Revel Systems Reviews

Revel POS--a powerful tool for hospitality and retail

Reviewed on 2016/06/16

Revel Systems POS is a very powerful tool that is well-supported, constantly undergoing updates and improvements (and that our salesman and installer have been very easy to work with!) I have generally found tech support to be responsive and they have usually always helped me resolve any issues.

Excellent System that Works Great

Reviewed on 2017/10/30

We have had others system and this just works great for us. It has a pretty good inventory system and a host of reports. The key is its makes the sales process easy. I have no problem giving Revel a strong recommendation.

Full of Glitches

Reviewed on 2016/11/07

We've been with Revel for about 8 months now. I am on the phone with customer support weekly, nearly daily. Our initial integration with Quickbooks was not well supported by their staff and eventually I had to just teach myself how to get the system set up and integrated. We have constantly had issues that when I contact customer service they tell me they don't know why it happened and it must be a glitch in the software. My credit card machine broke after 7 months and Revel could not figure out how to fix it so I called the manufacturer and they told me it was a software issue. Revel's solution was to trade in for a new one, rather than try to figure out what the software issue was. The first customer service agent I spoke to did not even have the manual for the pin pad that I was using.

Multiple times Revel has stopped speaking to Quickbooks without warning and our data has not been pushed through as it should. I've been told that the exchange feature that is built in to the front end of the system does not actually work and so we should stop using it and do a work around so that our entries into Quickbooks will be correct. My completed invoices have gotten stuck between the Ipad and the back office and the payments have therefore not been received into Quickbooks until I discovered the problem. Revel has multiple times overtaken Quickbooks and changed the vendor information in Quickbooks. After multiple phone calls to customer support for a single issue I've eventually been told that my system is out of date and that's what's causing the problem, but it was never brought up in initial phone calls. In the same vein, there is no indication from Revel that I should update the system. In fact for the last update, the app told me that it was the most up to date, but finally on the back end of Revel there was a warning that I needed to update or my system would be obsolete. In fact I was running the most up to date version of the app, but what needed to be done was to download an entirely new app-that was not made clear in Revel's warning, I just happened to figure it out myself. Furthermore, had I not happened to log into Revel's back end on that particular day, I would not have known that I was required to update.

One day the back office stopped sending our daily emailed reports. When I spoke to customer support they told me that it was because the email addresses where the report was sent were separated by commas and not semi-colons. When I mentioned that the commas had been working for 7 months they told me that it was due to an update on their back end that now required semi-colons. When asked how I was supposed to know that and change it I was told that it had been a "known issue" for over a month and that some businesses had a problem and some didn't so they didn't let customers know about the issue.

With all the issues I've had, I've never been able to speak to a supervisor or had any kind of conciliatory gesture like a reduced price made for me and in fact had to pay shipping to and from returning my credit card machine. When I speak to customer service about issues related to Quickbooks integration, they are not trained on Quickbooks so generally cannot help me.

Overall the system is extremely glitchy and inconsistent. It cannot be counted on to work the same way from day to day.

Works Well for our Small Business

Reviewed on 2018/08/02

Overall, Revel is a good company. We are a small convenience store at a marina and campground and they are working well for us. One of the reasons we went with Revel is because they have teamed up with Shell Corp. to create an integration for fuel pumps and the Revel point of sales. Revel is the cheapest option on the market, that I was able to find, to be able to offer my customers pay at the pump options. This is still in the works, but they are making steady progress and I am excited for when we can try it out.

Great program!

Reviewed on 2016/12/31

We use Revel as our point of sales system at the restaurant I work in. After switching to revel from a previous program, I was immediately pleased with how easy and intuitive the program is. Splitting checks is extremely easy to do, no matter how many you have to split it into. This was not the case with our old program. It allows the ability to color code categories and even put an image on a button. Another excellent feature is that servers cannot swipe a card or cash out a bill that is not under their name. This eliminates report mix-ups and the hassle of having to calculate how much of another server's tips you ended up with and owe back to them because it can't happen. Overall, Revel was an excellent upgrade and continues to be an excellent program.

