DEAR Systems, by Cin7 vs. Lightspeed Retail

The software was well suited to small businesses who manufacture and sell on line and who have to manage batch codes however they are now pricing themselves out of the market. Customer service is terrible

It is perfect for any small business looking for inventory control, Tracking purchase history, and just an all round easy to use software for retail and beyond. I would not use it if I have only a few hundred items or was a larger company that can afford to build my own POS software.

Incentivized

• Inventory tracking
• Invoicing
• Ecommerce synch

Incentivized

• Very very user friendly.
• Easy iPad interface that is easy to upgrade to new hardware if an iPad breaks, etc.
• On the Advanced plan the reporting is outstanding.
• Very easy to train new employees, especially younger employees raised on phones and tablets.
• We use their payments system and it's a very easy integration. I believe Stripe is their payment provider.

• Support
• Bugs
• Website Functionality
• Down-time
• Glitchiness

• They have not had major updates to their system in years. The inventory system is stagnant. Although their inventory system is robust, it is outdated.
• They do have 24-hour support, however, wait times are excessive and representatives have challenges understanding your issues.
• Trying to get issues resolved can take months or never at all. Management is non-existent. Trying to reach a supervisor is impossible.
• They have a culture of telling you what you want to hear but have no intentions of actually following through.
• Lightspeed is a great solution if you are a small business just getting started. But if you are intending to grow and expand, Lightspeed will become detrimental to your growth.
• The reporting/analytics is basic at best. They do offer paid options that are very expensive, but it is very robust. The basic reporting is very minimal.

It does what it says on the tin.

Incentivized

Very easy to use and figure out without calling customer support which is also very responsive and helpful.

Incentivized

Terrible support, absolutely useless for anything more major than a simple navigational problem. They always provide meaningless responses that don't really address the issue such as, "our engineering department is working on the issue" or "we're working on some optimisation". These responses would be fine if anything actually resulted from them, but the same errors and problems have existed for 4 years so I don't believe they really amount to anything. In addition, they're quite pushy for me to "close your ticket" so it can be marked as resolved, but my issue hasn't been resolved. I don't exactly want to leave my ticket open for several months, but they send me consistent reminders to close the ticket which is obnoxious especially since their resolution was "our engineering department will work on it".

I gave the rating of a 9 because ninety percent of the time when I talk to their support they're very helpful. One of the only real issues I have is there are times where the queue will be 7-9 people deep. When you have an error you don't know how to fix, sometimes this is very troubling. But overall their support is usually quick and friendly.

Incentivized

DEAR Systems is much better software compared to Xero. The inventory tracking within Xero doesn't record batch dates and isn't really capable of production modules. Additionally, Xero doesn't have pricing tiers within invoicing, which is a very helpful feature offered by DEAR Systems. If a business has any level of complexity than DEAR Systems is a significantly more capable software.

Incentivized

We used Microsoft Retail Management System before this and this was in a whole other league of its own with features and ease of use. I really like using Macs also. They are much more reliable and longer lasting than IBM or Similar computers. The cloud based system is great also so you do not have to have another unit to store you database on

Incentivized

• Lost company time
• Effective inventory management
• Mostly does the job it's supposed to

• I have to spend a lot less time training my employees because Lightspeed is so easy to use!
• Keeping track of our inventory is as simple as clicking a few buttons.
• Our online sales have grown tremendously since changing to Lightspeed

Incentivized