Shopify vs TouchBistro POS: Which point of sale solution is right for your company?
If you’re looking for a quick answer, Shopify is my favorite POS system for organizations in search of a flexible, feature-rich solution that can adapt to any business need. It’s ideal for companies looking to combine ecommerce with in-person sales, and it’s incredibly easy to use.
TouchBistro, on the other hand, is a great option if you’re looking for a point of sale system specifically tuned to the needs of restaurant owners. It combines payment processing and inventory management with unique tools for menu, table, and kitchen management.
Read on for my complete review of how these two options stack up head-to-head.
Quick Verdict
Choose Shopify POS: If you’re looking for a comprehensive omnichannel selling solution with deep integrations to a leading ecommerce platform. Shopify POS is versatile, scalable, flexible, and easy to use, and the Lite version comes included with most of Shopify’s ecommerce plans, making it a cost-effective options.
Choose TouchBistro POS: If you’re a restaurant manager in search of a user-friendly system, and a range of tools that make it easier to manage business performance. TouchBistro gives you everything from table management to menu customization tools, as well as flexible payment processing options, and great reporting features.
Shopify POS vs TouchBistro POS: The Overview
I’ll start this comparison guide with a quick introduction to both Shopify POS, and TouchBistro. Shopify POS is the point of sale solution offered by the ecommerce market leader, Shopify. It’s deeply integrated with Shopify’s ecommerce platform, allowing for seamless synchronization between your online store and in-store selling activities.
It’s also extremely easy to use and versatile, with built-in marketing and sales tools, a customizable checkout, and powerful inventory, customer, and staff management.
The “Lite” version of the software is included in most core Shopify plans, and Shopify also offers a premium plan, and a range of hardware options for vendors to choose from.
TouchBistro is a point of sale solution intended for restaurants and food service businesses. It includes standard POS features like secure payment processing and inventory management.
However, it also offers features for floor, table, and menu management, kitchen display systems, and guest engagement. TouchBistro can also integrate with a range of third-party apps. Plus, it supports online ordering options for omnichannel businesses.
Shopify vs TouchBistro: Software Features
Quick Verdict: Shopify has a broader range of general-purpose features than TouchBistro, but TouchBistro offers more restaurant-specific solutions.
Both TouchBistro and Shopify offer feature-rich software solutions. The capabilities you can access will vary depending on the plan you choose.
However, each option includes the basic capabilities you need for point of sale management, such as customer and staff management, payment processing, inventory management, and reporting and analytics.
TouchBistro Software Features
TouchBistro’s software is specially tuned to the needs of fast-paced food service businesses and restaurant environments. Some of the central features included are:
Payment processing: TouchBistro Payments, powered by Chase gives you the freedom to accept a range of payment methods from customers, including credit and debit card payments, and digital payments from Google and Apple Pay.
Inventory Management: With TouchBistro, you can manage inventory right down to the specific ingredients of each dish. There’s the option to add items manually, import CSV files, and use barcode scanners. However, there are no advanced vendor management features.
Table and floor management: TouchBistro allows users to create floor plans, assign staff to sections, book reservations, and track seat availability. You can even monitor table statuses for weeks and months, and send automated alerts to remind customers of a reservation.
Menu management: The customizable menu management system helps you organize your menu, schedule specials, and create a customized checkout experience for diners. You can also integrate your menus with your kitchen display system.
Order management: TouchBistro’s kitchen display systems, customer-facing displays, and tableside ordering options help you serve guests quicker and more effectively. You can even places ads on customer-facing displays, and accept orders placed online.
Customer management: With TouchBistro, customer management is easy. You can collect customer contact details, ask them for feedback, and send targeted advertisements to clients. Plus, there’s a loyalty program feature available, options for creating gift cards, and a built-in CRM platform.
Integrations: TouchBistro works with a range of tools for payment processing, accounting, inventory management, business insights, and analytics. You can also add apps for staff scheduling and payroll.
Reporting and analytics: TouchBistro gives you access to comprehensive reporting tools and visual insights into diner behavior. There are more than 50 report types to choose from, and you can filter reports by date, payment type, and menu category.
Staff Management: TouchBistro’s staff management tool, and its ability to integrate with payroll and schedule apps can help you optimize shift management and resource allocation. You can even track overtime hours and sales performance.
Shopify POS Software Features
Shopify POS is a flexible point of sale solution deeply integrated with the Shopify ecommerce platform. Like with TouchBistro, the features you get will vary depending on the plan you choose, but some of the core capabilities include:
Omnichannel selling: Comprehensive solutions for selling online and in-store in any business environment. You can create product QR codes, sync orders between your store and ecommerce platform, and offer customers a range of delivery and pickup options.
Inventory management: Shopify’s smart inventory management system includes everything from purchase orders, to demand forecasting, low stock reports, transfers, inventory counts, and sale item suggestions, for comprehensive control.
Staff management: The staff management tools included with Shopify POS support manager approvals, numerous staff members, sales attribution, roles and permissions, and unique staff POS PINs. You can also integrate with payroll and scheduling tools.
