Lightspeed vs Shopify POS: Which is Better?

Lightspeed and Shopify are two of the best POS providers on the market. They both offer seamless ecommerce integrations, CRM functionality, great payment processing and extensive POS inventory capabilities, but when our independent research team put both POS systems head to head, Shopify came out on top as best POS for ecommerce. Lightspeed performed well too, with top scores in most of our POS testing categories, including business management, stock management and business development, but it was its lower cost terminals that tipped it as the best POS for larger businesses.

In this review, we’ll be digging into exactly why we think Shopify is a better POS for ecommerce than Lightspeed. We'll cover the pros and cons, best POS features, integrations and functionality, and see how both POS systems fared when it came to our core testing categories. All of our research at Tech.co is completely independent, and we invest hours into testing every feature head to head, to ensure that our reviews are as accurate and informative as possible.

If at the end of this you're still stuck, or unsure of which product to choose, our free POS comparison tool should also take away some of the guesswork.

In this guide:

• Lightspeed vs Shopify: Overview
• Lightspeed Pricing
• Shopify Pricing
• Feature Comparison
• Mobile Apps
• POS Hardware
• Ease of Use
• The Verdict
• FAQs

Lightspeed vs Shopify: Overview

Lightspeed and Shopify POS appear similar at first glance, but when we put both point of sale systems head to head, it was clear that both providers were targeting slightly different business models.

Lightspeed, for example, offers tools specifically designed to help small businesses grow – the company’s CEO said as much in our interview with him. With features like curbside pickup, contactless payments and improved integrations, Lightspeed POS is constantly evolving and adapting to help businesses thrive, which is why is performs better in our business development testing category, with a score of 4.6 out of 5 compared to Shopify, who scored 4.2. You can start your business using any of Lightspeed’s plans, and add extra features when you need them.

Shopify, on the other hand, primarily targets businesses who started online and are looking to expand with brick-and-mortar stores to tap into a new audience. Considering that you also get the Shopify Lite POS plan included with all of its ecommerce plans, Shopify POS is a great fit for most companies — especially the 600,000 businesses worldwide who already use their system.

While Shopify is almost guaranteed to work with your business, Lightspeed is a bit more selective.

Shopify will easily serve any type of retail or restaurant business. Lightspeed, on the other hand, is best suited to retail businesses which sell lots of barcoded items – think toy stores or clothing stores rather than haberdasheries and florists, for example. This is because Lightspeed does not support partial quantities of products, expiry date information, or weighing scales.

If your business does provide barcoded products, Lightspeed could be the most user-friendly choice for you. However, we wouldn’t recommend Lightspeed for service-based businesses, such as beauty salons or hairdressers. It’s also worth noting that Lightspeed is unable to provide POS systems to businesses selling motorized vehicles, including boats.

For more information about what sort of businesses Lightspeed can serve, check out our full Lightspeed review.

It’s worth noting that if you really need ecommerce and point of sale, Shopify will let you add its point of sale solution to any of its ecommerce plans, which start from $29 per month.

Lightspeed POS vs Shopify POS: Pricing Plans

Lightspeed and Shopify POS are relatively well-matched when it comes to their pricing and value for money – even despite their different pricing structures. It’s also worth noting that neither Shopify nor Lightspeed can hold a candle to Square POS when it comes to value for money.

You can also compare the best POS providers on the market with our comparison tool. It gives you bespoke prices for each provider and can help you find the perfect service for your business.

Lightspeed POS pricing plans

Lightspeed offers five pricing plans – Basic, Starter, Standard, Advanced, and Pro.

Lightspeed POS Lean

Lightspeed plans start from $69 per month when billed annually, or $89 per month with monthly billing. With the basic plan, you won’t get access to Lightspeed’s ecommerce platform, nor will you be able to connect to an accounting platform. Customer loyalty and sales analytics features are also not included, but can be added for extra monthly charges.

What you will get, is access to the Lightspeed POS system and its Lightspeed Payments processing service. Lightspeed Payments will charge you 2.6% + 10 cents for card-present transactions, while card-not-present transactions will cost 2.6% + 30 cents. Lightspeed Payments is included with all plans and the charges won’t change, unless you upgrade to the Lightspeed Enterprise plan — its pricing is based on bespoke quotes from Lightspeed and is designed for larger businesses.

