Vend POS Review
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- Date Established
- 2010
- Location
- New Zealand
Pros
- Free plan available
- Loyalty program
- eCommerce integrations
- Multi-store capability
- Gift cards
Cons
- Basic reporting tools
- Expensive monthly cost
Overview
In 2010, Vend was revolutionary; it was a powerful POS system operating completely in the cloud, making it possible for your business to still function through an internet outage. Since then, Vend has stayed on top of current trends and remains one of the most user-friendly retail POS systems on the market. Vend is constantly updating its product and has very few flaws. The POS’s front end is remarkably intuitive even to the greenest retail employee, and its back-end features come with most things you would expect from a top-end system.
Since its launch, the company has developed a capable inventory management system, a multichannel sales approach with both in-store and online capabilities, a decent list of integrations with third-party software, and an altogether well-rounded retail management solution. Naturally, as with any system, there are a few areas where Vend needs some work. If you want eCommerce, an employee time clock, or email marketing, you’ll need to pay for third-party software integrations. And if you’re looking for incredibly advanced reporting, you may find Vend slightly lacking. However, for most small to mid-sized businesses, Vend will almost certainly have you covered. What’s especially impressive is you can use it on virtually any hardware setup you like.
Read on to learn more.
Don’t have time to read an entire review? Take a look at our top-rated point of sale solutions for a few quick recommendations. Every option we present here offers excellent customer support, detailed user interfaces, and easy-to-use software, all for a reasonable price.
Table of Contents
Pricing
Before signing up for a plan, you can test out Vend with a free 14-day trial (limited to 200 products and weekly erasure of sales data). As with other web-based POS services, Vend’s month-to-month plans can be canceled at any time, and your subscription is paid monthly via credit card. However, if you prepay for one year, you’ll receive a discount on the monthly price. Vend does offer a very limited free plan, but for small businesses just starting, it’s a nice option to have. Here are Vend’s plans:
Free
- $0/month for life
- One user
- One register
- 10 active products
- 1,000 customers
- Community support
Lite
- $99/month annually ($119/month billed monthly)
- One outlet
- One register (additional $59/month per additional registers or $49 annually)
- $20,000 monthly turnover in USD
- Unlimited products, users, and customers
- 24/7 phone and email support
- Automatic updates
- Inventory management
- Small business reporting
- Xero and QuickBooks accounting add-ons
Pro
- $129/month ($159/month billed monthly)
- One+ outlets
- One register (additional registers $59/month each or $49/month each billed annually)
- Unlimited turnover
- All features from Lite, plus:
- eCommerce integrations
- Gift cards and loyalty
- Advanced reporting
- Advanced promotions
- API access
- All available add-ons
- Multi-outlet retail management
Enterprise
- Call Vend for pricing
- Six+ outlets
- One+ registers (additional registers $49/month each or $39/month each billed annually)
- Unlimited turnover
- All feature from Pro, plus:
- Dedicated account manager
- Customized onboarding
Vend previously charged extra for premium phone support. We’re pleased to see that Vend now offers 24/7 phone support on all its paid plans. Overall, though, Vend’s pricing is a little on the high side, especially if you want advanced features or add-ons, such as eCommerce. For example, if you want an integrated online store and email marketing, you’ll pay $129/month (billed annually), plus another $29/month for an integrated Shopify store (or use another integrated eCommerce provider).
Cloud-Based Or Locally-Installed
Vend has its head in the cloud, so to speak. All aspects of operation occur within your HTML5 compatible web browser (or HTML5 iPad app). If you have a network outage, the cache takes over and runs things locally, automatically re-syncing sales when you come back online.
Specific Industry
Vend is a versatile solution for virtually any retail establishment, small or large. It offers convenient packages to accommodate nearly every type of business, with the possible exception of foodservice. Service and hospitality businesses will find it lacking — there are no features for table management or tipping, but Vend could potentially work for small cafes and other simple food distributors. Vend does what it does very well, and I always like it when a software company doesn’t try to be all things to everyone.
Specific Size Of Business
With Vend, there are no limits to the number of stores a business can have, so it is appropriate for small stores, large chains, and everything in between. The fact that it also offers a free version of its product for very small businesses (e.g., food truck vendors or farmer’s market retailers) is a nice addition. That doesn’t mean it won’t scale up; Vend does boast some customers with a few hundred stores each.
Ease Of Use
Rating: Excellent
Once signed up for the free trial, you’ll have the opportunity to take a self-guided tour. Each category is linked to the appropriate page in the dashboard for configuration, and you’ll be walked through the processes of adding products and customers, setting up taxes, and customizing the register quick keys, among other things. It’s a great way to get oriented to the system, though it’s all pretty self-explanatory, given how intuitive the software is.
Even as you get into some of the more peripheral functions of the POS — the loyalty program, inventory management, that sort of thing — Vend is ridiculously simple to use. Vend offers a helpful 10-minute demo video that gives a brief overview of its offerings, but if you have any experience with POS systems, it’s unlikely you’ll need it to figure out basic functions. Adding inventory was simple, and the option to create tags to more efficiently sort products was a snap. If you import your inventory via a CSV file, you can be up and ready to accept payments in a matter of minutes.
Vend doesn’t have an in-house eCommerce platform, but Vend integrates with Shopify and suggests using them for online sales. If, however, you are already set up with another popular eCommerce platform, such as Ecwid, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce, Vend also integrates with those companies. Once your store is up and running to your liking, Vend’s functionality is excellent. Managing products and customers even across multiple locations is simple and intuitive, though it does require a few more taps or clicks than some other POS systems offer.
Hardware & Operating System Requirements
If you run Vend in a web browser, you can use Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, or Firefox. As far as the OS, as long as your hardware can run at least Windows 7, Mac OSX Mountain Lion, or iOS 11, you’re good to go.
Along with standalone equipment, Vend offers three all-in-one POS bundles:
- Mac bundle
- PC bundle
- iPad bundle
The Mac and PC bundles come with cash drawers, printers, and scanners, and the iPad bundle comes with a stand, printer, cash drawer, and other optional accessories. You can also use Star’s all-in-one mobile point of purchase (mPOP) receipt printer and cash drawer. For more information regarding the peripheral equipment that works with Vend, you can check out the company website.
Features
You can check out a full list of Vend’s features and see a demo video on Vend’s website (though you’ll need to give your name, phone number, and email address to gain access). Here, I just want to touch on a few of Vend’s most notable features.
- eCommerce Integration: eCommerce integration is only available in the Pro and Enterprise plans. At one time, Vend had its own basic in-house eComm solution, but now it only integrates with third-party eCommerce platforms. Vend integrates with most of the top eCommerce platforms on the market, making it simple to either import your online store or start from scratch. Purchase orders made through the online store are automatically emailed to the admin, so order fulfillment is in real-time.
- Loyalty Program: It’s becoming commonplace for a POS to include some kind of loyalty engine and for good reason. Anytime you can create an incentive for customers to keep shopping at your store, you’ve got a leg up on the competition. Vend has an excellent Loyalty package, allowing you to import existing customers via a CSV file or easily add new customers to a list, storing their information under a unique profile, which can later be used for marketing. The Loyalty package also includes gift cards, and a customer’s balance is viewable from the payment screen at the time of checkout (assuming you’ve attached this person to the sale). You’ll see clearly how much the sale will earn the customer, how much they have available, and how much they owe on the current transaction. The Loyalty program also makes its way into other areas of Vend and, with some creativity, can be used to really drive sales.
- Customer Management: You can customize the fields you want for your customer list with such things as an address, phone number, email address, website, customer group, Facebook account, and Twitter ID. Vend uses the Loyalty program to entice shyer customers into giving up their info. When you enable the Loyalty program, there’s an option to create and send an automatic email to new enrollees. This email contains a personalized link to a Customer Portal, where people can give you their full contact info in exchange for bonus loyalty dollars. This makes adding customers at the time of sale quicker and less invasive — you only need to ask for their email address and then tell them to wait until they get the email so that they can earn more rewards. The link they receive is tied directly to the account you just created and can only be used to redeem rewards once (meaning if they fill out their info and get their bonus, the link will then expire to prevent double-dipping).
