LOKAL vs. the usual stack
Everything your business needs, in one app — not four.
Most owners end up paying for a POS, a website builder, a phone answering service, and an online-ordering platform — four bills, four logins, and commissions on every order. LOKAL replaces the whole stack with one flat plan.
What each tool actually covers
LOKAL is built to be the only app you open. Everything else is a piece of the puzzle.
| Capability | LOKAL All-in-one | Restaurant POS Toast, Square, Clover | Website builder Wix, Squarespace | AI phone service Smith.ai, Ruby | Ordering platform ChowNow | Restaurant platform Owner.com |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional website + custom domain | ||||||
| Commission-free online ordering | ||||||
| Point of Sale — register, inventory, day close | ||||||
| Kitchen display for the line | ||||||
| Receipt + kitchen ticket printing | ||||||
| QR / NFC table ordering | ||||||
| AI phone receptionist that takes orders | ||||||
| Appointment bookings + calendar | ||||||
| Loyalty + SMS and email order updates | ||||||
| Customer list + marketing campaigns | ||||||
| SEO tools + Google Search Console connected | ||||||
| Blog posts written and published for you | ||||||
| Google reviews pulled onto your own site | ||||||
| AI-designed promo graphics for your offers | ||||||
| Staff scheduling, attendance + payroll hours | ||||||
| Sales reports across register, web and phone | ||||||
| 0% commission on your own orders | — | — | ||||
| Month-to-month — no multi-year term | ||||||
| One login for everything | ||||||
| One bill for your whole stack |
The real cost of piecing it together
To match what LOKAL includes, most businesses subscribe to several tools at once.
Restaurant POS + ordering
$0–$165+/mo softwaree.g. Toast, Square, Clover
Toast publishes $0 (starter, single terminal), $69/mo per terminal, and custom plans from about $165/mo. Square for Restaurants is Free, $49 or $149 per location. Clover is $89.95–$129.85/mo software on top of $1,799–$4,447 of hardware, or $179–$354/mo on a 36-month term. Most restaurants report $150–$500/mo all-in.
Website builder
~$18–$49/moe.g. Wix, Squarespace
Wix Business is about $36/mo and Squarespace Business about $23/mo — and those are annual-billing prices; month-to-month costs more. Built to publish a website: ordering and POS are separate add-on products and there's no AI phone line, so you're back to stitching tools together.
AI / phone answering
~$150–$2,100/moe.g. Smith.ai, Ruby
Smith.ai's AI receptionist is $150/mo (Pro) or $500/mo (Enterprise); their human receptionists start at $300/mo, and Ruby starts at $250/mo for 50 minutes. Billed per call or per minute and capped by plan — a standalone service that doesn't know your menu, orders, or customers.
Direct online ordering
~$229–$449/moe.g. ChowNow
A monthly subscription on top of payment processing; marketplace apps (DoorDash, Uber Eats) instead take 15–30% commission per order.
All-in-one restaurant platform
$249–$499/moe.g. Owner.com
The closest thing to a like-for-like: a website, direct ordering, loyalty and AI marketing in one subscription. Published as $249/mo on the flexible plan plus a 5% fee per order, or $499/mo flat with no per-order fee. No POS register, and guests pay a separate order-support fee.
One-time and per-order extras
variese.g. the line items that don't show up in a monthly price
ChowNow charges a $119–$499 one-time setup fee. Clover's full-service hardware is $1,799–$4,447 up front, or a 36-month commitment. Card processing applies to every option on this page — including ours.
Now add it up
Three ways an owner could assemble the same ground from separate vendors, built from each provider's published plans — next to one lokal subscription at $129.99/mo.
The cheapest way to cover it
- Square for Restaurants — Free$0
- Wix Light website (annual billing)~$18
- Smith.ai AI Receptionist — Pro$150
about $38/mo less — roughly $456 a year
No loyalty, no kitchen display, no scheduling. Square doesn't publish a price for its loyalty add-on, so it isn't counted here.
What a typical stack looks like
- Square for Restaurants — Plus$49
- ChowNow — Launch (annual billing)$229
- Squarespace Core website (annual)$29
- Smith.ai AI Receptionist — Pro$150
about $327/mo less — roughly $3,924 a year
Plus ChowNow's $119–$499 one-time setup fee. Four subscriptions, four logins, four renewal dates.
A full-service build
- Clover full-service — Standard software~$110
- Owner.com — Flat Rate$499
- Ruby — 100 receptionist minutes$395
about $874/mo less — roughly $10,488 a year
Plus $2,548 of Clover hardware up front, or a 36-month commitment.
How these totals were built
One US location, one terminal. Annual-billing prices where a provider publishes both annual and monthly. Software subscriptions only: card processing and hardware are excluded from every column, including ours, because they apply to us too — a lokal tenant takes card payments through their own Square account at Square's normal rates. The lokal figure is $99.99 plus 300 AI receptionist minutes a month (roughly 75 calls) at about $0.10/min, before tax. Use more or fewer minutes and that number moves.
With LOKAL
One app. $99.99/mo
Website, commission-free ordering, POS, AI phone receptionist, bookings and loyalty — all included. Plus only the AI minutes you actually use (about $0.10/min) and any tax.
Card payments run through your own Square account at Square's normal rates — currently about 2.6% + 15¢ in person and 3.3% + 30¢ online, depending on your Square plan. That processing cost applies to every option on this page. What we add on top of it is 0% commission on your own orders.
Just $1 for your first month. After that your plan renews monthly at the price above, plus the AI minutes you actually use (about $0.10/min) and any tax. No yearly lock-in. Cancel anytime.
Start for $1Comparison reflects each category's standard published plans and typical use. Competitor names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used only to identify the category of tool. Pricing shown for other providers is approximate and was read from those providers' own published pricing pages in September 2026; plans and rates change, and several of these did in 2026 — please verify current pricing and features directly with each provider before you decide. Capability marks reflect what each provider publishes about its own plans. “Limited” means the capability exists only on higher tiers, as a paid add-on, or in a reduced form. Card processing and hardware are excluded from every price on this page, ours included.