Lightspeed POS Standard

The Standard plan costs $119 per month with annual billing, or $149 per month with monthly billing. The Standard plan’s main advantage over the cheaper Lean plan is that you can now sell online with Lightspeed eCom. We’d pause before jumping in with the Standard plan, though. Shopify will give you ecommerce and POS for less. With Lightspeed's Standard plan you'll also be able to connect a third-party accounting provider to your Lightspeed store, giving you one less job to do. Lightspeed supports integrations with a range of providers, including Omniboost, QuickBooks, Xero, and Sage.

Lightspeed POS Advanced

The Advanced plan gives you access to its customer loyalty program. This allows you to offer regular customers some nice extras, such as store credit, loyalty points and rewards, or special offers. You can also communicate these offers with your customers via a built-in drag-and-drop email campaign builder, or a text and push notification sender. These features will set you back $199 per month with annual billing or $269 per month with monthly billing.

Lightspeed POS Enterprise

Lightspeed Enterprise is the POS for big business. With this plan, you’ll get everything in the advanced plan plus access to unlimited personalized onboarding and launch services, personalized consultation services, a dedicated support team, API consultation, customer success manager, preferred payment rates, and finally get access to advanced store analytics. Advanced analytics is the kicker here, as you'll be able to see a complete overview of how many sales you’re making, employee performance, and marketing campaign effectiveness.

As we've mentioned, Lightspeed works best for retail businesses, but if you're unsure which of the above plans might work best for your store, you can take advantage of a free trial with Lightspeed, and try before you buy.

Shopify POS pricing plans

Shopify has two POS pricing plans – the free Shopify POS Lite plan, and the Shopify POS Pro plan but you'll need to sign up for a Shopify ecommerce plan before you get started. These start from $29 per month. For more information on Shopify pricing, check out out full pricing overview.

You can also compare Shopify's pricing plans against all of its POS rivals using our easy and straightforward POS pricing comparison tool.

Shopify POS Lite

Shopify POS lite is included with all Shopify ecommerce plans, meaning that you won’t need to pay anything extra to get POS with your ecommerce functionality.

You’ll get access to Shopify Payments, which gives you in-person credit card rates starting at 2.4% + 0 cents. Shopify POS Lite will also let you buy Shopify’s branded hardware, too.

What’s more, Shopify POS Lite comes with a lot of relatively high-end features considering it is, effectively, a free POS system. You get customizable checkouts, custom discounts, a global search across your store and storage to check product availability, automatic tax calculation, refunds, unlimited products and variants, multi-location inventory, customer loyalty, and analytics.

Shopify POS Pro

The paid-for plan costs $89 per month per location, as well as the cost of your Shopify ecommerce plan. This means that you could get ecommerce and a fully-featured brick-and-mortar POS from around $118 per month – far from a bad deal.

The Shopify POS Pro plan gives you access to some slightly more high-end features. You get automatic discounts, for example, which allow customers to redeem percentage, fixed amount, or BOGO discounts both in-person or online. You can let customers buy online and pickup or return/exchange in store. Customers will also be able to buy products in your store and get them shipped to their homes.

Any Shopify hardware you buy gets a two-year warranty, rather than the single year on the Lite plan. You can add unlimited staff to your store, as well as give them unique roles and permissions. You’ll be able to make stock adjustments manually, as well as transfer products across locations. Inventory counting with barcodes becomes available, as do custom purchase orders and inventory receiving functions. Inventory and demand analysis will help you work out which products sell the best, and when you need to have them in-store.

Lightspeed vs Shopify: Who’s Better for Value?

There’s only one winner here: Shopify.

Shopify POS isn’t the best value for money provider on the market but, compared to Lightspeed, it seems like a bit of a bargain. The fact that you can get full ecommerce and a strong POS platform for just $29 per month with the Shopify Lite plan is good enough for us.

However, there might be a better POS solution for your business outside of Shopify and Lightspeed. To find the perfect fit for your business, you can check out our POS pricing comparison tool.

