The Best SumUp Alternatives for Restaurants
Why restaurants outgrow SumUp
SumUp is a card reader with a basic POS app attached. It was built for market traders, small shops and simple counter service, and it's cheap to start with. That's why so many new restaurants and takeaways begin there.
The trouble starts when the place gets busy. Orders arrive on different tablets depending on where they came from. There's no kitchen display, so tickets get printed, and some get lost. Nobody can manage tables or courses. There's no loyalty scheme, no reporting across sites, and no way to add a branded app or a kiosk later. Most operators hit that wall within six to twelve months of opening.
If you're looking for a SumUp alternative for your restaurant, this page covers what to look for and how the options compare. The one worth choosing is Flipdish. It was built for restaurants from the start, and it does the things SumUp can't.
Where SumUp falls short
SumUp has no kitchen display system, no table or course management, no branded mobile app, no self-service kiosk, no marketplace aggregation, no loyalty or CRM tools, no staff scheduling and no AI phone ordering. Online ordering is basic. Multi-location management and inventory are both very limited.
For a market stall or a pop-up that only takes card payments, none of that matters. SumUp is fine there.
A restaurant running dine-in, takeaway, delivery and online orders at the same time is a different case. Staff retype orders from one screen into another. The owner buys a separate tool to fill each gap. Every gap you patch adds another login, another monthly fee and another thing that can stop working on a Saturday night.
What to look for in a SumUp alternative
Start with order flow. Every order should land in one queue, whether it came from the counter, the website, a kiosk, a phone call or a delivery marketplace. If it doesn't, somebody is copying orders by hand, and mistakes follow.
The kitchen needs a screen. Printed tickets slow things down, go missing in a rush and push error rates up. Orders should show up on a kitchen display without anyone touching them.
Your online ordering and your POS should be the same system, or very closely connected. If they aren't, you'll spend your time reconciling two sets of sales.
Reporting matters more than people expect. You want sales by site, by daypart, by item and by server, because that's what you use to decide who to schedule and what to take off the menu.
Think about the second site. Pick something you won't have to rip out when you open another location, or five more.
Payments come last, but don't skip them. When payment processing is built into the platform there's nothing to reconcile between systems. Check the transaction fees before you sign anything.
Flipdish
Flipdish is the best SumUp alternative for restaurant operators in the UK and Ireland. It's a full restaurant management system, and the card reader is just one piece of it.
The restaurant POS handles in-person ordering the way a restaurant actually works: modifiers, courses, split bills, table management and staff permissions. Online orders, kiosk orders, marketplace orders and phone orders go into the same queue as everything else. A server doesn't need to know where an order came from to deal with it.
Here's what's in the platform:
- The restaurant POS, built for hospitality, with modifiers, split bills, table management and staff roles.
- The Kitchen Display System. Orders from every channel appear in the kitchen on their own. No extra tablets, no printed tickets, no missed items.
- Online ordering through a branded website, so customers order from you directly and no third party takes a commission.
- A branded mobile app under your restaurant's name, which gives regulars an easy way to reorder.
- Self-service kiosks. They shorten the queue at the counter and upsell automatically, which lifts the average order value.
- Marketplace aggregation. Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo orders come into the same system as your own.
- Loyalty and marketing, with automated email, SMS and push campaigns. Loyalty sits inside the ordering flow.
- The AI Phone Agent, which takes phone orders and upsells while it does, so your staff can stay off the phone during service.
- AI Marketing, which finds customer segments and runs campaigns without you setting each one up by hand.
- Reporting and analytics covering sales, staff, inventory and marketing for every site in one dashboard.
- Integrated payments for in-person, online and phone orders on the same platform.
Independent restaurants, takeaways, cafés, QSRs and multi-location groups use Flipdish in the UK, Ireland and further afield. It's built for hospitality, so the day-to-day workflow matches how a kitchen and a floor team work.
Pricing is on the Flipdish pricing page.
