Epos Now review: the dedicated-till option, priced honestly

Epos Now Ltd is one of the biggest names in UK dedicated EPOS: a Norwich company, incorporated 13 June 2011 (Companies House 07666961), selling complete till systems for retail and hospitality with its own integrated card processing, Epos Now Payments. Its target list is the independent high street: convenience stores, clothing shops, vape shops, gift shops, pharmacies and pet stores on the retail side; pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes, bakeries, takeaways and hotels on the hospitality side, plus a multi-location enterprise tier.

The model is different from the smart-terminal providers we review elsewhere. Square or SumUp sell you payments with till software attached; Epos Now sells you a till, with payments attached. That shapes everything about the pricing.

The headline that pulls people in is a full till system (terminal, card machine, printer) for £299 against a listed £849. The mechanism that funds it is the 12-month payments, care and support subscription from £54 a month. Neither half exists without the other, so the real year-one comparison number for a Countertop 2 is about £947 plus card processing.

That is not a trick, it is a financing model, and for a business that genuinely wants a dedicated till with support behind it, it can be fair value: a comparable full counter setup bought outright runs £400 to £1,500+ on our EPOS hub figures, before any support contract. But it does mean an Epos Now decision is a 12-month commitment judged on totals, where a Square Terminal at £149 with free software and no contract is an afternoon's decision you can reverse.

On the payments side, the advertised flat rate from 0.8% for Visa and Mastercard is a genuinely low floor by UK published standards (compare the published rate cards by provider), but it is a floor: your actual rate is quoted per business, and American Express, JCB and UnionPay sit on a separate opt-in rate. Next-day payouts exclude weekends unless you pay for the faster option, which matters if Friday and Saturday are your week.

A good fit: an established shop, pharmacy, pub or restaurant that wants a purpose-built counter till, kitchen display (from £19 a month), sector-specific software and one UK supplier for hardware, payments and support, and that will still be trading on the same counter in 12 months. Epos Now is also distributed through UK card-machine ISOs (it appears among Handepay's listed EPOS partners), which says something about where it sits in the market: it is the dedicated-till default.

Look elsewhere if: you mainly need payments with a light till (a smart terminal on a free plan is far cheaper; see the coffee shop POS comparison), you trade seasonally or at events (no-contract pay-as-you-go wins; see restaurant POS and retail EPOS for the published-price alternatives), or weekend cashflow is critical and you do not want to pay extra for weekend settlement.