Lightspeed eCom Review

Pros

• Free plan
• Connects to existing websites on many platforms
• Digital sales supported
• Strong POS integration
• Includes advanced features

Cons

• Limited features on lower plans
• Limited payment gateway integrations

What Is Lightspeed eCom?

Lightspeed eCom is a fully hosted platform for online sales that’s designed to fit seamlessly within the Lightspeed system. Best known for its point of sale system, Lightspeed’s eCommerce option is designed to appeal to businesses with both online and in-person sales as part of their business plan.

Lightspeed Retail POS is highly rated. Will Lightspeed’s eCom component stand up to the competition? How does Lightspeed eCom’s Instant Site compare to other platforms?

This complete and unbiased Lightspeed eCom review will uncover all the details you need to know about this platform. We’ll look at pricing, ease of use, web design, unincentivized user reviews, and more, so you can decide if it’s the right online sales option for your business.

One thing to keep in mind: Lightspeed offers a couple of different avenues for sellers looking for an online presence. Lightspeed eCom is one that emphasizes online sales over in-person though both are supported.

If you’re looking for a Lightspeed solution that has a greater emphasis on in-person selling, while still supporting online sales, you might prefer Lightspeed Retail. It comes with a higher price tag ($69-269/month) and delivers more robust features for businesses with significant sales online and in person.

Lightspeed eCom Pricing

Lightspeed eCom offers four subscription tiers, including a free plan, with more features and capacity at each subsequent level. Pricing shown below is for customers making payments monthly; you can save money by paying annually instead.

All Lightspeed eCom plans include unlimited bandwidth and an Instant Site builder tool. On all plans, you can sell simultaneously on multiple sites, and you can add a store to an existing website.

Lightspeed does not offer refunds. So don’t hesitate to sign up for the free plan if you’d like to test the software. It’s easy to upgrade to the next plan once you’re ready or whenever you outgrow your current Lightspeed eCom plan.

Lightspeed eCom Free Plan

Lightspeed eCom offers a completely free plan that costs $0/month. Not surprisingly, it comes with some limitations. That includes a limit of just five products. However, it may be suitable for smaller businesses or for those just starting out. And the free plan is a great way to test the software without committing to a paid plan. You won’t even need a credit card to sign up.

The free plan includes:

• Online store (Instant Site)
• Mobile responsive shopping cart
• Online advertising (Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok)
• Limited number of products
• Facebook pixel
• One-tap checkout via Apple Pay (powered by Stripe)
• GDPR Compliance
• Tax invoices
• Email support

Lightspeed eCom Venture Plan

Lightspeed eCom’s lowest-tier paid plan costs $19/month and includes everything in the free plan, plus some useful new features. Key additions include social media integrations, digital products, tax calculations, coupons, customized checkout, and a mobile POS.

Here’s what the Venture plan delivers:

• Up to 100 products
• Sell on Instagram and Facebook
• Sell digital products
• App for multiple store management
• Automated taxes
• Google Shopping
• Access to App Market
• Automatic tax calculations
• Coupons, discounts, and gift cards
• Customized checkout
• Facebook shop and Instagram store
• Mobile POS
• Your own branded store management app (for Android and iOS)
• Pre-orders
• Inventory tracking
• Advanced SEO tools
• Connect your own domain
• Pay what you want option
• Live chat support

Lightspeed eCom Business Plan

Lightspeed eCom’s Business plan costs $39/month and includes everything on the Venture plan. Key additions include a higher product limit, Amazon and eBay integrations, staff accounts, multilingual functionality, and manual order creation.

