Rain POS Reviews

Pros

Easy way to add products to both POS and eCommerce simultaneously is one of the best way to both.

Cons

The cost of Rain POS is a bit steep for many local businesses and lack huge community base for support.

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365 Business Central and Bindo POS

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

Easy eCommerce integration and unified platform.

Switched From

QuickBooks Desktop, Odoo, Lavu POS and QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

Cost of running the POS and easy initial setup.

Pros

As a small business it is difficult to manage technology without an IT Department. I wanted to take my business online and struggled to find a solution that was affordable, easy to use and had good customer support. RAIN not only met my goals but exceeded them. Their customer support is what sets them ahead of their competition.

Cons

There are a couple of features I wish they would improve on. The most important to me are Customer Rewards. It doesn't allow online orders to use their rewards and the accrued reward is a dollar amount they can spend when I need it to be a % off.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online Advanced, Clover and Stripe

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

I wanted to take my products online with ease.

Switched From

QuickBooks Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

They offered a product that met both my retail instore POS needs but also got my business online without much effort. The implementation came with a web design, importing existing data from my old system and was most affordable for a business of my size.

Pros

Rain was sold to me and my music store as an all in one solution for POS, website, online sales, marketing, job orders, repairs, rentals, the whole nine. I love the POS and inventory part. The site is a little laggy to start and then everything works super fast. Most things in this realm are intuitive.

Cons

The onboarding cost was kind of high and I don't feel like I got that much out of it. The trainings were unnecessary and could have easily been done with a video. I really, really, really hate the website builder. They set up my website as close as they could match to my previous one from Wix and they did a pretty good job (although I discovered some mistakes that were pretty bad, such as the wrong phone number for my store, they were easily fixed by me) but I am frightened of doing anything to it beyond changing the text. I would say their web builder UI/UX is straight out of the 90s but that even the 90s had the concept of draft and publish. EVERYTHING you do on the website builder is IMMEDIATELY live and there is no way to revert to an early version without contacting them.

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale, Shopify POS and Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

I got a postcard in the mail and called up. The sales pitch was good and it had more features specific to music stores and at the time I liked the idea.

Pros

Rain POS has allowed us to integrate our eCommerce and in store retail in a way that no other company has been able to do. It has been so easy to learn how to use it, and it is very in depth. It is easy for me to change things on the website, and if there is something I can't do, their customer service team is always quick to help.

Cons

Some features need to be changed buy the software team, I can't change them myself.

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale, BigCommerce and Shopify

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

We were not able to use Shopkeep with our online store, so controlling inventory was quite difficult.

Switched From

ShopKeeper Job Control

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

They had a website umbrella built specifically for our type of store. We are able to sell things in a way that no other website/POS provider would allow us to do.

Pros

We've had a great experience thus far using the Rain point of sale program. The initial training was extremely in depth and helped us grasp all of the features before implementation. We love the product integration with Reverb.com and the fact that our inventory remains cohesive across online and in-store platforms. Online & phone support is quick & helpful. Rain has also been very helpful designing and updating our website, which is tied into the point of sale. They are constantly improving, updating and listening to customer suggestions to make their product even better.

Cons

One feature that is extremely helpful in our industry (music store) but missing from Rain, is a Maintenance Agreement/Service Contract module. We were disappointed it was not available when we switched to Rain, since we used that feature daily with AIMsi. We have found some halfway workarounds in Rain, but would like a more robust integrated module. Ideal features would be: MA identifier on serialized instruments in Work Orders module, ability to auto-send renewal emails to customers when their annual MA is expiring, MA batch operations for large inventories of instruments (many of the schools we service have 200-400 instruments that we maintain on MA's annually).

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale and QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

AIMsi was very antiquated and not user friendly. Support was spotty and typically condescending. At the time there was no seamless website integration and we were tied to licenses on desktop machines. That is not very useful when we're on the road at a school and need to access our POS.

Switched From

AIM

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

Overall features: website/online platform integration, ease of use, extensive initial training and mobile friendly platform.

Pros

We bought it for the seamless integration of Web and Brick & Mortar inventory management, sales and ease of use. It works very well for this purpose.

Cons

It is ultimately POS and Inventory Management software with little Accounting functionality. Daily exports to QuickBooks or other software are required, with additional entries in the accounting s/w to accommodate accounting best practices, Taxes on Receiving orders, billing and other financial tasks not accommodated in Like Sew. There are still some issues with Sales, Shipping and Taxes in Canada, and there is no ability to set up multiple price levels internally

Alternatives Considered

POSIM

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

WIndward was an excellent ERP level system with integrated accounting, however, it was technically complex, did not integrate easily to a web site, would have cost a significant amount to integrate web and shop data for sales and inventory management, and incurred significant annual/recurring maintenance charges

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

Ease of use, simplicity of architecture, direct web integration and an offering specifically tailored to the sewing/quilting industry

Pros

Easy to use and has great functionality. Could have a little bit more functionality than it has to make it great. However they need more people to fix bugs and enact on others suggestions to develop the product further. Customer Support is a joke!

