Clover POS Review 2023: Customizable Square Alternative

Clover POS is a popular hardware and software bundle suitable for small businesses—including retailers, restaurants, and service businesses. Inconsistency in pricing and contracts and limitations in Clover’s management features prevented it from earning a spot on our list of the best POS systems. However, the Clover point-of-sale system is adaptable, easy to use, and highly versatile, earning a respectable 3.92 out of 5 in our evaluation.

Clover is owned by Fiserv (formerly First Data) but allows third-party resellers to program other payment services into the system. This makes Clover unique because businesses that already have a merchant account they like or that want to shop around for the lowest processing rates can purchase Clover POS from their preferred merchant account.

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Clover leads our top recommendations for Square alternatives, providing a low-cost, fully integrated solution. It is ideal for businesses that rely heavily on sales mobility—those needing to complete transactions across sales floors, events, or curbside. Clover Go is our recommended mobile payment app for age-restricted products and existing Clover users.

Additionally, Square restricts you to using Square Payments to process transactions, so users looking for flexibility will appreciate the ability to use an existing merchant account with Clover.

However, businesses without a preferred merchant account may want to choose one of our recommended POS systems with built-in payment processing. Businesses with fast-moving inventory should also opt for alternative POS inventory systems. Casual sellers will likely prefer free POS software they can use with any hardware.

Fiserv, which owns Clover and is the direct seller, does not have a very favorable reputation when it comes to providing merchant services to small businesses (learn more about that in our Fiserv review).

If you are considering the Clover POS system and do not already have a compatible merchant account, we recommend that you look into the following resellers:

• Payment Depot: One of our top recommendations for the cheapest merchant services for small businesses
• Dharma Merchant Services: Best for restaurants and small storefronts
• National Processing: Affordable and reliable option for small businesses, particularly when accepting ACH and e-check payments online.

Each of the processors above offers competitive rates, transparent pricing, and decent customer service.

Clover POS Deciding Factors

Clover POS Alternatives

If you’re not sure which POS is right for you, check out our reviews of the top Clover alternatives.

Clover’s pricing scheme is complex and lacks clarity compared to other POS providers; this caused it to lose some points in our evaluation. While the basic subscription plan is quite attractive, missing features that require add-on costs and flat-rate transaction fees can quickly eat away at your revenue. Also, note that Clover has little control over how resellers price and set terms of use, so these many options can be overwhelming for those who are not familiar with Clover.

Its subscription plans will depend on your business type and the Clover hardware you use. Within each subscription plan are software plans with functionalities varying based on the hardware. Thus, the price of your system will be a combination of these factors, which can easily get confusing.

We took a step-by-step approach to help you find which Clover setup is best for you. The first thing to do would be to choose your business type.

Prices for Retail & Services Businesses

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Prices for Restaurants

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Notice that the monthly subscription plan determines the software plan and payment processing rates. Choose a monthly subscription and note the available hardware for each.

Clover Cash Registers & Hardware

Search below for the available hardware in your chosen subscription plan. This will provide you with the software features included in each plan for the particular device.

Clover Go

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Clover Flex

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Clover Mini for Retail

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Clover Mini for Restaurants

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Station Solo

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Station Duo

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You can purchase Clover hardware from Fiserv, Amazon, or any of over 3,000 resellers—that may give you a better price. Some may even lease the hardware, though we do not recommend this.

Clover Payment Processing

Fiserv, one of the largest merchant services companies in the world, owns Clover. However, it allows other merchant services to resell the POS system. It lists 69 approved resellers on its website, but you can find Clover systems elsewhere, even on Amazon. They all use Fiserv as their backend payment processor but can impose their own terms and pricing.

This means you may be able to find more equitable payment processing rates and cheaper hardware—or you may find yourself in a bad deal. Fiserv has a list of trusted resellers but does not monitor them all. Do your research to find the most reputable merchant service.

Regardless, the software remains the same. As long as your reseller can process the payments, you can accept credit, debit, gift cards, and contactless payments like Apple Pay

That said, Clover’s default payment processing fees (with Fiserv) are listed as follows:

• For Retail and Services: 2.3% + 10 cents to 2.6% + 10 cents per card-present transaction and 3.5% + 10 cents per card-not-present transaction
• For Restaurants: 2.3% + 10 cents per card-present transaction and 3.5% + 10 cents per card-not-present transaction

Setup & Application

Regardless of whether you sign up directly with Clover/Fiserv or with a reseller, the first thing you need to do is to choose a hardware device to purchase. If you sign up with a partner, they will link your merchant account with Clover in the background, and you will have access to a Clover account for customer support and software management.

Similarly, if you sign up directly with Clover, you will also be directed to first choose a device. The process will include a step where you will be asked to fill up information for a merchant account before completing your purchase.

Signing Up via the Clover Website

Signing Up via a Reseller

Once you receive your Clover hardware, you also get an instruction packet and manual to help set up your device. Your Clover device is payment-ready and will automatically connect to your wireless network to update its software.

Contract & Terms of Service (TOS)

Your terms of service for using payment processing with Clover will depend on your chosen merchant service provider. Because Clover partners with over 30,000 resellers, it’s important to ensure that you’re getting the best deal.

To give you an idea, here is a brief overview of our recommended Clover partners’ merchant services terms:

While Fiserv does advertise the Clover POS system on its website, it does not disclose any of its terms and conditions. Clover general TOS also does not say much about fees and contract length. Therefore it’s important to go over the merchant agreement with a Clover account manager.

