Lightspeed vs Clover

Why?

On the numbers alone Clover wins, and it is not close: $349 to get started against $89 a month before you have bought a register, and 2.3% + 10¢ against 2.6% + 10¢ on the card-present rate — worth about $900 a year on $25,000 a month in volume. If your catalogue is simple and your priority is getting a till on the counter cheaply, that is the whole argument, and you should buy Clover direct from clover.com so the published rates are the rates you actually get. The case for Lightspeed is everything the price comparison does not capture. Its inventory is a different class of product — serialised stock, variants, bundles, purchase orders and supplier catalogues — which is the reason retailers migrate to it rather than away. Its price is one published number for software and one published rate for processing, on every plan, with support included and answered in house. Clover's published prices apply only to merchants who buy online; most buy through a bank or reseller who sets the rate, the contract, the early termination fee and the support line, and that variability is what Clover's 2.0 Trustpilot score is largely about. The restaurant comparison also flips: Lightspeed Starter is $69 a month against Clover's $89.95 plus $1,799 of hardware. So: simple catalogue, tight budget, buying direct — Clover. Real inventory complexity, multiple locations, or an unwillingness to have your pricing set by whoever picks up the phone — Lightspeed.