Cons

Customer Support is a joke! I contacted support about a glitch. I told them to call me because I broke my wrist and easier to explain than typing it out. They refused to call me as if their time was more valuable in R&D than fixing bugs. I cant type with a broken wrist. All this is one fingered.

Pros

LikeSew is more precise at managing my inventory and handling the day-to-day business of running my fabric store than GoDaddy ever was. I now know exactly how much inventory I have on hand and it's value and what categories it falls into.

Cons

There could be some improvements in the email marketing program and the inventory receipt areas.

Alternatives Considered

Shopify POS

Reasons for Choosing Rain POS

I had no control over inventory management and it was time to renew my GoDaddy products.

Switched From

Square Point of Sale and GoDaddy Website Builder

Reasons for Switching to Rain POS

I had used Shopify at a friends business and I didn't like it.

Pros

I like the integration with My Music Staff. I also like the ease in which we can automate customer payments for services and rentals.

Cons

I do not like that we cannot easily adjust pricing, and have difficulty on supplier invoice tracking with taxes.

Pros

So far the only Pro is that you can pull a some information from Vendors. Being able to have inventory taken out with sales from Reverb is really nice, it was the catch hook that brought me to RAIN.

Cons

The merge is really rough, I did not get all of my customers merged from my previous POS system, my lay-a-ways were lost or messed up, past sales are lost, pictures had to be taken again. All the upc numbers were mismatched with other products. When you try to put pictures of your product for the website, you never know what picture it may choose no matter how many times you choose the correct one. I have had a bass I have tried many times to add a picture and it refused to add it and puts up a picture of a gig bag. I was told if I used Chrome many of the issues would subside, sadly this is not true. If you are starting out fresh, this may be an okay system to use, if you are migrating from another system, I would NOT recommend using RAIN. I really had high hopes but this has been a disaster. Even the work orders, which I thought would be easier, are a huge pain.

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

Ease of use even for a person not formally trained in computer technology.

Cons

Just a few small glitches here and there, but they continue to make improvements and they are quickly resolved.

Pros

Rain POS has helped me run my business in many ways. Reports are very easy to understand and useful for book keeping and planning. Most of all I love the help Rain offers. They have always been there for me and are so nice, especially when trying to set up my website. I am not a computer genius and don't have to be because I use Rain. In recent events we had to start selling products through our web site. Rain was able to teach me over the phone how to set all of it up, I couldn't be more grateful.

Cons

Most of the time the things that I felt could be improved have been through updates like phone numbers showing on receipts. It shows that they do listen when we ask for improvements.

Pros

Online and Brick and Mortar integration, extensive customer tracking, easy to customize website, efficient product ordering/receiving system

Cons

Updates can be slow to release, lacks a little in the reporting functionality

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

Rain is cloud based software.
It’s pretty inexpensive compared to others
Works on any computer with internet.

Cons

Reporting is lacking
Have to click three buttons to print a receipt
Glitchy and buggy
Inability to remove items from orders that don’t ship complete
Customer service is lacking

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

simple to use, but yet has the ability to fulfill all our POS needs.

Cons

the inability to make corrections to mistakes without contacting Rain i.e. reversing voids, having voided sales show up on my daily sales reports, and the customer history shot;ld show open sales and or on account sales as a different color or as an open sale rather than completed sale.

Pros

I originally like the fact that the POS interacted with the suppliers . Made it easy to load inventory into the system. Now they are raising the cost so much it really does not pay for itself.

Cons

The cost is high for a same business to use.

Pros

I like the data capture feature and the real time aspect of the online merging with the B&M shop. Knowing that what my customer is seeing online is what is actually available is fabulous.

Cons

The sad lack of report query options, particularly in regards to my inventory. I can put notes in if I make an adjustment but can't ever see those notes again. That's a feature I've been asking for for years.

Pros

Once you learn the system and features, it's pretty easy and intuitive. I like how integrated everything is - purchasing, receiving inventory, online and in-store transactions. Adding new products through almost any of my vendors is fast and easy.

Cons

The software is under constant development which is good, but also challenging. I like that they are continually working to improve the product, but it can be time consuming to keep up with constant changes.

Pros

I like that it integrates inventory between our point of sale and our website. We also like being able to access customers' purchase history.

Cons

Bare bones reporting, i.e. for sales data. Many reports offer zero or very few "drill down" options for specifics.

Pros

It was sold that it would be a great fit. It is very inexpensive.

Cons

They do not know what they are doing. They can only help you for 30 mins and then say that they do not know how to fix the issue so they have to get off the phone. Their labels do not work properly and they ast like it is not a big deal.