- Inventory Management: With Vend, you can easily add, remove, and edit inventory items. You can also include images of products as well as keep track of stock levels and any special taxes, costs, or prices for certain products. Prices can be set differently based on location or customer type or by creating special promotional discounts. Additionally, inventory can be imported to/exported from a CSV file. The system can import, create, and print barcode labels for easier inventory management. And any product can have an individualized Loyalty earning that overrides the default spend-to-earning ratio, which is especially helpful if there’s a particular product you want to push. Vend also offers a purchase order management feature.
- Price Books: Vend can maintain multiple price books, which you can use in several ways. You can keep separate price books based on store location or a specific group of customers (say, your Loyalty customers), or you can make them time-sensitive. For example, if you want to have a weekend sale, all you need to do is create a copy of your default price book, apply discounts across the board (or individualized discounts for different products), and set the time frame during which the new prices will be active. The new parameters will override your default price book (beginning at the time you’ve specified), and regular pricing will be restored when the sale is over.
- Gift Cards & Loyalty Cards: This feature allows you to create branded gift cards and loyalty cards, increase your payment options, and to avoid issuing refunds by offering store credit instead. These are barcode cards you can redeem with a scanner at your POS.
- Employee Management: Tired of employee errors, discrepancies, and theft? Vend enables you to reduce these issues by tracking employees and their cash management. You can also track employee performance, set employee sales goals, and switch users between transactions. Vend offers the ability to receive closure reports each day to double-check your totals. Absent, however, is an employee time clock that lets employees clock in and out — you’ll have to use a software integration such as Deputy if you want this feature.
- iPad App: Known as Vend Register, this app is optimized for use on an iPad. It gives users the ability to streamline and process sales quickly, easily customize quick keys, and includes such features as payment integration, layaways, on-account sales, and loyalty programs.
- Flexible Interface: Vend has a lot of nice elements on the front end, featuring such things as quick keys, which can be saved as templates and can speed up checkouts. It’s also easy to add quick sale notes with instructions or discounts directly to a transaction. Divvying up discounts to an entire sale or just an individual product takes just seconds, and receipts can be customized with your logo.
- Transaction Options: Vend offers layaway options, and it’s very easy to look up customer information to track payment history and balances. Other slightly complicated transactions, such as parking sales and adding store credit to an account, are simple to process along with more basic functions, such as returns and split payments.
- Barcode Scanner App: Scanner by Vend is a free barcode scanner app you can use to turn your iPhone or iPad into a barcode scanner. Scanner integrates with Vend POS to sync your counts and stock levels, removing the need for CSV imports and manual uploads.
- Reporting: Vend makes it easy to customize reports, giving you information by product, brand, supplier, etc. It also comes with a convenient Mobile Retail Dashboard, which allows you to see all of your data in real-time from any device with internet access. You can set weekly or monthly sales targets and track employee performance, and the end-of-day reports can be automatically sent and are easily digestible. However, advanced reports are only available at the higher price tiers, and even those “advanced” reports are not as robust as those of other cloud POS systems, such as Lightspeed Retail.
Customer Service & Support
Rating: Excellent
Vend offers customer support on all paid plans, with technical help just a phone call away, 24/7. There is also a live chat option through its website, and I found Vend’s customer service easy to deal with, and they responded to questions within 24 hours. In addition to phone, email, and live chat support, there is a thorough and searchable database of answers to common questions. This database is compiled of frequently asked questions, video tutorials, and the option to submit support tickets or suggest new features.
Additionally, Vend’s website hosts a whole swath of online training tools and business resources (everything from retail guides and trend reports to webinars and articles filled with helpful tips). And if you’re looking for a little extra help, Vend offers professional services, such as one-on-one training and launch services. Vend also has a YouTube channel with videos, including promotional bits, tutorials, quick tips, and long-form webinars. The company also maintains active Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts, along with a blog.
Compatible Credit Card Processors
Vend does not offer in-house payment processing, but it integrates with various payment processors as well as payment gateways that let you connect your merchant account to your POS and online store. In the United States, Worldpay, PayPal, CardConnect, EVO, North American Bancard, and Square are your options for credit card processing. The POS is EMV-enabled and set up to accept NFC payments, such as Apple Pay.
Additionally, since Vend is an international company, it offers processing options for different countries, including Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, and South Africa. Canadian merchants can use EVO, Moneris Solutions, or Chase Merchant Services. Australians have Tyro and PayPal, while South African businesses can use Yoco. Those in the United Kingdom can choose from iZettle, EVO, PayPal, Smartpay, Klarna, and SumUp. Smartpay and Windcave can be used in New Zealand.
And, of course, the system can also be used without integrated payments by merely completing the sale manually within Vend after a successful credit card swipe.
Integrations & Add-Ons
Rating: Excellent
Vend offers 40 different integrations with third-party software programs covering various areas, such as accounting, eCommerce, CRM, inventory management, employee management, scheduling, and analytics. Plus, with Vend’s open API, it’s possible to build a custom integration for pretty much any business app you want. You can view the full list of available integrations on Vend’s website, but some highlights are listed below:
- Xero: This is an online accounting system, which imports daily sales automatically for easy bank reconciliation, creates customized invoices and statement balances to send to customers, and imports stock orders as accounts payable invoices to keep track of/reconcile purchases. Additionally, you can import your Xero customer list easily into Vend, or vice versa.
- QuickBooks Online: Another popular accounting system, which allows you to import any existing data you might have along with customer lists.
- Shopify: This web store application syncs in-store and online inventory (e.g., the same products, pricing, and stock levels). That way, inventory is automatically updated in both systems, whether a purchase is made in-store or online. Product changes you make in Vend (to item descriptions or prices) automatically update to Shopify.
- Stitch Labs: Vend offers decent inventory management functions that are well-suited for smaller operations. If you’re running multiple stores, juggling several vendors, or finding that your inventory control is getting the best of you, Stitch Labs can integrate with the POS to extend your ability to manage stock.
- Deputy: Vend doesn’t give you the ability to schedule your employees and manage payroll, but it does integrate with the cloud-based employee management platform, Deputy. Take care of your scheduling, time and attendance, task delegation, employee communication, and more with this service.
- Timely: This is a service scheduling application that will allow you to set up appointments with customers for the various services you offer. Sync your products, services, and customers with Timely, then pull appointments back into Vend to be rung up as sales.
- Mailchimp: Vend doesn’t have an in-house email marketing system, but you can use MailSync to integrate Mailchimp for this purpose.
User Reviews
Rating: Excellent
Vend is not BBB accredited but has an A+ BBB rating and zero customer complaints.
Negative Reviews & Complaints
It’s pretty impressive for a system with Vend’s reach to have as few blisteringly negative reviews as it does. That said, there are a few common themes that recur in negative reviews:
- Price: Vend isn’t the cheapest solution on the market, especially with the options it only makes available with its Pro Plan. And if you’re having to pay for an additional eCommerce platform, the costs can add up. Customers who didn’t need all of Vend’s functionality often find it to be less than affordable.
- Glitches & Missing Features: After scouring the internet, I found several complaints regarding slow servers and minor glitches in the system. Some customers have also expressed a desire for a more robust feature set. For example, one customer wants to see a customer display option that is not limited to the iPad app, and several found the reporting suite lacking.