Here’s what the Business plan delivers:

• Up to 2,500 products
• Sell on Amazon and eBay
• Subscription sales
• 2 staff accounts
• Automated abandoned cart tools
• Multi-lingual store
• Product filters and variations
• Inventory Tracking Plus (variations/types)
• Abandoned cart emails
• Wholesale pricing groups
• Manual order creation
• Dimensional shipping rates
• Multilingual catalog
• Phone support

Lightspeed eCom Unlimited Plan

Lightspeed’s Unlimited plan costs $99/month and includes everything on the Business plan, plus these additional features:

• Unlimited products
• In-person selling via POS integration
• Automated email marketing
• Scheduled order pickup
• Unlimited staff accounts
• Priority support
• Free customization

Lightspeed eCom Features

Lightspeed eCommerce comes with enough features to fit the needs of most merchants. As is often the case, if you want to unlock all these features, you may need to subscribe to a higher-priced plan than you were hoping for.

Overall, however, I find Lightspeed eCom’s pricing tiers to be competitive in the eCommerce field. And I’m confident you’ll find a nice array of features compared to competitors’ similarly priced plan.

Let’s take a look at what you’ll find with Lightspeed eCommerce. Remember that not all features are available at all plan levels.

Lightspeed eCom Themes

You can choose among 100+ professionally designed, mobile responsive themes to build your Lightspeed eCom Instant Site. You won’t need any technical skill or design experience to add products and customize your online store. Instead, you’ll use 50+ content blocks to build your eCommerce site.

You’ll be able to upload logos and make changes to your site’s colors, fonts, banners, and more. Updating is very simple to do. If you want to make changes on a deeper level, you can do so by accessing Lightspeed eCom’s API.

Screenshot of Lightspeed eCom webpage, captured 4/27/2023

Types Of Payment Accepted With Lightspeed eCom

Lightspeed eCom Instant Site stores are built to accept payments from customers via Lightspeed Payments. Additional payment processors may vary by country.

Most Lightspeed eCom accounts will allow you to accept payments via PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You’ll also find two buy now, pay later options: Klarna and AfterPay. You can also add Cayan, 2Checkout, and Authorize.net to your list of payment processors.

Depending on your Lightspeed eCom subscription level, you may also be able to allow customers to pay by invoice and to pay at pickup.

It’s increasingly common for eCommerce platforms to lock users into the in-house payment processor. In some cases, you can pay a premium of some sort to enable another processor. I’m not super excited by the additional payment options Lightspeed eCom allows.

While the additional options presented are very well known, this is a more limited selection than eCommerce platforms typically offer. However, if you’re already using Lightspeed for payment processing, it will be a non-issue for you.

Selling On Multiple Sales Channels With Lightspeed eCom

All Lightspeed eCom subscription levels allow users to sell on multiple platforms. You can add a store to any website, in addition to your Lightspeed eCom Instant Site.

If you want to add social media sales, you’ll need to subscribe to a paid Lightspeed eCom plan. The Venture plan and above allows you to sell on Instagram and Facebook as well as Google Shopping. At the Business and Unlimited levels, you can sell on Amazon and eBay.

Does Lightspeed eCom Offer Buy Buttons?

You can use Lightspeed eCom to create a buy button for any product you list.

Selling Internationally

If you want to present your sales website in a language other than English, you’ll need to subscribe at the Business or Unlimited level. There are 11 additional languages available, and your customer can select their language when they visit your store.

All users can accept international orders. In fact, Lightspeed eCom’s default settings allow users to accept orders worldwide. You can limit your customer base geographically by selecting the countries you want to accept orders from. You’ll also need to set up shipping methods outside your home country.

You can also enable multiple currencies to accept payments. Your store will have one default currency, based on your original location.

Lightspeed eCom Marketing Features

All Lightspeed eCom subscriptions, including the Free plan, allow advertising on Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Snapchat, and TikTok. At the Business level and higher, you’ll be able to set up automated email marketing messages.

Lightspeed eCom also includes A/B testing at checkout so you can see and optimize conversion rates. And it’s relatively easy to create upselling prompts.

You can enable product reviews, and you can moderate those reviews before they go live.

Lightspeed Product Limits

Lightspeed eCom’s free plan limits you to just five products. We do know that the next plan, Venture, limits users to 100 products. You can list 2,500 on the Business plan, and the Unlimited plan allows, not surprisingly, unlimited products.

