Cantaloupe Systems

[kiwi]

Just wanting some feedback on Cantaloupe Systems if anybody is using their seed platform. I know they were wanting crazy minimum amounts of devices in the past to be able to start using their VMS system but was wondering if this had changed?

I had a operator tell me they maybe available here soon with no upfront purchase costs on their hardware but I am not 100% sure if this is correct or not.

I have spoken to a member (Broncho) about Cantaloupe in the past on here & he did mention that their hardware devices sometimes fail.

Has anyone else experienced any problems with Cantaloupe?

[AZVendor]

Have you looked into USA Technologies and their Quickstart program? I don't know if their software is what you would get from Cantaloupe's VMS, but USAT offers remote machine monitoring through their G8 card readers or with just their modem in each machine without a card reader. I don't know if you can get USAT down under.

[mission vending]

I have spoken to a member (Broncho) about Cantaloupe in the past on here & he did mention that their hardware devices sometimes fail.

They did have some hardware issues early on, I would guess any cutting edge technology does when its first commercialized but I have not heard, or read, anything in this regard lately. To be fair I have not been looking either.

[kiwi]

Have you looked into USA Technologies and their Quickstart program? I don't know if their software is what you would get from Cantaloupe's VMS, but USAT offers remote machine monitoring through their G8 card readers or with just their modem in each machine without a card reader. I don't know if you can get USAT down under.

Thanks Az for your reply & suggestion in looking into USAT & their Quickstart Program.. I know a lot of guys on this forum are using USAT & highly recommend them as a remote monitoring & cashless provider. I am not aware of anyone using them here yet or even if this is a possibility or not but I will definitely look into it further.

I do know that we would not be able to use there cashless card readers here as our merchants require a higher standard of security when it comes to accepting unattended payments from card readers.

They did have some hardware issues early on, I would guess any cutting edge technology does when its first commercialized but I have not heard, or read, anything in this regard lately. To be fair I have not been looking either.

I can imagine with the sheer amount of units they were pumping out that they would definitely have the odd failure.. I also asked the only company here that were using Cantaloupe if they had any issues with their hardware devices & his answer was "that out of the 750 units they run they have not had one fail yet" so i am guessing these problems have been fixed.

I know you told me before that you use USAT & that you had used inOne previously but I am wondering if before you decided to go with USAT whether you looked into Cantaloupe at all?

I don't know a lot about USAT, inOne or Cantaloupe but have not heard of to many small operators using Cantaloupe & wanted to know whether this was because the other options are better or if it is because Cantaloupe make it too difficult for small operators to start with them because of their minimum order requirement & training costs.

I guess what I am wanting to know is.. if Cantaloupe's hardware was "free" & you didn't have to pay for their training costs & there was no minimum order requirement would you still have gone with them for remote monitoring instead of USAT.

Please take into account that I am only talking about "remote monitoring" & not "cashless payments" as we would need to source card readers here because of our security standards.

[wheelermj]

I use InOne Technology, I have been using InOne for 3 years now. Before going with InOne, I looked at all the other options out there, at the time USA Tech didn't do remote monitoring, only credit cards, so that took them out of the running because I wanted the alerts and the data from remote. When talking with cantaloupe, there was a couple of things that I didn't like, first you can't just buy 1 device to see if it is going to work, you just invest for the 100 device start up package and hope for the best. And if I remember right, at the time they were not doing their own card processing, so I would still have to go through someone else for credit cards. I also looked at MEI, and again they wanted you to buy as start up package, and need to different boxes for remote and credit card, if you are doing remote monitoring and then later decide to do credit cards, then you would have to buy a different box that will work with the card reader. InOne was willing to sell me just one device and provide support for just one device, when I decided to add credit card readers, I just had to buy the card reader and plug them into the remote device that I already had. InOne also had the alerts that I really wanted, most importantly are power outages and and temperature alerts. InOne also does pre kitting and just had more of everything that I wanted. I have not researched any of them for a couple of years, so I can not say how they are any more. InOne is just the US distributor for the devices that are made in Isreal by a company called NayaxVend, and they have different distributors around the world, the company that sells them in Australia and New Zealand is http://www.vendcheck.com.au/.

[kiwi]

I use InOne Technology, I have been using InOne for 3 years now. Before going with InOne, I looked at all the other options out there, at the time USA Tech didn't do remote monitoring, only credit cards, so that took them out of the running because I wanted the alerts and the data from remote. When talking with cantaloupe, there was a couple of things that I didn't like, first you can't just buy 1 device to see if it is going to work, you just invest for the 100 device start up package and hope for the best. And if I remember right, at the time they were not doing their own card processing, so I would still have to go through someone else for credit cards. I also looked at MEI, and again they wanted you to buy as start up package, and need to different boxes for remote and credit card, if you are doing remote monitoring and then later decide to do credit cards, then you would have to buy a different box that will work with the card reader. InOne was willing to sell me just one device and provide support for just one device, when I decided to add credit card readers, I just had to buy the card reader and plug them into the remote device that I already had. InOne also had the alerts that I really wanted, most importantly are power outages and and temperature alerts. InOne also does pre kitting and just had more of everything that I wanted. I have not researched any of them for a couple of years, so I can not say how they are any more. InOne is just the US distributor for the devices that are made in Isreal by a company called NayaxVend, and they have different distributors around the world, the company that sells them in Australia and New Zealand is http://www.vendcheck.com.au/.

Thanks Wheelermj for your detailed responce.. you knowledge in this area is very much appreciated!

I have looked at vendcheck but their hardware is expensive @ US$400/unit.. that was a few year ago so I will check their new prices.

