Lightspeed vs Shopify for a shop with a till

en 2026-09-22 6 min read

If Lightspeed already runs your till, your stock and your day, the least disruptive answer is to keep it and switch on its webshop. Moving the whole shop to Shopify is a real project with a real number attached: a shop with a checkout is step 04, EUR 3.500 to 7.500 over 6 to 12 weeks, because payments are step 04 work on any platform.

The rest of this page is about the cases where moving is worth the disruption, and about a third route that is easy to skip: leave the till alone and fix the shop window instead.

The till is the part you cannot afford to break

A webshop can be rebuilt quietly. Nobody sees it until the day you switch. A till is not like that. It has to work at nine in the morning with a queue in front of it, on hardware bolted to a counter, operated by people who learned the old system by muscle memory. Behind it sit the stock count you order from, supplier records and barcodes.

So the two halves of this decision are not equal. Replacing the webshop is a project. Replacing the till is a project plus a risk to the day's takings, which is why hesitating is the correct instinct.

Where each system comes from

Lightspeed began at the counter. It is a point of sale system that grew a webshop, and the webshop half has Dutch roots, built on a company Lightspeed bought in Amsterdam. Its strength is the stockroom and the counter.

Shopify began online. It is a webshop that grew a point of sale, and its strength is everything from the storefront to the finished order. Each is strongest where it started, and the compromises you meet depend on which half of your business is the larger one.

Reasons to stay where you are

• The counter is the business and online is a shelf beside it.
• Your stock logic is genuinely complicated: several locations, supplier ordering, serial numbers, repairs.
• The bookkeeping export already lands in the shape your accountant wants.
• What you dislike is how the webshop looks, which is a design problem, not a platform problem.

Reasons to move

• Online is becoming the larger half of the business.
• The storefront is a marketing surface now and you fight it on every campaign.
• You need bundles, subscriptions, a marketplace connection or a loyalty scheme the current setup cannot reach.
• You are replacing the counter hardware anyway, so the disruption is already on the calendar.

Four routes and what they cost

Care sits outside the steps at EUR 100 to 300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, never a redesign or new features. A fixed quote follows scoping on every route above.

What a migration actually moves

Ask about this list before anyone shows you a design.

• Products, variants, barcodes and supplier codes, codes intact so the scanner still works.
• Stock levels, counted on the day you switch rather than exported in advance.
• Gift cards and loyalty balances. That is money you owe people, so it is the first thing to ask about and the worst thing to find late.
• Open orders, repairs and anything else half finished on the day.
• Sales history, which can stay readable in the old system if somebody decides that on purpose.

The Dutch details worth settling first

iDEAL at the checkout. A Dutch shop without it asks a Dutch customer to work harder than they will. Check what it costs per transaction and which provider sits behind it.

Collect in store. Reserving online and picking up at the counter only works when the webshop and the till agree about stock. Name the one system that holds the truth and make the other read from it.

BTW per product category. Food, books, services and standard goods are not taxed alike. They need to be right before the first order, not corrected after your BTW return is filed.

The bookkeeping export. Ask your accountant what they want to receive before you choose rather than after. It is a free question and the answer can settle the whole decision.

How we run it

Scoping first, then a fixed quote. For a step 04 build that means agreeing the catalogue, payment and shipping rules, tax categories, gift cards and loyalty, and who stands at the counter when you switch. Then 6 to 12 weeks of build, with the switchover set for your quietest day of the week rather than a Saturday.

The part that waits on you is the data: a clean product export with barcodes, a stock count, and a decision about the loyalty balances. We can clean it with you as quoted work, but it starts when somebody in the shop has time away from the floor. Anything we write for you, a theme or a connector, lives in your repository and is yours. We are in Amsterdam, so standing behind the counter on switchover morning is a fair thing to ask for in a quote. The steps are on the packages page, and how we design and build covers the method.

When to spend less

The till works and online is a shelf. Migrate nothing. A step 03 site at EUR 1.500 to 3.500 with correct hours, real photographs, what you stock and a link to your existing webshop will do more for the counter than a platform change. Cheaper still, step 01 at EUR 600 to 900 is one page with your hours, your address and a form.

The webshop looks dated but works. Redesign it inside the platform you already have. You keep your till, your stock and your order history, and it removes the only complaint you had.

Nobody arrives. Neither platform makes people find you. SEO foundation at EUR 450 to 750 one-off is the smaller bet, and it tells you whether the demand is there before you spend step 04 money chasing it.

If one of those three describes your shop, then do not hire us yet. Take the cheap option and come back when its limits cost you orders.

Questions retailers ask

Can we keep Lightspeed at the till and run Shopify online?

Yes, with a connector between them. What you buy with that is a reconciliation problem: two systems with an opinion about stock and a gap between them that shows up as an oversold item on a busy Saturday. Done deliberately it works, done by accident it becomes a standing argument.

Will our staff need retraining?

Yes, and that cost is real even when it is not on a quote. A till is muscle memory, so straight after a switch the counter is slower and the queue notices. Have somebody on the floor who has already practised on the new one.

What happens to our sales history?

Decide it on purpose. Moving the full transaction history is possible and costs money, and keeping the old system readable for reporting can give your accountant the same answers. What must move is anything carrying an open obligation: gift cards, loyalty points, deposits, repairs booked in.

Is Shopify's point of sale enough for a shop with a stockroom?

For a single shop with a straightforward stockroom, yes. It gets harder as the stock logic does: several locations moving stock between them, supplier purchase orders, serial numbers, repair records. Write down what you do at the counter most often and check each one against the system itself rather than against a feature list.

If you cannot tell which half of your business is the larger one, that is the conversation to have before any platform is chosen. Tell us what your counter does in a normal week and we will say honestly whether moving is worth it.