The other names you'll come across
Search for SumUp alternatives and you'll see the same few brands over and over. None of them is a good match for a restaurant that wants one system.
Square has a restaurant version of its POS that adds table layouts, course management and kitchen printing. It suits a single site that wants a small step up from SumUp. It's thinner on multi-location management, kiosks and AI, and the commission on online orders gets expensive as volume grows.
Epos Now sells a hospitality edition with table management, kitchen printing and staff management. Single-site operators can get by with it. Multi-location management and online ordering are weaker than Flipdish, and you'd need more third-party tools to fill out the rest of the stack.
Lightspeed Restaurant is a cloud POS with table management, floor plans and detailed reporting. It's a solid till, but online ordering, kiosks, AI and marketing all come from other vendors. If you want one integrated system, that means a lot of joining things up yourself.
Vita Mojo is a UK digital ordering and operations platform for fast-casual groups, strong on menu management and nutritional data. It's aimed at counter service, and it has less in the way of AI, marketing automation and AI phone ordering.
Every one of these leaves you adding tools, which is the problem you're trying to get away from.
SumUp vs Flipdish
| SumUp | Flipdish | |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant POS | Basic | Full hospitality POS |
| Kitchen Display System | ✗ | ✓ |
| Online ordering | Basic | ✓ |
| Branded mobile app | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-service kiosk | ✗ | ✓ |
| Marketplace aggregation | ✗ | ✓ |
| Loyalty and CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| AI phone ordering | ✗ | ✓ |
| AI marketing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi-location management | Very limited | ✓ |
| Payments | Card reader only | Built into the platform |
It isn't close. SumUp takes card payments and captures basic orders. Flipdish runs the restaurant.
What switching looks like
Moving off SumUp comes down to a handful of jobs.
- Hardware. A proper restaurant setup has a POS terminal or tablet, a customer-facing display, a kitchen display screen, a card reader and a receipt printer.
- Menu build. The new system needs a properly structured menu with modifiers, categories and prices. You do this once, and it takes a few days.
- Staff training. A good provider trains your team as part of onboarding. Most staff are comfortable on a new POS within a week.
- Integrations. If you take marketplace orders, they have to be connected. If you have a loyalty database, it needs to move across.
- Go-live. Plenty of operators run both systems side by side for a short while before the full cutover.
Flipdish's implementation team handles this, and the typical restaurant is live within a few weeks of signing.
The cost question
SumUp looks cheap. Hardware starts at around £19 and the transaction fee is small. The price changes once you list what a restaurant has to bolt on:
- an online ordering platform
- a loyalty tool
- a marketing platform
- a kitchen display system
- a marketplace aggregator
Each has its own monthly fee, its own integration that can break, and its own training and support line. When something goes wrong on a Friday night, you're working out which vendor to call.
Flipdish covers all five in one platform. That means one contract, one login and one support team, and the sales data sits in one place instead of five.
Questions to ask in a demo
Ask to see a real order travel from start to finish. Place one on the website, one at the till and one by phone, then watch where each appears in the kitchen. If they land in three different places, you've found the problem.
Ask what happens when a marketplace order arrives mid-rush, and whether staff have to touch it. Ask how a second site gets added, and what you'd see in reporting once it's live. Ask for the full list of transaction fees, including the ones on online orders.
Finally, ask who you call when something breaks during service. A short answer is a good sign.
Who should stay on SumUp
If you run a stall, a pop-up or a coffee cart with one person serving and no online orders, stay where you are. You don't need a kitchen display, and you'd be paying for features you'd never open.
Everyone else should look at what their current setup costs in time. How often do staff retype an order? How many tablets sit by the till? Can you see last Tuesday's sales split by daypart without exporting anything? If the answers are "often", "too many" and "no", you've outgrown SumUp.
When you're ready to see how Flipdish handles your menu and your order channels, request a Flipdish demo.
