Dojo Alternative: The Best Dojo Alternatives for Restaurant Payments
Why restaurants look for a Dojo alternative
Dojo makes card machines, and a lot of UK pubs, cafes and restaurants use them. Pricing is simple, the money lands the next day, and the terminal is small enough to carry to the table.
It's still just a card machine, though. No POS software, no online ordering, nothing for the kitchen, no loyalty. So a restaurant on Dojo is usually paying for a till system and an online payments provider on top of it.
The reasons people leave tend to be some mix of these:
- Dojo only takes in-person payments. Online orders need a different payment provider, which means a second contract and a second set of fees.
- It doesn't connect natively to most restaurant POS systems, so plenty of Dojo sites still run a separate till next to it.
- The minimum term is usually 18 months. Leave early and you can get hit with a termination fee.
- Rates can change at renewal. That's true of most providers, Dojo included.
- Some operators just want everything on one system, and a standalone terminal is one more thing to pay for and manage.
The best Dojo alternatives for restaurants
1. Flipdish
Flipdish is the one to look at if you want more than a payment terminal.
It puts a restaurant POS system, online ordering and payment processing in one platform. Counter, online, kiosk and phone orders all land in the same system, and the payments go through it too. No separate card machine from a separate company.
What you get:
- Payments for in-person and online orders on one contract, with one reporting dashboard and one support team to call
- Restaurant websites and branded apps with ordering built in
- Self-service kiosks that push up average order value and take pressure off the counter
- AI phone ordering that answers calls and takes orders so staff don't have to
- AI marketing and loyalty tools in the same platform
- Kitchen display systems showing orders from every channel in one queue
- Built for restaurants, takeaways, QSRs, cafes and multi-location groups
Dojo replaces your card machine. Flipdish replaces the card machine, the till and the online ordering setup, and it usually costs less than paying for those separately.
Best for restaurants that want to get off a standalone terminal and have POS, online ordering and payments in one place.
2. SumUp
SumUp is a card terminal with flat-rate pricing and no monthly fee on the entry-level plans. Like Dojo, there's no restaurant POS and nothing for the kitchen.
It's fine for very simple setups: market stalls, pop-ups, a food truck that doesn't take online orders. If you need order management, kitchen routing or reporting across several sites, it wasn't built for you.
3. Square
Square gives you a card terminal plus a free, basic POS app with simple order management, a product catalogue and some reporting. That's already more than Dojo does.
Next to a POS built for restaurants it's thin. Multi-location management is weak, there's no native kitchen display, and online ordering needs a separate Square Online subscription. A café with a short menu will get by. A restaurant group, or anyone doing real online volume, won't.
4. Zettle by PayPal
Zettle is a portable card reader with a basic POS app, running on PayPal's payments. It suits small food businesses and pop-ups. There's no KDS, delivery management, loyalty or multi-site reporting, which is what restaurants start needing once they grow.
5. Stripe Terminal
Stripe Terminal is payment hardware aimed at developers. It plugs into the rest of Stripe and can be wired into almost any system with an API, so it appeals to restaurant businesses with their own developers.
No tech team? Then someone has to build that integration for you. With a managed platform like Flipdish it's already done.
Dojo vs the alternatives: comparison table
| Provider | Card payments | POS included | Online ordering | Restaurant-specific | Multi-location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flipdish | ✓ | ✓ Full | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dojo | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| SumUp | ✓ | Basic | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Square | ✓ | Basic | Limited | Partial | Limited |
| Zettle | ✓ | Basic | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Stripe Terminal | ✓ | Dev only | Dev only | ✗ | Dev only |
How to switch from Dojo
- Check when your contract ends. Dojo terms are usually 18 months and leaving early may cost you a fee, so plan the switch around your renewal date.
- Decide if you want another card machine or a full platform. Another standalone terminal is a like-for-like swap. A platform covers payments, POS and online ordering together.
- Pick the replacement before the contract runs out. New hardware has to be ordered, delivered and set up before the Dojo terminals go back.
- Move your menu and settings across. If you're going to a full POS platform, rebuild the menu in the new system while the old one is still running.
- Train staff. Give it at least a week of parallel running or training before you go live.
What it actually costs
A restaurant running Dojo, a separate POS licence and a separate payment provider for online orders is paying three sets of fees. Add up the terminal rental, the POS subscription and the online payment fees and the total is usually more than an integrated platform costs.
Then there's the admin. Three lots of reporting, three support contacts, and the menu kept up to date in more than one place. For a lot of operators the time they get back from running one system is worth more than the fee savings.
Flipdish puts all of that in one platform. If you've outgrown a standalone terminal, it's the Dojo alternative to pick.