Virtual Terminal

If you prefer not to use Clover hardware, you can sign up for a Clover merchant account and use the virtual terminal to start accepting payments over the phone, in person, or with an invoice. It comes with end-to-end encryption to meet PCI compliance and is preloaded with your Clover dashboard.

Clover Virtual Terminal monthly fee: Free 30-day trial, and then $14.95/month; 3.5% + 10 cents keyed-in rate (Fiserv)

Overall, Clover is an intuitive, versatile, and feature-rich system, offering several configurations and add-ons to quickly streamline your checkout process and improve customer experience. It allows you to ring up sales, run taxes automatically, input (or suggest) gratuities, program discounts by the hour or time of day (e.g., Happy Hour), and apply service or delivery charges automatically.

Many of these features are available with the basic paid plan ($14.95), but note that some features, like the website builder function, are paid add-ons. These add-on costs prevented Clover from scoring higher.

Other POS systems, like Square, offer these features with their free plan.

Here are a few things you can do with a Clover register:

• Accept swipe, dip, or tap payments using credit and debit cards, as well as contactless payments like Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo
• Process expanded payment methods such as scan-to-pay, store credits, layaways, gift cards, and Buy-Now-Pay-Later options
• Add mobility with Clover Flex handheld device, and Clover Go mobile card reader
• Print or email receipts—or with Scan and Pay, add a QR code to allow customers to pay with their phones. You can include feedback coupons as well.

Customer Management

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Online Ordering

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Ecommerce

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While not the best in class, Clover’s business management tools are robust enough to handle fast-growing businesses, particularly restaurants. You can track ingredients, items, and variants, manage employee access and shift schedules, create and track invoices, and generate detailed reports.

However, Clover does not have built-in vendor management tools. Also, most of the advanced features are gated in its higher subscription plans. And, while these are still within competitive price ranges ($14.95–$74.95 for software), adding more third-party integration fees can quickly increase your monthly cost.

Inventory Management

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Invoice Management

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Employee Management

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Reporting & Analytics

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One advantage of the Clover system is that it comes with all the tools you need, and as you grow, you can add features from its list of apps. When setting up your business, you can also get 24/7 customer support by phone or email, as well as concierge-level setup if you want this.

The software itself gets above-average points for this category. Its interface is clear-cut; click on what you need to do in the menu bar, then follow the directions. When inputting inventory, you can create it for online ordering and for the console. You can also import inventory from a spreadsheet rather than adding items individually. Finally, Clover has over 200 third-party integrations, greatly increasing its versatility and functionality.

Two things detract from Clover’s ease of use: one, the lack of images, which can make it more difficult to find specific items; and two, the lack of low-inventory alerts, which means you need to keep track of when to reorder items.

Overall, we find Clover a solid POS with sophisticated features to run a busy retail or restaurant business. Subscription plans advertised on its website are within reason and user feedback of the system is generally positive.

However, given that you need to have the right merchant account to maximize Clover’s potential as a POS system, it may not be the best software for new, small business owners with no preferred merchant services provider to start with.

Additionally, the price structure can be confusing. It has also been mentioned more than once in the user reviews that they had to sign up for a few third-party integrations to access additional tools—something that could easily alarm anyone working on a budget.

Clover POS User Reviews

It’s surprising to see that given how widely distributed Clover is (through over 3,000 partners), there are still not a lot of user reviews. Most of the new feedback is positive but since the number of reviews is low, a couple of poor scores easily affected the results.

Overall Clover POS User Ratings:

• Capterra: 3.9 out of 5 stars from more than 400 reviews
• G2: 3.8 out of 5 stars from more than 60 reviews

Meanwhile there are a lot of new Clover app reviews from Apple users, raising the score to 4.8 out of 5 from over 7,000 reviews. Android users also rated it 4.8, based on well over 2,000 reviews. Finances Online’s Customer Satisfaction Algorithm that gathers reviews, comments, and opinions from users still maintains a 99% user satisfaction rating for Clover POS.

These are some of the trends we noticed when reading through Clover’s reviews:

Methodology: How We Evaluated Clover POS

To evaluate Clover, and all POS systems, we test each system ourselves. We start by looking at affordability along with a core set of features every POS should have, including easy transaction and order management, robust and flexible payment processing tools so you can affordably accept your customers’ preferred payment method, along with core business management features like inventory tracking, sales reports, and team management.

Of course, each system also needs to be easy to use, offer good value, and be able to grow with your business.

We use these criteria to examine the best overall POS systems. However, when looking at specific use cases, such as for retailers, complex inventory management, or mobile POS, we adjust the criteria to match the needs of those business types, which is why every POS has multiple scores across our site depending on the use case you are looking for.

Click through the tabs below for our retail POS evaluation criteria:

Clover POS Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Can I add extra devices or accessories to an existing Clover POS system?

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How do I set tax rates on Cover POS?

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There seems to be a significant discrepancy between user reviews and expert reviews for Clover. Why is this?

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Bottom Line

With a customized software and hardware package designed specifically for your business, it’s hard to find something not to like about Clover. For savvy retail and restaurant business owners, it’s worth checking out. However, note that Clover can be purchased from thousands of resellers, and the system cannot be reprogrammed so it can get tricky if you have not worked with a merchant account before. Our suggestion: find the best merchant service for you, then ask about Clover. Alternatively, you can also go straight to Clover and ask for a demo today.

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