You also mentioned in another post that you were using mostly "smart card reader" which were PCI-DSS compliant.. do you know the model number of these readers as I would like to find out if we can use them here.

[kiwi]

The US$400/unit is only for remote monitoring compared to the US$249 that inOne charges.. 60% is quite a high mark-up in my opinion especially when it doesn't include shipping from Oz to NZ!

[wheelermj]

Thanks Wheelermj for your detailed responce.. you knowledge in this area is very much appreciated!

I have looked at vendcheck but their hardware is expensive @ US$400/unit.. that was a few year ago so I will check their new prices.

You also mentioned in another post that you were using mostly "smart card reader" which were PCI-DSS compliant.. do you know the model number of these readers as I would like to find out if we can use them here.

It's called a VPOS reader, you can see it here http://www.nayax.com/, I have also attached a tech sheet about the VPOS from the Nayax site. It's been a while since I bought just a remote device without a card reader, but I think the price was a round $250 and $350-$375 with the VPOS reader. You might see if Vendcheck has a lease option on their equipment, InOne has an option that will allow you to lease the equipment rather than buy it, they just charge an extra $2-3 a month to your monitoring fees and a $10 one time activation fee per device.

nayax vpos reader - 2 page.pdf

[kiwi]

It's called a VPOS reader, you can see it here http://www.nayax.com/, I have also attached a tech sheet about the VPOS from the Nayax site. It's been a while since I bought just a remote device without a card reader, but I think the price was a round $250 and $350-$375 with the VPOS reader. You might see if Vendcheck has a lease option on their equipment, InOne has an option that will allow you to lease the equipment rather than buy it, they just charge an extra $2-3 a month to your monitoring fees and a $10 one time activation fee per device.

Thanks for the attachment on the VPOS.. I had been on the Nayax website but had missed seeing that pdf file on the VPOS.

I must be going blind like my mate moondog!!

I will also look into the possibility of the lease options that you mentioned although I doubt that option is available here.

Thanks again!!

[mission vending]

I can imagine with the sheer amount of units they were pumping out that they would definitely have the odd failure.. I also asked the only company here that were using Cantaloupe if they had any issues with their hardware devices & his answer was "that out of the 750 units they run they have not had one fail yet" so i am guessing these problems have been fixed.

I know you told me before that you use USAT & that you had used inOne previously but I am wondering if before you decided to go with USAT whether you looked into Cantaloupe at all?

I don't know a lot about USAT, inOne or Cantaloupe but have not heard of to many small operators using Cantaloupe & wanted to know whether this was because the other options are better or if it is because Cantaloupe make it too difficult for small operators to start with them because of their minimum order requirement & training costs.

I guess what I am wanting to know is.. if Cantaloupe's hardware was "free" & you didn't have to pay for their training costs & there was no minimum order requirement would you still have gone with them for remote monitoring instead of USAT.

Please take into account that I am only talking about "remote monitoring" & not "cashless payments" as we would need to source card readers here because of our security standards.

Kiwi,

Its been several years, but when I started looking at Cantaloupe early on I was put off by the high entry costs vs USAT and thus did not do much more than gather basic information and did not look at them in depth so I don't think that I could fairly answer your question.

[moondog]

Thanks for the attachment on the VPOS.. I had been on the Nayax website but had missed seeing that pdf file on the VPOS.

I must be going blind like my mate moondog!!

I will also look into the possibility of the lease options that you mentioned although I doubt that option is available here.

Thanks again!!

It's called "selective vision" Kiwi. I only see what I want to see

[kiwi]

Its been several years, but when I started looking at Cantaloupe early on I was put off by the high entry costs vs USAT and thus did not do much more than gather basic information and did not look at them in depth so I don't think that I could fairly answer your question.

You did answer my question as I kind of figured that high entry level cost put most operator off them..

It's called "selective vision" Kiwi. I only see what I want to see

My problem is selective hearing. Thats what my wife keeps telling me anyway

[kiwi]

I use InOne Technology, I have been using InOne for 3 years now

Hi wheelermj,

I hope you don't mind but I have copied & pasted all your comments regarding your experience with remote & cashless technologies to print out so that I can print out.

Four pages of very good information if I don't say so myself.. I will probably have more questions for you after I get my head around all of the information so I hope you don't mind this either

I will also add.. if it wasn't for TVF I would find it very hard to find information on remote monitoring as most companies don't put a lot of info on their website's for some reason. I have also sent e-mails to a few companies & have not even had replies from most of them apart from VendScreen who did e-mail me back but they currently sell their product outside the US.

I must say I didn't send an e-mail to inOne because of the fact that they have a distributor in Australia that also covers NZ but I may contact them anyway.

Thanks Again

Kiwi

[olivstone]

You might look into Stream VMS.  Stream VMS has an iPhone app and uses an internet browser for all your data.  Keeps up with scheduling, machines, commissions, cash control, etc.  We have been using them and all is good.  

[Fox]

We were a long time very happy Compuvend customer.  When we were notified the Compuvend was bought by Cantaloupe, we began a long process of studying Cantaloupe and other options.   We ultimately chose Streamware, based on several different factors that made it the best fit for our company (the integration with Micro Market sales data and the OCS delivery max systems were huge factors).  

 

During our study we spoke with other operators, and found a coupe companies that had invested a lot of money into Cantaloupe but almost went broke because of the 9.99 a month cost for every machine.   Now I have no idea if that is still their product model, or if the said companies bought something they didn't need.   I talked to probably 15 large operators, and 12 of the 15 strongly recommended Streamware over Compuvend.

 

We began the conversion last month, and Streamware has blown my socks off with what it can do.