Deliverect vs Flipdish: Which Restaurant Technology Platform Is Better?
The short version
Deliverect and Flipdish get compared a lot, but they don't do the same job.
Deliverect takes orders from Just Eat, Uber Eats, Deliveroo and the other delivery marketplaces and pushes them into your POS, so they land in one place instead of on three or four separate tablets lined up by the pass.
Flipdish gives a restaurant its own ordering channels - a branded website, an app, kiosks, phone ordering - plus a POS for in-venue orders that ties them together.
So Deliverect makes marketplace dependency easier to live with. Flipdish is built to help you need the marketplaces less. Which one you want comes down to whether you're happy with where your orders come from right now.
What Deliverect actually does
Deliverect sits between your marketplace accounts and your POS. A customer orders a chicken kebab and chips on Just Eat. That order goes to Deliverect, which converts it into the format your POS expects and sends it through. Nobody has to read the order off the Just Eat tablet and punch it into the till a second time.
If you've worked a busy Friday with three marketplace tablets going off at once, you know why people pay for this. Re-keying orders is slow, and it's where mistakes get in - the wrong size, a missed extra, a "no onions" that never reaches the kitchen.
Deliverect also syncs menus. Change a price or mark something as sold out in one place and the change goes out to every connected marketplace. Without that, someone has to log into each marketplace dashboard separately and make the same edit three times.
That's useful. What it doesn't do is touch the money. Every order that comes through Deliverect is still a marketplace order, and the marketplace still takes its commission, usually 25-35% of the order value. Deliverect is a monthly cost on top of that.
What Flipdish does
Flipdish is a restaurant technology platform. It covers:
- A restaurant POS for in-venue ordering
- Branded online ordering through your own website
- A branded mobile app with your restaurant's name on it
- Self-service kiosks, mainly for upselling in-venue
- An AI Phone Agent that takes phone orders
- Loyalty, marketing and customer engagement tools
The difference shows up when a customer orders through your own Flipdish-powered website or app. There's no marketplace in the middle, so there's no 25-35% commission on that order. You pay Flipdish's platform fee instead.
You also get the customer. With a marketplace order, the marketplace knows who ordered. With a direct order, you do - their name, what they ordered, how often they come back. That's what lets you run a loyalty scheme, send a "haven't seen you in a while" offer, or push a midweek deal to people who only ever order on Saturdays.
The money
| Order type | Typical platform cost |
|---|---|
| Marketplace order (Just Eat, Uber Eats, Deliveroo) | 25-35% commission per order |
| Deliverect | £49-£299/month, plus marketplace commission |
| Flipdish direct order | Fixed platform fee, no per-order commission |
This is the bit that gets lost in a lot of comparisons. Deliverect doesn't reduce what you pay the marketplaces. It makes those orders easier to handle. Different thing.
Say your restaurant does £15,000 a month through marketplaces at 30% commission. That's £4,500 a month to the marketplaces. Add Deliverect and you still pay the £4,500. Your total cost actually goes up by the Deliverect fee. You're paying for convenience. The convenience might be worth it, but it isn't a saving.
Flipdish direct orders work the other way round. There's a monthly platform cost and no commission on each order. The more orders you move to your own channels, the less of your turnover goes to someone else.
Some numbers. A takeaway doing 300 marketplace orders a week at a £15 average order value takes £4,500 a week, or about £19,500 a month. At 30% commission that's roughly £5,850 a month in fees.
Move 30% of those orders to direct ordering - 90 orders a week - and about £1,755 a month stops going to the marketplaces. Over a year that's just over £21,000. Move half and it's close to £2,925 a month.
Card payments still cost something on direct orders, and you've got the Flipdish fee to set against the saving, so the real number is lower than that. But it's commission you were paying on every single order, and it keeps shrinking as more customers switch.
