SumUp Point of Sale review: low-cost POS apps that have improved

Our opinion: improving, still not perfect

SumUp’s POS subscriptions have been greatly refined in the last two years.

I used to find the free app too limited for merchants expecting to expand in the near future, as there simply weren’t any upgrade options or integrations originally.

Now with POS Plus, you get a really polished app that especially (not exclusively) small food and drink operations could lean on for a low monthly cost.

The app designs and support options for Plus and Pro are definitely different, but you should base your choice on which features are essential in your business. Choosing Plus limits you to a closed platform of SumUp’s own simple features, whereas Pro is more adaptable with its add-ons and integrations.

“A year’s POS commitment is a prohibitor for some, but SumUp is still competitive considering the 1.25% (or lower) rate for all cards. Not even Dojo can offer this, particularly with their monthly minimum charge.”

– Emily Sorensen, Senior Editor, Mobile Transaction

POS Pro isn’t quite as comprehensive or fine-tuned as Lightspeed or Epos Now, but it’s edging closer to that.

The Pro app is efficient when you’re used to it, but it’s not entirely intuitive to set up from the backend. Certain features you’d expect to be there are not, and a lack of comprehensive resources about the settings can be frustrating in the beginning.

Plus, on the other hand, is more intuitive and mimics Square’s free POS apps with its user-friendly and quite versatile point of sale features. It is especially suited for small coffee shops with its simple floor plan and open orders, similar to Revolut POS but without the latter’s service charge options.

Bottom line: POS Plus is great value for single-location cafés and shops, while POS Pro’s more scalable features suit small but growing retail shops and food-and-drinks operations.

Pricing: different price levels, very competitive rates

There’s a SumUp POS plan for all budgets, and the amount of features is directly proportional to what you pay.

The free POS app is a simple starting point without lock-in, but the register interface is limited. SumUp POS Plus is good value at £19 monthly, which includes a basic table plan, barcode scanning, cash management and other extras not in the free POS app.

After an initial 30-day trial, however, Plus does lock you into a 12-month contract unless the trial is cancelled before the first charge.

SumUp POS Pro for iPad costs £49 monthly for the core app, and it requires a year’s subscription followed by a 90-day notice period. This means you’ll continue to be charged for 3 months after your notice. This is at odds with other monthly-charged POS systems allowing you to cancel the same month.

It’s possible to get the first month free, but then you must subsequently subscribe to SumUp POS Pro, so it’s not exactly a commitment-free trial. To know if the product is right for you, you can get a demo from SumUp first.

SumUp POS pricing:

SumUp POS Pro also has add-ons like Advanced Stock and Promotions for £19 monthly per terminal (software only). A kitchen display system is available through both Plus and Pro for £9 per display.

POS Pro users get quite a good fixed card machine rate that depends on the business, usually between 0.99%-1.25%, compared with the fixed 1.69% for Free and Plus users.

The latter can, however, subscribe to Payments Plus (£19/month) to pay 0.99% for domestic consumer cards and 1.99% for all other cards – both in store and online.

The other permitted card processors (Dojo or PayPal – on POS Pro only) have different transaction fees.

Online orders through POS Pro cost 1.7%-2.7% + 12p per transaction. The first £1,000 accepted online does not incur fees.

Getting started: generally painless

It’s easy to sign up for a free SumUp account in 5-15 minutes. Just click through to an online form on the website and submit answers about yourself and your business. Following the sign-up, you can download the free POS app to use straight away or subscribe to a Plus trial straight away through the app.

POS Pro requires completing a contact form to request a call back from a sales rep. This allows you to book a demo or get a tailored quote for your business. Signing up will get you a 30-day trial, which you need to cancel if you don’t want to lock into a 12-month contract afterwards.

You won’t be able to test the POS app properly until products, settings and setup information are added in your account.

POS Pro users are encouraged to contact the onboarding staff to help with setup and learn about the software. Otherwise, there’s an automated support chat in Backoffice and “Support Knowledge Base” with a somewhat confusing layout and incomplete selection of guides.

I tried finding answers to different queries through POS Pro without luck and got in touch with support through its messaging chat. In all cases, I was referred to an email address since the support staff didn’t know the answer. This could be an issue when you just want to get started quickly, especially as there are few explainers in the Backoffice interface.

My experience with POS Plus has been better, as help guides are better designed and the support options streamlined for any device.

POS features – Plus vs Pro

SumUp’s paid POS systems, Plus and Pro, are two distinctly different apps.

Perhaps you prefer the interface of one over the other, but it’s important to consider the feature differences determining whether Plus (the cheaper option) has enough to facilitate your operations, or if you need the more scalable Pro.

Both Plus and Pro have POS features for hospitality and retail, but we think Plus makes better sense for a café with its simple table plan and order management. Retail shops will want to look at Pro’s more extensive inventory management and restaurants at Pro’s broader order and menu options.

