Otter vs Chowly: the Zayos read on two different middle layers
Published July 2026 · Updated July 26, 2026
Otter now sells its own POS: an Advanced bundle listed at $314 a month, currently $198, plus a per order transaction fee it does not publish. Chowly keeps your existing point of sale, connects 150+ delivery apps to it across 50+ POS systems, and publishes no pricing at all.
Is my point of sale staying or going?
Almost every other comparison between these two is noise. Answer this one and the shortlist writes itself.
Your point of sale is being replaced anyway
Opening a new location, coming off a register you hate, or running on paper. You are buying hardware either way.
Otter is now a point of sale company as well as an aggregation company, and it prices like one. The Advanced bundle is listed at $314 a month and currently sells at $198 a month, and it includes the dual screen POS terminal, Order Manager with delivery app aggregation, online ordering, QR code ordering, a website builder and Inventory Savings. Advanced plus Kiosk is listed at $657 and currently $541, adding a 21 inch kiosk with a stand and POS kiosk mode. Both carry a per order transaction fee on top that Otter does not publish. One vendor, one contract, one screen on the counter.
Your point of sale is staying
Your team knows the register, your accountant knows the reports, and nobody wants a migration in the middle of a season.
Chowly is built to leave your register alone. It states integration with 50+ POS systems, naming Toast, Square, SpotOn, Clover and Lightspeed, and 150+ delivery apps connected through to that POS, with orders printing straight to the kitchen and no extra hardware. It is also a DoorDash Preferred Integration Partner. If the win you are after is "stop retyping tickets from three tablets into one register", this is the shape of tool that does it without changing what your staff touch.
Why can’t I get a straight price out of either of them?
You can get half of one. Otter publishes bundle prices on its website. Chowly publishes none and says pricing is scoped to your locations and the products you turn on, which is a normal enterprise sales motion and not a red flag on its own.
The gap that matters is the same on both: neither company publishes the per order transaction fee. On Otter’s pricing page the line is printed literally as a plus sign, the words "per order transaction fee", and no number. That fee is the one that scales with your success, so it is the one worth pinning down first.
Second thing to pin down: Otter’s displayed prices are promotional. $314 is struck through to $198, and $657 is struck through to $541. Ask in writing how long the promotional rate runs and what it renews at, because a move from $198 back up to $314 is a different budget than the one you signed off on.
- The per order transaction fee, in cents or in percent.
- What the monthly price renews at after any promotional period.
- Whether the price is per location or per account, and what a second location costs.
- What happens to your menus and your integrations on the day you cancel.
The line by line comparison.
Where each one genuinely wins.
Otter wins on
- ◆ A price you can read before you talk to anyone.
- ◆ One vendor for the terminal, the kitchen screen, the kiosk and the aggregation.
- ◆ New openings, where there is no POS to protect.
- ◆ Virtual brands and kiosk ordering as first class products rather than roadmap.
Chowly wins on
- ◆ Leaving a POS your staff already know completely alone.
- ◆ Breadth of register support, stated at 50+ POS systems.
- ◆ Groups whose locations run different registers.
- ◆ Carrying some of your risk, with a published six month money back growth promise.
If you are still torn after that, you are probably not choosing between two products. You are deciding whether this is the year you replace the register.
Where does Zayos sit next to these two?
Not opposite them. Zayos runs its marketplace ingestion through Otter, so if you are already on Otter, that part is done. What Zayos adds is the channel neither of these two is really about: your own ordering site, on your own domain, where the food revenue is not a percentage of anything.
Prices are on the website and there is no unpublished per order fee to chase: $499, $599 or $699 per month per location, month to month, no setup fee. The diner pays a service fee at checkout, $0.99 pickup, $2.99 delivery, $0 dine in, 10% catering, and the restaurant keeps 100% of the food revenue and 100% of the tips. Naya Grill in Pompano Beach and West Palm Beach is live and taking direct orders on it and keeps more than $48,000 a year that used to go to marketplace commissions, at about 3,000 orders a month. We are a Fort Lauderdale company.
Read on: how Otter ingestion works with Zayos, Zayos compared with Otter, and Zayos compared with Chowly.
Otter and Chowly, the questions that actually come up.
Otter and Chowly both say they aggregate delivery orders. What is the actual difference?
Which one publishes its prices?
What should I get in writing before I sign either one?
Is Chowly’s six month growth guarantee real?
Do I need either of them if I only sell on one delivery app?
Which one is better for a small group with different POS systems per location?
Sources
Read directly from each vendor’s own site on July 26, 2026. Otter’s displayed prices were promotional on that date. Where a figure is not published we have said so rather than estimated it.
- Otter bundle prices, bundle contents, the per order transaction fee line and Build Your Own: tryotter.com/pricing
- Chowly product modules, 150+ delivery apps, DoorDash Preferred Integration Partner: chowly.com/chowly-platform
- Chowly pricing model wording, 50+ POS systems and the Guaranteed Growth refund promise: chowly.com/alternatives/owner-com-alternatives
Before you pick a middle layer, price the problem.
The free AI report shows what each channel is costing you per order today, so you know whether the fix is an integration or a whole channel. 60 seconds, no card.