SpotOn vs Clover
Whether you run a restaurant, retail, or hospitality business, Clover and SpotOn are two of the most prominent POS system choices in the industry today. You've likely come across these two solutions in your hunt to find the best management system for your business.
Of course, the difficult question is,
How do you choose the right one for your needs?
Come dive in with us as we explore the differences between these two high-end POS solutions, allowing you to make the best decision possible!
Choose SpotOn If...
SpotOn POS is a great choice for small to mid-sized businesses that are in the market for a cloud-based point-of-sale solution. Some of SpotOn's best features include tableside ordering, online payments, fraud protection, and labor management.
Choose Clover If...
Clover POS is an excellent choice for small to mid-sized multilocation businesses in the restaurant, retail, and hospitality industries. With a line of sleek hardware, secure payment processing solutions, and a bundle of reliable business management tools, it is a very well-rounded system.
SpotOn VS Clover POS System Comparison
Clover | SpotOn | |
|---|---|---|
Ideal For | Mid-sized or multi-location business owners in the restaurant and retail industry | Small to mid-sized business owners in the restaurant and retail industry |
Hardware Cost | $49 to $1,649 | $65 to $95 per month + quote-based setup fee |
Software Cost | $14.95 per month starting | $25 per month starting |
Online Transactions | 3.5% +$0.10 | 2.99% +$0.20 |
In-Person Transactions | 2.3% to 2.6% + $0.10 depending on plan | 1.99% +$0.20 |
Mobile Device | Yes | Yes |
Customer Service | 24/7 phone and email support | 24/7 phone and email support |
Contract | Provider-dependent | One-year contract |
What’s Missing | Invoicing tools, vendor management tools, PayPal integration | Open API, reliable customer support, iPhone app |
Digging Into The Details
SpotOn's Best Features:
Tableside Ordering
Tableside ordering has certainly revolutionized the restaurant industry over the past few years. In a more and more contactless world, having features like tableside ordering to match the convenience of mobile and online ordering is crucial.
With SpotOn's tableside ordering feature, guests can order straight from the table using an integrated QR code. The tableside ordering menus are constantly updated using the menu management system, ensuring that everything listed is correct while limiting the amount of human interaction between staff and customers.
The tableside ordering goes hand-in-hand with SpotOn's quality online ordering and contactless checkout options.
Reporting and Analytics
No matter what type of business you're in charge of, data is king. You can use data to find new customers or increase customer retention, manage your marketing efforts, predict sales trends, and so much more. SpotOn's all-in-one platform comes with an extensive reporting and analytics suite to give you access to that crucial data.
Whether you're looking to track inventory to predict your most popular products or see how well certain employees are performing, all of the most important data is consolidated on your SpotOn user dashboard.
All of the consolidated data can be organized and printed on your adjacent receipt printer for physical records, and the system can be set up to automatically send you notifications when large data spikes occur.
While there is no full-fledged POS app, you can get reporting data from any smartphone with an internet connection using the SpotOn reporting app.
Review Management Software
SpotOn's all-in-one point-of-sale system features a unique review management system that we've yet to see in many other POS solutions. As you likely know, reviews are the lifeblood of any business. With reviews, business owners can amend poor customer experiences as well as make changes based on customer suggestions.
With SpotOn's review management software, you can consolidate all of your reviews from multiple platforms in a single digital space.
This makes them much easier to digest and respond to. You can even set your system to send you notifications when new reviews pop up.
The review management software can be an excellent tool for customer relationship management as well, as it allows you to acknowledge or reward those who leave good reviews.
Employee Management
The SpotOn Teamwork platform allows you to consolidate all of your important employee management data, from payroll to tip distribution to scheduling and beyond.
The central hub offers a dazzling array of scheduling features, real-time sales tools, analytics, time punches, and more, saving you priceless time that might otherwise be spent on mundane tasks.
The drag-and-drop scheduling templates are some of the most talked-about tools in this portion of SpotOn's software, as they allow managers to create data-driven schedules in a matter of minutes.
The system can also be used to review PTO, sick time, and shift trades from a single window.
Industry-Specific PLatforms
While SpotOn might not be as big of a name as Clover when it comes to popular POS system providers, it is an extremely versatile developer that offers a wide range of industry-specific platforms.
From quick-service restaurants to retail shops to appointment-based businesses like nail salons or fitness centers, it's clear that one of the main goals at SpotOn was to develop a diverse system to meet the needs of several different types of businesses.
Clover's Best Features:
Flexible, High-Quality Hardware
The thing that draws many customers to Clover is its hardware. You'll find a wide range of hardware options to choose from, no matter the type of business you run.
One of our favorite characteristics of Clover hardware is that it works in offline mode as well.
If your Wi-Fi goes down during a lunch rush, Clover's hardware will back up your data so you can continue processing payments and accessing other POS tools.
