Rain POS Software

Worst POS ever?

I’ve been suffering through the Rainbow pOS for the past three years. Hands down the worst POS I’ve ever encountered. Only reason we haven’t changed is the hassle of doing so. Once you become a Rain user you’ll have access to a feature that helps to recommend what features you’d like to see. This is probably the best feature only because I can see how every other user of Rain is as frustrated as I am. They keep saying they are making improvements but nothing ever changes.

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

Brought new life to my store!

Since we opened, we have hand written all our checks and inventory, which has sometimes lead to discrepancies in what we have in stock and prices on items. It also takes longer to cash people out at the register, which has left some customers at an inconvenience when running late to a gig. Since moving to Rain, we are now able to easily see what is in stock and let customers know if we have extra in the back all from our phones. Recently we had a customer whos speaker blew while at a gig and he was able to order a new one online for us to have ready for him when he walked in the door! We love using Rain!

Pros

Rain POS was surprisingly easy to set up and integrate into my exsiting website, it really opened up a lot of doors to help sell things in my store that have been sitting a while. We do a lot of lawaway orders, so it was nice to be able to set up a lawaway option on our online store.

Cons

The only thing I wish I was able to do is have the option to add multiple products at a time to help streamline the inventory process. Other than that, I have had zero issues!

Great!

Pros

Everyone is always very helpful with questions I have on the software. A great Company to be doing business with!

Cons

It is hard to get pictures the right sizes for site. I make them the size that I have been told and when putting them on the website they are huge.

Great POS

We have been with Rain POS from the beginning and the improvements have been great. Customer service is very good. Very pleased overall.

Pros

Very easy to use and get employees up to speed quickly. Lots of features to improve sales and inventory control.

Cons

All the features can be a bit overwhelming at first but if you start with the basics, its easy to add additional features as you go along.

expanding, they listen to ideas and constantly make improvements

Pros

its comprehensive. online inventory and instore inventory combined...awesome. very intuitive, very good tutorials and help functions.

Cons

none, I like the constant improvements. the only issue is the system randomly converts the default printer between the receipt printer and the label printer.

So Happy

I adore this system and tell everyone about it

Pros

It is super intuitive and easy to work with. I can start a new volunteer in the shop with very little training and they just get it.

Cons

Sometimes I wish I could enter new products easier when I'm filling out a PO. I feel like I have to save a draft and go back to products a lot

Happy, but I need just a bit more

Happy, just keep the costs down. Remember we are not selling iPhones or over-priced clothes. The wholesale cost of fabric is inching up there with shipping.I have to sell a lot of fabric just to cover my costs to you.

Pros

Easy to use for the most part, I can talk to an actual person on the phone and they don't have a made up English name.

Cons

I need to put Categories on sale without the whole site on sale or going to each individual item in that category like I have to do now.
I want to upload my own pretty newsletter and not have it get distorted. Using the newsletter feature on the site is boring.

Really awesome features with some minor bugs

Tech support has helped us so many times. First, they helped us figure out some of the features that we were not completely certain how to use. Then, when we encountered bugs, another quick call to Support and they had us back up and running within no time. I just wish that the program was not dependent on the internet. We’ve had a few times where the internet went out and we were not able to conduct business. This is not good, but it hasn’t happened too often, just enough to be mildly irritating.

Pros

This program is so easy to use, even for those who are not technologically literate. While we do not use all of the features, such as the rental option, we are really happy with the program. The fact that everything is stored in the cloud helps us when we are not in the store, such as with trunk shows. The tech support has been so helpful when we experienced bugs in the software, and they were very knowledgeable of the product. I have also found the SEO option of Rain, and we intend to utilize it to its fullest extent to promote our business and get our name out there.

Cons

There have been a few bugs in the software, but nothing that a quick call to support couldn’t fix. One thing that I did not like was when the internet went out. The fact that everything was based on the internet meant that we couldn’t use the cash register. This led to a loss of sales. Nothing too major, but it’s still significant. There should be a backup or a way to use the register when there is no internet connection. More traditional POS systems allow for use without internet, but for inventory reasons, something like Rain is required. Hopefully, they’ll release a version that stores a temporary backup on your system that updates the inventory once the internet is back up and running.

Never worked, horribly inaccurate migration of sales history

Unfortunately, all I got was a whole lot of wasted time and a loss of money for absolutely nothing. I really wanted it to work, and it might have, had they been able to migrate my sales history.

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.

Very functional adaptive website at a competitive price

Pros

Easy plug and play design allows for unlimited updates and edits. Add the file and picture storage for customer access and this all in one service is a great solution for small businesses.

Cons

Limited blog post functionality with subscription options, some bugs in the system that have yet to be resolved.

Tons of features packed into one POS system, great customer support.

Pros

Rain has tons of features, and for a music store that sells, rents, and repairs instruments, and also does lessons, there are a lot of things we need software for. With Rain, we can do most of it in one place, whereas in the past, we've had to have a system for this, something different for this, and something different for that also. It's a huge time saver and much less confusing to be able to do everything we need to do in one place. And the website is clean and easy to customize. Customer service is super easy to get in touch with and great to work with.

Cons

There are still a few bugs in this software. While the customer support guys are good about listening and working on fixes, there are still some small annoying things. For instance, when you delete a product from the Categories page, it does not direct you back to the Categories page, but rather the Products page. There's also not an easy way to move products into different categories in bulk. You either have to open each product manually, or you have to export the info to a spreadsheet.

Great POS platform - even for beginners! Not intimidating.

Inventory reporting, mainly. I just began using the Marketing module and so far, it seems like it will be a real winner and time saver for me!

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.

Very easy to set up but takes some time. The help we get from RAIN is awesome!

An all-in-one solution for our travelling and online business.

Pros

It's integration into our inventory and reports. The ability to customized the interface for my team.

Cons

It doesn't work as easily for Canadian companies. I would definitely recommend it 100% if they become more Canadian focused.

Since the initial set up very good.

We just finished entering all of our stock so now it should make my life easier, the book work is done, customer base takes care of itself.

Pros

The multiple features from entering a person once. I love how everything meshes with the other parts when it comes to inventory and people. Makes my life so much easier.

Cons

I was not really happy with my start up experience, the first person would say to watch this video, watch that video, I'm more of a hands on, show me once and I've got it, kind of person.

Easy to work with, excellent customer service

Pros

Web based software. My items are easily found on the internet. I love the ability to set re order points. I like the reports that we currently have.

Cons

difficult to order from the vendors. needs to be easier. I wish that the link to Quickbooks were more detailed in the daily dump

My initial experience was great. Now that I'm into year 2, not so great. No consistency in data.

The ability to link my inventory to my website.

Pros

I like the link between my inventory and the website. The program is somewhat intuitive so the ease of training staff is great.

Cons

Every time there is an update less of my product is picked up by my scanner. Moda inventory is easy than not available; no consistency. There is no easy way other than a bulk download to scan through products and update or delete.

Like-Sew websites have helped me build my online presence and streamline my business.

It was easy to use

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.

Seamless Migration from Older POS System

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.

absolutely awful customer service that is slow and unresponsive

Pros

everything promised about the software has turned out to not be true. they promised cataloging be done for the import of my inventory and they never delivered that.

Cons

it doesn't integrate with my credit card machine that was designed specifically for the software. of course rain isn't being helpful at all and we're losing money left and right.

Getting better all the time

Pros

I love the website/pos integration. Having your inventory line up is priceless. Also, the recent Reverb.com integration is going to be nice. There’s some bugs to work out but it’s getting there.

Cons

I understand the developers update/fix issues in order of Priority but it does take a long time to get support tickets cleared up.