- Lack Of Payment Processing Options: Several reviewers complained Vend was not compatible with their preferred credit card processor or that they could not find a supported processor that would work in their country. It’s worth noting, though, that Vend’s list of payment processing partners has grown over time.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
Several customer testimonials can be found on the Vend site itself as well as on the Vend blog under the tag “customer experience.” But there are satisfied customers all over the web. Here is what most of them are talking about:
- Simplicity & Usability: “Simple,” “smooth,” and “intuitive” are all words you’ll repeatedly see people using to describe this system. And I can’t argue with them. It’s virtually impossible to get lost in this system since every function is self-explanatory. Even start-up hiccups appear to be minimal.
- Inventory Management: Many customers praise Vend’s inventory management system as being helpful and easy to use. Reviewers especially like that you can view images of products in your inventory.
- Customer Support: Based on the reviews I’ve read, while not everyone is thrilled with Vend’s customer service, enough people are happy with it to justify putting it in the “pros” category. But if you’re more inclined to trust real numbers than people’s opinions (which may or may not be tainted by the general negativity of the internet), Vend has a real-time feedback tool that displays the current customer satisfaction rating based on the last 100 ratings. Needless to say, you’ve got to be pretty confident in your customer service ratings if you’ve got them out there for the whole world to see.
- Affordability: Many customers praised Vend for its cost, especially considering the number of features available. I’d say it is pretty comparable with most software within the same price range and could even compete fairly well with more expensive POS systems.
Final Verdict
Vend is one of the rare POS systems that will allow you to open it up and feel immediately at ease. What’s more, you get all the benefits of the cloud with Vend, and the fact that the software is also easy to learn and implement makes it a must-try for any retailer looking for a new POS.
There aren’t many gaps within the software, and in the few areas where Vend may lag, well, there’s an integration for that. With its focus on retail businesses, Vend checks pretty much every box. Moreover, you can use Vend with a variety of different hardware setups, so you’re not limited to using iPads like you are with a lot of other cloud-based POS systems.
Vend isn’t quite as robust as a handful of other retail systems out there. Still, for mid-sized businesses, which may not necessarily need to utilize extremely in-depth reports and inventory analysis, it would seem to be a perfect solution. If you don’t need too many add-ons, Vend’s cost will likely make it an appealing option to any retailer who is researching POS systems. Vend is one of our rare 5-star products and is more than worth the minimal investment required to get it up and running in your store.
Matt Sherman
Point of sale writer at Merchant Maverick
Matt Sherman has been immersed in point of sale systems for over a year now. Previously, he spent 14 years in the newspaper industry, the majority of which was as the sports editor for a pair of weekly newspapers in suburban Portland, Oregon. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon where he majored in English because he knows where the money is. Matt is the father to a pair of energetic boys and can easily be distracted by Netflix, Amazon and HBO Go.
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Organization Name: Timonium Wild Bird Center
It is difficult to say whose support is worse, WoldPay from FIS or VEND. I have been trying for five weeks to get my VEND POS Application to play. First it was Worldpay’s inability to fulfill on an authorization terminal – now its VEND’s inability to provide the technical support required to set it up. VEND claims to have 24/7 support – in reality they have when they get around to it support. Making a support appointment means that they are supposed to call you back at your appointed time. In reality, they seem to be challenged by the concept of time zones and this morning called at 0600 EDT instead of 0800 EDT.Based on my experience to date – I could not recommend VEND
for the first few months vend was awesome but then covid-19 came and they have been nothing but unreliable, ive had problems with the daily reports, the debit paymemt bridge won’t signal to the debit machine half the time, the system crashes occasionally and the worse part is since the covid they stopped doing phone support so if you run into issues expect weeks before they get back to you and even then if they give you the wrong answer your waiting another week. They have cost me thousands in lost revenue and if something don’t change soon I’m going to have to switch again….. highly not recommended
Organization Name: Campo Marzio
Vend is a basic POS system for its price. Here are some of my comments:1) They do not allow scanning of Supplier EAN/UPC barcodes (ex. If you sell a CocaCola soda can, then you cannot scan the barcode already on the can and Vend forces you to print a new barcode label for the can… makes no sense!)2) Very limited receipt / invoice customisations3) Has no ability to issue quotes4) Limited reporting abilities5) Product import abilities are limited and sometimes confusing6) Does not allow you to add product images to each SKU7) Vend works mainly off the Product Name and not the SKU as many POS systems do
Organization Name: Cajubrasil
I was very reluctant to sign up for Vend initially because the reviews were mixed and it was very expensive for the services it provided. However, after their pursuit of me as customer, I oblidged. While the features were limited, I used the services for a few months because at the time it was “fit for purpose”. But it’s my recent experience that completely turned me off. I recently transferred my business banking account which resulted in an updated credit card. Initially, my bank rejected their charges as their payment portal was not listed as accepted. Daily I was on the phone with vend support who assured me that there will be no additional charges as we worked through the issues. However, the minute the issue was resolved, my card was charged double. And the customer service representative that was responding to me on the hour, has yet to provide a solution or reverse the double charge. What’s worst is that there is no call center to contact. So you sit and wait until someone responds to you. Needless to say, no one is responding. Very poor experience.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Soak
We were thinking of switching to Vend from QuickBooks POS. I spent months researching POS systems and had it down to Lightspeed and Vend. After talking to a lot of people and doing demos from both companies, I was surprised to find out we can’t use Vend. It is a huge disappointment! All because of a tag printer! Vend is only compatible with one label printer, which in itself is surprising since it is a small printer that appears to be made for home use vs commercial use. However, more disappointing is that Vend only supports certain size tags. We have many small items and need to be able to use a tag smaller than 2 inches. Their answer was…sorry! There has to be other stores that use smaller tags??? Anyway, so much for all of their great features..we are forced to look elsewhere!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
My review is for Merchant Maverick. How can you give a misleading 5 stars for Vend if most of the 69 reviews are 1 and 2 stars? A little misleading wouldn’t you say? Business owners come here for an accurate assessment of a company, your ratings seem biased at best.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Todd,
Thanks for your feedback. To address your concern about the validity of our reviews, please read our post on negativity bias and how this site makes money to better understand how Merchant Maverick delivers real, unbiased reviews to our readers. Best wishes!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
VEND was quite helpful but then it is very expensive especially for a startup. The customer support costs are quite a sore pin-prick to deal with. It was really taking toll on my restaurant business. I started using a newer, more affordable one – Waiterio. I strongly believe one should use POS that are custom-built for a specific industry due reduce operational costs.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We migrated to Vend in August 2018, however I have been hesitant to switch to an annual plan in case we need to jump ship. We are a smaller shop (3 iPad registers, Shopify) and Vend meets all of the requirements in our evaluation: order syncing, COGS, ease of use…etc. However, I took for granted the basic features of a POS: ability to process credit cards and stability. We probably have lost around 2-3K in sales due to stability issues with the Paypal credit card integration. During certain weeks, we have to force quit these apps 2-3 times a day. I have worked with support, but other than updating apps and iOS, their hands are tied. In your POS evaluation, be sure to give weighting to one integrated system (Square, Shopify…etc). Now that Shopify supports COGS, I’m curious to give them a second look.All and all Vend is a decent system from a use and requirements perspective…I just wish it was more stable. Our tech support hours have increased 10X this year due to Vend.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Ideal Green Market Cooperative
Thanks for your review of VEND. I had my reservations about using this POS software after we had some issues with customer support. I agree VEND will have to change how it operates and offer customer support free of charge. If their product works well, customer support issues should decrease.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: The Nest Egg, LLC
Hi. I’m looking for a desktop POS system that is fully integrated with Quickbooks desktop Premier Edition 2018. I have very little need for upfront purposes (ie a customer giving me a credit card at point of purchase.) Nearly all payments will be by check or wire transfer. Need it to have a strong purchase order and sales order platform. Also the ability to enter multiple lines in item information (ie mfr, style, color, size, fabric, wood color…). Currently using QB Desk Premier Edition 2018 for my accounting for a retail business and QB POS 2018. Want this new POS system to be seamless like what I have with my retail company. Any suggestions. Thanks!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Sean!
