Vend Review
- Phone Number
- 888-978-0199
- Date Established
- 2010
- Location
- New Zealand
Overview:
In 2010, Vaughan Roswell led his team of software architects to create Vend, the world’s first web-based retail POS to use the offline cache capabilities of HTML5. The architecture of this ground-breaking point of sale system allows it to be truly hardware independent, and despite being 100% cloud-based, Vend can continue to ring up sales during an Internet outage.
Of course, there’s more to talk about than just Vend’s offline functionality. Since its launch, the company has developed an impressive inventory management system, an omnichannel sales approach with both in-store and online capabilities, an extensive 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. There is an extra monthly charge for priority phone support, for example. However, the general response to Vend since its inception shows that Roswell & Co. have absolutely filled a need. With a customer base spread out in 100 countries (and now over 15,000 installations strong), Vend has proven to be more than just a fad in the POS market.
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.
Pricing:
All subscription levels come with a free 30-day trial (limited to 200 products and weekly erasure of sales data). As with other web-based POS services, there is no contract and your subscription is paid monthly via credit card. If you prepay for one year, you’ll receive a discount on the monthly price. Here are Vend’s plans:
Starter $69/mo ($39/mo billed annually)
- 1 store
- 1 register (maximum)
- Unlimited products
- 3 users
- 24/7 email support
- Inventory Managment
- Customer Profiles
- Small Business Reporting
Advanced $99/mo ($79/mo billed annually)
- 1 store
- 1 register (additional registers $49/mo ea. or $39/mo ea. billed annually)
- Unlimited products
- Unlimited user accounts
- 24/7 email support
- All features from Starter plus:
- eCommerce
- Gift cards and Loyalty
- Advanced Reporting
- Advanced User Permissions
Multi-Outlet $249/mo ($199/mo billed annually)
- Unlimited stores
- 2 register (additional registers $49/mo ea. or $39/mo ea. billed annually)
- Unlimited products
- Unlimited user accounts
- 24/7 email and priority phone support
- All features from Advanced plus:
- Multi-outlet Inventory
Premium Support comes standard with the Multi-Outlet plan and is available with the Advanced plan for an additional fee of $19/month. This level of support includes personal set-up assistance, ongoing training, and phone support. Vend also offers an Enterprise plan if you are in need of a more personalized plan. For more information about Enterprise, you will need to get in contact Vend directly.
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 until the connection comes back. Operating during an outage does leave you with limited functionality, which does not make Vend most ideal solution for mobile operations with unpredictable internet connectivity.
Specific Industry:
Vend is suitable for retail operations of all stripes. Service and hospitality businesses will find it lacking—there are no item modifiers or features for table management and tipping—but that’s okay. 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. Affordable plans (at the low end of the pricing spectrum) combined with the cost savings of having the whole system in the cloud make Vend an easy fit for smaller businesses. That doesn’t mean it won’t scale up; Vend does boast some customers with a few hundred stores each.
Hardware and Operating System Requirements:
The strictest requirement for running Vend is the web browser you use: it has to be Google Chrome. But as long as your hardware can run at least Windows 7 or Mac OS X 10.5, you’re good to go.
Along with standalone equipment, Vend offers three all-in-one POS bundles:
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 their website.
Ease of Use:
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. If you poke around Vend’s Pinterest account, there are plenty of pictures of young, attractive people having the time of their lives whilst eating donuts and playing with their dogs. My guess is these are all members of the support team who have little to do each day because none of their customers have a problem using the software.
On the other hand…Vend’s eCommerce feature is not exactly a paragon of user-friendliness. I didn’t even have to attempt navigating anywhere before I got the sense that this is a very new, very unrefined addition to the Vend system. To get you started, there’s an unremarkable link to the Help Center, and a 3-step checklist for setting up Shipping, Payments, and Taxes. Under Shipping, the only options are for flat-rate fees and a “first + each additional item” approach. No percentages or “percentage plus,” no weight-based calculators, no integration apparent for Fedex, UPS, DHL, or anything else. No item specificity.
There are presently only 21 themes available (and more coming soon according to the site), many of which are practically identical. In short, while the interface is simple and everything is laid out in an organized manner, this tool still has a long way to go before I can call it a full-fledged and legitimate feature.
Product Features:
You can check out a full list of Vend’s features by taking a “tour” on the website. Here, I just want to touch on a couple of Vend’s most notable features.
- eCommerce Functionality – eCommerce is only available in the Advanced and the Multi-Outlet plans, but it’s included for no additional charge at these subscription levels. Vend offers hosting, an integrated website builder, design help through a selection of Responsive Themes, live sync with your in-store inventory, and the ability to tie in your own domain name. One of the most notable elements of this eCommerce tool is its Responsive Design—the ability to automatically display correctly on any sized screen: phone, tablet, or desktop. As I mentioned in the Ease of Use section, the eCommerce feature is fairly unremarkable otherwise, though it does have a decent Content Management system, which allows you to add products, add pages, rearrange design elements, and add functionality without knowing a jot of code. (The store is also HTML and CSS friendly, if coding is totally your thing.) 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’s approach to Loyalty, as usual, is to keep things simple. They’ve used a model where money spent earns rewards, but rather than adding a layer of complexity with a confusing point system, it’s simply a dollars to dollars scenario. You specify how much a customer has to spend before they earn a dollar in Loyalty rewards—the default setting is a dollar earned for every $50 spent, but it can be set to whatever you want. The great thing about this is that those earned dollars are available to use on the next purchase; there’s no need to reach a minimum amount of points before your customers start saving. The 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 this sale will earn the customer, how much they have available, and how much is owed 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 – Vend maintains a contact list of all your customers. You can create the list by mass importing from a CSV file or adding each name one by one via the web console (or even in the POS interface at the time of sale). You can customize the fields you want for your customer list with things like 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 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/exported from/to a CSV file. The system has the ability to 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 a number of ways. You can maintain 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 timeframe 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 – This feature, recently added, allows you to create your own branded gift cards (redeemable on Vend eCommerce as well), increase your payment options, and avoid issuing refunds by offering store credit instead.
