Switching platforms
Loyverse alternatives, and when it is worth leaving free
Let us start with the part most comparison pages skip: a free till is a real product, and for a single counter with a modest product list it may be everything you need. If that describes you, stay on it. Paying for software to solve problems you do not have is a worse decision than using free software that fits.
The reason people go looking anyway is not that free software is bad. It is that the free tier is the counter, and a shop is more than a counter. The moment you want the stock side to be serious, the staff side to have permissions, the books to be books and the catalogue to also be a website, you find yourself assembling those from modules, add-ons and other products — and paying, in subscriptions and in your own evenings, for the joins between them.
This page is about identifying that moment honestly, because leaving too early wastes money and leaving too late wastes something you cannot get back. Anything said here about other products describes their publicly documented structure; module pricing and features change and belong on their own sites.
What you get
What this gives you
The till is free; the shop is modular
Free point-of-sale products typically charge for the parts a growing business needs most — employee management, advanced inventory, integrations — as separate paid modules, often per employee.
No storefront in the box
A free till generally has no native online store. The catalogue you have already built cannot become a website, so you build the catalogue a second time somewhere else.
The books stay somewhere else
Sales data exports; double-entry accounting is a different product. That export is a monthly task somebody owns, and it is where the errors get in.
Per-employee pricing scales with hiring
A cost that grows with headcount is the one that surprises people. Price your expected team in a year, not the one behind the counter today.
Stock control is where the money is
Reorder points, supplier purchase orders, transfers between branches, batch and expiry — the things that stop you losing margin are usually the things behind the paywall.
Leaving is an export problem
Check the export path before you invest a year of history in anything. Products and customers normally come out cleanly; transaction history is the part to ask about.
What a free till is genuinely good at
Getting you off paper, today, for nothing. A phone becomes a working till, receipts print, and the day's takings are a figure rather than a guess. For a stall, a small duka, a single-counter café or anyone currently reconciling a notebook against a cash tin, that is a substantial upgrade and it costs nothing.
It is also a low-risk way to learn what you actually need. Six months on a free till will teach you more about your own requirements than any amount of comparison reading, because you will discover which of the things you thought mattered you never once used, and which small annoyance you hit forty times a week.
We say this plainly because the alternative — persuading a shop with one counter and eighty products to buy a retail platform — produces a customer who cancels. If free fits, use free.
The four thresholds where it stops fitting
The first is stock. As soon as you are ordering from suppliers rather than buying what you notice has run out, you need reorder points, purchase orders and a cost price that follows the stock. A till that records sales but not the buying side leaves you managing the expensive half of the business in a spreadsheet.
The second is people. One owner behind one counter needs no permissions. Three staff across two shifts need roles, discount limits, void trails and a report that tells you which till the shortfall came from. On most free products that is a paid module priced per employee, which is the point at which free and paid stop being far apart.
The third is the website. If customers are asking whether they can order without coming in, the catalogue you have already built should become the storefront rather than being rebuilt on another platform. A free till has no answer to this, so the answer becomes a second product, a second product list and a reconciliation between them.
The fourth is the books. Exporting sales into accounting software monthly works until the month it is not done, and then it is three months. When the accounts need to be continuous rather than reconstructed, an export is no longer the mechanism you want.
Comparing on the configuration you will actually run
The comparison that misleads is free-tier against paid-plan. The comparison that informs is the configuration you will be running in twelve months against the same configuration elsewhere: the till, plus the stock module, plus employee management for your real headcount, plus whatever provides the storefront, plus whatever provides the books, plus the time cost of the joins between them.
Do that arithmetic honestly and free tills usually remain cheaper for the smallest shops and stop being cheaper somewhere around the second employee or the first serious stock requirement. The exact crossover depends on your headcount and whether you need a storefront, which is why nobody can give you a number and everybody should give you the method.
Include one line most people leave out: the hours. An evening a week spent making two systems agree is a real cost, it falls on the person least able to spare it, and it does not appear on any pricing page.
If you do move, move the history too
Before you commit anywhere, confirm what comes out. Products, variants, prices and customers export cleanly from most systems. Transaction history is the one to ask about specifically, because a year of sales you cannot take with you is a year of trend data you lose at the moment you most want to compare.
Coming into sell.ke, the import path takes CSV or Excel for products, photos, variants, pack sizes, prices, cost prices and opening stock. If what you have is a supplier price list or a photo of a shelf rather than a clean export, Amina can build the catalogue from it, which is generally faster than retyping.
Run both systems for a fortnight. It is the only reliable way to find the small thing that matters to your shop and appears on nobody's feature list, and the trial is deliberately long enough to do it.
