Applova Self Ordering Kiosk vs Lightspeed Restaurant

Applova Self Ordering Kiosk is an Android touchscreen system for restaurant customers to browse menus, customize items, place orders, and pay in-store. It supports item modifiers, combo meals, upsells, and multiple payment methods. Personalized recommendations can use customers’ previous purchases. Orders can go directly to the kitchen, with Applova describing instant routing for QSR kiosks. Restaurants can choose countertop, wall-mounted, or floor-standing hardware, quoted separately from the software. Applova lists Clover, Square, RPOWER, GoDaddy, and other restaurant-solution partners, and says the kiosk integrates with Square POS for order and payment management. Third-party payment processors handle card transactions and are described as PCI DSS compliant; Applova says it does not store or handle cardholder data. The product targets QSRs, fast-casual businesses, multi-location brands, and restaurants of all sizes. Pricing is on request for a monthly software plan, with hardware quoted separately. Support includes a dedicated team and 24/7 customer support.

Lightspeed Restaurant is restaurant management software built around a point-of-sale and payments platform. It supports customizable menus, screens and floor plans, with online, tableside and QR-code ordering. Restaurants, hotels and multi-location operators can use the system for operations including inventory, reservations, tables, staff scheduling and sales reporting. The cloud-based POS can keep working offline, saving entered data locally and uploading it when connectivity returns; master-data maintenance and eCloud evaluations still require internet access. Its front end requires the Lightspeed Restaurant iPad app, while the back end can be managed on desktop and iPad. Lightspeed also says the POS can run in a browser on Mac, PC, Apple or Android devices. The Restaurant Integration Hub includes hundreds of third-party integrations, and accounting sync can send sales data to QuickBooks, Xero, Sage and other software. Plans start at $69/mo. Restaurant has no free plan or free trial listed; a demo option is presented instead.