We don’t often recommend QuickBooks’ POS system but, in your particular case, it might be worth looking into. It’s a bit pricier, but it’s a decent desktop system that’s easy to use and obviously, is designed to run QuickBooks accounting software. Revel also partners with QuickBooks and has one of the better integrations with them. Vend is a little cheaper and also should sync seamlessly. We have a post 7 POS Systems That Integrate With Quickbooks; I think it would be worth your while to take a look. Best of luck!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Cooper & Company Home+Gift
So frustrated with Vend right now. We updated our iPads to ios12 but Vend evidently does not understand the sandbox environment to test their products compatibility. So here we trying to operate our business with weak support and no real answer to why they let us down like this…in retail we cannot have interrupted system issues like this. I thought Vend was going to be something helpful for our business but after this debacle, I’m looking for a new partner. Any good suggestions?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Michael,
That sounds frustrating! Not knowing much about your needs, it is hard to make a specific recommendation. However, ShopKeep and ERPLY are similar to Vend’s price range. You could also check out Bindo or Quetzal. Best of luck to you!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: 30 Minutes To Escape
I’ve been using VEND for almost 2 years and I have to say I was quite satisfied. Easy to use for staff. Nice reporting tool. A bit pricey (99usd/month at the time) for a small business like mine but still ok.Then my account was suspended because of a refused payment which I totally ignored : no notification at all of that problem. First comment : These people can hurt your business without notice. When I found out I tried to proceed the payment to recover my account. I was charged 218 usd instead of 99. Explanation : Impossible to get my membership back with the same rate and service. So they charged for the 99 usd due plus a new but downgraded 129usd package.Today if I want the same service I had for 2 years I have to pay 159 usd instead of 99 usd / month.Second comment : Customer Service is terrible. Answering like you are an idiot. No service mind. No loyalty. No empathy for clients. I’d even say no respect. When after 2 years comes an upgraded price with a downgraded tool… I guess we are in a “no comment” zone. I decided to stop communicating with them when they proposed me a discount which in fact is a annually billed membership available to anyone. I think this company was ok earlier but now they’ve become arrogant and overpriced. Especially for small owners who are not retailers and have basic needs. Today this basics are not even fulfilled anymore. I just opened a new outlet for which I am exploring pos alternatives (and there are lots of them).For 129usd/month my VEND reporting screen is ridiculously blurred right now. Reminding me to move on ASAP from that circus.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Vend
Hi Nicolas,
We’re really sorry to hear about your recent challenges with our service and your billing, and that our attempts to contact you were missed during this time. Frustration is definitely not the feeling we want to create for any of our users.
Since you activated two years ago we made some changes to our pricing structure, so that we can continue investing in and developing Vend even further. We’ve already made some significant updates, such as an extensive promotions suite and changes to managing your product catalog. As your business is service-based rather than inventory-based retail, I understand if the perceived value of these updates may not be as significant for you. Because of these changes however, our system no longer supports the ability to reactivate on older plans. We’re really sorry for the surprise and inconvenience this has caused you.
It really is unfortunate to hear your experience regarding customer service. We will certainly take a look into this as that is not the experience we wish to offer anyone. I believe the discount that was offered meant you could pay the discounted annual price but at a monthly rate, rather than paying for a full year upfront. We hoped this would alleviate some of the extra costs, so we’re sorry if this was not the case.
Because your Vend account was cancelled due to non-payment, the $99 at reactivation was charged to cover your outstanding bill. Again, it was incredibly unfortunate that our communications did not get through to your most up-to-date contact details, and we’re sorry for how this has affected you. We really hope you will consider the discount offered, but understand if you wish to find a solution more tailored toward the service-based needs of your business.
Best wishes,
Lucia
Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Great Escape Games
Vend has a great, easy to use front end, but a horrible, feature-lacking back end. It is very easy to sell with Vend on an Ipad and my employees love it. Having used it for a few weeks now I can say that for my employees, processing basic sales transaction is simple and fast. If rating solely in the front end it would easily be at least 4 stars.However, the back end is a nightmare. I have over 10,000 individual items and when you create an order all you see is the item name. When you have 10,000 items the basic names tend to overlap, such a blue paint in three different lines, so you don’t know which you are ordering. It would have been nice had they included the supplier ID or brand or something on the order, but all you get is the name and cost. You can’t even modify your report to change the headings, a really basic feature in most programs. You have to create your order, export it to see what products are actually on the order, and then import it to send it. Auto ordered is handled via reorder point and reorder quantity. A system designed to create inventory shortages whereas a simple Min/Max system would have been vastly better. A truly horrible system unless you have very few items.Then there is no system at all for special orders which we do a lot of. No way to designate an order as a special order or pre-order, no way to track the inventory on special orders, nothing. There are a few work arounds, but they are are clumsy and require manually keeping records. We have resorted to laybys (lay-away), Prefixing special orders with “SO” and using excel to track items ordered.The order system is a disaster and has very few useful features and some serious bugs. When we place orders, huge numbers of items that we have reorder numbers for don’t come up for reorder so we are back to doing manual adds to the orders which with our number of items does not work. Then if a mistake is made on a received order there is no mechanism to reverse it or delete it. It is there forever screwing up accounting. Their advice? Alter the inventory numbers, which brings us to the fact that the system is designed to allow theft. Anyone with authority can simply change inventory numbers. No reason required, just alter the number. If you check the particular item you can see the history of changes, but with lots of inventory that is impractical. Go to reports and there isn’t even a report on inventory numbers altered. Very open to theft. Then there was the bug where an item was received on that bad receiving (Asst. Manager messed up since he was new to system), but when I tried to enter a reversing order the item couldn’t be found. If I went to products I could find it, but I was not able to locate it or enter on a receiving invoice. Then there is the lie about it integrating with Quickbooks on-line. Ran into a bug right away which they couldn’t fix for days and then found out you can’t use store credit if you are integrated with Quickbooks. We need both and simply can’t do both for some bizarre reason. Their solution? Use Xero. It is clear they do not truly integrate with Qb, but claim they do. They are integrated with Xero and if your don’t use that avoid Vend.Lastly, only works with on BT barcode scanner which can’t scan at least 50% of our items. You end up spending a lot to get BT scanners, printers and receipt printers that are inferior to non-BT equipment.Simply put, stay away from Vend unless you are small business with a very small variety of product, don’t do special orders and don’t want to integrate with Quickbooks.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Vend
Hey Gary,
Thanks for taking the time to pass on your feedback to us. Firstly, just wanted to say it’s great to hear that you and your employees are finding selling on Vend so easy and that your employees are loving it. I’m really sorry that there are some issues that have been affecting Vend’s back-end usability for you and that we don’t have all of the features that you would like for your your business right now.
Vend point of sale software is designed for inventory based retailers and we know how important strong inventory management is for retailers. Your feedback has been passed on to our team − if there are any issues you’re having ongoing problems with please reach out to our support team for assistance.
Best,
Lucia
Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Why is it that all Vend wants to do is send links when there is a problem? We have a serious issue getting our website up and running but it won’t sync with Shopify. Shopify feels so sorry for us that Vend has been no help they have assigned one of their people to help us. All Vend does is here, read this Link. We are not computer techs and repeatedly call Vend for support and they have NO answers, because their system has a problem which they have admitted to us now after the fact! WE will be leaving Vend as soon asap.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Vend
Hey there,
Truly really sorry to hear about your challenges with our customer service team and your Vend + Shopify integration. If you’re still having any issues at all please reach out to our team so that we can assist.