Checkout options

The interface where you start a new order or transaction is what we call a checkout.

Plus and Pro more or less have the same features on this page, but the layout of buttons, fonts and colours differ.

The checkout screens show your products, categories (in separate tabs) and the current, itemised bill on the left (Pro) or right (Plus).

Customisability

Products on the checkout screen can be ordered they way you like it and grouped into category sections accessed via tabs.

However, only Pro allows you to customise the size and design of the product buttons. That being said, you can edit the product layout directly in the Plus app, whereas Pro requires the backend dashboard to change design elements.

Versatile checkout options in any case

Both Plus and Pro include the following general features at checkout.

You can add £ or % discounts, customer details and whether the order is for eat-in or takeaway (if selling food). Orders can be saved, parked or voided. If an item is not already in the library, it is easily added at checkout with a custom description and VAT.

If you need to take cash out of the till, you can register the reason for it (e.g. mark as petty cash or adjustment entry). In a similar vein, you can add cash to the till drawer with a reason registered.

A side menu lets you access cash movements, saved sales and previous transactions. You can refund from here either through scanning the barcode of the receipt or searching through past sales and select the item to refund.

Payment methods

Both apps allow you to accept cash and card payments.

With Plus, the payment methods include keyed card entry and payment links via SumUp, not just card reader payments.

Pro also gives you an option to accept payment over the phone, but you’ll need to handle this through your chosen payment processor because the app only lets you register it as ‘Phone’. The same applies to tapping Pro’s other payment methods ‘Other’, ‘Gift Card/Voucher’ or ‘Account’ – there is no screen for entering a reference number, so you’ll need a system for tracking these yourself.

The POS Pro app can connect with a compatible card machine for a smooth checkout. If integrated with SumUp payments, Pro will work with a SumUp card reader and allow you to send a payment link for the transaction.

Need to split bills? Only POS Pro can handle that.

Receipts

Either till app lets you send an email receipt after each sale or print a sales receipt through a connected printer.

We’ve seen reports from users that the Pro app automatically prints a receipt every time, even when you tap that it’s not needed, so you can’t actually save on receipt paper until this bug is fixed.

Inventory library

Although Plus has a product library with categories, variants and stock levels, Pro’s inventory management can handle more complex stock systems.

Both POS systems have basic product management capabilities like stock levels, barcode scanning, bulk product import and a detailed items library. Apart from categories and variants, each product can also contain attributes (added layer of variants), modifiers, SKUs, custom VAT rates and an image in either app.

In Pro’s case, products are added to the till interface through the drag-and-drop ‘Selling Layouts’ in the browser dashboard. Here, you can also manage suppliers and product tags. If products are low in stock, the merchant can receive a notification to signal when to order more of it.

If you subscribe to the Advanced Stock add-on for POS Pro only, you get more advanced features like:

• Multi-site support
• Integrated and automated purchase orders
• Delivery scheduling
• Stock variance reports
• Wastage reporting
• Stock auditing

These features are simply not available for POS Plus users.

Customers and loyalty

Both apps have a customer list detailing their contact details and purchase history, but Plus doesn’t let you attach orders to a customer in the POS app – only edit the order name. Pro can attach orders to customers.

If you already have a spreadsheet of people, this can be uploaded to the Pro and Plus systems to save time.

Separate loyalty programmes align with the customer directory in Plus and Pro, depending on which POS system you have. In both cases, customers have to download an app to accumulate points or store credit. Pro’s more advanced loyalty features cost £19 monthly whereas Plus’ loyalty system is free.

Hospitality features

The core POS subscriptions of Pro and Plus contain food-and-drink features, but these are more limited on Plus.

Like the similar Revolut POS app, SumUp POS Plus has a very basic table plan to mimic your floor. It doesn’t show the order number, customer name etc. on the tables, just how long the order has been open for.

Still, Plus does have a section in the app where you can reopen and edit orders, but it’s on a separate screen from the floor plan.

Pro’s Advanced Hospitality add-on module covers ingredient-tracking, allergens, course and menu management with recipes, table plans, customer tabs and split bills. There’s more on this add-in than Plus can ever manage, so it’s worth testing to see if it will cover your needs in a food-and-drink business.

Pro and Plus both connect with a kitchen display system (KDS) for £9 monthly per KDS screen.

Employee management

Both systems have good user account settings.

On Plus and Pro, you can add employees with custom permissions, a passcode (for till logins) and roles. When users then log in and out of the till, you can track these work hours through the back office.

On Pro, it’s possible to add more than one admin with access to all settings and import staff from a spreadsheet.

Offline mode

A major difference: SumUp POS Plus doesn’t work offline, but POS Pro does.

