Revel Systems Reviews

Pros

It's easy to learn and accessible. Having it on an Ipad means that it's large enough to know what button is being pressed, and to move things around if need be. Having categories set up is great so we can keep track of how much change we need or how many people came in to visit the museum, that day.

Cons

It can get a little complicated especially with adding discounts to certain purchases which can be difficult for our older volunteers to get a hold of. But is really it, on the basic side of things, it works well and does the job efficiently.

Pros

We love the ease of use for both our patients and staff. Revel is designed to be very user friendly and efficient.

Cons

The reboot time it takes when you reset the system.

Alternatives Considered

Lightspeed Restaurant, Slice and Toast POS

Reasons for Switching to Revel Systems

The price, communication, and customer service lined up with our values and Revel had the best "value" for the price and wonderful service.

Pros

Syncs for us seamlessly with Quickbooks online
Can handle large inventory
Lots of options for discounts and sales and alternative pricing and grouping
Love putting the orders together on on iPad and closing it out at the register on another.

Cons

Terrible, horrible, god awful customer service. The tech people are great at helping do a lot of things by phone; however when we did an update after a big fiasco with trying to resync iPads to printers and iPads to swipers, etc, we find out that our scale that we purchased through Revel for more cost when it was only worth less, we were told is no longer supported...this only 2 years after purchase. Sadly, we are so immersed in their system at present that we will have to purchase the new scale that they are supporting. We received zero notification that they were discontinuing the scale. The scale is a massive factor in our use of revel as 2/3 of our inventory is measured by grams. We have received run around after run around by phone, by email AND...even when I showed up at their office in San Francisco.

Pros

Revel has a lot of features that allow us to easily keep track of our visitor numbers and inventory. The system is very easy for our staff to use and it requires very little training.

Cons

We have run into numerous technical issues with Revel and their customer service has not been very helpful when resolving some issues.

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale

Reasons for Switching to Revel Systems

Revel has better back-end management

Pros

I work for a small college bookstore that recently transitioned from an ancient, outdated POS system. We were all so excited about Revel. It's sleek, easy to use, and much simpler than many of its predecessors.

Cons

The biggest trouble we ran into is that Revel is hopelessly buggy, and I would sometimes be on the phone with customer service for an hour before getting my problem resolved. For a small business with only one cash register, this was often a nightmare.

Pros

It functions as a POS system. Nothing stuck out as especially good.

Cons

The UX for making your menu is much much less friendly than other products on the market.

Every single improvement that Revel makes requires an extra monthly subscription to access it. Don't expect any free upgrades.

And now a paid subscription to access data that is more than 12 months old??? Are you kidding me? How about closing out your books at the end of the year, or insurance audits? This is ridiculous.

Pros

Easy to use. Easy to learn staff friendly have a portable option, reliable enough. Use iPad and doesn’t take too much space.

Cons

Not set up toward restaurant, long orders arrive in the kitchen, with no clear consolidation of the order, making it difficult to work with big parties. And few little similar problems, that make you think, this system was not developed for restaurant

Alternatives Considered

TouchBistro

Reasons for Choosing Revel Systems

Vivonet was great and reliable, but a nightmare to set up, also after few years they ask me to buy a new system, was the perfect time to switch.

Reasons for Switching to Revel Systems

At the time I could not access my touch bistro network from an outside computer.

Pros

Easy to use and set up. The reports are pretty good. As a simple POS and time keeping system, it works well

Cons

If you need a POS that will help you with in depth inventory control, this is probably not the system for you

Pros

I like the view of the menu the most. It allows you to easily select products and add additional items, if you need to.

Cons

The customer service is horrible. If you have any issues with the system, good luck to you and block off at least an hour.

Pros

You can program it to accept tips on charge card which increased the barista's tips. IT was a lot better than our previous system.

Cons

The backend stuff is hard to figure out and the customer service isn't the best. Also you need quite a bit of training to be comfortable with using it on a day to day basis.

Pros

Nothing
All I can say is that the package looks nice but there’s nothing useful in the package but a pack of lies.

