Shopify POS Lite vs Pro: What’s the Difference?

Shopify POS Lite vs Pro: what are the real differences business leaders need to be aware of?

If you’re running an online store and want to manage both ecommerce and in-person transactions with the same convenient software, Shopify POS is a great solution.

Designed to simplify sales processes, the Shopify Point of Sale system includes an all-in-one application for product, inventory, and transaction management, as well as a host of valuable tools and resources.

With Shopify POS, you can offer customers a range of flexible shopping options, such as local delivery and pick-up, ship to customer, and more.

Plus, built-in customer profiles, marketing tools, and integrations make it easy to increase sales and revenue.

However, the exact functionality you can access on Shopify POS will depend on one important thing, whether you use the “Shopify POS Lite” service, or the “Pro” alternative.

Here’s your complete guide to comparing the two options.

What is Shopify POS?

Shopify POS is a popular and easy-to-use point of sale system, specifically designed for small and scaling businesses.

It offers companies everything they need “out of the box” to sell in-person and online, from a unified back-office, to integrated hardware.

As a flexible solution, Shopify POS supports single stores, pop-up shops and events, multi-store environments, and omnichannel platforms.

It competes well with many point of sale systems, offering smooth payment management, fast checkouts, and automations on every plan.

What really sets Shopify POS apart from other solutions, is its seamless connection with the Shopify ecommerce platform.

The service gives business owners the freedom to easily manage sales, inventory, and customer data in a central location. This means any brick and mortar retailer, or online seller can create an omnichannel plan for sales.

Customers can shop with your Shopify store online, and you can even send them an email with their cart if they abandon items in-store.

Plus, when customers buy either online or in-store, your inventory will be automatically updated across all channels, minimizing the risk of stock-outs.

Depending on your plan, Shopify POS can also include some particularly advanced features you won’t find elsewhere, such as integrated sale item suggestions, employee management, and ultra-detailed inventory and stock reports.

What is Shopify POS Lite? The Basic POS Solution

As mentioned above, there are two ways to access Shopify POS. The first, and cheapest option is “Shopify POS Lite”.

Although this is often referred to as the “free version” of Shopify POS, it’s not entirely free. You’ll need a Shopify ecommerce plan to access the basic features.

While there is an option to access Shopify POS Lite for one location using Shopify’s “Starter” plan ($5 per month), this plan includes the highest transaction rates (starting at 5%), and only 1 admin and POS login.

You also don’t get access to Shopify’s full website building toolkit.

In some parts of the world, users can also access Shopify POS through the Shopify “Retail” plan, starting at £69 per month in the UK, with 1.7% in-person transaction fees, or 2% plus £0.25 online fees. This comes with one POS Pro location, and 2 admin accounts, with unlimited logins.

The easiest way to access Shopify POS Lite is to simply purchase one of the basic monthly subscription options for Shopify, starting at $39 per month for the Basic plan.

Shopify POS Lite Features

Though Shopify POS Lite isn’t nearly advanced as POS Pro in terms of functionality, it does come with a lot of the core features business leaders need.

You’ll be able to access a powerful POS app for Android and iOS devices, which includes access to your single back-office environment.

Plus, Shopify POS Lite can also be used on a variety of fully integrated hardware solutions, including the Shopify POS Go mobile system.

The features of Shopify POS Lite include:

Omnichannel selling:

Tools for cross-channel in-store and online selling, including options to send customers cart information so they can finish a purchase online. You can also attach unique QR codes to products for customers to scan with their smartphone.

Shopify Lite supports online sales, in-person sales, and integrations with social media and other channels, so you can manage transactions anywhere.

Inventory tracking:

Shopify POS Lite includes basic inventory tracking tools to help you stay on top of your inventory and assign products to different locations and channels. Your count will automatically update when an order is fulfilled on any channel.

Staff management:

POS Lite users get basic staff accounts with unique PIN numbers which allow them to log into the system from any location.

