of the day and only one answered in a timely manner (and only to tell me that he couldn’t help me until I upgraded to the paid plan).
• Support Ticket – Like the knowledgebase and community forum, the ticket system is brand new and functions pretty similarly to email. Basically, you can use it to ask support questions and request new features.
• Chat – As far as I can tell, chat is available 24/7 as well, but I ran into the same problem here, where they wouldn’t answer my questions until I was paying for the software.
• Training – When you’re first starting out, you can schedule up to four training sessions with technical support, each session lasting up to two hours.
• Social Media – eHopper has a blog on its website, but it doesn’t really offer anything in terms of tech support. The same is true of the company’s LinkedIn page.

Negative Reviews and Complaints:

eHopper seems to have made a pretty small footprint in the POS world considering there isn’t much user feedback. Here are some of the common issues I noticed in online comments:

• General Lack of Features – Without raw ingredient tracking and the ability to properly comp, even some of the smallest retail and food service merchants I’ve worked with would balk at eHopper.
• Limited Reporting Suite – Limited doesn’t really cover how extremely basic this reporting suite is. You can’t even break down your sales by the hour to identify your peak selling times, which makes scheduling employees a total guessing game. There’s also no way to track modifiers once an order has been processed—this means there’s no way to even estimate (without counting out your inventory) how many of your modifier ingredients you’re using.
• Limited Integrations – Considering how sparse the system is, an eCommerce software or an online ordering program integration could really help fill in the cracks.
• Mobile Option Doesn’t Work – Galaxy 7 mobile users complain that eHopper doesn’t work on their devices.

Positive Reviews and Testimonials:

Here are some of the things that customers like about eHopper:

• Easy to Use/Simple – You can’t argue with simplicity if that’s what you need. It can be really easy to clutter up an interface (even with a limited amount of features), but eHopper manages to keep things simple, relatively intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing.
• Cheap – Something else you can’t argue with. If you don’t need integrated credit card processing and find yourself comfortable enough with the system that you don’t anticipate the need for technical support, free is a great price. Even the paid plan is pretty cheap, though. Well below the industry average.
• Basics Are All There – If you don’t need a system with any bells or whistles, it’s difficult to go wrong with eHopper. Sure, you’ll start running into problems when you start to expand, and if there’s still no ability to export products or reports at that point you’re going to be in trouble, but until that happens, eHopper can take care of you.

Final Verdict:

I quite honestly expect more from a company that’s been around since 2012. It has had a couple years to add the features that have become pretty standard in both retail and food service, but it still comes across like a newer product.

eHopper has created a decent foundation with the makings of a great POS system. The cash management features are surprisingly decent, but the rest of the system can’t accommodate a high volume business. A lot of the information needed for more advanced stock control and generating purchase orders can already be entered into the system, but those features just aren’t there. You can already designate the unit by which each product is sold, but there’s no weight scale integration or raw ingredient tracking. Each transaction is tracked by employee, but there are no in-depth analytics of individual employee sales or performance. The trend seems to be that the necessary information is in there, there’s just nothing you can do with it.

In the end, the most appealing aspects of this software are its ease of use and low price, but that’s simply not enough to build a solid business on. Particularly not when there are so many great POS alternatives out there. I know that eHopper is working on adding more features (online ordering, eCommerce, and the ability to export reports), and you can always explore eHopper’s software for yourself. But once you’ve given it a go, I would encourage you to take another look around before jumping on board with eHopper.