Future POS (point of sale) review

The best POS systems are designed to help boost business profitability and maximize employee efficiency. Future POS has been in business for more than 20 years, offering high-end POS solutions for businesses of all shapes and sizes. 

Since 1998, Future POS have been known for its restaurant and bar solutions, but the company's POS systems are useful for everyone in hospitality and entertainment, from nightclub owners to mobile food vendors. In fact, TV personality Jon Taffer regularly features Future's POS systems on his show, Bar Rescue. Perhaps that's why it's garnered quite a following over the years.

What’s more, it’s a part of the Shift4 Payments group, one of the largest payment processing providers around.  

Our Future POS review takes a closer look at this system, analyzing its prices, user interface, main features, and more to help you determine whether it’s as good as its reputation would suggest. 

Future POS: Plans and pricing

Like many POS service providers, Future POS offers custom-priced solutions for every new client. This is because every business will have different software and hardware requirements, and with this sort of price structure, you will only ever pay for what you need. 

To get started, simply reach out to the Future POS team to schedule a demo. Have a chat with the sales team to discuss your requirements and the size of your business. If you decide to go ahead and use the software, they will work with you to come up with a price that fits your budget.

Future POS: Features

The Future POS system isn’t the most modern, but it still has a tidy selection of advanced tools that you can take advantage of. 

One standout feature is mobile POS compatibility. This enables you to accept sales on the go, and there’s even 3G and 4G SIM compatibility so you can use your mobile internet connection. 

You can select from a range of front-of-house themes to customize the user interface. Change the appearance of the system, or add your own custom theme to ensure you’re getting the layout and look you’re going for. 

With Future POS’s multi-column modifiers, you can present all options for an order in one single window. These are fully customizable, and you won’t ever have to switch between screens or go through complicated ordering processes again. 

Last but not least is Future POS’s recent QR code ordering and payment integration. With this, you can offer fully contactless payments and ordering solutions across the board. Customers simply need to scan the code that’s given to them and follow the prompts to perform the desired actions. 

Future POS: Interface and use

To get started with Future POS, you will need to reach out to either the sales team or to your local licensed dealer for a demo of the software. After discussing your requirements, the team will assist you with deployment, ensuring the entire system is set up and ready to go. 

The user interface itself is a little outdated, but it features a fairly recognizable POS look, so it should be easy to get to grips with. You'll benefit from fingerprint or passcode login, and ensure different employees have instant access to the parts of the system that are most relevant to them. 

There are numerous attractive management tools available, enabling you to split bills, take and manage orders with the click of a button, and modify your menu in a fast and streamlined manner.

Future POS: Support

Future POS offers two live customer support options. 

Either get in touch with the team via the toll-free US phone number or fill out the contact form on the company website to start a conversation. 

Unfortunately, there are very few self-help resources, which is a welcome and increasingly common trend among software and service providers these days. A robust blog with tips, tricks, and tutorials should be a key tool for customers, but the Future POS blog is extremely bare, posting only a handful of job opportunities in the last three years.

Future POS: Security

As a leading POS system, Future POS offers excellent data security across the board. It’s fully compliant with and certified by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which means that all financial and payment data is handled safely.  

In addition, sensitive data, including payment card information, is never stored in Future POS’s systems—or in any of its payment processing partners’ systems. Tokenization is used for further security, and PCI-certified end-to-end encryption should give you full confidence. This emphasis on privacy and security is the clear result of the company's decades of experience in this space.

The competition

Being feature-rich, Future POS is certainly a viable option, with plenty of industry experience. But a few alternatives, like Square POS and Shopify POS offer more modern looking POS solutions. 

One such competitor is Epos Now POS, which is designed for hospitality and retail use. It comes with an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) platform, as well as an app store that you can draw on to add extra functionality. There’s also a clear price structure, which is a nice change when compared to more traditional POS systems and their case-by-case pricing. 

Another great option is AirPOS POS system, which is designed specifically for small business use. Like QuickBooks POS, it doesn’t have lock-in contracts, and it boasts a very straightforward setup process, a versatile, intuitive user interface, and various hardware integrations to help you get the most out of the system.

Final verdict

All things considered, Future POS is a decent if slightly dated POS system. It has been around for more than two decades, and its reputation is built on the company's high-quality solutions that you and your business can rely on. 

The themes offered to customize your POS are old fashioned, however (see video above), much like the overall user interface of the POS system. If you value style first and foremost, this may be an issue, as is Future's traditional price structuring, which isn't as transparent as others. 

But at the end of the day, decades of experience, deep strength in security, and a rich feature selection make it a very solid option. Appearance is only skin deep, right?