Not every marketplace customer will switch. Some people only ever open the Uber Eats app and won't go looking for your website. Regulars are a different story. They already know who you are, and they're the easiest ones to move.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Flipdish | Deliverect |
|---|---|---|
| POS system | ✓ | ✗ (integrates with existing POS) |
| Marketplace integration | Available | ✓ Core product |
| Direct online ordering | ✓ | ✗ |
| Branded mobile app | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self-service kiosk | ✓ | ✗ |
| AI phone ordering | ✓ | ✗ |
| Customer loyalty | ✓ | ✗ |
| Menu management | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reduces marketplace commission | ✓ | ✗ |
Two things stand out. Deliverect doesn't include a POS - it plugs into the one you already have, so you need to be happy with that POS. And nearly everything on the Flipdish side is about orders that never go through a marketplace, which is the opposite end of the problem from where Deliverect works.
When Deliverect is the right call
Deliverect makes sense if:
- You have no plans to move away from marketplace ordering
- You get a lot of orders from several marketplaces at once
- Your current POS doesn't connect to the marketplaces directly
- The kitchen is buried in tablets and you want them gone
It suits operators who've decided the marketplaces are a permanent part of the business and just want those orders to run cleanly. That's a fair position to take. Some restaurants get a lot of their new customers from people browsing Deliveroo, and they aren't trying to change that.
If that's you, Deliverect does what it says. Just be clear about what you're buying. You're paying to manage commission, not to cut it.
Why Flipdish is the better long-term bet
Deliverect tidies up the mess that marketplace ordering creates. Flipdish goes after the cause of the mess, which is that too many of your orders come through someone else's platform.
Restaurants that grow direct orders keep more of each order and own the customer relationship. Those two things feed each other. Every direct customer is someone you can reach again without paying a marketplace to put you in front of them.
Take a regular who orders every Friday through Deliveroo, £20 a time. Over a year that's 52 orders and £1,040 in sales. At 30%, about £312 of that goes in commission - for a customer who already knew your name before they opened the app. Get that one person ordering from your own site and the £312 stays with you. You can also see they order every Friday, so if they go quiet for a couple of weeks, you can send them something.
Marketplace customers belong to the marketplace. The marketplace decides where you show up in search, whether a competitor gets promoted above you, and which takeaway that customer gets nudged towards next week. You don't get a say in any of it.
Then there's the rest of the setup. With Deliverect you still need a POS, and if you want direct online ordering, an app or kiosks, you're buying those from other suppliers and making them all talk to each other. Flipdish puts direct ordering, POS, kiosks, mobile apps and AI phone ordering under one contract. Fewer suppliers. Fewer logins. One menu to keep up to date.
The phone deserves its own mention. On a busy night the phone rings while everyone is packing bags, and somebody has to stop and take the order. The AI Phone Agent answers and takes phone orders so they come through the system like any other order, not on a notepad by the till.
Can you use both?
Yes. Some restaurants keep their marketplace listings and run Flipdish for their own channels at the same time. Flipdish online ordering and the POS work alongside marketplace orders.
For most operators the plan is to use the marketplaces to get found by new customers and use direct channels to keep them. One simple way to do it: put a card in every marketplace bag with your website or app on it and a discount on the next direct order. Somebody finds you on Just Eat, likes the food, sees the card, and orders from you directly next time. Over a few months, the share of orders coming through your own channels goes up and the commission bill comes down.
You don't need to switch the marketplaces off on day one. You probably shouldn't.
Pricing
Deliverect pricing starts at around £49 a month for a single location and goes up with order volume and extra locations. That's on top of whatever commission you pay the marketplaces.
Flipdish pricing depends on how many locations you have and which modules you need, so you'll have to ask for a quote. The online ordering pricing page has an overview.
When you compare them, compare the whole bill. On one side, Deliverect's fee plus your full marketplace commission. On the other, Flipdish's fee plus whatever marketplace commission is left once some of your orders have moved direct. Looking at the platform fees alone tells you very little, because the commission is where most of the money goes.
So which is better?
If you want your existing marketplace orders to run more smoothly, Deliverect does that job.
If you want more of your revenue coming through channels you own, Flipdish is the better platform. For restaurants and takeaways in the UK and Ireland trying to rely less on the marketplaces, it covers the most ground: direct ordering, POS, kiosks, mobile apps and AI phone ordering, all under a single contract.