Migrating to Lightspeed Retail comes with many advantages to empower your business, and we'll be with you every step of the way to help ensure a smooth transition. That said, though they both bear the name Lightspeed, Retail and OnSite are different systems and sometimes satisfy your business needs in different ways.
From the server to the cloud
The biggest difference between OnSite and Retail is in where your information lives. OnSite is a server-based system, so all of your data exists on a server in your store. This comes with inherent risks and limitations, such as the potential to lose all of your data and an inability to access your information from elsewhere. While the risk of data loss can be mitigated by backing up your server, and there are ways to set up remote access to your server from another network, these workarounds are an additional layer of complexity that must be maintained.
Lightspeed Retail is cloud-based, meaning all of your business's information is stored on Lightspeed servers, which are secure and backed-up. This means your information is not only safe and recoverable, it is also accessible from any of your devices on any network. All you need is your password and access to the internet to check up on your business.
Because you are accessing your Lightspeed Retail account through a web browser, your computer requirements are very lax (any modern computer that can access the internet will do), and you never need to worry about updating to new versions of the software, or about how those new versions will interact with your operating system.
Lightspeed Retail's cloud-based nature takes a lot of the worry and stress of maintaining your system off of your plate so you can focus instead on running your business.
Learning the differences
Because Retail and OnSite were built separately from the ground up, there is a bit of a learning curve as you transition from one system to the other. Here are some primers to get you started:
Migrating your information
Much of your information, from your inventory to your customer database, can be migrated from OnSite to Retail:
Hardware
Much of your OnSite hardware is still compatible with Retail:
Accounting
Lightspeed Retail offers new tools for keeping on top of your accounting needs through Lightspeed Accounting: