Switched to Rain from Lightspeed

Overall pleased with RAIN and glad we made the switch. A bit more thought into easier workflow within the Register, Special Order and LayAway screens and it will be a force to reckon with. I was hoping for an easier eCom experience, but that is not what I received. Much like other POS Systems that offer an integrated eCom Site...building out the site and making it look the way we want doesn't follow the basic HTML buildout process. As a web developer for over 20 years...I find the eCom platform to be VERY challenging to use and often times VERY discouraging. I can see they worked hard to have the functionality be similar to other CMS Website Platforms (Wix, WordPress, etc), but it's too confusing to navigate effectively taking up valuable time.

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.

Excellent for Music Stores!

Overall we have been extremely pleased with our choice to switch to Rain in 2018 for our point of sale and website. The product is incredibly user friendly, can be used on any device (not tied to a license on one desktop machine like other systems) and support is great. One area other shops have asked us about is QuickBooks exports. We don't use that much, but other stores seem to be very reliant on those exports, which they say are lacking in Rain. Again, not a direct complaint from me, but one that I hear about on industry forums & from direct messages. We were a somewhat early adapter of Rain in our industry and are relatively connected in our industry & repair organization, so we seem to field a lot of inquiries about the program. We have recommended the product to quite a few other shops and want to make sure that it fits their accounting needs as well.

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).

Disappointed

It was a rough year and a half trying to operate a business with that many mistakes from their side.

Pros

I liked that the website and the inventory were combined. That people could see in real time what we had in stock and purchase online. That was nice and was one of the main features of why we went with Rain originally.

Cons

We spent a lot of time and money on Rain POS. It was the first online computer software company we ever used for point of sale. I spent an entire year in 2017 logging our entire inventory, coming up with pricing and pictures and history on every item. We went live in 2018 and by April 2019 we were done with the contract side and we closed out the point of sale side by the end of that year. Their inconsistences within the contract module were too high. And every time we called in to tech support, all they could tell us what that there was a "glitch" in the system and they couldn't fix it within a timely manner. I really felt like I was losing the trust of my customers because of Rain's mistakes.

Like Sew POS Review

Overall we are happy with Rain/Like Sew. It gives us an easy to manage Web front end for our store that behind the scenes in completely integrated with our Brick & Mortar operation. Improvements are still needed in many areas - the system is a work in progress regularly rolling our new and improved functionality.

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

Love this system!

I can get the reports I need and want. Tech support is wonderful. They are constantly updating and improving the software.

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.