It’s worth noting that five products are about half the number commonly allowed on free eCommerce plans. And the jump from Venture’s 100 products to the Business plan’s 2,500 is a big one. If you want to list 101 products or more, you’ll double your plan price from about $20 to about $40.

Inventory Management With Lightspeed eCom

If you sign up for a paid Lightspeed eCom plan, you’ll have access to robust inventory management tools. The lowest-paid plan, Business, includes basic inventory tracking only.

Upgrade to the Business or Unlimited plan, and you’ll unlock a “plus” version of Lightspeed’s inventory tracking, and you’ll be able to use it to track product variations and types.

You can also set up wholesale pricing groups and manually create orders. You can also set up a multilingual catalog, add product filters, sell recurring subscriptions, and add digital products to your catalog.

Lightspeed eCom Shipping Tools

Lightspeed eCom comes with integrated shipping, allowing you to connect with major carriers (including FedEx, the USPS, UPS, and Canada Post) to access real-time shipping rates. Shipping labels and shipping costs are automatically generated from your store control panel (available to US merchants only).

You can also access discounts of up to 50% on domestic and international shipping costs. Lightspeed allows you to boost sales by offering free shipping deals on set products, destinations, shipping methods, and order totals.

If you sell to local customers, some Lightspeed eCom plans allow you to set up local delivery and pickup options.

Dropshipping through Alibaba, Sprocket, Syncee, Printful, and other providers is also supported.

Lightspeed SEO Tools

All Lightspeed eCom stores come with basic SEO tools. Paid plans included advanced SEO tools.

Blogging

You can create a blog to spread awareness, create relationships, boost your SEO rankings, and stay in touch with customers. From your store admin, known as the Back Office, click Blogs and then Add a blog post.

Lightspeed eCom Discounts & Coupons

Lightspeed eCom’s paid plans allow you to offer discounts and coupons. You can create complex discounts like BOGO offers, percentage discounts, free shipping offers, and so on. You can also choose to apply the discount after tax is applied.

To access the discount rules page from your admin, click Marketing > Discounts > Discount Rules.

Developer Tools

If you’re comfortable working with HTML and CSS, you’ll have full customization options for the front end of your store.

You can access Lightspeed eCom’s open API to build custom integrations and workflows or to add a greater degree of customization to your online store.

In-Person Selling Tools

Paid plans allow you to use Lightspeed mobile point-of-sale system to make sales on the go. If you want a full POS integration, you’ll need to subscribe at the Unlimited level.

Lightspeed eCom Reports

View data on sales, traffic, and orders.

Is Lightspeed eCom Easy To Use?

It’s easy to get a feel for Lightspeed. Enter some basic contact information, and you’ll gain access to a full demo of the software.

Or, do as I did, and sign up for the free plan. Although you’ll be limited to adding only five products, you can take the opportunity to test-drive the software.

I started by noodling around with the basic look of my new store. It was easy to change the headers and stock photos, and text to personalize it. Choose a template to start, and then you’ll see all your design options listed on the left side of your screen. You won’t be able to perform deep customization here, but I found it easy enough to add my own words, colors, and images.

Screenshot of Lightspeed eCom webpage, captured 4/28/2023

Next, I tried adding a product, which I found to be similarly straightforward. Just enter basic information about the product, then add images, set pricing, enable product availability/in-stock notification, add an SKU, product weight, a description, and so on.

Screenshot of Lightspeed eCom webpage, captured 4/28/2023

Everything you need to list a product is listed on separate tabs you can toggle between: Attributes, options, shipping, SEO, related products, and even a Buy Now button that you can embed on your blog or anywhere else you want to create a buying option.

All in all, Lightspeed eCommerce offers an intuitive, easy-to-learn dashboard that would work just fine even for merchants with no previous online selling experience.