Best,
Lucia
Vend Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We are busy store, we recently experienced a problem with: After we add a sale to vend and park it we can’t see the sale in Parked Sales, we have tried everything …..but need support from VEND.Vend is quite good for our needs…….But if you run into problems good luck getting support from the team.You are left alone to try and sort out the problem using there online help. Not good enough. I would not recommend Vend to other users due the lack of personal support they offer.Lawrence
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Lawrence,
Thanks for taking the time to review Vend. I’m really sorry to hear that this has been your experience with our support team. I’ve had a look at your ticket regarding parked sales and can see that we replied within a five-hour time period – apologies if this wasn’t adequate for you and totally understand that you wanted your issue resolved as soon as possible. We’re happy that our team were able to resolve your issue quickly and suggest you consider priority phone support if you would like to be able to skip to the front of the line and talk to someone when you require more hands-on support. That being said our team are here to help you and if you ever need to urgently speak to someone please let us know and we’ll get in touch via phone as soon as we can.
Best,
Lucia
Vend Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
we have gone on using this, as we are so busy this time of year, changing is such a hassel.BUT we have quite adding any sku’s, we are so totally totally disgusted, I will be making this a high priority next month, to find a replacement…The things wrong, the list would be so long you wouldn’t let me lis t it all…whatI DO NOT understand is how you can use this and give it 5 stars…what to do you do to test it??and if it is five stars I can not trust ANYTHING you write about because this is the biggest pieces of JUNK out there…its a cash registrar, and now, with the recent changes, it went from god and ringing up people to bad..it can’t even figure that tax right. at times…it really swcrews it up…how about a wholesale …should be zero tax…it will have a negivtive…so maybe you have a 10.00 sales…no tax..a 10 percent wholesale discount. should be 9.00 rite….wrong it will have 10.00 minus the 10% whihc is 1. subtotal 9.00 tax should be zero but pops up at negitive $2.73 which is 6.27…not nine dollars…..god only know how many of these we did..before finding it….and I could go on for hours….just BUYER BEWARE….
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Kathy,
We’re certainly sorry to hear that Vend has not been suitable for your needs as a retailer. If you’d like some help from our support team with making sure your tax is set up correctly then please reach out to us so we can assist you with that – we’d love to help you out however we can.
Best,
Lucia
Vend Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Vend’s POS system is great. We have 6500 products and have been using Vend POS for about 4 years There have been problems in the past but reliability and features have been improved. So why only the 2 stars? Because i am mad at Vend for introducing their own ecommerce solution. We had huge problems with the “seemless integration” with Shopify due to the inherent problem of maintaining 2 databases, so were overjoyed when Vend announced they were going to offer ecommerce as well. we spent a lot of money having our online store developed and translated to work on Vend. only to find that the ecommerce is so basic in terms of payment gateways, customer maintenence, shipping methods etc as to be almost useless. Actually worse than useless because of our cost of developing our site. Vend inform me that they have “changed their focus” on ecommerce and will not be upgrading to anything approaching a useful offering, Unless you are running a real bare bones operation from your lounge stay away or limit yourself to the POS.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Angus,
Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and we really appreciate your positive review of Vend POS. Our team are dedicated to releasing new and exciting features, and continuously making improvements to make Vend the best POS in the world.
I’m sorry to hear that you had issues with the Vend + Shopify integration and that you have found Vend Ecommerce not sufficient to meet your requirements. Vend Ecommerce is lighter in functionality than some other ecommerce integrations, such as Shopify. If you need any assistance with your current ecommerce or finding a new ecommerce solution please get in touch with our team.
Best,
Lucia
Vend Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I am a current Vend user – unfortunately I purchased the product for a full year and am strongly considering the option of just spending the money (double the amount) to go with something else. I am a new business owner, as such I am very busy and do require help with new software from time to time – Vend is very aggressive and communicative in their sales pitch to you – which makes you think that they communicate well with their clients, but after they have your money they completely disappear!!!!!! No one EVER answers a phone and they NEVER return a call. Their online help is also useless. Do yourself a favour and spend a little more on software that has tech support included.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
You may want to look at Instore POS. Very similar to Vend. It is a Great product with outstanding customer service!! Randy
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hey Mark,
Thanks for reaching out – I’m considerably sorry to hear that this has been your experience with Vend. We want everyone to have a great experience and it’s certainly disappointing to hear that you haven’t had that.
Apologies that you felt our sales process was aggressive – that’s definitely not how we want you to feel at all. If you require extra support with setting up Vend, we do offer set up services and our support team are there to help with any issues that may arise with the Vend software. In the last few months, we’ve put more focus on our phones and have increased the rate of calls answered on the first ring. That being said if you don’t get through to our support team via phone you can leave a voice message and will not lose your place in the queue, and our team will always return your call.
Not sure if you’re referring to our Help Centre or our email and chat support when you say online help but I’m sorry to hear that you feel that way. We ask our customers to rate us and publish those ratings as we hold ourselves to the same high standard our retailers do. Our rating is currently 85% happy based on real-time feedback and this is updated every 5 minutes – you can check our rating out anytime here: vendhq.com/tour/pos-support.
If there’s anything we can do to help you have a better experience with Vend please get in touch with our team. We’re here to help and want to delight our retailers!
Best,
Lucia
Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Jordan Nelson – please review your comments about pricing. They are wrong. As per other reviews I have done:
ALSO, BEWARE THE COST OF THEIR RECOMMENDED SYSTEM IS NOT $99 A MONTH. IT IS $164 A MONTH AS YOU PAY $139 IF YOU PAY MONTHLY AND AN ADDITIONAL $25 A MONTH FOR PHONE SUPPORT.
I don’t even want to go into all of the issues I have had with Vend since I began. Just today yet another issue where the system is now showing, for no apparent reason, that I am making negative profit! This is going to look great on the books.
Here is just a smidge of the issues I have logged since starting with Vend. And I am not joking when I say just a smidge
[ ] Quite often problem where printer and til drawer don’t come open “Error on drawer kick TLBS” Could not open connection to the printer – solution found – will cost another $162 to implement an upgraded version of our router
[ ] Go to autofill stock order and it doesn’t include every product that we are low on stock for??
[ ] System is too slow on the iPad – tried on the laptop and works much better
[ ] System didn’t work properly without a bluetooth keyboard – had to purchase at an additional cost
[ ] system does not automatically scan items – had to implement new $700 scanner to get it to work without clicking the search button and then clicking the item when it came up (existing scanner works on laptop though)
[ ] Did not input all of the meat quantities from my order – now saying negative??
[ ] Stocktake failed as it started to bring up stock quantities of 10,000,000 and other weird numbers when trying to enter products into the system
[ ] does not auto fill – puts in products that are not active
[ ] When you receive items it does not update the price in the system (double handling)
[ ] When you save an order to receive and come back to it later, all the items marked as zero input the prices again
[ ] Adds up incorrectly in receive order screen – e.g. 12 of Beetroot noodles @ $2.95 was coming up as $29.50
[ ] Does not delete inactive products
[ ] Order Total on main screen different from order total when you go in to edit order.
Customer support is not supportive at all. I can pay an extra $25 a month for phone support but given the responses I have had from Vend I don’t think they would actually be able to help me better over the phone. Apparently we get “chat support” as part of our plan but no one from Vend can find where the chat support is supposed to be.
So dissapointed and trying to find an alternative but the money I have spent on this system thus far ($1,390 on the software as well as $2,400 upfront install costs, plus additional costs for hardware not first installed $700 and $162) makes me think this is possibly one of the worst decisions I have made in business.
Edit
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thanks for the heads up about pricing! I’m working on updating this review currently.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Julia,
Thank you for taking the time to write this review. Your feedback is appreciated by us as it helps us to improve our processes and product to make Vend great. I would like to address some of your concerns, issues and feedback.
If you check our Pricing page on our website, it shows a monthly price that is billed annually. If you choose to be billed monthly, the monthly price is slightly more. Many of our retailers prefer to pay annually as it saves them time, and as it saves us time as well we offer a lower price for paying annually. I’m very sorry if this wasn’t explained clearly and it is definitely not our intent to mislead anyone.