Only good if your needs are very Basic

Reviewed on 2018/04/23

Overall Revel is a total letdown and will be replaced by year end with a better system, lots of things we were promised could be done require using their "Open API" which costs more per month than the entire POS system does for 5 stations. We were not told about the API pricing upfront (or that there was even a cost at all, it was pitched like it was included in the regular fee) just that we could use the API to do everything we told them we needed to do, my project manager informed me of the API pricing during our implementation, when I called out the sales rep for never mentioning the additional cost despite repeated conversations about how critical this was she told me "its not my job to tell you the pricing for the API since that's not my department"

It is also very difficult to impossible to find and load an order in the dashboard by customer. You have to load the customers orders report, find the customer in the list, click show orders, note the order number, then go to the order history report and then you can click through to the order, why isn't the order number under customers order a hyperlink to take me to the order?

They made a systems change to batch process updates to the POS instead of in realtime, we have a custom app that we use for check ins when a customer comes into the store and it adds customers to the revel system so we can link them to a sale and track close rate etc. They used to sync in real time from the dashboard to the stations, after a recent update it takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes for the customers to pull down from the revel dashboard. I have verified they show up on the dashboard instantly as they should, there is just a major delay in syncing back to the iPads now that was not there before the update.

Reporting is very weak in certain areas, you can't view profit by anything other than employee which is worthless if you don't have pay rates loaded which we don't since we aren't using that aspect of the system.

When we receive inventory in the store, we upload it into the revel dashboard via their excel template this works about 75% of the time, the rest of the time it just silently fails, you will never receive any notice that it failed, where it failed etc. So now before I do any uploads, I do an export of what we have immediately before so when it fails I can compare to the inventory after the partial upload to figure out where the import stopped so I can import the rest.

I could keep going but bottom line is if your needs are more than barebones or you are not a restaurant you should look elsewhere for a much better solution.

Powerful tool but sometimes clunky

Reviewed on 2022/11/13

Usually works very well, not my favourite because of user experience and aesthetics however.

de la mer experience with Revel

Reviewed on 2017/11/24

Good - but has great mobile app partner in PepperHQ

Reviewed on 2016/11/25

Revel itself is a solid system, but it was not until we integrated it with a mobile app platform (one of their partners, who seem to only work with Revel) that we really started to get a return on investment from the Revel system. The two systems work brilliantly together and have transformed not only the customer experience, but also our operational efficiency. Revel itself is only part of the solution, Pepper HQ - check them out at http://pepperhq.com - is the key to unlocking the value and extending the features within Revel and I think Revel have been very clever getting these guys to partner with them - massive advantage over any other EPOS provider.

Great product if you have the time to put into it.

Reviewed on 2019/01/03

Stay away this program

Reviewed on 2016/11/21

We are existing Revel System customer but I think our 2 year relationship is going to be an end. Changing a POS system is not simple but we still choose to leave must have our reasons. I just want to share my experiences with everyone who might consider marry to them.

1. We were told from their sale rep the QuickBooks integration will 100% work for Canadian customer because of this reason we signed off the deal, however we don't have a chance to test the integration because it was still under development, we should wait till the launch but we can't wait because we need a new system to support our grow. We did reconfirm the QB compatibility again and again so we don't think there will be a problem. We got everything setup and running, about few months later the QuickBooks Integration finally launched but they told us this feature strictly for US customer only?! This case only escalated to their sales team lead and they refused to go further higher, you have no easy way to reach their upper management team unfortunately we dun have any recording or email for the proof, they only offer a free month to settle the case. They would guarantee you everything at the beginning and once you in everything is just too late, we have learned a lesson.

2. We are not pleased and disappointed on how Revel handle system upgrade, almost every single incident causes us problem and certain level of business impact, we need to bend or change our business model/process to fit these updates. Revel introduce new feature but at the same time take away the old feature immediately, can you imagine how much trouble causing? For example we never had an option call “Credit Limit”, after the latest mandatory POS upgrade on iPad (this is another matter will mention after), we are forced to commit the new changes, we can no longer take "House Account" credit payment until we enable the "Credit Limit" option inside customer, but this is not the major problem, I am so shocking they don't provide a batch upload method, instead we are instructed to make this change inside each customer one by one, we have thousands of customers are on account. This is so ridiculous but why they can't just keep thing simple?

