Rain POS Reviews

Pros

Integrated Marketing
Automatic "pushing" of items to our Reverb.com Account
Lightweight on system resources on our iMac's

Cons

Special Order Workflow is clunky and needs to be simplified. We've resorted to using the "Quote" option to better manage Special Orders and ring in total sales under a "Gift Card" first. That way when working with multiple vendors on a special order, we have easier use of customer funds when "finalizing" the deal.
Register is Average and would prefer ability to see cost of products on screen.
In Register - when scanning duplicate items they get entered as "new" line item versus adding to the SKU already input.
Can't us an IR Gun on an iPad when scanning incoming inventory or during inventory counts.
Layaway Screen has some great features, but workflow is a bit convoluted.
Website build out is horribly confusing and NOTHING follows traditional HTML processes. This was the same problem with Lightspeed's eCom platform - hard to work with and no sense of workflow.

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale and Shopify POS

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

Price at first - Lightspeed wanted us to pay 40% MORE than we did previously and provide us less.

Switched From

Square Point of Sale and Shopify POS

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

Price, integrated marketing features and the ability to "push" items to Reverb.com.

Pros

Rain Pos is dependable, well priced with instantaneous software help. The company LISTENS to their clients, I can't emphasize this enough. My POS is with me everywhere, at the doctor, on vacation, in bed at night.

Cons

I would like an end of day report on products loaded into the system.

Alternatives Considered

POSIM

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

TRS was retiring their dos system.

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

It was designed for quilting. They understand all of the pins and needles.

Pros

It was all in one with a nice platform. Handled customer accounts and payment links built into the invoices.

Cons

They promised the world and delivered nothing. The on boarding took months and I had to pay for service during the $2,000 cost of onboarding. Then when we went to cancel they said you have to give us a notice. Why you said zero length contract.

Pros

Product is very easy to use. It's nice that I can put items on my website right from the product page. Web page is easy to edit.

Cons

I wish there were more yarn and knitting notions vendors integrated into the system.

Alternatives Considered

Lightspeed Golf

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

The reps presented the information well. They answered any question I had and were willing to show me on a demo. The nicest people work here.

Pros

This is a great program that integrates a point of sale program with a website store that keep inventory stock levels on the website. The basics functions are easy to use and learn.

Cons

Rain POS needs to make some of the reporting more functional so that you can see product sales easier and for a monthly and yearly sense.

Pros

We have used Rain POS (Like Sew) for over five years and are very satisfied with it. We love that our website (recently upgraded by Rain) integrates with our POS, keeping our inventory numbers accurate. The Point of Sale is very user friendly. Reporting is decent. The website is simple to update.

Cons

While there are sometimes reporting issues or technical issues, Rain has an easy process in place to report problems online or by phone, and they are generally responsive in a timely manner. Rain also has a method to make suggestions on how to change or update the POS/website. I appreciate that they are willing to take our suggestions!

I do wish there was a report for Items Received; it would be nice to be able to create custom reports.

The only major issue we have with Rain is when the system crashes - either because our internet goes out (in which case we are able to use our iPads on cellular to ring up customers) or because Rain goes down. Luckily, this is very rare! And when it's Rain's issue, it is usually remedied quickly.

Finally, it would be great if Rain integrated with Sage Accounting software. We have to manually transfer data from Rain's reports into Sage Accounting. This is time consuming.

Alternatives Considered

Shopify

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

We wanted to integrate our website and our point of sale system.

Pros

RAIN lives in the cloud and being able to access our POS from any device is a huge advantage over the POSs we were using before. The Rent-To-Own module helped simplify a very important part of our business. Integrating with REVERB has helped extend our e-commerce reach across the country. The user interface is clean and user-friendly; just what you'd expect from a modern cloud-based platform.

Cons

The marketing platform did not meet our expectations. The email marketing in particular is not up to what I would consider industry standard in terms of the template builder, contact management, scheduled emails, segmented lists, and analytics. We have since dropped that add-on and went with ActiveCampaign which is light years ahead.

