SpotOn POS Review: Compare its Features, Prices, and Pros and Cons

If you're looking for a customizable point-of-sale (POS) solution with top-tier inventory management tools, SpotOn should be on your radar. This SpotOn POS review explains how it's packed with a solid range of retail and hospitality features, as well as offering more specialist options than you can shake a stick at – from casual full-service to home decor and beyond.

With software prices starting from $25 per month for SpotOn With Payments, businesses don't need to break the bank to get started on the system either. However, SpotOn's pricing structure is very opaque, and if you want to unlock fairly basic features like reservation options and customer loyalty tools you have a pay extra for add-ons. This makes the solution slightly less affordable than other POS we've reviewed.

There's a lot to unwrap when it comes to SpotOn, from its custom hardware options to its impressive training mode, so scroll down to find out if the point-of-sale is a good fit for your business. Alternatively, if you're still open to other solutions, use our free comparison tool to receive custom quotes from leading POS providers.

In this review:

• SpotOn POS: Quick Fact-File
• SpotOn POS: Pricing & Plans 
• SpotOn Review: Key Features
• How Does SpotOn Compare to Other POS Systems?
• Our Methodology
• Verdict – Is SpotOn POS Right for You?
• Frequently Asked Questions

Tech.co leaves no stone unturned when it comes to product research. When reviewing POS systems like SpotOn, we consider a broad variety of factors including restaurant and retail-specific features, help and support options, and overall customer satisfaction. Jump down to our methodology section to learn more about how we make our verdicts.

SpotOn POS: Quick Fact-File

Here's a round-up of SpotOns main deciding factors, to help you understand its offering at a glance.

• Software cost – SpotOn operates on a custom pricing model. However, the provider's software bundles start from $25 per month.
• Add-on costs – SpotOn offers loyalty, appointments, web development, and web hosting packages for $65 per month extra each.
• Transaction fees – Transaction fees will be dependent on your chosen payment processor, but if you opt for SpotOn With Payments you'll pay 1.99% + 20¢ to 2.99% + 20¢ per transaction.
• Help & support options – SpotOn offers email support 24/7 but only received a dismal 1/5 help and support score because it lacks live chat tools and doesn't carry out daily backups.
• Till features –  SpotOn has a strong range of payment and ordering tools, including bill splitting, receipt customization, and QR payment options, which is why we awarded it a solid score of 4/5 for till features after trying them out for ourselves.

SpotOn POS: Pricing & Plans

SpotOn POS runs on a custom pricing structure and its cost will depend on the size, industry, and unique needs of your business.

You'll need to reach out to SpotOn's sales team for precise quotes, but here's an overview of the POS main software and hardware packages:

• With Payments — Retailing at $25 per month, SpotOn With Payments is a software-only payment processing solution with basic POS features. However, while this is SpotOn's cheapest software plan, it requires users to rely on SpotOn's payment processing services which charge 1.99% + 20¢ to 2.99% + 20¢ per transaction.
• Software Only — If you want to bypass SpotOns transaction fees by using your own payment processor, you can get SpotOns Software Only package for $195 per month. This plan includes marketing, reviews management, loyalty, and website development features, but lacks payment analytics.
• Register — SpotOns's full retail package costs $65 per month, and includes a large software and hardware package including a 13.3″ display, a barcode scanner, a thermal printer, a cash draw, and advanced POS capabilities.
• Restaurant — Retailing at $65 per month, SpotOn Restaurant includes a full hardware package and advanced hospitality features including table layouts, mobile manager, online ordering, and split payments.

SpotOn scrapped its Poynt and Register Lite Plan in 2023, so businesses can no longer get started with the POS for $15 per month. You can see how SpotOn's current plans compare side by side below:

SpotOn transaction fees

If you choose to use SpotOn's in-built payment processor, the POS charges two different rates depending on the payment type. On top of the monthly fees, businesses can expect to pay:

• 1.99% + 25¢ for standard credit and debit card transactions
• 2.99% + 25¢ for keyed-in, international and corporate transactions

Software add-ons and extra fees

SponOn lets you augment your chosen package with software add-ons, but they do come at a premium. We list some of SpotOn's main software add-ons below:

• $65 per month for web development
• $65 per month for web hosting
• $65 per month for appointment management
• $45 per month for online ordering

Businesses will also have to pay a one-time setup fee which usually costs $250 up-front but may vary depending on your requirements.

Is SpotOn good value?

Compared to Square pricing or PayPal Zettle fees, SpotOn is more expensive than other solutions such as Square and Zettle, we could only award SpotOn a mediocre value score of 3/5 when analyzing its value for money against competitors. However, with plans available from $25 per month, its entry price is still lower than TouchBistro's and Vend's, and its hardware is also cheaper than Clover's — making its value offering pretty run-of-the-mill overall.