Compare
A free till and a full retail system
What each is built to cover. Module names and prices change — check the current list on the vendor's own site.
| What you are comparing | A free POS tier | sell.ke |
|---|---|---|
| The counter | Free, and capable | Included on every plan |
| Basic stock counts | Included | Included |
| Purchase orders and reorder points | Typically a paid module | Included |
| Staff roles and permissions | Typically a paid module, often per employee | Included, per location |
| Multiple locations | Supported, with stock transfers varying by tier | From the Basic plan, with recorded transfers |
| Online store | Not native — a separate platform | Included from Basic, same catalogue |
| Accounting | Export to another product | Double-entry, from the Growth plan |
| Offline selling | Supported on the counter | Full offline selling, reconciled on reconnect |
| How the vendor earns | Add-on modules and payment integrations | One subscription; no margin on your payments |
| Best for | One counter, simple stock, small team | A shop with suppliers, staff, branches or a website |
Loyverse is a trademark of Loyverse POS, which is not affiliated with sell.ke. The left column describes the common structure of free point-of-sale tiers rather than any one vendor's current packaging; check module availability and pricing with the vendor directly.
Questions
Loyverse alternatives — questions
Is Loyverse actually free?
The point-of-sale app itself is, and genuinely so — there is no trial clock on the till. What is paid is the set of modules a growing shop reaches for: employee management with roles and permissions, advanced inventory, and integrations, typically charged per employee or per module per month. That is a reasonable business model and it is stated openly. It just means the honest comparison is not free-against-paid, it is your real configuration against the same configuration elsewhere.
Does Loyverse have an online store?
Not as a native storefront generated from your product catalogue. Selling online alongside it means a separate ecommerce platform, which means building the catalogue a second time and then keeping two stock figures in agreement — by hand, or through a connector you maintain. If the website is something you want within the year, that is the single largest structural difference to weigh, because it is the one that creates ongoing work rather than a one-off cost.
When should I stay on a free POS?
One counter, one or two people, a product list you can hold in your head, buying stock as you notice it running out, and no near-term plan for a website. That shop should stay free and spend the money on stock. Revisit the decision when one of four things happens: you start ordering from suppliers on a schedule, you hire a second shift, customers start asking to order online, or your accountant starts asking for something your exports do not contain.
Can I export my data out of a free POS if I move?
Usually yes for products and customers, which export as CSV from most systems. The part to verify before you rely on it is transaction history — sales history is what your trend reporting, your seasonality and your reorder points are built from, and rebuilding a year of it is not possible after the fact. Ask the question while you are still deciding, not while you are leaving, and prefer any system that answers it without hedging.
How long does moving from a free till take?
A single shop with a few hundred products is usually selling on the new system the same day, because the work is the catalogue rather than the software — import the CSV, check the prices, count the opening stock. A multi-location business with thousands of SKUs should plan about a week and run both systems side by side for a fortnight afterwards. The fortnight is not caution for its own sake; it is how you find the one workflow that matters to your shop and was on nobody's feature list.
How much does sell.ke cost?
Plans run from USD 12/month for a single-location till to USD 115/month for unlimited scale, with the online store on your own domain included from USD 23/month. In Kenya the same plans are KES 1,499 to KES 14,999/month, billed in shillings. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card, and there is no per-terminal licence and no commission on your sales. There is no hardware to buy either — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Can I bring across the products I already have?
Yes — bulk import from CSV or Excel, including photos, variants, pack sizes, prices, cost prices and opening stock counts. If what you have is a supplier price list rather than a clean spreadsheet, Amina can build the catalogue from a photo or a PDF of it, which is usually faster than retyping.
Can I run more than one location?
Yes, from the Basic plan up. Locations share one product catalogue but hold their own stock, so moving goods between them is a recorded transfer rather than a re-count at both ends. Reports run per location or across all of them, and staff permissions are set per location — a branch supervisor does not need to see another branch's margins.
What happens to my data if I leave?
You export it. Products, customers, suppliers, stock movements and transactions are all exportable, and the accounting side produces standard statements rather than a proprietary format. We would rather you stayed because moving is not worth it than because moving is not possible — a business whose records are hostage is a business that resents its software.
Read next
The other pages that answer the question you are probably about to ask.
Square POS alternatives
What to use when Square is not available to you, or not the shape you need.
Shopify alternatives with mobile money
What changes when the wallet, not the card, is how your customers pay.
Best POS for a small business
How to judge one honestly, and the trap that catches most first-time buyers.
Inventory management software
Stock that updates itself as it moves, instead of a spreadsheet you maintain.
All-in-one POS, inventory & online store
One system for the counter, the stock and the website — not three that sync.
POS systems explained
What a point of sale system is, what it replaces, and how to choose one.
Go deeper on a feature
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
Buying, suppliers and approvals
Purchase orders, goods-received notes, supplier bills and the cost figure every margin depends on.
Try it on your own products
Fourteen days, no card. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list, and run it alongside whatever you use now.