Alternatives Considered

AIM and Lightspeed Retail

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

The former product was not great.

Pros

I think the customer service is very good. Recently I wanted my homepage to be updated and revamped. They worked very quickly and efficiently with me to get give it a new look and within a few days I had a website looks very modern and professional. Also, I really like the marketing package. I used the POS for several years before adding the marketing feature. I like the automatic emails that it sends to my customers every week. Also, My website is easier to use from a cell phone now. It's worth paying the extra money for each month.

Cons

I do not like the way the inventory receiving works. It is supposed to be integrated with some of my vendors but doesn't seem to be complete or accurate. Also, I really wish that the email marketing was easier to use and more robust.

Pros

The program is quite intuitive thus making it relatively easy to use. I like the fact that it is cloud based so we can add another register as needed during very busy times. Also the integration between the website and the POS is great for product inventory. General ease of taking physical inventory.

Cons

There are a number of small glitches - ways to accomplish tasks that are not thought all the way through. I get a listing of UPCs from a vendor with my new order of earrings, many are duplicates that we have had. We upload the entire list, the system is not able to recognize duplicates and combine them just keeps adding the new number making physical inventory a nightmare. Customer name search is an "includes" function instead of a "starts with" so an Andy pulls up Sandy, Candy & every Anderson, i no particular order.

Pros

ease of access. I like being able to use the software anywhere.

Cons

the reporting features are not very helpful. also the bugs and anomalies that we experience on a weekly basis are annoying.

Alternatives Considered

Lightspeed Retail

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

desire to move to a cloud based platform.

Switched From

CashFootprint Point-of-Sale

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

price

Pros

It is easy to use and update, so I can create and modify my own products, and add products from the integrated industry catalogs. It provides me with useful information about my customers and sales transactions, data which really helps me keep and attract new customers. I especially like the batch product update feature so I can change a group of products at a time without having to individually update each product record. I have had good customer service, especially when there was a problem with the software. I have seen my sales grow and my professional online image enhanced. The cost is reasonable for my business so far. The video training is great and absolutely necessary to understand how to use the software efficiently. I also attended training at Fall Quilt Market which was excellent and highly informative.

Cons

I am disappointed that I am unable to integrate my email marketing with the website. In my opinion, The Marketing package is not as useful to online-only stores as it is to POS customers. The newsletter module is clunky and hard to work with. The email feature is useful, but since my email list is on a different service and not integrated, it is not as useful as it could be. It took awhile for my site to get up and running well, and to work out all the bugs. I had to be persistent in following up to get problems fixed and clear in my communication to be sure they understood what I was asking for.

Pros

Ease of use, and integration with our e-commerce site.

Cons

There are a few features that I'm waiting on that will tailor the system more for the music industry.

Pros

Feature laden! and they are still developing more music store specific features! One customer data base, one inventory database. Integrated POS system, integrated Wed Store, integrated repairs system. Then add on: integrated short term rentals, rent to own with auto pay, layaway, email marketing abilities, gift card ability, coupon ability, push products to Reverb ability, create and save quotes under a customer name, track store account balances and apply to transactions, purchasing lists by vendor populated with qty triggered items and with and easy receiving and item costs updating.
Outstandingly responsive customer service!

Cons

Still waiting on the private lesson feature =( But it is in development and it sounds like it will be finished Spring of 2018. Would be great to see invoicing against a quote so I could do school business with schools requiring a PO number on an invoice for payment.

Pros

integrated POS and e-commerce website. web based makes it functional on any computer type. RTO module is nice.

Cons

Special Orders/Purchase Orders/Receiving Orders is grossly deficient. Reporting is not great. Prominent bugs in website text in regard to special characters. Lacks flexibility in some of the website design options. No rotation option for product photos. Label printing is terrible. No dimension option for shipping calculations.