We offer support services via chat, email, and phone. If you want you can choose to have priority phone support as an extra add on – unfortunately we do not currently have the infrastructure to allow all of our retailers to call us at anytime, and not all of our retailers require phone support which is why it is available as an add on. Chat is available through the website whenever we have support team members available to look after it. If you go to the support page the chat will pop up if it is available – if it isn’t available when you go to the website you can always submit a ticket.
Buying hardware is usually part of setting up a new POS, unless you have pre-existing hardware and/or very simple requirements as a retailer. Initial setup is very important to make sure everything runs smoothly and works together. Unfortunately it sounds like many of your problems and issues with hardware were due to your initial setup. We do provide launch packages for a cost to help you get set up, and a lot of issues can be avoided this way as we make sure everything is setup properly and works together. This is especially important if you need to use Vend in a very specific way.
We’re aware that you were working with a Vend Partner to help in your setup and there were some delays in the support team helping you with your issues due to cross communication. We’re looking at improving partner training and communication to make sure that all initial setups go as smoothly as possible and retailers like yourself avoid running into issues.
Again, we would like to thank you for sharing your feedback as it helps us be the best we can be and we hope that Vend can bring delight to you as a retailer. If you’re still having any issues that you need fixed please reach out to the team – they’re more than happy to help you.
Best,
Lucia
Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We are a retail food service company with many choices. We purchased Vend POS system in 2014 after a lengthy discussion of the business and whether Vend could manage our needs. We have been fighting this system since we got it. The initial hardware glitches took over three months to resolve. During this time we were billed over $600 for a system which was not functional and upgraded customer service which was not helpful. The hardware company (recommended by Vend) pointed the finger at the software and the software division pointed fingers at the hardware. Meanwhile, we paid for upgraded customer service. Upgraded service means that Vend will talk with you on the phone,. As some point it is irrelevant whether Vend tells you they can not/will not change features by email or by phone. If I had a dollar for every time a customer service rep told me they were ‘sorry’, I could close my business and retire. We experience issues with this system at least monthly as the software goes through “upgrades” which are neither helpful or requested. There are significant issues with the POS and disclosure of sales information. Employers beware. Employees using the sales screen, regardless of their position, can see both the daily sales and monthly total sales at any time. Vend’s response is that this is a feature which can not be changed. We have had one good customer service rep in two years but she could only take us so far due to system issues which remain unchanged. We had numerous other customer service reps who were not helpful. Keep in mind that this is their upgraded customer service for which you pay monthly. Otherwise, the customer service is assigned randomly in a variety of locations around the globe and no one communicates. It s a waste of customer time to repeat issues with each rep, so each new rep can apologize and tell you the issue is in the programming and can not be changed. They will “pass the comments onto the developers”. Then you receive an email saying they checked and the developers will consider the feedback.The sales force does not know this system and can not evaluate the fit between a business and the POS system, they are just out for “the sale”. We never should have been sold this system and we will change as soon as we have the resources to do so. Don’t waste your money on this system.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for taking the time to leave a review of Vend. I’m sorry to hear that Vend POS has not been a good fit for your business and that you didn’t have a good experience with our customer service team.
Just to clarify, Vend has User Roles and Permissions for the roles of Cashier, Manager, and Admin. On the Advanced Plan there are Advanced User Permissions which can be customised. This can include specifying what sales users have access to, and you can choose to allow your users to only view reports on sales they’ve made, or reports on all sales made at outlets the user has assigned to. You can also customise permissions regarding product costs, labels, discounts, selling, customers, products, e-commerce, and setup.
So that we can offer 24/7 support to retailers all over the world we have a global customer service team. We assure you that our team are in constant communication with each other and work together to help retailers.
We really appreciate feedback from retailers as it helps us steer our ship in the right direction and make Vend the best it can be. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback.
Best,
Lucia
Vend Community Manager
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Why, when reviewing systems, do you not determine if the system is PCI Compliant. Anyone who is in the market for a system would be foolish to purchase a system that is not compliant. Having the ability to use EMV does not make it PCI Complaint.
Are the Vend POS systems PCI Complaint?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Gene,
Yes, the Vend POS systems are PCI Compliant: https://www.vendhq.com/pos-security
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We have had both good and bad issues. We hate the way data is loading into the system. We have 12000 items and at our current rate of input I will die of old age before they are all in.THe POS part in and of itself is great. Easy, very easy to train someone..quick keys are fine.but and this is most likely going to cause us to change vendor this coming summer after our up coming busy time. THE IS NO CUSTOMER DISPLAY. I can not believe there is not. I never asked because in todays age I just assumed there would be. So I am at fault. However, it a big issue. And there are a lot of little things…our printer refuses to print in something in a size that’s readable, unless it is a charge on account, then the print is prefect. Our scanner, scans find, but you have to then hit the ‘add’ key for each entry. I’m told there is fix..but so far it hasn’t happened. We can’t get our stock orders to balance to the invoice, for several reasons, again no help.. I love the POS part, rest, not so much. we would love to have it be all it could be. And thought it would happen. Now much less sure. a great glorified cash register but well…try it, for three months or so…then decide if its for you. We are giving it and vend until June to have it be ‘all that it can be’ then well…we will see…but without a customer display we are out of here
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Kathy,
If you use vend on IOS ipad device there is the choice to use a customer facing display.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
there is NO display if you have a REAL register not a ipad thing. We will be leaving Vend sometime this winter because of this and other huge problems that have no solution. Perhaps if you are a tiny ‘teehirt’ shop this is for you, but a real retail store with thousands of items and customers NOT so much…and now this morning they have forced us to change from a sell screen that, while not perfect, at least worked ok. To one that we don’t like, haven’t liked, (you could try it, and change back if you didn’t like it) now you are forced to use it……I really really am disappointed with this company. At first blush they look awesome…we have had for two years now and really really are less and less happy….the only reason we are still with it, is that the thoughts of going and and hunting for programs again is chilling. And unitl you REALLY USE it, you can’t tell. and then the idea of all that data to redo …oh my……a nightmare coming..
