Full-service restaurant / Online ordering
Online ordering for a full-service restaurant
Scored and compared prices dated
The short answer
For most dining rooms, online ordering is a smaller slice of revenue than the third-party delivery apps suggest, and the real decision is whether your own ordering page feeds the same kitchen ticket as a table order or creates a second workflow at the pass. Buy it from whichever POS vendor you already use rather than treating it as a separate purchase.
Reviewed by the editorial team · updated 11 August 2026
Step 3
What matters most to you?
Pick one or two. Everything below re-scores instantly, and we show you the maths.
Winner overall
Square for Restaurants
The default answer for anyone who wants to be selling this afternoon.
The trade-off
Offline mode takes the card without knowing if it will clear, so a declined payment surfaces after the customer has gone.
Why it won
- price
- ease of setup
- support
- volume
- integrations
Our scores, 1 to 5, defined on the methodology page.
Everything else, ranked the same way
| # | Product | From | Contract | Card rate | Score | Price checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Square for Restaurants The default answer for anyone who wants to be selling this afternoon. | Free, then $49 | none | 2.6% + 10¢ in person on the free plan, 2.5% + 15¢ on Plus | 4.2 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 02 | SpotOn The one people actually praise for picking up the phone. | Free, then $55 | 2-year minimum on the $0 plan, month to month on Essentials | 2.79% + 20¢ on the $0 plan, 2.45% + 15¢ on Essentials | 3.6 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 03 | Toast The one built for restaurants only, with the lock-in that implies. | Free, then $69 | multi-year is typical | 2.99% + 15¢ on the free Starter Kit, 2.49% + 15¢ on the $69 plan | 3.6 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 04 | Lightspeed Restaurant Strong reporting and stock control, priced for somewhere above the small independent. | From $69 | month to month available | 2.6% + 10¢ on Starter, negotiable on higher tiers | 3.2 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
| 05 | Clover Sold through resellers, which is the single most important thing to know about it. | From $59.95 | 36 months is common when hardware is bundled | roughly 2.3% to 2.6% + 10¢ in person, varies by who sold it to you | 3 | Pricing checked 10 Aug 2026 |
What's different about buying this for full-service restaurants
Online ordering gets sold as a growth category, and for a counter or a ghost kitchen it genuinely is one. For a dining room, it is usually a smaller piece of the business, takeout and the occasional catering order sitting alongside a room that is mostly walk-ins and reservations, and the buying decision looks different as a result.
The thing worth checking before anything else is whether an online order lands on the same kitchen display or ticket printer as a table order, or whether it shows up on a separate tablet the kitchen has to watch in addition to everything else. Clover, Lightspeed, SpotOn, Square and Toast all sell ordering as an add-on to their own POS, and in every case the integration is tighter when it is the same vendor end to end.
The other number worth knowing is what you are giving up to a third-party marketplace if you route orders through DoorDash or Uber Eats instead: commissions around 30% are standard, versus a flat monthly add-on fee for your own ordering page. For a dining room where delivery is a minority of covers, the maths usually favours your own page even before you count the customer data you keep.
Questions people actually ask
- Will to-go orders disrupt table service during a rush?
- They can, if the tickets are not visually distinguished on the kitchen display or printer. Most systems let you flag online orders separately so the line can prioritise correctly; check this in the demo rather than assuming it.
- Is it worth being on a third-party marketplace as well as my own page?
- For discovery, sometimes; for margin, rarely. Many full-service operators run both and treat the marketplace as advertising they pay for per order, which is a fair way to think about the commission.