Lightspeed pricing per month: till, online shop and transactions

In Belgium, Lightspeed costs 68 to 259 euros a month for an online shop on Lightspeed eCom, 99 to 229 euros for a retail till and 89 to 249 euros for a restaurant till, each on an annual plan. On top come the fees per payment, your hardware and any add-ons. If you combine a shop and an online shop, you pay two subscriptions.

Lightspeed is a company from Montreal with a Belgian office in Ghent, and for many shops and restaurants in Flanders it is the default till. Its online shop product, Lightspeed eCom, grew big in the Benelux under its earlier name SEOshop. If you are opening or taking over a shop in Belgium and the seller or your accountant mentions Lightspeed, this guide tells you what it really costs. It sets the three products side by side, adds up what comes on top, works through three shops and says when the combination is worth it. Thinking of leaving? Read switching from Lightspeed to Shopify or the comparison Shopify or Lightspeed. If you first want to know what an online shop costs in general, read ecommerce website cost; for the comparison with the other big name, see Shopify or WooCommerce.

Lightspeed eCom: the online shop per month

Four plans. They differ in the number of product variants, users and languages, and in how much of the shop you can change yourself.

Lightspeed charges no transaction fees of its own per order on eCom. You do pay your payment provider for every payment. You can try it free for 14 days.

Languages matter more in Belgium than elsewhere. A shop serving Flanders and Brussels often needs Dutch and French, and English for expats and tourists: that is three languages, which Essential does not cover.

The till: retail and restaurants

The till is a separate product with its own plans. For a shop:

The English pricing page calls the middle plan Core; the Belgian Dutch page calls it Essentieel. For restaurants, Lightspeed Restaurant has three plans: Basic at 89 euros, Core at 159 euros and Pro at 249 euros a month. A kitchen display, a mobile till at the table, ordering by QR code, a self-order kiosk and reservations are add-ons. Lightspeed itself adds that prices may vary and that extra service fees are possible, depending on your type of business.

Hardware is not in the monthly price: a till terminal, a receipt printer, a scanner and a cash drawer you buy or rent on top.

Worked example: a shop with a till and an online shop at 300 orders

Our own worked example for a clothes shop with a till in the shop and an online shop with 600 variants, 300 online orders a month and two languages, Dutch and French. Annual plan, excluding VAT and hardware.

Two things change this sum the most. If your customers pay by card instead of Bancontact, you pay a percentage of the amount, and with an average order of 60 euros that weighs more than a fixed rate. And if you pay monthly instead of annually, eCom Advanced costs 138 euros instead of 120. The fees of Lightspeed Payments itself are not on the Belgian pricing page; you get them in your quote. Bancontact, the Belgian debit card and app, is what most Belgians pay with online, so it is the line to check first. What each payment method costs on the other big platforms is in Wix vs Shopify; the cost of a European alternative in Shopify alternatives in Europe.

And the same on Shopify?

On Shopify the same shop costs Basic at 24 euros a month plus POS Pro at 79 euros for one location, 103 euros together, against 219 euros for the two Lightspeed subscriptions. Shopify does charge per payment through Shopify Payments, with Bancontact at 0.39 euros, and 2 percent extra if you use another payment provider online. How that works out at your volume is calculated in Shopify cost; what Shopify does and does not do better is in Shopify or Lightspeed.

When the till plus online shop combination is worth it

• Choose Lightspeed for both ifyou have a physical shop with a lot of stock, your staff already know the Lightspeed till, and you want every sale in the shop to come straight out of the online stock without an integration.
• Choose only an online shop ifyou have no physical shop. Then you pay no till, and you compare Lightspeed eCom with Shopify and WooCommerce on the online shop alone; see Shopify or WooCommerce.
• Choose only the till ifyou sell little online. The Lightspeed Retail plans mention a built-in basic version of Lightspeed eCom; ask which features it has before you take a second subscription.
• Choose another route ifyou need several languages, many variants or links with your accounting and find the annual bill above too high. What an online shop costs in general is in ecommerce website cost.

What your contract costs you if you want to stop

Lightspeed does not refund a running monthly or annual subscription once your licence is active. If you want to cancel or change your plan, that goes through your account manager. So read before you sign:

• The termin your order form: an annual plan you pay until the end, even if you stop earlier.
• The notice periodput the date in your diary the day you sign.
• The hardwareis it bought or rented, and what happens to a rental contract if you cancel the software?
• Your datain Lightspeed eCom you export orders, invoices, products and VAT as a CSV file. Do that before you cancel.

Taking over an existing shop that runs on Lightspeed? Ask the seller for the order form and the end date of the contract; you may be inheriting a year of fees.

Planning a switch? Set the end date of your contract next to the move. How to move the online shop without losing Google rankings, with a redirect for every old product address, is in migrate to Shopify; the general rules for a move are in website migration without losing SEO.

Costs you do not see on the pricing page

For an online shop that has to win customers from Google, what you can do with the platform for findability counts next to the monthly price: your own titles per product and per language, fast pages on a phone, and a sitemap that is right. How that works is in technical SEO.

How we look at a Lightspeed quote

We do not sell Lightspeed and get nothing for it. What we do is set your quote next to your own figures: how many variants, how many languages, how many orders and which payment methods. Then we tell you whether Lightspeed fits, whether Shopify works out cheaper, or whether a custom online shop with a link to your till is the better choice. How we build shops is on webshop development.