- Employee Tracking – Tired of employee errors, discrepancies, and theft? Vend now enables you to reduce these issues by tracking employees and their cash management.
- iPad App – Known as Vend Register, this app is optimized for use on an iPad. It comes with the ability to quickly streamline and process sales; has easily customizable quick keys; and includes features such as payment integration, layaways, on-account sales, and loyalty programs.
Integrations and Add-Ons:
Vend offers a ton of integrations with third-party software programs. You can view the full list here, 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.
- Shopify – This web store application syncs in-store and online inventory (i.e. same products, pricing, and stock levels). That way, inventory is automatically updated in both systems whether a purchase is done in store or online. Product changes you make in Vend (to item description or price) automatically update to Shopify.
- Perkville – By signing up with Perkville, merchants can create an online rewards program for their customers or create special coupons for referrals to their friends and family. Integrating with Vend allows customer lists to be transferred and synced between the two systems.
- Stitch Labs – Vend offers some basic inventory management functions that are well suited for smaller operations. If you’re running multiple stores, juggling several vendors, or in any way 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.
Compatible Credit Card Processors:
In the United States, Vantiv, PayPal, and Square are your options for in-store credit card processing. Vend also includes Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Payment Express as eCommerce gateway options, which basically means you can integrate with any processor you want on your web store. The POS is EMV-enabled and set up to accept NFC payments like Apple Pay.
Additionally, since Vend is a multi-national company, they offer different processing options for different countries. Canadian merchants can use Moneris Solutions. Australians have got Tyro and PayPal. Those in the United Kingdom can choose from iZettle, PayPal, and Payment Express. Other Europeans can choose between iZettle and Payment Express. Smartpay is reserved for New Zealand. And all other regions can use iZettle.
And, of course, the system can also be used without integrated payments simply by completing the sale manually within Vend after a successful credit card swipe.
Customer Service and Technical Support:
Vend offers yearly contracts for Premium support on the paid plans, with technical help just a phone call away, 24/7. In addition to phone, email, and live chat, 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. Even more impressive, though, is Vend University, a site hosting a whole swath of 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, launch services, and eCommerce setup assistance.
Vend has a YouTube channel with videos including promotional bits (like the one at the beginning of this review), tutorials, quick tips, and long form webinars. They also maintain active Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts, along with a blog. Finally, Vend has created its own website called We Love POS as a place for people to share their POS horror stories on the web, as well as to insert funny anecdotes, pictures, and videos related to POS. Anybody interested in sharing their POS story on the We Love POS site, whether they’re a current Vend customer or not, receives a free month of Vend.
Negative Reviews and Complaints:
Vend’s simplicity is a selling point, for sure, but it does come at a certain cost. Some features, already standard in many of its competitors, are lacking here:
- Technical Support Costs – I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. It irks me when a POS company charges users for support. Maybe it’s the principle of the thing. Maybe I’m just high-maintenance. Most customers actually seem completely satisfied with the support offerings, and I’ll admit the email help is fast and reliable (and free), but almost all of the top POS systems offer free 24/7 support with their plans, and if Vend wishes to stay competitive, they’ll probably have to follow suit. The internet is also full of comments made by those who are unhappy with the level of support they receive, even when they do pay extra for the advanced coverage. Some customers cite long wait times and unhelpful or even rude customer service representatives.
- Glitches and 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 for that is not just limited to the iPad app.
Positive Reviews and 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 and 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.
- eCommerce – Especially for the price, people don’t seem to mind that Vend’s web store platform isn’t all that advanced or customizable. It looks like Vend is popular among do-it-yourself merchants who just want a simple way to sell online without the hassle of integrating with third party software like Shopify or Magento. To each his own, I guess.
- 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 – Another notable thing about Vend is its affordability. It is on the low end of the pricing spectrum as far as cloud-based POS software goes, but this doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of the product. 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 has a lot going for it, and it’s definitely one of the top five (or so) POS systems I’ve tested, at least as far as user experience is concerned. 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.
Vend doesn’t have the scope of functions that some of its cloud competitors offer, but it has a further reach geographically and a clearer focus on retail. And while a POS system like Revel can boast full offline functionality, more advanced inventory management, and extensive hospitality/foodservice features, Vend has a much lower cost of entry while still satisfying a great many of a retailer’s needs. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, none of Vend’s competitors show the same commitment to making unironic facial hair acceptable in the workplace again. An important issue.
Courtesy of the “We Work at Vend” Pinterest Board
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. At the very least, take it for a spin. You know you want to.
If you’re truly just starting out, and even Vend has more features than you think you’ll need, you might also want to read our Vend vs Square comparison article.
Jordan Nelson
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52 Comments
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
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….
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
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.
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.
You may want to look at Instore POS. Very similar to Vend. It is a Great product with outstanding customer service!! Randy
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
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.
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..
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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.
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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…
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Thank you Erick. Your reviews are exhaustive and unbiased. Should be useful to any body who is evaluating POS solutions.
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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.
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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.
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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!!!
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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.
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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?
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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
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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??
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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.