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
this a reply to my comments.YES! I know they have one for an IPAD…if I wanted to use one, which I don’t..I have a 23″ screen I don’t have to wear glass (an impossible task in a greenhouse setting as the are always fogging up, and so then you take them off and lose them)..in any event I don’t want an ipad…I want a full screen, POS computer size screen. I can’t not believe, find it unbelievable, that anyone would make software for POS and NOT have a customer readout. Its mind boggling. Its why we never asked explicitly until we went to buy the hardware, it simply was so out of the realm of real I still can’t believe it.oh well, that is the least of the problems…be warned its not all its cracked up to be…and the straw that breaks this old camels back is the NEW SELL screen…crazy awful.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I live in Australia and foolishly thought I would try vend. I started when the ausie dollar was high and it seemed reasonably priced for my small business. Since then the dollar has declined in value and I have been paying over 100 AU per month. I have tried on various occasions to see if there is anything they can do. Support have been unhelpful and said they have been trying to fix this problem. Yet over many months of complaints ~ they have not changed their billing system. Also, when you instruct the software that an account has been paid, It’s not recorded. So the software says that they still owe money and the customer is displayed as having a negative balance. I have decided to change to MYOB. Farewell vend…
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thank you Erick. Your reviews are exhaustive and unbiased. Should be useful to any body who is evaluating POS solutions.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Thank you Erik for such a detailed and honest review. I appreciate your candid review of pros and cons. I used the trial version of Vend, Revel, Lightspeed, and Shopify based on your reviews (they were all top placed). Each one as you describe had pros and cons. I won;t go into detail as to why unless son=meone contacts me direct, but I decided Vend was best for our business. Thanks again for all your explicit UPDATED review.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I have had Vend for 1 year and have it synced with my Shopify webstore. At the moment we have having major issues with the inventory sync and am finding it extremely difficult getting an answer for the problem. We are selling products in our online store which are out of stock in Vend. There must be an issue with the integration and i am yet to receive an answer to this problem. At the moment i am contemplating changing the Vend POS as its becoming very hard to run a business like this when you have to spend much of your time telling customers you are out of stock. It reflects badly on the business.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
They claim to have Quick Books integration but the way they integrate ALL “On Account” sales are totally ignored, as if they never happened leaving you to manually enter each transaction into Quick Books. This gives a whole new and accurate definition to POS software!!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
The basics of my business and VendI own Dr Vape It an electronic cigarette brick and mortar retailer and we use Vend and have three location with two registers at each location and an office/warehouse location that we do some wholesale out of that requires one register purchase. Cost: We pay $433 per month and $200 per year for support. That is $5396 per year. Stability and Speed: Vend is good, no real complaints their for daily operations like ringing customers up. Taking inventory has been a major issue. It is extremely slow (unresponsive) and inventory often come out dramatically short or over at each location. We have been taking inventory on a weekly bases to try and resolve the issue and with no success. Is this our problem or a problem with Vend? I really don’t know and problem never will considering we are being forced to leave Vend. Major Complaints: One big complaint I do have about Vend is the receipts are constantly changing and they are just wonky. I don’t even know how to explain it. They say it is an issue with Chrome but that is the case why are you using Chrome as your backbone. Look you get a receipt it just is not going to print as you would expect to to. We had a major issue of loosing credit card sales at one point because of the receipts or the enter button on the keyboard. To get all the receipts you want you could hit the enter button 3 times fast but if the credit card do not go thru for some reason you would never know. That was a major issue. Look all software is going to have glitches but this one pissed me off. The major problems I see with not owning your POS system.1. Updates. This one is a double edge sword. Should be pro but often is a negative. Hosted solutions updates are down on their schedule not yours. The updates rarely come with detailed explanation of what and when. If you own your own local system you can familiarize yourself with the update and implement it on your schedule. Like after you have informed your employees that something is changing. 2. They can update you out of the system by doing upgrades or downgrades that will not work for your company. In our example Vend is doing a major update and dropping support for Authorize.net our merchant account gateway. They have choose one and only one merchant account company to work with. They will not process credit cards for companies that are consider high risk; We are considered high risk. Even if you are not high risk this is likely going to cause your merchant account fees to go up. 3. Cost becomes out of control with just a small amount of growth. We pay over $5000 per year for Vend POS and they are one of the better priced hosted Multi Location/Store POS systems we found. We are having Retail Edge locally installed for about $5000 at all of our locations. I would expect our overall cost long term to go down dramatically. Some after thoughtsI believe many people are choosing these hosted solutions for the sake of support, low cost of entry and updates. Once you have learned the system how often do you need support. I am pretty technically savvy so support is not something I need often. Even if I did I would by a support plan. By the way most support plans are very negotiable. Host solutions cost of entry are hands down a winner but if you plan to stay in business for a long time the total cost far out ways simply purchasing your POS out right and then buying updates, or not buying updates. I would like to get a solid 5 years out of my POS without any major updates. Do you want to learn essentially a new POS every year. Not me. I just want my POS to work and not be headache and of course not bleed me dry. Tablets! Oh I hate a POS system on a tablet. Yes even more than I hate Windows 8. I like efficiency and tablets are anything but. If we bar coded everything in the store maybe it would be better. Typing customer information on a tablet is not the same as a keyboard. This is a personnel opinion and I have never been a tablet lover for anything more than reading a book. Love by Kindle Paper White. So in summery, if you have a small single location business perhaps a hosted POS solution like Vend will work well for you. If you are planning on growing your business I recommend finding a locally installed multi store POS system. I really hope this helps someone out.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
This review has lots of good information, but I’ve been shopping around for a long while and as far as I’m aware, it was actually posted quite a while ago. I see the “updated on” date was changed to January 2015, but can’t see any real updates or changes in the review. Have you revisited the negative reviews/complaints?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Chris,
Thank you for the kind words. We do minor updates regularly, but we definitely need to do a full update very soon. Stay tuned.
Best,
Amad
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I would not use Perkville again in a million years!! ON our receipts to customers they were told to go shop at a competitors business.. working with Nick at the PErkville customer service he said “yes that’s the case if the person ever spent money at that other store they remind them of the other business so that they could begin to go to to earn points with them” – Sorry this sounds ethically wrong since we were paying for their services!
Is it crazy to wonder how its ok that they can charge us $100 a month to promote our competitors store with our customers??
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We love Vend. Many updates, and great things to come from them
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I started using Vend about 2 weeks ago and switch my accounting software from QuickBooks Online to Xero ( to automatically sync information) . I was surprised of the easiness this is done, but extremely disappointed with the lack of cost of goods sold transactions….How can a company say is fully compatible with Xero if is not transferring the cost of goods sold of the sales….I’m really thinking in finding another POS where I can transfer all transactions into either Xero or QuickBooks Online..
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Hi Adrian,
Oli here from Vend, thanks so much for the feedback.
You are correct here, this is simply a missing feature in the Xero integration right now. We are actually looking into implementing exactly this feature in the future but it’s still only in it’s planning stages. The Quickbooks integration is very much a beta but the same will be true of that integration as well.
If you have any other questions about this please feel free to contact me directly, oliver@vendhq.com, or get in touch with our awesome support team at support@vendhq.com.
Cheers,
Oli, Vend Community Support
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Hello, there. I am a small shop owner with 5000+ SKU’s in Miami, FL, looking for an online alternative to my Quickbooks POS. Noticing that the last post on this thread was as of October of 2013, I was wondering whether any of the missing features that prevent a five-star rating, such as no Employee Management (clock-in and out, so important!), and no Security between Users (sounds quite basic) have been addressed. I would seek to use three registers at one location. I wish the Medium version handled not just 1000, but 5000 SKU’s. I appreciate the granularity of the review and the candor of all the users, as well as the replies from the Vend staff.
I look forward to your replies.
Lou
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Hi Lou-
I’m actually in the middle of researching/testing Vend for an updated review as we speak (as we type, actually). Look for it by early next week.
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i find both Vend and their support very good and very fast actually!and the system its self is very easy to work with, we have put our own procedures in place to work around the lack of cash facilities, so that’s not a problem for us either :). However the only problem i am experiencing is that after doing a CSV and importing it, our vend account and our inventory wont update, but yet again with the service as good as it is with us, we have a the support dealing with it, and emailing me back and forth with updates, they even used “openoffice” to do it for us as difficult as it is with the time difference from US to South Africa!
so thank you Vend support!
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I’ve been trying to set up my account for more than a week. PayPal integration is far more complex then Vend would have you believe and support is awful. After being supplied the same stock answers available online I was informed that, as an unpaid subscription, I was not eligible for email support (the only support available). So much for free trial.
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Hey Robert,
Sorry for being months late to the party, but just noticed your comment here. Have you sorted this out? The PayPal integration really ought to be appallingly easy, so I’d love to get to the bottom of your problem. Feel free to email me directly at tara@vendhq.com and I’ll see what I can uncover.
Thanks!
Tara
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Vend is not perfect, but pre store opening (18 months ago), even after trying Vend, we looked at half a dozen other solutions and even imported inventory into those systems to see how they would work. In spite of the missing feature (cash float, etc), we ended up going back to Vend because of it’s simplicity.
The quick keys at first had me concerned, as it appeared that Vend would be more suitable for a cafe style of store without thousands of SkUs. However, the quick keys have proved to be very versatile, for defining “odd” small items that can’t easily be barcoded, defining “miscellaneous” keys especially for unprocessed items that are being sold out of the box before being defined, a cash rounding button on cash sales, gift cards, tax exemptions, etc.
Negatives for us: Shopify: This is a Shopify issue, not Vend. Vend lets you assign different tax rates on a product by product basis, which is required in Canada, but Shopify (Canadian roots!) can’t. Found this out after setting up templates, etc, and paying Shopify for these templates, only to find out that they only handle location specific tax rates , not product specific. Mentioning it here because Vend refunded the incremental monthly fee for Shopify integration, while Shopify did nothing. Kudos for Vend, can’t say the same about Shopify.
