What has to connect to it?
Accounting, online ordering, scheduling, inventory, payroll. List them before you evaluate anything, because integrations are where a system quietly fails.
Point-of-sale systems
The system your staff uses every single shift.
A point-of-sale decision outlasts a rate decision. You can renegotiate pricing in a year. Retraining a team on a new register is a different kind of cost.
What to weigh
Three questions before you look at any demo.
Answer these and most of the market rules itself out.
Who is standing at it?
If a new hire cannot be trained on it in a shift, that cost repeats every time somebody leaves.
Is it tied to the processing?
Bundled systems are simpler to set up but lock your software and your rate together, so changing one means replacing both.
Buy the terminal, never lease it
This is the one piece of advice worth more than everything else on this page. Equipment leases are typically non-cancelable and run for years, and they routinely cost several times what the hardware is worth. Buy the terminal outright or use free placement.
If you already have a lease, find the end date before you consider changing anything else. It usually determines what is realistically possible and when. How to get out of a merchant equipment lease covers the options, and what free equipment actually costs covers the other trap.
When something breaks
Support is the part nobody evaluates until the register is down on a Friday night. Worth asking directly: who answers, how quickly a replacement arrives, whether there is a loaner in the meantime, and whether you can keep taking payment some other way while you wait.
Equipment also needs revisiting when your business changes. New location, new payment channel, new software, or a card brand requirement can all leave working hardware behind. That is a conversation to have before it becomes urgent.
Software and processing are separate decisions
They are often sold as one thing, but they do not have to be. Keeping them separate preserves your options, and that matters more the more your staff have learned the software. It is worth knowing which kind of arrangement you are being offered before you sign.
Honest reviews of the big names
This site names no brands outside the blog, because the right answer depends on your business and not on who anyone represents. The blog answers the "is it any good" question directly, with no affiliate links.
By industry
What a good fit looks like depends on the business.
A repair bay and a retail counter need very different things from the same category of product.
Talk to Luis
Talk it through before you commit.
A short conversation now is cheaper than the wrong system for three years.