Cons

The sales process is extremely misleading and they will tell you anything you want to hear but delivery will fall very short
During the process of selecting a point-of-sale system be interviewed several software companies including Revel
In this process the sales person promises that their point of sale is capable of the options we were looking for and in the process of discovery after we made payments and purchased equipment and software we realized that it was not true
In particular we wanted to use a kitchen display system that had the capability of firing courses and this was not the case
Later when we told them that this is not functioning properly they recommended that we use printers instead
We told them the reason why we made the switch to your company was to use kitchen display and avoid printers all together
Sadly they refuse to acknowledge even though all the technicians that we spoke to clearly admitted that this function is not currently functional in the way it should be
I would strongly advise not to use the system as they are extremely misleading in the process of delivering their sale and product

We never even started using the system as the system was not capable of delivering what we were promised to.
So we lost all the initial investment into it and no recourse.

Alternatives Considered

Square Point of Sale and TouchBistro

Reasons for Choosing Revel Systems

Because they offered what we needed

Switched From

TouchBistro

Reasons for Switching to Revel Systems

We didn’t chose revel ultimately We made the choice initially because they made false promises

Pros

Possibly the inventory, everything else is just average

Cons

I feel that I was the Ginney pig of this product. Your customer help line is the worst

Alternatives Considered

Toast POS

Reasons for Choosing Revel Systems

I thought it would help with inventory

Reasons for Switching to Revel Systems

I thought I could trust the [sensitive content hidden] to help us with the product. He does not return my calls and my system is not working correctly. I constantly have my credit cards freezing, which causes customers to get double charged and then I have to refund them

Pros

Very adaptive if you are FSR. Many ways to get to open tabs. Support team emails articles and/or videos to help after virtually every support call . Support staff are very friendly and patient.

Cons

SOUNDED good, but they couldn't deliver! Make sure they demonstrate the feature you want to use before purchasing. I spoke to my sales rep for 30-45 minutes and multiple times and still the system did not work as expected! I could not remove the majority of dining options (we are a bar with NO food or table service) I need lots of tabs and good inventory tracking of my liquor, kinda like a night club. The system works for FULL service, QUICK service or retail I guess... Definitely not a bar with no table service. It is VERY difficult to set up!! At first I thought lots of settings = lots of customization. In my case I found it not customizable to my needs. I was calling support 15 times a day for advise and work arounds. In 1 week I waited on hold with support 4 times for 20-25 minutes each call. One time I actually waited for 1 whole HOUR! Thank fully I still had not gone live. I don't like the menu lay out. Personally I think the categories and subcategories take up a LOT of valuable screen space (BIG squares). I thought I could bypass the subcategories, but after purchase found out that I couldn't get necessary reports that way. Modifiers can only add ingredients. I needed cocktails that use less of one ingredient and more of another. Later found out that was not possible. Also 3 year contract?! Wow that's a big commitment!

Pros

Revel Systems syncs with Quickbooks better than any other system I'm aware of. They most often sell the equipment with higher-end networking and wireless access points such as Meraki or Ubiquiti whereas others use residential Netgear, Linksys, or TP Link which jeopardizes the stability of using a tablet as your POS.

Cons

This oversight by Revel is ridiculous. However, are you table service and do you need your servers or other employees to take credit card tips out of the cash drawer at the end of their shift? Or leave a receipt in the drawer of how much they took out? If so it's not currently possible with Revision 2.22.9-61 or below for a server to print a basic tip report (unless you give them full financial access which includes labor rates for all other employees.). The iPad assigns the tip to whoever pays out the ticket when the customer leaves. So if your host uses his or her pin to close the ticket and the customer adds a tip that ticket is then assigned to the host rather than the waiter or waitress that helped them on the front end of revel. Furthermore, the manager can't even see a server's tips to pay out the credit card tips accurately from iPad until he or she has batched out at the end of the day. The only solution after two years of trying to remedy this situation for CajunKitchenCafe.com is to pull the report from a laptap on the backend after the point of sale has been batched at the end of the day or put the credit card tips on the employees paycheck which is a huge change to culture for most restaurants that have been in business for as long as Cajun Kitchen.