Lightspeed vs Shopify: Feature Comparison

While Shopify POS will give your business more bang-for-buck on paper, but that might not be the case in practice, depending on your business' needs. Our researchers put both Shopify and Lightspeed head to head, to take a closer look at everything each provider offers. Here's how they performed.

Sales features

Lightspeed and Shopify are both designed to help businesses deliver omnichannel sales – meaning that businesses like yours will be able to sell in-store, online, and on-the-go with a variety of different payment types. Both Lightspeed and Shopify accept credit, debit, and gift card transactions, as well as cash and checks, and you’ll also be able to sell subscriptions for regular services and products with both Shopify and Lightspeed.

Shopify provides slightly easier management as a platform, as it syncs all your sales, inventory, and expenses across all of your sales platforms.

Reporting and analytics

When it comes to reporting on sales and performance, the more data you have, the better. In this respect, Lightspeed performs better than Shopify. Both platforms cover the basics; reporting on sales, individual product and category performance, and general finances, however, Lightspeed gives you more reporting tools on labor and software users. It can also produce daily, weekly, and monthly reports, which is useful for businesses who constantly monitor their trends and pivot their strategy.

Both platforms performed pretty well in the category overall, as Shopify and Lightspeed POS do allow for sales forecasting, which isn’t something you can say about all POS providers. You can see how they compare using our free POS comparison tool. 

Integrations and add-ons

Shopify and Lightspeed both offer lots of third-party integrations. For example, with Shopify POS integrations you can manage tables with Webkul software, Payroll with Staffy, Loyalty programs with Glow Loyalty, inventory management with Stocky, bar inventory, appointment bookings and more – all of which we found to provide a good user experience. Lightspeed POS integrates with slightly different software, focusing its efforts on other areas. Some integrations include Omniboost for accounting, Pointy Analytics, Service reign for customer service, Deputy for employee scheduling, Avero for reporting and SevenRooms for reservations.

Both platforms offer integrations with QuickBooks. What’s more, Shopify and Lightspeed both offer app stores that allow you to add ready-made plugins to your system too.

Inventory features

Both Shopify and Lightspeed offer extensive inventory features which will help make managing your business simple. When we tested both providers, our research team found Lightspeed to be better suited to businesses that have a lot of fixed items that they sell, as opposed to items that vary by weight or complexity, such as flowers, materials, or pieces of art. Shopify POS faces similar issues, but we found it to be slightly more flexible than Lightspeed in this respect.

With that being said, here’s a quick rundown of what we found each platform’s capabilities were. Lightspeed in comparison to Shopify, will allow you to process and follow work orders, as well as give products unique serial numbers. You can also track inventory levels across multiple locations. Plus, you can directly import products from more than 3,000 preloaded catalogues. What we liked the most was that you can also consolidate a list of purchases, transfers, and orders into single orders and change prices in bulk — which makes a huge difference when you're trying to keep up with the competition.

Shopify, on the other hand, will let you create inventory transfers and count your inventory across different locations. You’ll also be able to view the history of inventory adjustments for products and their variants making Shopify POS a great option too.

All told, while Lightspeed has a slightly wider inventory feature, where Shopify may just take the edge is in its inventory locations. With Shopify's inventory locations you can assign inventory wherever you are — retail stores, warehouses, or pop-ups, but  Lightspeed’s plans only include one retail location unless you choose to upgrade. Overall, we felt both providers performed pretty well in this category and rated it a 5 out of 5 for stock management.

But, if you want to compare Lightspeed against its biggest rivals, you can check out our free POS comparison tool.

Ecommerce features

You might have seen this coming, but Shopify POS takes the lead in this category, as a far greater ecommerce platform than Lightspeed – the best POS for ecommerce businesses overall, according to our research.

Lightspeed’s platform offers you the basics to start selling online, as well as in store. You can import stock from your physical to online store, as well as create bespoke discount codes.

Lightspeed’s platform also gives you customizable mobile-responsive website templates. You can easily create shipping instructions with EasyPost and ShipStation, and connect your store with Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to help you sell products. You can even sell in multiple languages, and in multiple currencies thanks to Lightspeed’s international shipping rates.

