Dojo Alternative: The Best Dojo Alternatives for Restaurant Payments
What is Dojo?
Dojo is a UK card payment provider. It sells card machines and payment processing to businesses, and plenty of its customers are restaurants. Transactions go through quickly and the money lands in your account the next business day.
That's most of what it does. Restaurants that start looking elsewhere usually want something Dojo doesn't sell, or they've run into the contract terms.
Why restaurants look for Dojo alternatives
- Dojo isn't a POS. It takes the payment, and the order still has to be handled in another system.
- Contracts can run for several years and may come with early termination fees.
- Reporting covers payments. It won't tell you much else about how the restaurant is doing.
- Online and app orders need a separate provider, so a lot of Dojo users end up with one system at the counter and another for the website.
- No kiosks. Dojo doesn't make kiosk hardware or software.
If you want payments, POS, online ordering and marketing in one place, a standalone payment provider won't get you there.
The best Dojo alternatives for restaurants
1. Flipdish - Best for restaurants that want everything in one system
Flipdish handles payments as one part of a full restaurant platform. Payments are built into the restaurant POS, and the same system runs:
- online ordering through your own branded website and app
- self-service kiosks, with card payment at the kiosk
- AI phone ordering that answers takeaway calls
- reporting across every order channel
- AI marketing tools and loyalty
It suits multi-site groups, QSRs and any operator who wants counter, online, kiosk and app orders in the same place.
Dojo takes the card payment. Flipdish takes the card payment and runs the rest of the restaurant too. Nobody re-keys orders from one system into another, the reports come from one place, and there's one supplier to call about POS, ordering and payments.
2. Square - Best for very small operators
Square's card reader is everywhere, and it comes with a basic POS. That's fine for a market stall or a pop-up doing low volumes. It struggles in a full-service restaurant with a complicated menu, several sites or a lot of orders a day.
3. SumUp - Best for low-cost card acceptance
SumUp sells simple card readers with no monthly fee. You pay per transaction. It's about as simple a setup as you'll get, but there's no table management, no kitchen display integration and no online ordering.
4. Zettle by PayPal - Best for PayPal users
Zettle is a card reader and basic POS that links up with PayPal. If your business already runs through PayPal, it's an easy add. It's a general-purpose product though, and it doesn't go deep on restaurant features.
5. Lightspeed Restaurant - Best for complex full-service restaurants
Lightspeed is built for restaurants and is good at table management and reservations. For a sit-down restaurant it's a reasonable pick. It does less for takeaway, delivery and multi-channel ordering than Flipdish.
Dojo vs Flipdish
| Feature | Dojo | Flipdish |
|---|---|---|
| In-person card payments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Restaurant POS | ✗ | ✓ |
| Online ordering | ✗ | ✓ |
| Branded restaurant app | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-service kiosks | ✗ | ✓ |
| AI phone ordering | ✗ | ✓ |
| Unified reporting | Limited | ✓ |
| Multi-site management | Limited | ✓ |
| Loyalty and marketing | ✗ | ✓ |
How to choose a Dojo alternative
If all you need is fast card payments in person, Dojo does that job fine. Look at alternatives when:
- you want in-person and online payments in the same system
- you need a POS that pulls in orders from every channel
- you want to run self-service kiosks
- you have more than one site and want reporting across all of them
- you want customer data, loyalty and marketing in the same platform as your orders
Unless you're very small, a payment-only provider usually means running more systems, not fewer.
Making the switch
If you're on a Dojo contract, check the notice period and any early termination fees before you switch. Most providers will negotiate, particularly if you've got a real offer from someone else.
Ask every provider you look at for:
- the full cost breakdown, not just the headline rate
- how they connect to your current POS, or the one you're moving to
- contract length and what it costs to leave
- how support works and how long problems take to fix
For more on what card payments cost, see How Much Do Card Payments Cost Restaurants in the UK? and Restaurant Card Processing Fees Explained.