Clover POS Reviews
Clover has become one of the most popular POS Systems on the market for small to mid-sized businesses over the past few years. Retail outlets, restaurants, and professional services have gravitated toward this POS provider due to its practicality.
But with so many different price plans and features to choose from, it's easy to get confused.
Not only will we break down exactly what the Clover POS solution offers, but we will also point out its limitations, enabling you to determine whether or not Clover is the best option for your needs.
Pricing
The pricing options vary quite widely for the Clover system.
For starters, if you want to get Clover hardware, you will pay $1,649 or more for Clover terminals, anywhere from $499 to $749 for Clover touchscreens, and $49 for a card reader.
The industry-specific Clover POS software packages range from about $14.95 to $94.95, depending on your needs.
Lastly, you have Clover's payment processing, which is divided up into two categories:
The great thing is that Clover offers quite competitive payment processing flat rates.
The rates vary quite a bit for different types of services. For example, rates can drastically change whether you're a quick-service restaurant, full-service restaurant, retail shop, or personal service provider.
If you're looking for a basic plan that allows you to accept in-person transactions, we recommend checking out the Payments Plan. This plan offers payment processing for in-person transactions.
We also recommend the No Hardware plan for merchants who mostly take payments online. This plan comes with a unique virtual terminal that allows customers to enter their credit card information online. Clover's virtual terminal has a customer-facing online payment portal that can send paperless receipts, generate sales reports, and email invoices to customers.
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Features and Benefits
Clover POS offers several features, though the feature-set you receive depends on the plan you choose. Let's take an overview look at some of the features you can expect with a top-tier Clover plan:
Let's dig into a few of the most notable features in the Clover POS solution to give you a better idea of what you can expect.
Inventory Management
Clover recently upgraded its inventory features, allowing you to better organize items and options for easier access. You can even describe items and manage inventory by size or variant, which you won't find in many basic inventory systems.
Foodservice providers can create modifiers for different items and sell them at fixed or variable prices.
Customer Management Tools
You can collect customer information, look at their order history, and view information regarding transactions, helping you to maintain existing and supportive customers.
Reporting and Analytics
The reporting that comes with Clover POS software is pretty basic, though for what you pay, it's solid for most small businesses.
You get decent reporting tools with the Clover app, which also delivers a "By Payments" report, giving you a completed transaction summary.
You'll also find reports for orders, taxes, discounts, employee activities, employee statistics, payment by card type, cash reports, net payment statistics, and more.
You can sort and organize all of your reports by date and time, or a number of other filters, making it easy to analyze data.
Loyalty Programs
The loyalty functionality that comes with Clover is top-notch, whether you get the Clover Mini, Clover Flex, or Clover Station. There are several ways in which customers have the ability to accrue benefits from continued patronage, as business owners have the ability to create custom customer loyalty programs.
You can easily track customer spending habits and quickly lookup customer information. You can also get customer feedback with ease and send out real-time promotions with email and text campaigns.
Gift Cards
When it comes to gift cards, Clover is on top of its game. You can create digital and physical gift cards, which customers can access with their mobile devices. The beauty of this system is the ability to track digital cards, which takes away the need for receipts or physical cards that take up space.
Hardware Options
One thing that sets Clover apart from many other POS systems is the number of hardware options the business offers. Let's take a look at some of Clover's hardware options.
Clover Go
The Clover Go mobile card reader syncs up with all of your other Clover devices. It works on Android and iOS devices, allowing you to make contactless payments on the go.
This small credit card processing hardware piece goes for $49, making it an ideal for smaller businesses.
Clover Flex
Clover Flex is a larger rapid deposit device that accepts payments in multiple forms.
This solution is a full-on, flexible POS system that employees can operate from their hands.
This particular point of sale solution comes with customization options, a loyalty program, and advanced inventory features.
You can also add the Clover Flex into your Clover Station Solo or Duo setup, depending on your needs.
Overall, it offers far more flexibility than the Clover Go, which is wonderful growing businesses.
Clover Mini
For even more flexibility, we recommend the Clover Mini, which is made to help businesses run front-of-house and back-office operations with ease.
The Clover Mini has an easy-to-use interface and accepts a wide range of payments. You'll find top-notch employee management features, a wide range of reports, and advanced inventory features that can work with both quick-service and full-service restaurants.
Clover Station Solo and Duo
Just a step up from the Clover Mini are the Clover Station Solo and Clover Station Duo.
The Solo is the classic Clover offering, recommended for full-service restaurants. It comes with a cash drawer, receipt printer, and a 14" high-definition touchscreen. The interface is simple and sleek, allowing you to accept payments (both in-store credit card payments and online payments), build restaurant floor plans, and more.
The Clover Station Duo adds a few unique features, such as a customer-facing display, which looks just like the Clover Mini. It also comes with a high-speed receipt printer.
The Solo and Duo are priced at $1,349 and $1,649, respectively.
Ease Of Use
One of the main selling points for Clover is its ease of use. No matter what Clover device you choose to go with, employees should be able to pick it up after a few minutes of training. The Clover app market has many apps that are clearly labeled and very self-explanatory. The hardware and software work together beautifully, which is not something you can confidently say with other POS systems.
Beyond that, the interfaces are very visually appealing, which makes it fun to navigate the system.
Complaints and Limitations
One of the main complaints with Clover POS is that you're limited to a single merchant services provider. This means that you can search for different customer service options, prices, and rates, yet the Clover merchant services are only through Fiserv.
Unfortunately, Fiserv doesn't get a great reputation, which is the major downside to going with this service.
Another complaint is that Clover devices can be pretty prohibitive when it comes to upfront costs. It's easy to spend anywhere from $2k to 3k right out of the gate if you need more than one terminal for your business.
Lastly, Clover has fair customer support, though it's nothing to write home about, especially considering how popular this provider is.
Competing Alternatives
Square POS
Square POS is a close alternative to Clover, as the company provides flexible and straightforward plans with a deep feature-set.
It also provides access to customer loyalty programs and payroll services with comparable fees.
Plus, many of Square's operations are much easier to understand thanks to the fact that you won't have to navigate through third-party integrations.
Lightspeed POS is another reliable and intuitive point of sale system that has very similar features to Clover.
This point of sale system uses an iPad and has a very user-friendly interface and 24/7 live support.
The great thing about Lightspeed is that it is much more affordable than Clover, making it a better option for small businesses.
Final Verdict
There are many things that Clover's point of sale system does really well, and many people note that it is one of the most intuitive options around. The beauty of the interface is that it is incredibly simple to use, perfect for businesses with a high employee turnaround. Clover also has the ability to integrate a number of third-party applications.
One of the main things to note with Clover is that it does not provide the best support for its products, which is probably due to the fact that it sells through several different merchant services providers.
However, if you don't mind taking a bit of a risk with payment processing and customer support, then Clover is one of the best options on the market.
For accurate pricing on your Clover point of sale solution, make sure to fill out our form below. We offer price quotes from several providers, so you don't have to spend your time sifting the Internet and contacting providers for estimates. You get to select the lowest quote offered in your area.
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Tyler Connaghan
Contributing Author