This makes the Pro app very reliable, although card payments and certain features do require an online connection.

But even when online, you have to refresh the Pro app manually to view changes submitted in the backend Dashboard. This is not very intuitive for frontend staff who have no idea when their manager has made changes in the backend.

In the Plus app, changes from the backend automatically update in the app – at least when we tested it.

Reporting

Plus’ and Pro’s core reports used to only cover basics like sales monitoring and transaction searches, but SumUp has added analytics like:

• Revenue reports
• Best-selling items
• Tips totals
• Promo reports (Pro only)

The POS apps also monitor the cash flow so you can cash up at the end of the day. When closing the register, there’s a complete summary of all the day’s main details around cash, sales categories, payment methods and till movements.

We noticed the daily sales so far (X report) in POS Pro have to be printed, though – they cannot just be viewed on the app screen. This is a peculiarity since not everyone wants to use a printer just for a quick glance.

Only Pro can accommodate for multiple store locations – Plus just shows reports for single locations.

Card machines and payments

Your card machine arrangement depends on your chosen POS software:

• POS Plus only works with SumUp’s card machines.
• POS Pro works with Dojo (Paymentsense) and PayPal card machines as well as SumUp’s card machines.

Dojo requires a contract and multiple variable costs, whereas PayPal has a fixed transaction rate of 1.75% and no lock-in.

SumUp POS Pro used to also integrate with Barclaycard, Retail Merchant Services, Square and Worldpay, but has confirmed with us that only PayPal and Dojo integrate now.

Regardless of the POS setup, merchants can benefit from attractive SumUp rates with the right agreement.

• POS Plus users can subscribe to Payments Plus (£19/month), lowering the domestic consumer card rate to 0.99% while other cards cost 1.99%. These rates apply to online payments too, where fees are typically much higher.
• POS Pro users can negotiate low, fixed rates and usually pay between 0.99%-1.25% depending on the business sales volume and package. This is a lot lower than Lightspeed’s and Epos Now’s own payment processing fees.

But choosing SumUp for card processing has another major plus: next-day payouts in the SumUp Business Account, including weekends.

Integrations

SumUp connects with external software platforms for additional functions, but you get more options with POS Pro.

POS Plus only connects with accounting software QuickBooks, Xero and Sage so you don’t have to manually feed sales data into your chosen bookkeeping system.

For other software integrations, go for POS Pro which syncs with the following:

• Shopify and WooCommerce for ecommerce
• QuickBooks, Xero, FreeAgent and Pebble for accounting
• Restaurants would benefit from the integrations with Kitchen CUT, ResDiary, Fourth and MarketMan
• MailChimp for email marketing
• Yoyo for customer loyalty tools
• Employee tools can be expanded through Tanda or Planday

If this does not cover everything for you, you can use APIs and webhooks for your own software arrangement through Pro.

Customer service, reviews and experiences

SumUp’s customer service has been a mixed bag when it comes to the POS products, but much has improved in the past year.

The support hours depend on which plan you’re on:

• Free POS: 8am-7pm on working days, 7am-5pm on weekends and Bank Holidays
• POS Plus: Priority support 24/7
• POS Pro: “Dedicated support” 8am-8pm on working days, 8am-7pm on weekends and Bank Holidays

Users can contact SumUp via chat, email and telephone, but only Plus subscribers get 24/7 priority support. We find it curious that Pro subscribers have fewer hours’ customer service than the cheaper Plus, but this is a consequence of them being different software systems.

The lack of personal support for emergencies past 8pm on weekdays or 7pm on weekends could be an issue for bars, pubs and restaurants that operate late.

Since Goodtill’s rebrand to SumUp POS Pro, we’ve noticed an increase of negative reviews from customers. There’s been a lack of communication from SumUp, slow onboarding causing issues for new businesses, and problems unsubscribing – at least 1-2 years ago.

Our experience of the service

Our own experience of POS Pro has not been that easy either, considering a lack of step-by-step guides about specific settings. The resource section could still be better, but if you leave a comment in the chat, a support person may actually write a section on your query if it’s not already there (that’s what happened to us within a day of asking about product attributes).

“I’ve sometimes been a bit frustrated with SumUp POS Pro, since I never got prompt replies to queries when testing it in 2024. No one responded on the website chat after trying several days, and other contact methods were slow or lacking too. During previous testing in 2022, customer support was more responsive.”

– Emily Sorensen, Senior Editor, Mobile Transaction

While testing the PSO Pro app, we also noticed bugs and shortcomings. If you do too, there’s a feature request section in Dashboard, but SumUp only allocates resources to fixing the highest-rated requests. Even then, some bugs take months to address.

POS Plus, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same learning curve or obstacles, as it’s just a more advanced version of the free POS app that’s been carefully honed for a decade.