CStore Essentials 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

CStore Essentials

2.6

(17)

Pricing

Starting at $29.00 per month

About CStore Essentials

CStore Essentials is a retail operations management solution, which helps convenience store owners create promotions for customers, keep track of services offered and manage all fuel tasks from within a centralized platform. Key features include lottery management, live sales, pricebook, inventory management, user access levels and fuel management.

Teams using CStore Essentials can track employee tasks like clocking in and out and calculate pay hours, as well as compare cash flows and balances through the automated financial reporting dashboard. The system connects with existing payroll systems to generate reports of employee timesheets in order to emit payments.

CStore Essentials enables businesses to integrate tobacco loyalty with their POS and track purchases, which can be scanned into data reports and submitted to vendors.

CStore Essentials Screenshots

CStore Essentials Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $29.00 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Scan Data Basic

$29.00

flat rate, per month

Plan includes:

Automated Reporting
Multi-Pack Rebates
Scan Data Rebates

Store Operations Standard

$69.00

flat rate, per month

Plan includes:

Automated Reporting
Daily Reporting
Fuel Management
Inventory Management
Live Sales
Lottery Management
Mobile and Web App
Multi-Pack Rebates
Pricebook
Promotions

Tobacco Loyalty Plus

$89.00

flat rate, per month

Plan includes:

Automated Reporting
Daily Reporting
Fuel Management
Inventory Management
Live Sales
Lottery Management
Loyalty Host Connection
Loyalty POS Integration
Mobile and Web App
Multi-Pack Rebates

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CStore Essentials Features

Popular features found in Convenience Store
Barcode/Ticket Scanning
Commission Management
Customizable Reports
Discount Management
Fuel Management
Inventory Tracking
Lottery Management
Loyalty Program
Mobile Access
Multi-Location
Reporting & Statistics
Third-Party Integrations
More features of CStore Essentials
Billing & Invoicing
Employee Management
Inventory Management
Performance Metrics
Price/Margin Management
Purchase Order Management
Real-Time Data
Receipt Management
Sales Reports

CStore Essentials User Reviews

Overall Rating

2.6

Ratings Breakdown

18%

24%

12%

41%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

3.4

Value for money

3.6

Customer support

2.3

Functionality

3.2

Have you used CStore Essentials and would like to share your experience with others?

Dan L.

Verified reviewer

Retail

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed July 2020

Great Product for Beginners

I don't know how I would manage my business without the use of this app.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I would have to say that the product itself is intuitive and easy to use. I did not use the support department to setup my software, I simply did it on my own and I found it easy to setup. I track my lottery, sales, inventory, and price-book through the program. I am slowly teaching my employees to use the program as well. The app is nicer than some of the others that I have seen.

Cons:

There is always room for improvement and this software is no exception. To being with, user permission levels are not customizable. They do give you a list of "levels" that have worked so far, but there is not a detailed list of what levels have for permissions, you have to kind of go about it through trial and error. When I asked CS about the different levels, the answer I received was that the levels name says it all, but that is not the case. The app that you can use on your phone has several faults.... When creating custom price or promo groups, you can not edit existing names or delete duplicates, which is EXTREMELY annoying. When adding new groups, you get an error, but I has really created the group, so not knowing any better in the beginning, I have multiple groups of the same nature. When making promo changes, you have to log into the website in order to send changes to promo groups, but you can send price changes directly from the app. On the website, multiple reports do not work properly if at all. It is very hard to customize the Day Closing feature. No customizable reports!! Scan Data is nice, but I keep having issues with RJR reports.

Reasons for choosing CStore Essentials

The price

Imran K.

Retail

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed June 2017

Great program with even better management and support

It is a complete program and make managing the business much easier. Everything is at your fingertips. Very well designed program and even better support staff.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

You can count on these guys. They have a wonderful onboarding process where they hold your hand through the installation and setup. I highly recommend this program as it is a complete system. Also Alvin is wonderful to work with.

Manish S.

Verified reviewer

Retail

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2023

Horrible tech support

I been trying to reach the tech support since last one month. Contacted there tech support, chat support, sales team but no one willing to take the responsibilities and help.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Very nice software which can deliver all reports in no time.

Cons:

Horrible tech support for basic needs of inventory and margin.

Reasons for switching to CStore Essentials

Due to tech support and we are loosing money every day. I have signed up for 5 stores and EDI invoices, but they don't care for business. There tech people seems to be don't care for work and able to help or resolve the simple issues.

Hitesh P.

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review source

Reviewed November 2016

Best software, Worst customer service

I would say they have done an awesome job creating this software, I mean they have paid attention to all the detail work that, as an owner want in a software. I would say there is not that many company offer what they offer for a price and features. they had mess up in one department and that is their customer service. I mean really if you know that you had cover everything in your software and such an unprofessional service. that is totally unexpected by users. if you call or email their tech support you will not get an answer for few days and even if you call them and ask for the status they may not even remembered it and you might have to explain you problems over and over. in case if you get lucky enough, where they fixed your problem, they will not notify you that its been resolved. I would not bad mouth them at all , but I would tell them to pay attention to their customer service. for people I would say that this software is a one of a kind in c-store back office software industries. it got a bright future for sure if they take care their customer.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

software features, delivery scan , plu management, lotto report , lotto scan gas delivery gas price change etc

Cons:

seriously there is nothing I can point at it and say I don't like this section.

