Sluggish transactions, inventory headaches, and compliance issues all risk damaging your smoke and vape shop’s hard-earned reputation and customer loyalty. Yet many smoke shop owners still rely on a cash register that’s essentially a dinosaur in today's age.
The reality is smoke shops now have access to specialized point of sale (POS) systems designed explicitly for your unique needs. In one seamless platform, you gain compliance assurance, inventory automation, customer loyalty tools, and data-driven insights that boost profitability.
This guide covers seven modern vape POS solutions smoke shops can leverage this year to delight their customers and grow their sales in an increasingly competitive market.
Vape POS Solutions: What You Need To Know
You know you need some kind of point of sale system for your store, but why invest in a vape POS solution? A specialized point of sale system can help you level up your vape shop. Some features you need to look for when choosing your ideal provider include:
- Age Verification: Automated age verification for vape and e-cigarette purchases helps ensure compliance with state laws around restricted sales. This safeguards your business from legal issues.
- Robust Inventory Management: Centralized inventory management across multiple shop locations allows you to transfer stock between stores to meet demand seamlessly.
- Customer Relationship Management: A customer database that tracks purchase history and shopping habits puts valuable data at your fingertips. With these tools, you can provide personalized recommendations and incentives.
- Loyalty Programs: Built-in loyalty programs allow you to reward returning customers and increase retention.
- Advanced Reporting and Analytics: Detailed sales reporting and analytics help you identify trends and optimize your product selection.
- Employee Management: Staff management tools give you the technology you need to track employee performance and sales efficiency.
When evaluating vape POS solutions, find a system that seamlessly integrates with your existing hardware and software, including syncing capabilities with peripherals like receipt printers, cash drawers, and barcode scanners. Also, remember that cloud-based systems often provide the most seamless experience.
It's essential that the POS is robust enough to handle vape-specific inventory like mods, kits, individual components, juices, and flavor variants. And if you intend to expand your business over time, ensure the POS can scale with higher sales volumes across multiple locations and product lines.
Finally, look for dedicated customer support from the POS provider to assist with hands-on training during onboarding or help resolve any issues. With these key features and functionalities in mind, let’s examine our list of the top picks for vape POS solutions for this year.
1. Square POS
Best For: Simplicity and Mobility
Square POS is one of the most popular point of sale systems on the market. Best suited for retailers prioritizing simplicity and mobility, Square enables businesses to accept payments and manage basic operations on the go.
A key advantage of Square is the ability to turn mobile devices like tablets or smartphones into full-featured POS solutions. This capability allows retailers the flexibility to sell products and process transactions on the sales floor or checkout area.
Other notable features include:
- Integrations with popular accounting platforms like QuickBooks for seamless financial syncing
- Inventory management tools
- E-commerce integration to unify online and in-store data
Overall, Square creates a powerful yet easy-to-use POS system for basic payment processing and sales insights. Their retail solution suits smaller shops or those with straightforward needs that still demand flexibility plus mobility.
Pricing: Square offers a free solution with 2.6 percent + 10¢ processing charges per in-person tap, dip, swipe, or manual card entry.
2. Korona POS
Best For: Omnichannel Retail
Korona POS is a robust cloud-based point of sale solution tailored for vape shops and tobacco retailers. Best suited for stores needing strong omnichannel features, this solution provides detailed analytics and automation to streamline product tracking.
Notable capabilities include:
- Automatic updates to inventory counts based on sales activity in real-time
- Age verification integrations to automatically confirm legal purchase age
- Employee management tools with permission levels to restrict access
- Integrated payments, cash drawers, barcode scanners, and other peripherals
Korona POS delivers robust functionality beyond basic systems for vape retailers struggling with inventory challenges or lacking visibility into day-to-day operations. Owners gain greater oversight into store performance while features like age verification ensure continued compliance.
Pricing: Korona POS offers flexible pricing starting at $59 per month. Higher tiers provide added capabilities like advanced reporting and e-commerce integrations.
3. POS Nation
Best For: Inventory Management
POS Nation offers a specialty POS solution tailored to the needs of tobacco shops, smoke retailers, cigar stores, and lounges. Best suited for small businesses and omnichannel merchants, it unifies data from online and brick-and-mortar sales channels into a single dashboard with advanced inventory features.