One issue that did take a whie to resolve: We simply could not get bar codes for product labels to print with sufficient resolution; in both Safari and Chrome. This is one area where I think Vend could put more attention, or at least provide more support or resolution on. After lots of trial and error, it seems to be a problem in general with web based printing, we had the same problem with Apple CUPs printer drivers. Fortunately, we got around with a very low cost 3rd party product (Belight) and a locally installed print driver. (We don’t bother trying to print bar codes from Vend anymore, which is unfortunate as it also means we don’t really use their order processing that much either).
My verdict – I still don’t know of another POS solution that I would use instead. Almost zero training involved, and what’s missing, at least for us, such as cash float, are not enough to sway this. We were also concerned about a cloud based POS that went down if the internet went down, on this aspect Vend has worked great through it’s offline cache and data base syncing.
– Elm Hill Kids, 499 terry Fox Drive, Kanata, Ontario, Canada
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Reorder point and inventory is broken in vend…
You cannot set a minimum and maximum for your outlet.
If I set actual stock on shelf to 12 (maximum I want in my shop), reorder point 6, reorder amount 3…. As soon as stock falls to 6, an order is generated, not for the difference in my inventory but for 3! My stock then is 9 and won’t order until it falls again to 6 and an order is again for 3. So i never ever reach my optimum quantity of 12! If I have a massive weekend and sell out…. guess what? An order is generated for 3 (reorder amount that I set)
I cannot believe vend has not fixed this broken feature, I have been sending them requests for months, aa have many other users…I am a growing business with multiple outlets, and inventory with vend is a REAL nightmare… At the moment I have to pay a staff member to stay behind and MANUALLY write an order for each outlet….!!!
The more people talk about this the sooner something will be done …
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Hi Paul Thanks for your feedback on vend. The reorder point works great in vend. But just not how you’d like it to work. Vend will always re order the amount of stock you specify in the reorder amount field found when you are setting up products.
Thanks again
Paul
vend
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I agree Paul. We have had vend in multiple stores for a few months now and while everything works far better than EPOS Now, our previous system the inventory system is dated further than EPOS Now’s interface. I have been asking for the image size to assign for an exact match for the buttons for over a month and not having a maximum and a reorder point is killing us. They have told us it will not be updated until next year (2017) which is totally unaceptable and therefore I can see us leaving it behind with our 4 stores when our yearly payment subscription has expired.
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I must respectfully disagree with the 4.5 star rating. I own two retail stores (Betty’s Health Foods) in Homestead and Key Largo, FL and have been in business for 35 years. After reading this review I eagerly went to their website (using your link, so I hope you got credit) : ), and registered for my trial version.
They had some issues with the formatting of the various reports. The layout was kind of blocky like it was made up of fields, directly off of a spreadsheet or something, instead of having nice neat line items. when you have to run 8 or 10 reorder reports/wk this is more important than one might think. But the
deal breaker for me, and should be for everyone is the total lack of cash handling ability. I know you covered it, but let me illustrate so everyone can grasp the significance of it. With no cash in or cash out function, I was forced to create a new item in inventory called “cash in”. This item was not tracked or counted, and had zero cost associated with it. To open the drawer in the morning I had to sell one “cash in” for the amount of my start cash. Lets say $200. Then I sold one item with a cost of $10 and a price of $20. Then I closed the drawer and ran reports. I showed sales of $220 and revenue of $210!!! I honestly don’t know how any business can use this POS, or how it could garner 4.5 stars. Sure it looks good, is easy to navigate, but this is a FUNDAMENTAL function that any and all POS solutions must have. Thank you.
Jimmy Edwards
Betty’s Health Foods
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Thank you for the comments Jimmy. I noticed you left some responses on our other reviews as well. This reply should address them all.
Although we do our best to be as thorough and detailed as possible with our reviews, we unfortunately cannot duplicate every type of point-of-sale transaction in every environment, thus our ratings are more of a generalized view. We’re definitely working on it though, and it’s comments like yours that give us insight into the different types of retail settings, which ultimately help us update and refine our process.
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Vend is beautiful and easy to learn. I would love to use it but I’m a store owner with multiple outlets located in the USA and Vend does not support different tax rates determined by the outlets physical location (County it resides in).
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I agree with Jenny re Vend support – and Jenny we are in New Zealand. Getting support via email only is crap. We need answers now and we need the integration with Xero fixed now. Given the problems we are experiencing with Vend I find it to believe all those positive testimonials.
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I have never in my life experienced worse service than I have with Vend. No serious business owner should feel comfortable using them. My system has been down for 5 business days their answer is to write down every sale and not give a customer a receipt. It is UNBELIEVABLE how excruciating it is to deal with a company in New Zeland when your business is in the US. I HIGHLY DISCOURAGE anyone from using their overpriced product that truly comes with the worst support I have ever experienced. I am shockingly disappointed.
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Hi Jenny,
Thanks for your feedback on your service experience with vend. I’m sorry to see that you experience very poor service from our support team. I’d like to now highlight that we have an office on the East Coast of North America now. We’ve now got North America covered off for support and sales in your time zone. Again if you’d like to take a free trial of vend you can sign up here https://secure.vendhq.com/signup
Thanks again
Paul
Vend
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Hi,
As far as the cash handling thing, I am gathering I can still accept and ring things up as cash, just that vend doesn’t keep a tally of the cash taken in or given back?
Is that correct? Also, are there reports that can be run at the end of the day? And one more, does it accept gift cards?
Also, although I now live int he States (born in Dunedin though (-: ) I have been looking into Xero accounting software. is that something you would recommend over say quickbooks etc?
Thanks so much for your time.
Roman
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Hi roman
The cash handling side of things is not as dramatic as in the review. Sure it would’ve been nice to have all those features but what Vend lacks on this it makes up handsomely as a fantastic POS system.
Each sale you select the payment method. The register closure report at the end of the day will tally everything up. That is what I enter in my accounts like MYOB. I can keep a track of what the amount should be in the till by deducting the balance of that from what the cash on hand figure is in my accounts.
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Anyone got a review of eposfreedom ?
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Not yet Eric, but we’ll add them to the pipeline.
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Thank you for the most thorough and balanced review I’ve read in a very long time. I’ve been searching for a good POS system for weeks now and never felt I could make an informed decision. Thanks to this review I’m getting VEND right now!
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Hi Nicolette,
I’m looking at a POS solution at the moment (located in Australia). I was wondering if you went ahead with Vend and if so, how do you find it?
Cheers,
Colleen
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Hey team, thanks for the balanced and thorough review 🙂
I would just like to comment on one point, if I may?
> I can’t ignore the fact that the Vend site has no phone number, email address, or live chat available.
While it is true that we don’t currently offer telephone or live chat support, we do have a support email address. support [at] vendhq.com.
We encourage all our customers to submit priority requests through our online support portal, hosted on Zendesk – which is an industry leading support platform. Customers receive email notification of replies to all tickets, and can reply by email or our web portal. Private requests we endeavour to reply to within 8 business hours, and less than 2 hours for urgent requests.
In addition to private support tickets, our lively community forums offer a place for our customers to ask questions of other users and the Vend team, post and vote on feature requests, and learn in detail about setting up and using our product.
We received 90%+ satisfaction ratings for our email and web support. We’re very proud of our support channel, and are even brave enough to publish our feedback ratings right on our support homepage!
http://support.vendhq.com
Many thanks,
Nick Houldsworth
Vend
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Thanks for the heads up Nick. I’ll have the review updated shortly. Great product btw. 🙂
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Nick, we went ahead and updated the review, and increased your rating to 4.5. 🙂
Let us know if you have any other questions/comments.
Take care!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.