Magento POS Review: Ebizmarts vs ConnectPOS

If you’re looking for Magento-based POS, chances that you’re pondering among these names: Ebizmarts, Magestore, X-POS and ConnectPOS.

In this comparison series, we review these Magento POS for you, so you can decide on which one will be the most suitable for your business. Today we will look at how Ebizmarts POS perform against ConnectPOS in terms of the following main points.

Magento POS Review: Device

Ebizmarts POS is available for iPad app only while ConnectPOS comes in both web app version and iPad app version. Thus, ConnectPOS gives you more flexibility in choosing the devices.

Your cashier may only need a web POS app to check out for customers, but during peak hours or seasons, you or another cashier can grab an iPad and use ConnectPOS iPad app to help with checkout and reduce wait time for shoppers. The great thing is ConnectPOS iPad app comes at no extra cost.

Magento POS Review: Product & Inventory

ConnectPOS gives you more flexibility to manage products and stock:

• Switch between Grid View and List View

• Support decimal quantity of an item (for example: 0.5 kg, 1.2 metres)

• Display stock at each store and allow stock transfer directly from POS (multi-warehouse inventory)

Ebizmarts enables updating stock directly on POS but it’s still the global stock, not at the level of different stores and warehouses. Therefore, if you have multi-store online and offline, you should opt for ConnectPOS.

Magento POS Review: Checkout Process

ConnectPOS is rated higher than Ebizmarts for its intuitive interface that makes it easy for cashiers to navigate and complete their tasks, especially when they face a long queue of customers waiting to check out.

Now, let’s break down the small details (that make big differences) in the checkout process of both Magento POS:

Product and Customer Search

Ebizmarts focuses on iPad app so it makes really good use of iPad camera by turning it into a barcode scanner to scan products and customers” badges. This will be useful if you don’t want to spend extra on purchasing a barcode scanner that works with the iPad.

On the other hand, ConnectPOS works with a wide range of POS hardware including printers and barcode scanners so it’s likely that you can continue using the ones that you have. It also has Custom Sale that allows cashiers to sell a new product which is not available in Magento yet. The order with Custom Sale items will be synced normally to Magento like other orders.

Since ConnectPOS focuses on fast and smooth performance, it is equipped with Customer Online Mode (which means customers are managed in real-time with Magento to avoid loading all customers to POS; thus, Internet is required) and optimized to work with a large number of products up to 100K SKUs.

Prices, Promotions and Taxes

ConnectPOS has a clear advantage here as it supports all types of Magento prices and promotions, including special prices, tier prices, shopping cart price rules and catalog price rules. You can also manually discount the whole order by fixed number or percentage, while Ebizmarts only allows cart discount with Coupon Code.

In terms of taxes, ConnectPOS calculates more accurately than Ebizmarts and the tax rules will work in ConnectPOS’ Offline Mode once they are synced to POS. The calculation time also decreases significantly in ConnectPOS as it can calculate locally instead of waiting for Magento to calculate for it.

Payments

Ebizmarts POS is integrated with more payments than ConnectPOS as it’s been on the market for long. Besides common payments such as PayPal Here, Authorize.Net and Payment Express, Ebizmarts offers Sage Pay, Stripe, Adyen, and Alipay while ConnectPOS has iZettle and Tyro.

Integrated payments are recommended as shop operators don’t have to type in the amount to charge by hand, so it minimizes mistakes made during the payment process.

Non-integrated payments are available in ConnectPOS only, which you can customize to represent different payment methods and there is no limit on the number of non-integrated payments.

Refund and Exchange

You can refund for a dissatisfied customer using Refund in ConnectPOS and Cancel Order in Ebizmarts POS. You can also choose to put the refunded item back to stock or not (in case it’s the manufacturer’s fault). Then you can choose to refund to Gift Cards in ConnectPOS or Store Credit in Ebizmarts.

To perform exchange, you will have to create a new order in Ebizmarts while with ConnectPOS, you can do so in the original order by choosing the refunded item and add the new item for exchange to cart. A new order will be automatically created for the new item with a note linking the new order to the original order for tracking.

Omnichannel Features

Synchronized database between Magento and POS enables these two Magento Point-of-Sale extensions to bring about omnichannel features. These features are:

• Click-and-collect (ConnectPOS)/ In-store Pickup (Ebizmarts)
• Endless Aisle and Multishipping.

In both POS, customers can check their order information on Second Screen, choose to subscribe to the brand’s newsletters or check out on their own with Kiosk Mode.

Ebizmarts also allows shop operators to check out for customers in other stores by switching between store views.

Meanwhile, ConnectPOS supports cashiers with Sales Assistant Mode that provides necessary information and recommendations so they can confidently consult modern customers who are well-informed and tech-savvy.

Magento POS Review: Store Operation

Shop Operator/ Cashier Management

Both POS enables Pincode login for quick access. In ConnectPOS, you can also set auto-logout after POS is idle for a certain amount of time (i.e. 15 minutes) to keep it secured.

Ebizmarts once again makes the most out of iPad as it works with Microsoft to provide Staff Clock-in and -out with Face Recognition. This is a fast and secure way for cashiers to log in and start selling.

With ConnectPOS and Ebizmarts POS, you can attribute an order to a specific salesperson to calculate commission for them. Ebizmarts go further with a lovely feature called Hi-Five Screen that appears after every sale or the biggest sales (depending on your configuration) so your cashiers can give POS a hi-5 to cheer for their sales.

Customization

A translation tool is available in Ebizmarts for Magento 2 and ConnectPOS for Magento 1 and 2. In ConnectPOS you can customize receipts to make it match your brand design. In case you need specific customization to meet your business requirement, you can contact the Support Team for a free quote.

Synchronization

ConnectPOS is the winner here as it can synchronize in real time between Magento and POS. In Ebizmarts POS, you can choose to auto-sync every 10, 30 or 60 minutes or manually sync.

Magento POS Review: Store Management

Ebizmarts has a separate section for Customer Management where you can see all related information under the name of a single customer. However, with ConnectPOS, there is no separate section for Customer Management.

To look up personal information and purchase history of a customer, you can go to Order List and type the customer’s name into the search bar. Then you can view his personal information including his lifetime value and reward points, and all of his orders, online and in-store.

Last but not least, reports are of great importance to any retailers. ConnectPOS has both X-Report (Midday Report) and Z-Report (End of day Report) while Ebizmarts only has X-Report. Furthermore, ConnectPOS has its own Report module with more than 20 types of reports that can be filtered and compared by date range. Of course, you can also export these reports to share with your accountants.

Final Words

If you own a small or medium store and you only need a register, you should consider Ebizmarts since it makes use of the iPad and offers quite a good range of features and payments. If you have multi-stores and a need for speed, you should go for ConnectPOS for its stability, scalability and high speed.

Both POS offer free trials so we recommend that you try both before making your decisions. Register for a free trial of ConnectPOS (no credit card required) and a free trial of Ebizmarts POS (credit card required).