Lightspeed is an awesome POS solution, but it’s not right for every business. Some merchants might want a more affordable POS, or one that provides advanced or niche features. Read on for a look at some of the best alternatives to Lightspeed. We’ll explore Lightspeed competitors, including Square, Shopify, Toast, and more.

Whether your restaurant is focusing more on in-person dining or takeout options, Toast POS comes with a fantastic array of built-in features to serve customers. Toast also acts as the client’s payment processor. Toast is different from many of its iOS-based competitors in the POS world because it runs on Android operating systems, making the tablets it runs on cheaper and more versatile.

Square Payments earns a perfect 5-star rating for ease of use, astounding feature set, transparent and affordable pricing, and overall status as a powerhouse for merchants. While Square’s payment processing service is not appropriate for all business types and lacks the stability and negotiability of a standard merchant account, many small businesses enjoy the predictable pricing and the lightning-quick setup.

NCR Silver gets high marks for its ease of use, flexibility, and built-in marketing tools. Unfortunately, while NCR makes solidly good POS software, its Silver product suffers from other issues — namely, the restrictive service contract foisted on merchants who want to purchase the system.

With a full POS system and free booking site, Square Appointments offers a lot of value for salons and independent stylists. But as with other Square products, it only makes sense if you commit to using Square Payments as well, which can be a great convenience or a severe limitation.

Lightspeed is one of the most robust and easy-to-use solutions in today’s POS market. If you’re looking for a retail system that will likely have every option you could dream up in a POS in both the front and back end, and pricing isn’t a major consideration, Lightspeed Retail should be fairly high on your list.

Franpos has established itself as a solid all-in-one system and is particularly useful in the salon world. It specifically caters to franchises and service industry establishments with special feature requirements (booking, scheduling, checking in and out, employee-specific service rates, rentals, and recurring memberships).

TouchBistro boasts some of the most customer-friendly software in the point of sale industry. TouchBistro’s innovative software and intuitive design remain highlights for this POS. The company has also bulked up in the past year, adding better in-house inventory and reporting features to make it an even more attractive product.

If you own a small business, Revel is certainly scalable for virtually any size. However, although Revel is a good POS system, using Revel Systems is a long-term commitment.