3. The Revel POS consist by two pieces, the frontend (iPad) and the backend (web management). Periodically they roll out major upgrade (notified) or small updates (silence) at the backend and then you must follow their schedule to download and re-install the new iPad App manually during off business hour to match your backend version, otherwise your iPad POS will not function properly

4. They have very slow development, usually the iOS App should be prepared and updated on device before the new iOS launch, but Revel work reversely, they will tell you DO NOT upgrade your iPad iOS Software whenever until they ready. They need to understand you cannot disable system update on iPad, until some point you will get the software update reminder popup crazy everyday on the iPad and you must choose "remind me/install later" to bypass but couple times my staffs by accidently hit the wrong button and fire up the software update, then the till will be out of service until we reach Revel support for fix. I cannot blame on my staffs in this case, Revel have to do something to avoid this to happen.

4. Support - their level 1 support is useless, even level 2 not really helpful, the most words I have heard are "Sorry" or "This is the system design, nothing we can do". I don’t need a sorry. I have a strong feeling their development teams make whatever changes they want without thinking the impacts would brought up to the customers.

5. The most funniest thing is Revel have a Voice of Customer team to hear your feedback, this is cool, they do reach out you to hear your problems or complaints but limited to listen only! They don't follow up anymore, I have one phone conservation and one email both sink into the deep sea, sigh*

Good luck!

One of my worst business decisions....

Reviewed on 2021/04/30

1. Difficult to set up. I'm nearly set up now and it took me an average of 10 hours a day for 6 or 7 days.
2. Misrepresented themselves as being able to scale down for a small quick service bar with bar tabs.
3. Hold times for support are any where from 20 sec's-1 hour!! Unreliable.
4. Support staff are very nice and try hard to help, but there is some language barrier with every support staff member 24 hours a day.
After many phone calls, emails and frustrating nights I finally received confirmation today that they will release me from contract and charge me 45% restocking fee on equipment. IM somewhat satisfied by that. If you have a QSR or a FSR maybe they work....And maybe usually they answer support calls faster. I don't know. I'm just glad I'm out with a minimally painful 1k mistake.

100% Fail - Waste of Valuable Time and Money

Reviewed on 2017/06/16

Long and short, our experience with the Revel systems POS (our intent is to use it in Retail application) has been a nightmare. The problems started early on in being sold hardware components that were not designed to work in the way we needed to utilize them - despite us being very detailed in what we needed - and despite the Sales reps assurances they would (specifically the barcode scanners and printers). We purchased our system in Mid-March but due to delays in the build-out of our store front and arrival of inventory components we were not actually able to begin the on-boarding/product and inventory load until Mid-May and that's when things turned awful.

Our initial product information load seemed to go well, however when we attempted to load the corresponding inventory via the method instructed it would not load. Come to find out we were given incorrect instructions and fields/information that should have been on the load sheet were not there. That issue began 5/15 and was finally resolved 5/17. On 5/16 another set of issues started during the attempt at setting up our receipt with logo, company info, etc (figured we'd do that while the inventory thing got figured out. Wrong!) That was finally figured out and resolved by our onboard rep on 5/17 at the end of the day... with zero explanation as to what the issue was and if it could happen again. Since we were finally able to go ahead and get the first phase of products/inventory info loaded (our onboard rep did it for us because no matter what or how we tried it was unsuccessful) we scheduled our POS front end training on 5/19 - which also was a bust because we learned that none of our printers were correctly configured before our system was sent. This also stalled us from being able to barcode the items in the store until 5/26 when that issue was finally resolved with one of our barcode printers and the receipt printer (it is now 6/15 and the second printer for our warehouse still hasn't been configured... we have literally been dealing with daily issues with the backend system and front end system all this time and haven't even been able to address that yet).