Lightspeed eCom Customer Service & Technical Support

Lightspeed eCom offers both personalized customer support and self-help resources to their merchants. However, your level of support will depend on your subscription level. On the free plan, you’ll be able to use email support only. Sign up at the Unlimited level, and you’ll receive priority support and even receive free customization help.

Here are the types of support that Lightspeed provides:

• Phone Support: On the Business and Unlimited plans only
• Live Chat: Available on all paid plans
• Community Forum: Access the help center online
• Support Ticket: Submit n online request for support.
• Social Media
• Videos: Visit Lightspeed’s YouTube channel

Lightspeed eCom Integrations & Add-Ons

Lightspeed eCom offers dozens of integrations. To gain access to the app store, you’ll need to sign up at the Venture or Business level.

Here’s a brief list of a few categories of integrations you can browse:

• Shipping
• Loyalty
• Payment processing
• Fulfillment
• Taxes

Lightspeed eCom Reviews

Lightspeed eCom has solid but not overwhelming reviews. Across a variety of websites, users rate this software around 3.5/5 stars. We do notice that a lot of user-reviewers commented on Lightspeed eCom pages but referenced different Lightspeed products, like Lightspeed Restaurant or Lightspeed Retail.

Still, it’s worth taking a look at what users have to say, being careful to sort out the eCom reviews from those referring to other Lightspeed products.

Negatives Lightspeed eCom Reviews & Complaints

Here are some of the most common complaints from Lightspeed eCom users:

• Payment Limitations: Although they say the processing rates are comparable to other processors, not everyone likes being locked into Lightspeed for payment processing.
• Expensive: If you want access to advanced features, you may need to sign on for a plan that’s more pricey than you were hoping for.
• Limited Features On Some Plans: Lightspeed steers users toward more expensive plans by making some advanced features available only on higher-priced plans. Advanced inventory and SEO tools are two examples.
• Bugs: Customers often mention glitches and bugs in the software.

Positive Lightspeed eCom Reviews & Testimonials

We were also able to find a few positive reviews from current users. Here’s what they frequently mention:

• Ease Of Use: Users like that it’s easy to start setting up your online store. You’ll be able to find features and add products with no trouble.
• Integrates With Lightspeed POS: If you’re running both an online and offline store, you can easily sync your inventory and sales stats with Lightspeed’s POS solution.
• Scalable: Lightspeed can handle mid-size to larger businesses. Customizable templates let you make changes to the look and feel of your site.
• Good Support: Some merchants have had good experiences with Lightspeed eCom’s support team.

Final Verdict Of Lightspeed eCommerce

We think Lightspeed could be a good fit for mid-size to larger businesses. The pricing for a basic plan may be a bit steep for start-ups and smaller businesses, especially since a lot of features are only available on higher plans.

Lightspeed eCom offers a good range of features, they provide decent web design options, and Lightspeed’s POS is solid. However, I am a bit leery of a couple of things. In order to receive all of the features most eCommerce businesses need, you’ll have to spring for the Unlimited plan at $99/month. And although I understand the business rationale behind it, I don’t like when eCommerce platforms completely remove users’ choice of payment processors.

On the other hand, if you currently run a brick-and-mortar business and are using Lightspeed for your POS system, Lightspeed eCom makes a lot of sense. Lightspeed eCom integrates easily with your POS to make inventory management a whole lot easier, on- and offline.

Here’s the bottom line: if you’re a current Lightspeed POS customer (or are considering becoming one), you would do well to take a look at Lightspeed eCom’s free trial. Keep in mind that Lightspeed eCom works with existing websites, too. If you’re currently selling on a site built by WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, and more, connecting to Lightspeed eCom might be easier than you think.

And, if you’re not convinced that Lightspeed eCom is for you, take a look at some of our other favorites. We’ve gathered together a list of what we think are the best eCommerce platforms available to help you find a great match.

Lightspeed eCom FAQs

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Lightspeed eCom	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Lightspeed eCom for yourself.

The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

Lightspeed eCom	Visit Site

After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see Lightspeed eCom for yourself.