Clover vs. Square POS

Clover is well suited for high-volume environments where quality and dependability are paramount. The hardware can scale easily and always looks good on the counter. I have even seen Clover hardware used in small mom-and-pop type stores. The ability to swing the monitor around for signature is really nice. Customers appreciate the ease of use. The stations we have to use nice large bright screens. Not familiar enough with the Clover product line to know if the smaller screen sizes are available for applications where space is a concern.

Incentivized

Square was absolutely fantastic when I first started using it. Easy to set up, use, changing settings, and the like. It has evolved over the years, almost too much, to an insane amount of options, apps, settings, et cetera. I would like to see options for just utilizing specific parts, such as invoices, versus the entire system being set up for daily sales. It makes the tracking side of things a little wonky when you only send 2-5 invoices/month for larger projects. Overall, I like that it’s familiar to me, which is why I continue to use it

Incentivized

• Clover has an excellent POS system with several add-on pieces of equipment available. Many many features to fit all business needs
• Very easy to use, and even has an online login where you can edit inventory and settings, as well as get real time reports
• Inventory control, offline mode, and customer information storage are also wonderful tools to help you keep up with your business
• Reports! The reports are great!!

Incentivized

• After you set a daily processing deadline time, charges processed by that time are deposited the next business day.
• The reporting dash board looks overwhelming but that's because it has all of the the information that you've processed before. That was invaluable when we recently went to look at the detail on a two year old transaction and were able to find the information by ourselves.
• The ability to use multiple devices is great. We can process charges on a computer, a tablet, or even a smartphone.
• Receipts are automatically sent to the customer's preferred email or texted to their phone.

Incentivized

• Focus functionality on retail use and not broad based with focus on food services
• Build a turn table into the countertop unit so both the employee and customer can use the tablet
• Offer color choices in units (white is not always friendly with long term use)

Incentivized

• The cost of the hardware (specific scanners and receipt printers) was prohibitive for my company, and whilst we managed without them, they would have been nice to have. The range of scanners and printers that integrate with Square is small, so despite our devices' capabilities to read barcodes (we used ipads) and the Zebra receipt/label printers we had, we couldn't use either as the system wouldn't integrate with them.
• Whilst Square's credit card reader is nifty in design, it's a bit small and lacking substance to have as a customer-facing reader so it really needs the dock the company offers. The dock is awkward to open to reset or pair the reader. We often found pairing the reader with the device running the system tricky and confusing, relying on pressing one button and then interpreting a sequence of lights that often caused confusion. The pairing process might have been clearer presented through the device rather than the reader.
• Truly can't think of any more!

Incentivized

I don't really foresee anything being able to dislodge Square from our organization—we're not evangelists or anything like that—it's just the best solution we've found for our use case. Being able to quickly handle transactions from customers and then track all of those sales for analysis/bookkeeping later on.

Incentivized

There are numerous aspects to Clover's usability: the usability of their point of sale systems, the usability of their CRM and web dashboards, and the technical side of integrating with other third-party services. All are top tier. Clover's usability is excellent and I have never had a problem figuring out how to use their services at any level. The POS system has a very low barrier to entry and an easy learning curve for newcomers.

Incentivized

We find Square POS is very user friendly. Its interface is customizable to our needs and very easy to use. Before we adopted Square POS, we used a combination of solutions from different manufacturer to try and achieve a portion of the functionality that Square POS provides under only 1 login

Incentivized

We didn't have any significant complaints about their support. As we transitioned out of BluePay to a new provider that partnered with our new CRM, they were able to help with that transition. However, it was a little slower than we'd have liked.

Incentivized

Square POS support is good, I would not say they are great. There is a good knowledge base that you can access and there are other service providers who support Square POS who can assist you, but I find that the lack of help and support for setting it up for different industries is a let down. We had to research for hours just to find a solution to fix our need for a billing option for services for example. It would be great if Square POS broadened its support and solutions for various industries.

Incentivized

We initially chose BluePay because they had purchased the company that we used for our online payment processing and sales applications. To remain with our previous provider would have required costly updates but BluePay was fully integrated and allowed for a very smooth transition with little to no disruption for our employees or customers. After making the switch, we were so glad that we did. Our account rep has been so helpful and responsive, even going to the level of creating and scheduling custom reports to allow our users to do their jobs more easily and efficiently. We've also been pleased to see our overall fees/interchange go down from what we were charged by our previous providers. Overall, we have been very pleased with the service and services provided.

Incentivized

Square POS is just the easiest to use and therefore the easiest to onboard new users to. I'd also like to point out, that if you're missing or lost one of the readers it's so easy to buy one at an Apple store or even other merchants like T-mobile or Verizon. WePay had less fees but was harder to onboard new users to. Eventbrite had really high fees.

Incentivized

• The system usually never has any technical problems.
• A few times, Clover servers have gone down, in which case, you are unable to do any transaction.
• The system is easy and fast so our customers don't have to wait long for payment.

Incentivized

• The transaction fees and charge rates are much higher than other options available. We only used this system for a short time while we were switching to a MUCH cheaper option (Authorize.net).
• I have also used this system with a charity that I volunteer with who only uses it during a couple of fundraisers a year when they have a small gift shop set up to sell donated goods to raise money. For such low volume, the fees aren't as big of a deal and the convenience of being able to take cards no matter where the event is located makes it worth it.
• This is a system your average consumer will recognize and trust, so there's that.

Incentivized