Custom checkout: With the custom checkout experience offered by Shopify, you can manage exchanges, custom-print receipts, create discount codes, automatically calculate taxes, apply custom discount codes and more.
Payment processing: With Shopify Payments on all POS plans, you’ll be able to accept virtually any type of payment method, and even create custom payment types, such as gift cards and split payment options.
Customer management: Shopify POS includes tools for creating rich customer profiles with order histories and contact details. You’ll also be able to organize your customers with tags, which can help with segmentation.
Marketing: Shopify makes increasing sales easy, with tools for showcasing product reviews, connecting with customers via email, and integrations for social media and Google merchant center. Plus, you can integrate the platform with other marketing tools.
Integrations: Shopify POS can integrate with a huge range of marketing, sales, inventory management, accounting, and business management tools. The Shopify app store is home to thousands of apps that work directly with Shopify POS.
Reporting and analytics: Comprehensive reporting and analytics tools in Shopify POS include everything from sales dashboards to cash flow reports, discounts reports, inventory insights, cash tracking solutions and product reports.
Shopify vs TouchBistro: Hardware Solutions
Quick Verdict: Shopify has more proprietary hardware to offer business owners. TouchBistro integrates with a range of hardware solutions specifically designed for restaurants.
Once you have the ideal POS software for your retail or restaurant business, you’ll need the correct hardware. TouchBistro doesn’t offer a lot of proprietary hardware options, but you can buy various printers, routers, barcode scanners, kitchen displays systems and registers from the company.
The organization will even help you choose the best configuration for your needs.
For the most part, however, TouchBistro is designed to be run from an iPad or tablet, with a range of accessories, which can help to keep your hardware costs low.
Shopify’s POS solution can work with a range of third-party hardware solutions, but the company also offers some proprietary options, such as the Shopify POS Go mobile point of sale system, for $399.
You can also create custom kits of Shopify’s hardware and third-party accessories, accessing a range of registers, displays, tablet stands, barcode scanners, and card readers.
Like TouchBistro, you can run your Shopify POS software from a mobile device or tablet, with a connected card reader, so it’s great for keeping set-up costs low.
Read more:
Shopify vs TouchBistro: Pricing and Fees
Quick Verdict: Shopify is the more cost-effective option, particularly if you have an ecommerce plan with Shopify already.
Shopify and TouchBistro take a very different approach to pricing for their solutions. While the price of purchasing hardware from both vendors will vary drastically depending on what you need, the software cost for Shopify is actually cheaper than you’d think.
If you have one of Shopify’s core ecommerce plans already, the Shopify POS Lite solution will be included in that package.
This means you can pay as little as $39 per month to access most of the features if you’re using the Basic Shopify plan.
Notably, the Advanced Shopify plan ($399 per month), does add a couple of extra reports and features to the system.
Alternatively, if you want all the features Shopify POS can offer, you’ll need a Shopify POS Pro plan. This costs $89 per month per location to add to your existing Shopify ecommerce plan. Alternatively, you can access it included with your Shopify Plus plan.
Notably however, all Shopify POS users will need a Shopify ecommerce subscription, which might be a problem if you’re using a different ecommerce system for online selling.
TouchBistro doesn’t have any free plans, but access to the cloud-based platform (which you can also connect to a range of ecommerce platforms) starts at $69 per month. The $69 per month plan will give you access to menu, floor plan, table and staff management, as well as reporting and analytics.
There are also extra fees for certain add-on features, such as:
Marketing: $99
Reservation: $229
Online ordering: $50
Loyalty programs: $99
Gift cards: $25
These add-on costs can make TouchBistro a lot more expensive than Shopify POS pretty quickly.
Shopify vs TouchBistro: Customer Support
Quick Verdict: I find Shopify’s customer support a little better, thanks to the wide range of self-help resources available, and Shopify’s huge community.
Both Shopify and TouchBistro offer similar solutions when it comes to customer support. With both companies, retailers and restaurant owners can access direct support via phone, email, and live chat. However, the speed of your response may vary depending on your plan.
Additionally, both companies offer access to a range of resources online, such as FAQs, guides, videos, setup instructions and troubleshooting documents. However, Shopify does have a more robust selection of blogs and videos available. Plus, it has a more active community.
I also think that Shopify’s software and hardware is a little easier to use, with tooltips to guide you through the process of managing everything. This means you probably won’t need to reach out for direct help from the team as often as you would with TouchBistro.
Shopify vs TouchBistro: Which is Best?
So, which solution do you need, Shopify or TouchBistro?
Ultimately, Shopify is the better option overall if you’re looking for a cost-effective, versatile POS solution, with deep integrations to a leading ecommerce platform. It also has more proprietary hardware options, and more built-in marketing tools.
TouchBistro is likely to be the better choice for you if you need a system specifically dedicated to restaurant management. Although restaurants can access integrations with Shopify to unlock additional features, Shopify POS doesn’t offer things like menu and table management as standard.
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