We've used Vend since 2014. Vend was bought by Lightspeed and is now Lightspeed. The monthly subscription fee went up and we were initially told that we would no longer receive a nonprofit discount, but then we started getting a discount, but it's still $100 per month after discount. We've just started using Square because there is no monthly fee for the free version, but yeah we are realizing that it has those issues you mention, plus it's harder to enter returns (seems to only allow returns from a specific prior purchase).
Lightspeed has been good, aside from the fees. Layaways and returns are easy, you can turn off sales tax for a transaction, gift cards are straightforward, you can set up different users (though we don't really do that so can't comment on ease of use with that). I'm thinking we might just go back to using Lightspeed despite the fee since it works and so much of our sales data is still found there. It seems we can maybe downgrade to the Lean plan without losing features that we use. I look forward to hearing other peoples' recommendations.
Paul Nagel
The Bicycle Tree
shop: (714) 760-4681
702 W. 17th St. Unit C