Vendor Response

Mr. Patel Thank you for your kind feedback regarding the product and functionalitys. With regards to the customer support, I am happy to inform you that as of Dec 31, we hired 3 new support reps to meet our demands and are now trained for basic support issues. We have seen a reduction in our support wait time from 12-15 hours to 30 to 45 minutes for most issues. We continue to look for support agents so we can get that time down to 15-30 minutes but its important that we find someone who has cstore experience as well as a technical background. Please continue to provide us any feedback so we can continue to import our product and support. Have a wonderful day.

Replied February 2017

Nick P.

Retail

11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed October 2016

C Store Pro

I have been using for 4 years, service has gone from bad to worst. Used to friendly service and the owner himself was interested, have grown too large and they can not handle it. I WOULD NOT SUGGEST. Thay stretched themselves beyond capacity. you might have a question that why I am still with them ? Because of the owner's DAD, hell of a nice person and used to be very personalized service. Thinking about changing, hate do to it all again after this long period, but have no choice.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Awesome, can do lot.

Cons:

things changing on its own, which includes account payables. Paid bills change.

Vendor Response

Mr Patel Thanks for submitting this review. As owners of the company, its always good to get direct feedback from our customers. Your concerns about support with regards to grown too large and they can not handle it are valid. We under estimated our growth and did not do an accurate job of projecting our HR needs. I am happy to inform you that our support has now gotten better and we have hired 3 new agents to speed up the support time. With regards to features and functionality, we have also hired 2 new engineers to help with it so we can make improvements to our product based on your feedback. Please continue to provide us feedback so we can continue to improve. Thanks are valid and we have now made significant improvements to our support to speed up the process

Replied February 2017

laxman d.

Verified reviewer

Consumer Services

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2023

customer service really bad

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Functionality

Pros:

daily and lotto sheet are good but customer service bad

Cons:

product is good but customer service bad

Dan P.

Verified reviewer

Retail

11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2021

Use only if youre operating one store

This was a good system to use as a beginner but the developers still seem challenged to fix issues that have been going on for over a year.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It is relatively easy to use and learn. Be prepared to teach yourself. Would be great if it was dependable.

Cons:

This is not great software if you have multiple stores. The central pricebook is useless to a multi store user. Too many bugs go along with this software that the developers can not fix. New features have come out that were never communicated and training is not something you should count on.

Zakir A.

Verified reviewer

Consumer Goods

2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed September 2021

CStore Pro - Review

Moderate. If lottery Module is fixed, than this product can become a very desirable product.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Inventory Management and lie sales reporting

Cons:

Lottery Module. It is not compatible with Hoosier Lottery scratch offs. For Hoosier lottery, the way scratch off are designed, you dispense tickets from high to low serial number. Whereas, in Cstore pro, it does not allow that or it does not have this flexibility.

Akram K.

Retail

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review source

Reviewed January 2017

bad experience review

Training less than adequate. Support variously non-existence. Voice attendant very boring and very far from customer's experience. (they don't love to help, they simply don't care). Follow up is not a familiar term to any of their engineers. from a user's perspective, too many mouse clicking to accomplish one simple task. Should I go on......

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Remote access and smart-phone application

Cons:

in accurate inventory system. Changes inventory on it's (or someone messes with it in the cloud). takes too long to send changes to the POS system. i.e. it has to update the server before it updates the POS.

Vendor Response

Hi Akram We are sorry you feel that way. I had a chance to look at our records and unless im mistaken, it doesn't appear you have attended our training classes. I highly recommend you attend the classes as they will eliminate most of your frustrations. Also I see that you have contacted our support team numerous times but its important to keep in mind that the support team is there for basic trouble shooting issues (15-30) minutes max. Most of the issues you called about were regarding training and they are not at that level yet (hopefully they will get there in a few :-) more months). Please signup for our webinars and I am confident that will help you significantly. If you need one on one training, we would be more than happy to offer you limited 1 on 1 training but only for a few hours. After that, we can provide 1 hour 1 on 1 classes at an hourly rate. Thanks.

Replied February 2017

Niraj P.

Retail

11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed December 2018

THINK 50K times before getting into this

Great program, lack of stability. Been for a longtime and don't want to change to new company but looks like I am being forced to do so.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Great Features but still have to do a lot

Cons:

When you want to work on something like inventories adding new items etc, the message keeps coming NPR Pipes not responding. Your whole day got ruined because nu help on saturday or sunday.

Showing 1 - 10 of 17 Reviews

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