Pros

The support we received from the rain team in getting started with a POS system. None of my team had any experience with POS and they made the transition easy. We still don’t use all the features available but are adding them to our system gradually. The customer support system is fantastic. The reports available on the system save hundreds of man hours and help us see how our business is doing. The inventory system is a huge help.

Cons

Integration with some Consumer Finance companies would be valuable to retail users. A “Dummy” website that could be used for training new employees would be a big help.

Pros

Easy to use, and help with inventory and daily and year end reports

Cons

We have no suggestions for any new features we would like to see.

Pros

my contact was really nice.
I was very excited about the integration aspects of the software, unfortunately I was never able to use them.

Cons

I was initially assured our sales history could be migrated. Later I received an email saying it could not. I responded that was unacceptable and I did not wish to continue with the software. It is useless to us without it. I was reassured if I exported the data in the correct formats, it would work. We spent three days checking the data to assure a high level of accuracy and sent it in the requested formats. I was told the migration team would take care of the rest. Untrue. We spent weeks, rechecking the data which was horrifically incorrect. We sent several punch lists. Some of the errors were fixed but often we were told "we don't know why this is happening". Even simple yes/no columns in our spreadsheets were randomly incorrect. Were we told we would just have to manually check all the data; over 3000 customers and 19000 sales receipts. We worked for three months, 100s of hours and have never been able to go live due to all of the errors. I couldn't enter employees in the system without them being an administrator, which they classified as a "glitch" and told me to use a different computer than the one at work. I have desperately tried to get these issues corrected. When I requested a refund they said the fees were non-refundable after the migration is complete. My migration was never complete and I requested not to continue with them if they were unable to migrate my sales history, before they started the migration. This system did not work as advertised and sold to me.

Pros

The platform Rain provides is user friendly for a Non-tech person as myself. It was fairly straight forward to populate and personalize my website to fit the needs of my business and clients. Customer service has always been responsive and helpful to resolve any difficulties promptly. The value for the cost is excellent.

Cons

Least favorite is the recent difficulties sending a newsletter. My longtime email address was now blocked from sending. I had to purchase a business email and the integration was rather difficult. Without the help of my husband a professional IT person, I could not have completed the changes myself.

Pros

Tons of features and easy to use.

Cons

To print a receipt there are too many steps. Wish it was easier or less time consuming.

Pros

integration

Cons

still developing some features

Pros

Keeping track of inventory , able to make changes

Cons

Doesn’t always record fabric sales properly

Pros

We went with RAIN for a number of reasons. Integration with our website, and in turn, Reverb.com was very important to us. We also liked RAIN's ability to migrate from our antiquated POS so that we had a relatively easy transition. Lastly, being a cloud based system allows our entire staff to work on the system from anywhere.

Cons

At first (about 12 months ago) RAIN was a bit clunky. Navigating was slow, they didn't allow enough pictures for our website, and the search function was not always effective. Also the Reverb integration had growing pains. The thing about RAIN is that they are constantly improving and correcting issues based on their customer's (ours) feedback. At this point the Reverb integration and search functions work perfectly and they now allow unlimited pics on each listing.

Pros

I love the ease of using it, the reports help out so much. Looking up customers history is a breeze.

Cons

I had trouble with my labels in the printing mode. I use a different size of label than they have on file. Not able to pick my own expatriation date on coupons or add new coupons.

Pros

It manages the inventory in real time between store and online purchases. Now that I have learned how to manage the website, it is easy to frequently change the home page, add new inventory and create promotions. The inventory catalog is a major time saver.

Cons

There are some surprising disconnects: although a customer is set up with 10% discount, the discount will only apply automatically when purchasing in the store. Somehow the store customer and the (same) web customer are not connected. Lack of integration with shipping companies. Cumbersome uploads to QuickBooks.

Pros

I love that inventory reflects between shopping instore or online.

Cons

No is perfect and sometimes there are bug they get worked out.