Checkout tools:

Shopify POS Lite allows users to checkout anywhere using a smartphone or tablet. You can create smart grids to speed up checkout processes, automatically calculate taxes at checkout, and create order notes, custom discount codes, and custom sales processes.

There’s also a camera barcode scanner for iOS devices and support for offline transactions.

Receipts and returns:

Companies can create custom receipts on every Shopify POS plan, and send them to customers via email or SMS. There’s also support for managing returns if customers need a refund for their products.

Product management:

Shopify POS Lite can support unlimited products, product collections, variants for size, color, materials, and SKUs, and multi-location inventories.

You can also assign barcode labels to products, and track inventory status across channels.

Customer management:

On Shopify POS Lite, businesses can create rich customer profiles with insights into lifetime spend, notes, purchase history, shipping addresses, and marketing preferences.

You can also create loyalty programs, tag customers with specific information, and contact clients through email, SMS, or phone.

Reporting and analytics:

Shopify POS Lite comes with a comprehensive dashboard overview of your entire business, inventory reports, financial reports, and cash tracking tools.

If you have a Shopify plan or above, you can also create discount reports, product reports, cash flow reports, and retail sales reports.

The reporting tools make it easy to analyze sales, staff member performance, product performance, and marketing strategies over time, with visualizations.

Payment Options

Shopify POS Lite and Pro both come with a native integration to Shopify Payments. Companies can use this to accept debit card and credit card payments from Visa, Mastercard, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and more. Plus, you pay a single rate for all transactions based on their Shopify plan.

The solution also comes with cashflow management tools, auto-reconciliation, chargeback management, and additional payment options.

For instance, you can create and sell gift cards and add them to a digital Apple wallet. There are also options for custom payment types, partial payments, split payments/tenders and more.

Marketing

Shopify POS Lite includes access to a variety of valuable marketing tools, including options for collecting customer reviews and testimonials.

You can capture customer emails at checkout to inform your email marketing campaigns, and integrate your POS with social media channels.

Plus, there’s an integration available for the Google Merchant Center, so you can promote your store and automatically sync products with Google.

Plus, you can benefit from all the SEO tools and marketing integrations available for Shopify too.

What is Shopify POS Pro? The Pro Features

Shopify POS Pro, included in the Shopify Retail plan, and with the Shopify Plus enterprise package, is the more advanced version of Shopify’s Point of Sale solution.

It can also be purchased as an add-on to any Shopify package, for a price of $89 per location per month.

Shopify POS Pro is the advanced solution from Shopify. It comes with all of the features included in the “Lite” plan, as well as some bonus extras, such as:

Omnichannel selling features

Alongside the omnichannel selling features included in Shopify POS Lite, Pro merchants will also gain access to local pickup and delivery options, to provide customers with more ways to access products.

There’s also the option to allow customers to buy products in-store and have them shipped directly to their location, with automatic insights into shipping costs.

Plus, you can allow customers to purchase items online then exchange or return them in-store, to reduce the work involved in the standard returns process.

Smart Inventory Management

While you can only track and sync inventory with Shopify POS Lite, there are a huge range of additional inventory management features available for Pro users.

You can create purchase orders for vendors and suppliers, and get purchase order suggestions based on demand forecasts.

Shopify POS Pro also supports transfer requests from different inventory locations, inventory receiving tools, and detailed inventory counting and reporting capabilities.

You can conduct inventory analysis reports with in-depth analytics, make stock adjustments in real-time, and leverage low stock reports to reduce stock-outs.

Plus, Shopify can automatically suggest which items you should consider putting on “sale” based on your analytics.

Staff Management and Staff permissions

Staff management tools are also a lot more advanced on Shopify POS Pro. Alongside staff PINs, you also get customizable POS staff roles and permissions, and the option to create unlimited members of staff. You’ll also be able to attribute specific sales to each member of staff on your team.

