Speaker 1: Today, we'll compare 5 Star's Square, Clover, Toast, and Spark Loyalty on price, customer loyalty, technology, customer data, and customer engagement features, so that you can make the best decision for your business. Hi, I'm Amy. I'm a retail manager here in Olympia, Washington, and I host Small Business Success with Spark Loyalty, a channel created specifically for independent retailers to grow customers, loyalty, and sales. Price, loyalty, and engagement are critical to the success of your retail business, and there are many solutions out there to help you thrive in this area. Good news, we did the heavy lifting and researched the top 5 solutions on the market today. 5 Star's, Square, Clover, Toast, and Spark Loyalty. By the end of this video, you'll know how these solutions compare on price, hardware, customer engagement tools, and more. Let's kick off by comparing price and contracts, starting with 5 Star's. 5 Star's pricing structure is based on the size of your business and other factors. You'll need to talk with a sales representative to receive a pricing quote specific to your business. Our research shows that 5 Star's base monthly price varies pretty widely, and could be around several hundred dollars per month for some merchants. One way to lock in a lower monthly rate with 5 Star's is to sign a contract. The longer the contract term, the lower your monthly rate, but it also means that you're locked into a long-term agreement. In addition to the monthly fee, you'll also need to purchase extra packages if you want all of 5 Star's engagement tools, such as text and email campaigns. I'll get into this more in just a bit. The bottom line? You'll need to get a quote to determine the final 5 Star's price for your business, but it's safe to estimate around a couple hundred dollars per month. Text and email capabilities will need to be purchased as add-ons. 5 Star's does require a long-term contract, and the longer your contract is, the lower your monthly rate will be. Moving on to Square. Square is a combo point-of-sale system, also known as POS, slash loyalty solution. So you can only use Square's loyalty system with the purchase of their POS system. Square does not charge a monthly fee to use their POS system. Instead, you pay processing fees on all of your transactions. Other expenses include purchasing Square's hardware, which is an upfront cost of $169. You'll also need to purchase their loyalty program, which starts at $45 per month and increases from there using participation-based pricing. More on this later. Our research shows that Square does not require a long-term contract, and that you can cancel at any time. Bottom line? You'll need to purchase Square's POS system in order to access their loyalty program. You'll only pay processing fees to use their POS system. Square is a one-time upfront hardware cost of around $169. Their loyalty program starts at $45 per month and goes up from there with an increase in customer engagement. Square does not require a long-term contract. Let's move on to Clover. Clover is also a POS and loyalty combo solution. Clover does require a contract, which charges a monthly fee that includes a limited loyalty program. Clover confirmed with us that most of their customers do end up purchasing a separate loyalty app, as Clover's built-in loyalty program is very limited in its capabilities, including the inability to award loyalty points. Clover's complex pricing structure makes it a little hard to estimate price. But here's what Merchant Maverick reports. Upfront hardware costs can be anywhere from around $1,300 to $1,600. The software runs around $40 per month for their basic register plan. Credit card fees can be between 2.3% and 2.6%, plus $0.10 per transaction. You'll likely need to purchase an additional loyalty app if you'd like to do things like award loyalty points to your customers. Another POS slash loyalty combo solution is Toast. Toast uses a tiered pricing structure for their POS system. The base monthly rate changes depending on your business and which features you would like to use. To enjoy Toast's loyalty program, you will need to pay an additional fee for the Toast loyalty system, which does not automatically come with their POS system. Bottom line for Toast? You'll need to talk with an agent to get a quote specific to your business, but plan on a base monthly rate of anywhere between $69 to $165. Payment processing fees change based on your monthly rate. If you pay a higher monthly fee, your processing fee will be lower. Posted processing fees start around 2.49%, plus $0.15 per transaction with the $69 a month plan. Toast does ask for a multi-year contract. And finally, let's look at Spark Loyalty. This system is a loyalty-only program. Spark Loyalty does not make POS software and instead specializes in creating a complete customer loyalty and engagement solution. Spark Loyalty offers a simple pricing model. One monthly flat rate of $99 per store location, with all of its features included. This includes unlimited text and email campaigns. If you have more than one store location, Spark Loyalty will usually offer a price break when you sign up multiple locations. Spark Loyalty does not require a long-term contract, so you can cancel at any time. Bottom line? You can get the entire Spark Loyalty system for $99 per month. This includes all features of the program, including unlimited text and email campaigns, a fully customizable program, and access to their helpful and responsive customer support team. Spark Loyalty does not require a long-term contract, and you can cancel at any time. Now let's look at the technology and hardware for each system, starting again with 5 Star. The 5 Star system uses two different counter tablets, one for their customer and one for the cashier. So it does require a fair amount of counter space. Square's system requires one large counter screen, as well as card reader and receipt printer. This is because you'll need to sign up for Square's full POS system in order to access their loyalty program. The same is true of Clover, which uses one large tablet screen with a built-in card reader on a swivel base, as well as a receipt printer. Toast also uses a large counter screen, card reader, and receipt printer for their full POS system and loyalty program. And finally, Spark Loyalty. Because Spark Loyalty is only a loyalty program, they have pretty minimal hardware. The Spark Loyalty system includes one small counter tablet and two Spark Stamps. The stamp is used by the cashier to securely validate the customer, awarding points, and redeeming rewards. And finally, let's look at how each system can help you engage your customers and build loyalty. As I mentioned earlier, 5 Star's customer engagement tools such as text and email campaigns need to be purchased as add-on packages. The package price depends on the number of campaigns you want to send out. More campaigns means a higher package price. So this could be an ever-changing and ever-increasing cost to your business. In order to get text and email campaigns with Square, you'll have to subscribe to Square Marketing, which integrates their POS system and other Square tools. Square Marketing uses participation-based pricing, which means that the more you grow your customer engagement, the more you pay to use the system. To engage your customers using Clover's system, you'll need to upgrade to their Customer Engagement Plus plan. This plan unlocks all of your engagement tools, including unlimited text and email campaigns, social promotions, and the ability to send out offers and reward your customers. Unlike the other solutions we've mentioned here, Toast does not readily offer a lot of information about their engagement tools. What we can tell you from our research is that merchants usually need to contact Toast's customer support team in order to create and send out a campaign to their customers, rather than having the ability to do this from their dashboards. This can add an extra step in the middle of an already busy day. Finally, let's look at Spark Loyalty. This system includes unlimited text and email campaigns in their base flat rate of $99 per month. You can create and send out campaigns right from your dashboard, and you'll never pay more for engagement with your customers. So why does Spark Loyalty offer so much for such an affordable price? Well, Spark Loyalty is developed by an independent company called Snowshoe. Because they are a locally owned, independent company themselves, they get small businesses, and they want to see every independent retail store and every small business owner succeed. That's why they offer the most affordable, flexible, and feature-packed loyalty program on the market. There's no risk, no contract. You can also reach our customer success team at 707-79-SPARK, or email us at info at snow.sh. Remember to like and subscribe to our channel, and hit the bell icon to get notified when new videos get published. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.