Key capabilities include:
- Barcode scanning to quickly capture product info and simplify inventory tracking
- Carton-pack inventory management with automatic deductions when units are sold
- Over 55 built-in sales reports plus customization options
- Age verification and mix and match pricing for rebate tracking
- Loss prevention features like inventory controls and analytics
POS Nation offers seasoned industry expertise to merchants needing unified channels and granular inventory oversight. Their solution also scales to accommodate growing sales volumes and additional locations over time.
Pricing: POS Nation provides transparent pricing through a customized pricing tool.
4. Lightspeed
Best For: Advanced Reporting
Lightspeed POS offers a feature-packed system tailored to the needs of specialty retailers like vape shops. It provides powerful analytics and reporting tools to inform better business decisions.
Notable capabilities include:
- An interactive data dashboard with sales, inventory, and employee metrics
- Custom report builder to configure detailed data views
- Age verification integration
- Inventory variant tracking
Lightspeed offers vape shop owners with the actionable insights they need to identify trends, optimize inventory, evaluate campaigns, and boost productivity. Using Lightspeed, store owners can slice and dice data, configure detailed reports, and clearly visualize key performance indicators.
Pricing: Lightspeed pricing starts at $119 per month for the basic plan, but goes up considerably for the advanced plan with additional capabilities.
5. NCR
Best For: Fuel and Gas Sales
NCR offers a robust POS solution tailored to the needs of convenience stores, fuel stations, and similar retail environments. This solution provides tools to track customer purchases, configure loyalty programs, and deliver targeted promotions.
Key features include:
- Custom loyalty programs with specialized rewards schemes
- Targeted promotions to incentivize purchases and drive sales
- Unified online and in-store platforms for omnichannel convenience
- Open API for ease of integration with other technologies
NCR brings enterprise-grade capabilities for convenience store owners struggling to compete with big brands on customer experience. Their solution optimizes operations, enables innovation via open platforms, and provides specialized services.
Pricing: NCR pricing is only available through custom quote.
6. Clover
Best For: Add-On Apps
Clover POS offers a solution known for its flexibility and extensive app integration capabilities. This tool enables deep customization via third-party apps and supports a wide range of hardware options.
Key features include:
- Clover App Marketplace’s hundreds of integrateable apps
- Bring your own device options supporting third-party hardware.
- Inventory management with barcode scanning
- Unified online and brick-and-mortar data
Clover provides extensive flexibility for retailers needing to bridge online and in-person shopping across customized environments. Owners can adapt Clover to existing workflows through open APIs instead of the other way around.
Pricing: Clover offers transparent pricing starting at $59.95 per month for the basic plan. Higher tiers provide multi-device bundles, advanced reporting, and customization flexibility.
7. Cigars POS
Best For: Tobacco and Vape Inventory
Cigars POS offers a cloud-based solution tailored to the operational needs of tobacco shops, cigar lounges, vape stores, and other specialty retailers. Our solution provides robust tools for managing wholesale case-based inventory while helping you crush compliance tasks without the headaches.
Notable features include:
- Tracking inventory by the carton/case in addition to individual retail units
- Age verification integration to automatically validate legal purchase age
- Custom label printing capabilities
- High-risk payment processing
- Custom promotions and loyalty programs
- Mix and match bundle creation
Cigars POS delivers purpose-built functionality for tobacco and vape retailers struggling with legacy systems unequipped for industry nuances. You can use our built-in reporting features to gain insights and automation around vital but manual processes like the PACT Act and scan data reports.
Pricing: Get a custom quote for your perfect solution using our transparent build and price tool.
Vape POS Solutions: Finding Your Best Fit
Whether vape products make up the bulk of your smoke shop's sales or are a growing segment for your store. The solutions listed in this post should give you a good idea of the capabilities you need from your POS solution. You can optimize and future-proof operations by implementing a solution with must-have features like robust vape inventory management, built-in age verification, and custom reporting.
Cigars POS offers a specialty POS platform explicitly designed for smoke shops, vape stores, and cigar lounges. Our solution is packed with features tailored to the needs of your unique industry, including automated age verification, carton-pack inventory tracking, scan data reporting, and custom label printing for bottles and displays.
Schedule a demo of Cigars POS today to learn more about our vape and tobacco specialty retail solution and see how we can help you grow your business.
