Revel Systems Reviews

I work for a small college bookstore that recently transitioned from an ancient, outdated POS system.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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

Very Powerful Database for retail store once you have all your prices and inventory entered. The POS is easy to use after (only after) set up.

1. Despite previous positive reviews for customer service, they are terrible! They are great for explaining how to use the product, they are terrible for fixing their own product! 2. ALSO, DO NOT USE FOR E-COMMERCE! The web order feature (e-commerce) is useless and looks even worse. Prepare to explain your problem repeatedly when using support. You will be transferred from one tier of support to the next. There's at least 3 tiers of support and they don't provide passdown info between support tiers. I tried the web order function, paid for it and found the shipping feature was flawed right before I took the website live. After 3-4 weeks of constantly repeating myself (explaining the problem) they said the problem would be fixed with the next update. They agreed to refund me for 1 month of the web order subscription. A few weeks later I called to check on the refund, I found out I was still enrolled and the promised refund has changed to a credit for a future month of the web order subscription. 3. Finally, Revel uses TLS 1.0 protocol. My credit card processor deemed this obsolete, and is going to charge me a monthly fee until they update the program. Or, I can complete a risk mitigation questionnaire and the fees will be waived as long as the program is updated by June 2018. The questions on the form are far beyond my computer/programming knowledge so I have to request support from Revel. I'm now at tier 2, explained my problem twice and still don't have any help. 4. If you are buying an existing business that uses Revel, you cannot transfer info from one revel account to another. They may tell you it can be done, I assure you they do not have the means to do it. You will find yourself starting over from scratch. As a small business, this setback was extremely costly in terms of man hours required to restart.

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.

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.

The ability to customize the POS
Online ordering built in at decent rate (may be more expensive now)
IPad based (flexibility)
Integrates with many payment processors (heads up on gateway fees)

Expensive
Seems like they are moving to a la carte pricing structure (more expensive)
Customer Support is based in Philippines, while sometimes good they don't really understand sometimes

IOS IPad functionality. Delivered product to store front quickly. If you have limited customization needs, the entry of products may prove easy.

On-boarding process. Inability to own product customization challenges. No provision in contract for when the product does not work with your business model as they initially advocated.

The user face is extremely sleek. Appearance wise it's a total 10. It was also very easy for our servers to learn how to use.

The cost is ridiculously high. Revel also likes to make changes that incur higher fees with the various vendors needed to process credit cards. A few months ago our payment gateway monthly fee raised high with absolutely no notice or real explanation as to why. When we called to ask about what changes were actually made, the reps could only seem to say that some security features had been upgraded. Really felt like we were just being gouged for more money.

The set up process was daunting as well. We have since had numerous issues that were only resolved when I posted a negative review on another forum. So customer service isn't equitable to the monthly cost of the service.

Syncing issues have also been a huge headache for us. The check splitting functionality has lost us money numerous times and caused terrible delays in our server's ability to help guests. Checks will merge themselves back together after a payment has been processed and its usually almost impossible to correct once it happens.

Revel is easy for employees to learn (even the non-tech employees) and to use. They have good updates; they listen to their customers about what is needed and then try to implement it. Our store is an hour away from the main office, and we are able to see the inventory from the office to place orders for the store! The reports are useful, varied and well laid out for ease of reading.

The integration between QuickBooks Desktop and Revel has been a bit tricky. I wish their support team was a bit better at understanding how the two programs talk to each other. I have found that I need to have the Revel Support team tell me how Revel is supposed to talk to QuickBooks and then I'll have to go to the QuickBooks support or forum to figure out how to set up QuickBooks so that it does what Revel intended.

Our company is the merchandise concessionaire for Athletic Events at Army West Point and we are big fans of the Revel System. At our latest game, we had 11 stands and were able to push through almost 2000 transactions in a little over four hours. The system has worked flawless for us and our gross sales is up over 20% this season because of the ease of sales. We added a scanner and the fans love it. Combined with a strong credit card provider we have our sales available for us usually in 48 hours. The system works for us in many locations on batteries and its Verizon wi-fi is very good. If we have wi-fi trouble on site with a large crowd...it holds transaction and puts it through when the wi-fi is up. Our staff...not big techies...has had NO problems after expressing a feeling that the system would make it hard for customers to be serviced. We are big fans because it is helping our business. We now do almost four to one credit cards over cash purchases.

You will find Revel is a little more expensive than other systems. They also make a decent profit on the hardware. But it is clearly you get what you pay for....when you have great service and a strong working system....you have to pay. This is a professional system.