Every venue running two products has a join in it. With Epos Now the join is unusually easy to see, because the company draws it for you: there is the till, and there is the app store, and most of what you think of as running a venue lives on the far side of that line.
Start with the credit, which is real. Epos Now, out of Norwich and sold here through an Australian site and resellers, is one of the few vendors on this list that puts its numbers on the page. A first time owner can sit down on a Sunday night, see a price, and know whether they can afford to open. Hardware and software come bundled cheaply. For getting a first till onto a counter without a sales call, it does the job it advertises.
Which side of the app store your evening is on
The till itself is fine. Counter and table service, tabs, split and part payments, discounts and price levels, refunds and voids, stock, cash up and end of day, sales reporting you can read on your phone.
Then look at what Epos Now's own product pages describe as apps you add: online ordering, where customers click a web link to browse the menu, place their order and pay. Loyalty, where the customer's spend and points sit on a Loyalty dashboard. Gift cards. The kitchen display. Email marketing. Each of those is a decision, a purchase, a setup, a settings screen and a thing staff have to be shown. Bookings are not in the store at all, at any price, and neither are rosters or timesheets, so a venue that takes tables and runs a team of casuals is buying from other companies as well.
7.12pm, and the order the kitchen never saw
Friday. Table of three orders a large pizza and two pastas through your ordering link. The customer's phone says thank you, your order is confirmed, twenty five minutes. In the kitchen, nothing happens.
Why nothing happened is the whole argument. The ordering page is one app. The kitchen screen is another app. The till is the product underneath both. When the order stops somewhere in that chain, at 7.12pm on a Friday, nobody in the building knows which of the three is at fault, and there is no single number to ring where somebody owns all three. What actually happens is that a staff member notices at 7.34pm, the kitchen makes it in a hurry, the guest gets a cold pasta at 7.50pm and leaves a review about it on Sunday. Multiply that by the nights it happens quietly.
One flat white, two menus, and a public holiday
A flat white goes to five dollars ninety. On the till, that is one edit, a minute, done. Your online menu is not on the till. It is in the ordering app, with its own copy of the menu, so you go and do it again, and until you do, every online customer buys coffee at last month's price and you pay the difference.
Same shape when the kitchen runs out of the special. Marked off on the till in seconds, still selling online until somebody remembers. Same shape again on the King's Birthday, when the hours change: the till, then the ordering app, then whichever booking product you had to buy separately, then Google. None of these is hard. Each is five minutes. It is five minutes several times a week, forever, and the time you forget one is the time a customer finds out for you.
The price is published. The bill is not finished.
Publishing a price is a genuine advantage over the vendors here who will not, and worth saying so. Just read what it buys: the till. Ordering, loyalty, gift cards and the kitchen screen are additions with their own ongoing cost, chosen one at a time as you discover you need them, which is why month twelve rarely looks like month one. Add a booking product and a roster product from other companies and you are writing three or four cheques a month, none of which get smaller.
Ours is one line. Allvio Complete is $399 per month ex GST for one location, plus $299 per month for each extra location, and it switches on every app, ordering and bookings included, with no per app or per user charge. If you want two or three apps rather than all of them, Build your own starts at $20 per month per app. The trial is 30 days and needs no card. Hardware is sold outright: $1,499 ex GST for the single station, $1,869 for the retail station, $2,499 for the restaurant station. The subscription also covers invoicing, payroll and your GST and BAS figures, which is the only time we will mention them.
Epos Now | Allvio | |
|---|---|---|
What you are actually buying | A cheap, capable till, with online ordering, loyalty, gift cards and the kitchen screen described by Epos Now as separate apps you add | One Australian subscription with the till, ordering, bookings, campaigns and rostering already on |
Getting it running | A quick till setup, then a separate signup, setup and staff briefing for each app you add | One setup and one login covers the counter, the ordering page and the diary |
Changing a price or a menu item | Typed into the till, then typed again into the ordering app, which keeps its own menu | Typed once. The till and the ordering page read the same catalogue |
Changing your trading hours | The till, then the ordering app, then a separate booking product, since Epos Now does not do bookings | Changed once for the counter, online ordering and what guests can book |
Keeping a customer's details right | Contact details at the till. Spend history comes with the paid Loyalty app, and there is no field for a preference or an allergy | One record with visits, spend, allergies and occasions, used by the till, the diary and marketing |
What you pay before your first sale | A cheap bundle, plus every app you decide you need before opening, plus a booking and roster product from elsewhere | Hardware outright from $1,499 ex GST, then one subscription, after 30 days free with no card |
Working out what it will cost you | The till price is published, which is a real strength. What the apps add is worked out one at a time | Published in Australian dollars, all apps included, so the number does not grow later |
When it breaks mid service | The till, the ordering app and the kitchen app are separate pieces, so the first job at 7pm is working out which one to chase | One company owns the ordering page, the kitchen screen and the till together |
Best fit | A first site on a tight budget that wants a till today and will add capability, and cost, app by app | An owner who wants ordering, bookings and rosters working on day one for a known monthly figure |
Your Tuesday regular, as the system sees her
She comes in twice a week and has done for two years. She cannot eat dairy. She has spent more in your cafe than most people spend on a holiday. On a till with contact fields and a loyalty app someone never quite finished setting up, she is a phone number. The person on the counter this morning started last week, asks her name, and asks whether she wants milk in that. She is not offended. She just stops feeling like a regular, and one Tuesday she tries the place across the road.
When starting cheap is the right call
If cash is the binding constraint and you need a till on the counter this month, Epos Now is an honest way in, and being able to read a price without booking a call beats most of this field. Just do the sum for the venue you will be in a year from now: how many apps you are paying for, how many logins your staff have, and how many places the same flat white price has to be typed on a Tuesday night that is already too long.
This comparison reflects each product's general positioning as published by each vendor in August 2026. Features and pricing change: always check directly with each vendor before deciding.