Does SpotOn have a Free Plan?

SpotOn doesn't currently offer a free plan, all of its packages incur monthly fees. SpotOn doesn't offer a free demo either, making it hard for potential customers to get a taste of the product before they commit to lengthy contracts.

If you're looking to shirk monthly fees for longer than a month, we would recommend using Square or Zettle instead. Both providers offer quality free plans for hospitality and retail businesses alike, charging just transaction fees instead. Square even chucks in a free card reader too, making it a great option for new ventures.

If it's free options you're looking for, check out our guide to the best free POS systems.

SpotOn Review: Key Features

SpotOn offers tons of competitive features. Here's a round-up of our favorites:

Till features

SpotOn offers a wide range of payment options, letting customers pay with cash, credit and debit card cards, mobile wallet apps like Apple Pay and Google Pay, Samsung Pay, QR codes, and gift cards. SpotOn also offers a number of stand-out order features like bill splitting, receipt customization, and refunds and discounts.

After testing SpotOn's till features out for ourselves, we were so impressed we gave them a score of 4/5 – ranking above other competitors like Square, Lightspeed, and Shopify in this category.

SpotOn till software screenshot. Source: spoton.com

Training features

SpotOn's training features are also a lot stronger than most of its rivals. The provider offers a dedicated training mode that lets new members of staff carry out a number of duties in a protected mode — including creating orders, adding discounts, using modifiers, printing receipts, and more.

While Vend still offers the best staff training features we've reviewed, SpotOn is still an excellent option for onboarding staff, with other systems like Square, Epos Now, and Shopify, lacking a training mode completely.

Inventory management

After testing SpotOn's stock management features we were really impressed with their quality, which is why we awarded them a perfect category score of 5/5. The provider's back-of-house platform lets businesses manage stock from anywhere with real-time updates, alerts, and front-of-house countdowns to prevent you from selling out of items. These features place SpotOn neck-and-neck with POSs like Square, Lightspeed, and Shopify, which also received a perfect store for their inventory tools.

Performance tracking

SpotOn lets businesses monitor their performance through a variety of metrics. The point-of-sale offers reporting features that help users track trends over time, measure the success of their marketing campaigns, and even follow the ROI on reward redemptions. Unfortunately, since SpotOn lacks basic sales forecasting tools, it only secured a 3.6/5 for the business development features.

If it's strong performance tracking features you're after, we would recommend going with TouchBistro instead, with the POS offering more than 50 reporting options.

SpotOn's restaurant reporting tools. Source, spoton.com

Help and support

While SpotOn does offer a help center and customer support via email and phone lines 24 hours a day, it lacks very basic help tools like live chat and auto backups, contributing to its dismal support score of 1/5. Unfortunately, this makes SpotOn a lot less useful than systems like Square and Talech for businesses that depend on these services regularly.

See how SpotOn's features compare to its competition in our guide to the top small business POS systems.

How Does SpotOn Compare to Other POS Systems?

SpotOn is a great option for businesses after customizable software options and stand-out inventory features. However, if you're looking for a cost-effective point-of-sale solution that can do it all ⁠— with 5/5 support features to boot ⁠— we would recommend our top-ranked system, Square.

Alternatively, food businesses after a more advanced restaurant POS system would be better off opting for Lightspeed or Toast, with both solutions offering advanced hospitality features like ingredient tracking and tableside management – earning it a near-perfect score of 4.9/5 score for restaurant features in our research. Clover and Zettle are some other quality retail-focused POS systems, especially for stores that are keen on keeping monthly prices down.

There are loads of notable mentions though, so take a look at our table below for a summary of SpotOn's top competitors.

Our Methodology

We take product reviews very seriously at Tech.co. When ranking and reviewing point-of-sale systems, we measure them against a number of key metrics, to make sure we make the most valuable recommendations possible. When researching POSs, our categories of interest include:

• Till features – When measuring how adept a system's ordering and payment features are, we look out for stand-out tools like bill splitting, refunds, and receipt customization.
• Business management – We also check how capable a POS is at managing core areas of the businesses. I.e, does it offer robust staff management and performance tracking tools?
• Business development – For businesses looking to expand, we measure the number and quality of growth features, including customer loyalty, ecommerce, and brand awareness tools.
• Usability – We assess a system's user experience and set up time to see how suitable it will be for beginners.
• Price – To gauge how affordable a system is, we calculate the average price of its plan and factor in if any free versions or demos are available.
• Customer score – We also research the point-of-sale's customer support tools and overall level of customer satisfaction.

On top of these core metrics, we also account for retail and restaurant-specific features – from delivery support and marketplace integrations to menu customization and floorplan management, to measure the potential of a system for businesses in different industries. Then, we award the systems a score out of five for each of these categories and rank and review them accordingly.

Learn more about our dedicated research process here.

Frequently Asked Questions