Shopify, on the other hand, offers all these features and more. Rather than offering customizable themes, it has a full drag-and-drop store builder — which is perfect for businesses looking to further personalize their customer journey and build a platform that's more representative of their brand. In addition it has an in-depth dashboard to help you analyze your sales, which is massively important for growth. Shopify even offers discounted shipping with USPS, meaning you could save up to 40% on shipping, and send customers automatic tracking updates through the Shop app.

If ecommerce is a central pillar of your business, you can't go wrong with Shopify POS — we’d recommend Shopify ahead of Lightspeed in heartbeat.

Lightspeed vs Shopify POS: Mobile App

Again, both Lightspeed and Shopify have mobile apps which allow you to control the entire POS experience, which is great for businesses who are always on the go. We tested both providers to see which POS App was easiest to use, and had the best features for businesses to see whether one had the edge over the other.

The Shopify POS app works across a range of iPad OS and iOS devices, as well as any device running Android 5.0 (Lollipop) or later. If you’re on iPhone, it’ll need to be an iPhone 5s running iOS 11.4 or later. If you’re an iPad user, you’ll need one of the following:

• iPad Air – Gen 2 or later running iPadOS 11.4 or later
• iPad – Gen 5 or later running iPadOS 11.4 or later
• iPad Mini – Gen 2 or later running iPadOS 11.4 or later
• All iPad Pro models as long as they run iPadOS 11.4 or later

You’ll be able to process credit card payments on-the-go, as well as automatically apply the correct sales tax. You can send email and SMS receipts to customers, as well as print customized receipts with your store details. Barcode scanners can be integrated to simplify the sales process, and you can even manage your marketing operations from the app.

Shopify’s iOS and iPadOS app gets almost universally good reviews, and receives an overall rating of 4.3 out of 5. Shopify’s Android app, meanwhile, gets 4.1 out of 5 on the Play Store, but our team thought it performed pretty well.

The Lightspeed POS app, on the other hand, works on iPads, MacOS devices, or Windows PCs – no iPhones or Androids here. It requires iPad OS 12.2 or later, and MacOS 10.12. You’ll obviously need a Windows 10 PC.

Like the Shopify POS app, Lightspeed’s options let you control the entire POS experience from a mobile device. But, unlike Shopify, Lightspeed’s app gets a bit of a kicking on the App Store, receiving a rating of just 2.7 out of 5.

Lightspeed has also recently updated its dedicated Restaurants app. If your Lightspeed Restaurants app icon features a red logo on a white background, you’re using the older ‘L Series’ app. The new ‘K Series’ app has a white logo on a red background.

Lightspeed vs Shopify: POS Hardware

Hardware is as important as software for getting the most from your POS system. Comparing Lightspeed and Shopify POS offerings, however, was more complicated than we expected.

Shopify, like most POS providers, sells a range of hardware that you can choose from and pay for however you like. Lightspeed, on the other hand, will sell you a range of hardware, but doesn’t disclose its prices. Still, we were able to compare both based on what they offered, and how businesses using the products felt it performed.

Lightspeed POS hardware

Here’s a quick look at some of the hardware that Lightspeed POS offers:

If you’re using an iPad to control Lightspeed, the iPad hardware kit will give you a range of peripherals to improve your wireless POS experience. These include:

• LAN receipt printer
• Cash drawer
• Bluetooth barcode scanner
• Lightspeed-branded iPad stand
• Receipt paper

Sadly, there’s no iPad included.

Similarly, Lightspeed offers a kit designed for desktop users. It includes:

• USB receipt printer
• Cash drawer
• USB barcode scanner

You can also buy the following items from Lightspeed on their own:

• Zebra ZD410 label printer
• Safescan LD-3336 cash drawer
• Star Micronics CB2002 cash drawer
• SocketScan S700 2D barcode scanner
• SocketScan S740 2D bluetooth barcode scanner
• USB barcode scanner
• Epson TM-M30 printer
• Epson TM-U220B LAN kitchen printer
• Star Micronics SP742 kitchen printer
• Star Micronics TSP-100 LAN receipt printer
• Switch 8/16/24/48 Ports POE
• AC Pro Unifi Indoor wifi booster
• Antenna Mesh outdoor wifi booster
• LiteServer local database

Shopify POS hardware

Shopify POS, on the other hand, lets you buy a range of items individually. It also lists its prices, which for us was a big win, as its important for businesses to have that type of transparency. Here’s a look at what you can buy, and how much it’ll all cost.