Clover offers all-in-one countertop POS hardware, a portable handheld device, and simple credit card readers for businesses just starting out. The Clover Flex is certainly one of the company's most popular pieces of hardware. With a sleek, portable, and modern design, you can use it to input inventory information around your store. And, as one of the most highly recommended restaurant POS systems, it makes taking tableside orders from customers easy.
The Clover Station and Clover Station Pro are two of the company's most popular hardware solutions. The standard Clover Station POS offers a countertop unit with a cash drawer and a receipt printer, while the Clover Station Pro offers all of that and an additional customer display.
CRM Features
CRM stands for customer relationship management, and you'll find plenty of features in Clover's point-of-sale software that can keep you connected with your customer base. The beauty of Clover's CRM software is that it goes beyond your basic customer contact information storage and purchase tracking.
One of the standout features of this CRM software is the loyalty program tool. You can use this tool to create rewards for loyal customers to increase retention and show them how much you appreciate their business.
Best of all, you don't have to pay an extra fee to use the loyalty program feature, as it comes standard with all Clover plans.
We highly recommend integrating the feedback app, so your customers can leave you reviews and feedback directly. These features provide a unique level of insight into what your best customers think of your products and services.
Third-Party Integrations
Because Clover is one of the biggest names in the POS solution industry, it has several software partners with which users can integrate their systems. While SpotOn certainly has a decent number of integration partners as well, it is nowhere near the vastness of Clover's partner list.
Whether you're looking to integrate high-end payroll solutions or eCommerce support with Shopify, you can do so with Clover. The open API allows for complete integration flexibility as well. If a complex feature you need isn't available as an integration, you can more than likely develop the tool and integrate with Clover's point-of-sale solution.
Payroll Management
We can't think of a more powerful payroll management solution than the one found in Clover's point-of-sale POS solution.
You can use Clover's payroll management software to manage payments and keep track of employee hours.
With the included Clover app, you can even manage payroll-related operations on the go.
As a business owner, you likely know how time-consuming certain tasks can be.
Time-tracking and scheduling are two common tasks that require a lot of manpower. With Clover's payroll management software, you can dump the most mundane work on the software.
Multi-Store Management
Business owners who run large enterprises often applaud Clover's ability to help manage multiple locations. Whether you need to rotate stock and inventory or manage staff from location to location, there are plenty of muli-location functionalities available on Clover's apps to help you save time while increasing revenue.
With its top-of-the-line cloud-based software, you can easily open up new locations and input information to connect them with your current data stream. The multi-location management software can then send you intelligent, real-time reporting from each location, staff management tools, and customer support.
SpotOn Drawbacks:
One major drawback of SpotOn compared to Clover is that SpotOn does not feature an iPhone app. Many business owners are on the go these days, meaning they need a streamlined way to get access to their business insights wherever they can find an internet connection. Popular iPhone POS apps are made to make on-the-god transactions, track employees, and keep an eye on the daily operations of your business while you're out. We hope that SpotOn eventually makes its system more flexible with mobile software.
Another big drawback of SpotOn based on customer reviews is the company's lack of quality customer support. Customers often complain about the difficulty of getting in touch with someone on the customer support team. Having reliable customer support is crucial when you're dealing with system glitches, shutdowns, or payment processing lockouts. If you can't get your system back up, you lose money. Before solidifying your decision to purchase SpotOn, we urge you to consider your future customer support needs.
Clover Drawbacks:
One drawback of Clover vs. SpotOn is that Clover does not offer PayPal as a payment processing integration. If you do business of any kind, you know PayPal. It's one of the most popular payment platforms in the industry. Though Clover has several integrations that SpotOn does not, including Xero, MailChimp, and Shopify, lacking PayPal access isn't something we can ignore.
Another major Clover drawback is that the system can be purchased through a vast network of third-party sellers. While this certainly makes this solution more accessible, it also opens up the market to bad seeds that can overcharge you or lock you into long contracts without your knowledge. Unlike many other point-of-sale solutions, you need a fair bit of caution when shopping around for the best deal on a Clover point-of-sale POS.
Which Is A Better Value?
Both Clover and SpotOn are great options for small to medium businesses that need flexible tools. From full-service restaurants to retail businesses, each of these platforms offers quality features to keep operations running as smoothly as possible, including inventory management, employee management, customer relationship management, and more.
If you're in the market for a POS solution designed for merchants that need high-end, flexible hardware and customization through third-party integrations, Clover is a better choice. However, if you're in the market for a sleek and modern cloud-based point-of-sale POS solution designed individually with industry-specific needs, SpotOn is a better choice.
Both of these solutions get an A+ overall rating from us, and both certainly have happy users behind them.
Tyler Connaghan
Contributing Author