Other issues that occurred (that are now resolved but no one can explain the how or why it happened, or will it happen again?) where the backend system spontaneously dumped my login information on 6/7. Our rep basically had to reset me up (2 more days down). Thought we were finally good... got to the actual POS and discovered that the login PINs for myself and 3 of our employees did not work (despite the 3 employees info being present and correct in the backend - my information erased again and defaulted to a generic 1234). Got that sorted a couple days later.

This weeks issue has been with the integration to Quick Books online. The POS is sending inaccurate info to QBO - and of course, no one can tell us why, or worse, how to correct it. One generally assumes that in business accurate financial reporting is kind of a thing... I mean Revel hasn't had a problem charging us the monthly fee all this time and I'm sure they track that somewhere, right?

Naturally in the month from 5/15 to today, 6/15, we finally hit our limit and requested information on returning the system (being willing to take the risk of being without a POS system at our opening and just processing manually through QBO). Our onboard rep passed us on to Client Relations and a few days later we finally get a generic, and frankly offensive, email from customer rep that in no way acknowledged our issues and frustrations - but instead had a copy of our Revel contact attached. I assume the point was to put it out there that Revel only has a 30 day return policy (keep in mind rep didn't say that in his email... he pretty much implied "figure it out for yourself"). Of course, since we bought our system in March we are well beyond the 30 day limit.

I really could keep going. I am just shy of now 100 emails back and forth about issue, after issue, after issue - none of which truly got any clear resolution or explanation.

I'll save you some time. Do not buy this system. Its bad, the customer support is worse, and like us some of you will likely end up tossing a system in the storage room and going to another platform.

Poor billing practices after cancellation requested

Reviewed on 2017/10/03

I think it's overpriced and too time-consuming inputting modifiers and making changes to suit our business needs

Trust the Bad Reviews

Reviewed on 2017/02/08

For the sake of easy reading, I will simply say that at 49 years old, I have never had a worse experience in terms of product capability, professionalism within a company, accountability, and most of all, service. So bad was the product and service, that I willing gave up the initial expense, to allow myself to walk away from any contractual obligation. And this was after only months of use. There is too much negative to put down in a review. We literally had issues with every system of the program: setting up the system, the loyalty program, programming the system, credit card processing, state taxes, and revel not understanding restaurants and the nomenclature of the industry. Advice: Look for a system that clearly outlines their service obligations. Make sure that you are able to speak to someone in the company, and not to an outsourced panel of phone answers who's only response is, "I am sorry that you are having this problem" and who are in no way able to offer solutions to your issues. You will spend hours on the phone during the life of your revel relationship pulling out your hair, yelling things at people overseas that are not typically in your vocabulary or character to say, and ultimately so frustrated that you too, will be looking for ways out of this bad relationship.

Good but troublesome

Reviewed on 2018/01/03

WOULD NOT TOUCH THEM

Reviewed on 2021/02/01

very poor

The worst multi-Store POS on the market

Reviewed on 2018/02/03

Do your homework first and be thorough. DO not believe everything they tell you. The salespeople are polished. Serious waste of time and money.

Will be a good POS if it works like they said

Reviewed on 2019/11/09

My overall experience has not been positive since day one. There have been operational errors from the very beginning to the degree that using Revel has cost us money thru loss of customers who get frustrated with all the online ordering errors and just go elsewhere. Counter service has been slowed down due to having the system freeze up or force an unscheduled update in the middle of service. Customers get frustrated and the employees just make fun of your "provided services"

Had to get rid of system after 2 years - integration problems with Apple updates. Constant...

Reviewed on 2017/11/07

It was a learning experience for sure.

Unstable POS with little customer support

Reviewed on 2015/07/28

A solid system that works for me....

Reviewed on 2018/01/04

Overall I'm very happy with the product.

Don’t buy this system

Reviewed on 2022/04/29

Never able to get in touch with a tech it’s never resolved. Poor tech and well I wish I could get 4 months of my life back from being on hold trying to fix their crashing system issues

Their databases and analytics are good, but that is it

Reviewed on 2020/12/02

I liked the way I was able to manage the data with their system but just this is not worth the price I was paying for it

Worst POS system I have ever used - removed after install - review long overdue

Reviewed on 2018/02/21

We are a successful multi-unit restaurant group that operates restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area