Shopify Retail Kit

• Tap & Chip card reader – $49
• Shopify Dock for Tap & Chip reader – $39
• Shopify Retail Stand for iPad 10.2”/ Air 10.5” – $149
• Shopify Retail Stand for iPad 9.7” – $149
• Shopify Retail Kit 10.2”/ Air 10.5” – $299
• Shopify Casual Kit – $99
• Shopify Mini Dock Cable – $9
• Shopify Mounting Kit – $9

Shopify’s barcode scanners cost between $299 and $329, while label printers start from $199 but can run to $499 for a wireless unit. Receipt printers, meanwhile, can cost between $289 and $359, while cash drawers cost $139. You can also buy shipping scales from Shopify – a 10 lbs scale will cost $49, while a 100 lbs scale will set you back $89.

All told, we think that Shopify POS offers better hardware than Lightspeed. Not only does it disclose the prices of its hardware options, but Shopify offers a better variety of options than Lightspeed.

Lightspeed vs Shopify: Ease of Use

Problems with your POS system can have massive ramifications for your business – any time your shop is down, you’ll be losing money.

Both Lightspeed and Shopify POS offer 14-day free trials to help you get accustomed to the platform, as well as online knowledge centers to help you diagnose and fix issues yourself. However, Shopify offers live chat and 24/7 phone support; Lightspeed, on the other hand, offers email and phone support, but no live chat.

When it comes to the actual UI of each company’s POS apps, there’s precious little between them. Both utilise nice, easy to understand designs, with intuitive menus and visual cues, but we did find in our testing that Shopify's app has far fewer issues, so in terms of ease of use we've got to give this one to Shopify as the clear overall winner.

Verdict: Lightspeed vs Shopify

Both Lightspeed and Shopify offer brilliant POS software — and we found evidence of that in every category we tested. Shopify performed especially well in stock management with an unlimited number of products in comparison to Lightspeed, whose variants count towards the limit they step. Still, Lightspeed also scored well in this category, and we'd put that down the fact that our research team just loved their inventory management functionality, which was incredibly intuitive and easy to use (they both scored 5 out of 5).

In reality, Shopify POS is best for ecommerce, but Lightspeed performed exceptionally well in our POS categories, edging slightly ahead of Shopify in its final overall score.

Our research supports the fact that Shopify brings a better ecommerce solution to the table, and we also loved the fact that it was transparent about its hardware pricing, where Lightspeed was not. We also felt that Shopify POS also serves a wider range of businesses with more complex inventories, but Lightspeed definitely has the edge when it comes to its integrated customer rewards system and loyalty tools.

For larger businesses, Lightspeed scored 4.5 out of 5 in our POS areas of investigation vs. Shopify's 4.2 out of 5 — making Lightspeed the better POS of large businesses with bigger inventories of discrete barcoded items.

If you're not sold on Lightspeed or Shopify, you can compare all of the leading POS providers with our quick and easy comparison tool. It will help you see all of our researcher's favorite platforms and pick the perfect one for your business.

Our Research and Methodology

All Tech.co reviews are completely independent — based on our independent testing, research and analysis. We have entire team of experts dedicated doing exactly that — testing and researching every product we recommend, to ensure that we can provide the most accurate, up-to-date information about a product as possible.

We know how hard it is to run a business in 2023, and our goal is to help businesses succeed. Not every product we recommend will be the right product for you needs, but we do everything we can to ensure that we test the right criteria. an take many forms, from a single card reader plugged into a smartphone, to tills with screens, cash registers, and receipt printers.

The importance in variety of POS systems will differ greatly depending on the business type, and we take a number of categories into consideration when we do testing; including business management features, stock management, till, pricing, business development, usability and more.

Based on our research and analysis, we know that Shopify is the best POS for ecommerce, because it scored high in all the categories that matter most to ecommerce businesses. Lightspeed is better for larger businesses, but its also a good all around POS for businesses looking to expand.

Lightspeed vs Shopify: FAQs