Shopify POS Pro even comes with manager approval workflows, with specific solutions for approving actions like editing taxes or applying discounts.

Checkout features

On top of all the robust checkout features included in Shopify POS Lite, Shopify POS Pro also supports some extra capabilities.

You can process exchanges for past purchases from any retail or online location, and update your inventory automatically.

There’s also the option to save and retrieve shopping carts from a range of environments, to help accelerate the checkout process.

Plus, you’ll be able to customize printed receipts with your store hours, policies, promotions, and even your website URL.

Analytics

While most of the Shopify POS analytical and reporting tools come included with Shopify POS Lite, particularly if you have a “Shopify” plan or above, there is one bonus extra for POS Pro users.

Pro merchants can access daily sales reports, which offer detailed insights into staff performance, products, sales, and other information, all generated straight from your POS environment.

Shopify POS Lite vs Pro: The Pricing

Perhaps the biggest difference between using Shopify POS Lite and Shopify POS Pro for your store, aside from the extra features in “Pro” is the pricing.

While both solutions include a host of POS features, excellent customer support, and access to a range of sales channels, you will pay a little more to get the bonus features of Shopify POS Pro.

The way Shopify charges for its POS system may be a little difficult to understand. As mentioned above, the Shopify Lite system for POS transactions and online sales comes with most standard Shopify packages.

While you can access one Shopify POS Lite account with “Shopify Starter” for $5 per month, you’ll also pay transaction fees starting at 5%.

The other Shopify plans available for Lite users include:

• Basic Shopify: $39 per month (plus transaction fees starting at 2.9% plus 30 cents online, or 2.7% in-store, as well as 2% for transactions not using Shopify Payments). This plan includes 2 staff accounts, 1,000 inventory locations, tools for online sales, website-building features for retail businesses, and basic reports.
• Shopify: $105 per month (plus transaction fees starting at 2.8% plus 30 cents online, or 2.7% in-store, as well as 2% for transactions not using Shopify Payments). This plan includes all the features of Basic, plus up to 5 staff accounts, more reporting tools, and additional sales channels via the Shopify POS app.
• Advanced Shopify: $399 per month (plus payment processing fees starting at 2.6% plus 30 cents online, or 2.5% in-store, as well as 1% for transactions not using Shopify Payments). This plan includes all the features of Shopify, plus up to 15 staff accounts, advanced Shopify reports, and additional customer support.

To access the Shopify POS Pro system, you can explore a few options. There’s the Shopify “Retail” plan for $89 per month, which includes 1 POS Pro location, 2 admin accounts, unlimited POS logins, and transaction rates of 2.7% in-person, or 2.9% plus 30 cents online.

Another option is to to pay for Shopify Plus, the enterprise version of Shopify for online and brick-and-mortar stores.

The Shopify Plus plan starts at $2300 per month and provides access to a host of valuable customization features, tools and services, as well as advanced reporting tools and integrations.

For small business owners who want to add Shopify POS Pro to their existing plan, there’s also the option to integrate the Pro system into your plan for $89 per location per month.

Notably, outside of software costs, you will also need to think about any hardware you might need for your retail store. Shopify offers a range of credit card reader solutions, terminals for dip, swipe and chip payments, receipt printers, cash drawers, and register options.

The Shopify POS hardware varies in price, from card readers starting at $29, to the Shopify POS Go mobile system for $399, and the retail bundle starting at $159.

All of these tools are user-friendly. However, you can also choose to process payments using your iPad, or mobile device, with the Shopify POS features for mobile.

This could be ideal if you don’t have a permanent physical store, and you want to keep business expenses low.

Shopify POS Lite vs Pro: Making the Right Choice

If you’re looking for a fantastic POS system for omnichannel selling, Shopify could have everything you need.

With support for multiple payment methods, marketing tools, and extensive reporting features, the Shopify POS system has a lot to offer.