Pros

I can see exactly what we sold on a certain day. They look impressive so despite the fact that they have low functionality they look really pretty....but, lets be honest....that's mostly the ipad.

Cons

Notice how it's spelled rEVEL. (it's illiterate evil with an R). Things I though rEVEL would do but it doesn't, problems we have, and why you shouldn't purchase revel for your establishment.

1. When you set up a customer, they are not automatically set up to collect reward points. Your staff have to create a rewards card separately, then link it to the customer. We've had lots of input errors because of this. The customer and reward points numbers are a customers phone number, which means that if they change their phone number you have to change their customer number. Then deactivate their rewards card number. Then create a new rewards card. Then go to the back end and download the entire customer matrix, insert the number of reward points they should have under their new number, then upload all of the data back into the system. Something that you can only do when you are closed for the day. So many things with revel are like this. Something that should be simple is the most cumbersome thing ever.

2. Customers cant fill in their own information on the customer facing display which leads to lots of inputting errors.

3. The only way collected customer emails link into your email program is if you pay a hefty monthly fee (per pos station) for a third party app.

4. If a customer chooses to have their receipt emailed to them, the system does not collect that email and sync it to their customer identification.

5. In Canada here, there are no Province options when filling out customer details so we can't even collect their address properly.

6. Want to send a coupon to your top 50 customers? Good luck There is no report that you can run for that. Tons of data. No way to mine it. Have fun paying a third party to mine your data for you.

7. Want to know who purchased an item on a specific day? Once again, all this data, with no reports to mine it.

8. GLITCHY! Open orders hanging open, customer reward points not being accrued correctly, and weird little things like pop up balloons that slow down transaction time by 5 seconds, customer list not being alphabetical, orders re-opening hours later showing few cents owing on it, lag time between info going up to the cloud and back down to the stations. (a customer wants to exchange something they bought 5 minutes ago? They have to go to the same pos station they bought it at as the sale will not show up on the other stations for hours). Items that we sell by the each suddenly show an inventory of 1.86 units, where did that .14 of a unit go?

9. CUMBERSOME, the procedures for creating gift cards, processing returns, creating a customer, linking that customer to a reward card. All of it is just so damned cumbersome, takes so many taps on the ipad and is not intuitive....even for our millennial cashiers.

10. The sales people flat out lie. I asked really specific functionality questions from our sales person, who flat out lied about the systems capabilities. Then dropped us like a hot potato once he had our money. I spent the next month chasing Revel to make sure that the install happened before we opened. This attitude of sale first, customer service last, follows through. The hubs that they sold us are glitchy and faulty. We complained about them for a full year. Then we got an email offering us their new and improved network hubs. So basically they sold me crap. Knew that they sold me something that didn't work. Then offered a discount on selling the replacement to me.

11. The Customer Management system does very little. Once again, we had to pay a third party to figure out who our top customers were, then go through their profiles one by one to gather their emails to send them all an email to offer them a reward for being a top customer.

12. You can't redeem multiple rewards at once, or process a refund without a customer making a purchase(we sell milk in reusable glass bottles that the customer gets money back when they bring back their bottle, you can't process this if they just come back to return the bottle without making a purchase), or or process two refunds and a reward under the same transaction. So many glitchy things.

13. Someone will reply to this saying there are no open tickets on our account. And this is true. Because the reply to all of these things is that the feature doesn't exist and I should put in a request for a new feature. Which I have done. Repeatedly over the last 3 years. And here we are, still calling revel support asking why if you sell systems in Canada can I not enter a Canadian address in the system.

14. Poorly trained staff. We are a seasonal business and each spring when we open up, we have to have revel support enter some identification numbers on the back end to have their system work with our payment processor monaris (the only one they offer). It always takes several weeks of my calling back and sitting on hold to get this simple thing done. Every time. This is what it's like calling revel every time. I'm sure that there are lots of weird glitchy things with every system out there but revel really appears as though it was built poorly from the outset and has software flaws that can not be changed.

One of my managers spends 10-20 hours per week working on fixing revel errors, calling customer service, figuring out how the system works now that there is another update, writing detailed training manuals for our staff to us the system. It's just so time consumptive and terrible. It makes it all the worse that revel folks just repeat the party line and don't actually look for solutions to the system problems. "Fill in a feature request form" It's like they've all drunk the kool-aid and have become automatons controlled by an evil wizard named Revel.

Pros

I got to keep the really expensive iPad. My workers made a lot of money in overtime because of the time on the phone with customer support troubleshooting problems with the software.

Cons

As a business owner please do your due diligence and run from this company. After calling to stop the recurring billing from Revel and receiving a ticket 1245556, which stated it was being sent to billing department for cancellation. Revel continued to bill until i contacted them a second time. Their excuse of needing to speak to someone in client relations first before they would cancel the service. No indication when the 1st request to cancel was made that I had to call or speak to anyone else. They go on and on about company policy and how I don't see it their way. Someone calls to cancel a service, as a responsible business you cancel it, you don't leave the account open and continue to bill. If I say cancel, I don't need a sales guy calling from customer relations to offer incentives or to gather facts about his product or why am I leaving. Stop wasting customer's time having them speak to multiple people just to have you stop taking money out of their account month after month.

Pros

Few

Cons

Many

Pros

Mobile ordertakers. However they are a constant problem and we continue to have issues with them.

Cons

Difficulty with spitting guest checks. Cause multiple challenges with discounts. Overall discount platform. Difficult to use and not meeting my needs. Gift card have been a consistent problem with much time spent on the phone with support people, but still no resolution. Too many issues overall. Today the credit cards didn't work because of some technical issue in support. They got it fixed and it worked fine for a few hours then it stopped working again. Too many issues that steal too much of my time. the system should be working for me, but instead It seems to make my job harder.....

Pros

The employee management features are good. It easy to create employee schedules and track employee profits and sales.

Cons

We switched to Revel from QuickBooks POS because we wanted to move to a cloud based POS. Our goal was to be able to manage our retail store and build an e-commerce business. We were told that the Revel system was capable of everything that QuickBooks POS did and much more. However, once we began building it out we quickly realized it was not capable of doing what the sales rep told us it would nor did it have many of the features we used in QB.

It took us nearly six months to completely rebuild our entire inventory system, because Revel did not support selling a single product by multiple units of measure (ex. soda by the can, case or 6 pack). Now that we finally have the system in place we've had problems with the inventory management system giving us false quantities resulting in over purchasing and/or running out of key products.

They also release new system updates and products every couple of months, however the new releases often have problems and many of the tech support personnel have no idea how to fix problems.

Pros

The local (Australian) staff who sold it to us, were helpful and it all went well. No longer managed by Australian staff and it went down hill from then.
Really have little good to say about it after 3 years of use.

Cons

Offered a one off fee relief of $200 during shutdown. Every other app gave 100% fee relief or significant discounts.
Cost of hardware was for fixed period, but they offered no discount once that period was over. Basically intend to charge for the cost of the hardware, indefinitely.
Support is provided by eastern European call centre. Pleasant and helpful but a minor language barrier.
Cant do many basic things you'd expect. Such as a set menu with course options
Level of integration is extremely poor. Basically all at additional cost. Including integration with essential accounting app, which they claim in advertising is integrated. Its not.

Pros

The best thing about this System is the easy and intuitive interface. It greatly facilitates the operations of the day and allows us to always work in a better way. It has, also, a number of options and improvements that allow me to adapt to my needs, especially the part of the discounts. They are the best!

Cons

The bad thing is the implementation, being such a complete software it takes a long time to configure all the functions to your liking to work in a better way. However, with practice and patience, it is possible to get ahead.

Pros

Very user friendly and great tech support

Cons

I liked all aspects of REVEL, sometimes I had a few cc issues, but were resolved

Pros

Easy to use front end with a robust, feature-packed browser-based back end that makes multi-unit support effortless.

Cons

It is a bit pricey compared to some other systems, but the quality and support you get is worth it in every way.

Pros

when the internet goes down Revel continues on for a couple of days with cash payments

Cons

its has become less service friendly now that all calls go to overseas and seems to be more tech orientated than customer user orientated