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The Best Retail Management Software

Updated
Rhiân Davies
By: Rhiân Davies

Our Small Business Expert

Many or all of the products here are from our partners that compensate us. It’s how we make money. But our editorial integrity ensures our experts’ opinions aren’t influenced by compensation. Terms may apply to offers listed on this page.

There are plenty of retail management systems on the market that combine services to help retailers run their businesses smoothly. Whichever retail management software you choose needs to serve your business needs and be adequate for the size and type of industry you work in. Find out what you need to look for in a retail management solution, as well as our top picks.

Retail management software helps retailers manage their businesses by combining several separate tools into one platform. Good retail management systems are comprehensive enough to allow retailers to run most of their business operations on one single platform.

However, not all retail management solutions are one-size-fits-all tools. Finding the right tool to support and power business operations is the first step in modernizing and optimizing your retail business.

We've put together a list of retail management software to help you narrow down your options and make the right decision for your business.

Product Description Next Steps
talech
Rating image, 3.80 out of 5 stars.
3.80/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
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talech is a lesser-known yet solid POS system geared toward retail and food service businesses. We highlight talech's best features, benefits, and more in this review.
Read Review
KORONA POS
Rating image, 4.00 out of 5 stars.
4.00/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
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KORONA POS is a point of sale solution that caters to many different industries. In this review, we highlight KORONA POS's best features, pricing, and benefits.
Read Review
Retail Pro
Rating image, 3.20 out of 5 stars.
3.20/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
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Retail Pro is a retail management solution designed for larger specialty retail businesses. In this review, we highlight Retail Pro’s best features.
Read Review
Agiliron
Rating image, 2.80 out of 5 stars.
2.80/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
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Agiliron is a multichannel commerce solution packed with retail features. We highlight Agiliron's features, pricing, and more in this review.
Read Review
Epicor Retail Cloud
Rating image, 2.70 out of 5 stars.
2.70/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
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Epicor Retail Cloud is a retail management solution designed specifically for speciality retail businesses. In this review, we highlight Epicor Retail Cloud’s best retail features.
Read Review

Our top picks for the best Retail Software

Ratings Methodology
talech
Read Review
Rating image, 3.80 out of 5 stars.
3.80/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
 = Best
= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
= Poor
Bottom Line: talech is a lesser-known yet solid POS system geared toward retail and food service businesses. We highlight talech's best features, benefits, and more in this review.
Read Full Review

talech is a modern retail management solution designed for both the retail and restaurant industry, though the software’s restaurant-focused features stand out.

The company’s basic and medium pricing plans serve a wide array of business types, from cafes and quick-service restaurants to fast food operations and medium retailers, while its premium pricing package is geared towards full-service restaurants, multilocation businesses, and salons and spas.

This makes talech a good fit for both small and large retail businesses.

talech’s features include:

Image showing talech’s dashboard, with a visual representation of sales figures for multiple locations.

talech’s dashboard provides an at-a-glance look at sales figures. Image source: Author

talech does not offer a free version like many similar solutions, but does offer three reasonably priced pricing bands that include the following features:

  • Starter: Priced at $29/month, it’s best for cafes and basic retail operations. Features include unlimited devices, up to 5 employees and 100 products, inventory tracking, employee permissions, basic order management, full and partial refunds, cash drawer management, customer history tracking, and basic reporting.
  • Standard: Priced at $69/month, it’s best for quick-service restaurants, fast/casual food service, and medium-size retailers. This package includes all Starter plan features plus unlimited employees and products, product bundles, time-based services, sales of items by weight, bar code label printing, clock-in and timesheets, kitchen printing, automatic discounts, exchanges, store credit, house accounts, and insights.
  • Premium: Priced at $99/month, it’s best for full-service restaurants, multilocation businesses, and salons and spas. The Premium package includes all Standard plan features plus appointment booking, gift cards, online ordering, inventory alerts, purchase orders, inventory log, stock take, table management, pay by position, split and merge orders, coursing, automatic gratuity, and buy one, get one (BOGO) discounts.

When it comes to customer support, talech excels. The vendor offers 24/7 phone support, 24/7 email support, live chat available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and a knowledge base that houses help articles, training videos, and a search bar.

KORONA POS
Read Review
Rating image, 4.00 out of 5 stars.
4.00/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
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= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
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Bottom Line: KORONA POS is a point of sale solution that caters to many different industries. In this review, we highlight KORONA POS's best features, pricing, and benefits.
Read Full Review

KORONA POS is a retail POS system suitable for small to medium-size businesses in a large range of specialty industries, including bakeries, wineries, bookstores, hardware stores, cafes, and liquor stores.

The system’s POS dashboard is highly customizable and can be adapted to suit each business’s needs.

KORONA POS’s standard plan features include:

  • Inventory management
  • Back office
  • Reporting
  • Customer management
  • Time clock
  • Franchise and multilocation support
KORONA POS’ dashboard interface, with a main screen, sidebar, and calculator.

KORONA POS’ dashboard interface is largely customizable, but a little outdated. Image source: Author

Instead of offering different pricing bands, KORONA POS lets users build on their standard plan by adding modules to suit their business model. KORONA POS offers monthly subscription pricing which includes full training, automated system updates, and 24/7 customer support. Prices start at $49/month for each active POS terminal.

KORONA POS also offers several good customer support options such as 24/7 phone and email support, an in-depth online user manual, live chat, and many YouTube tutorial videos.

Retail Pro
Read Review
Rating image, 3.20 out of 5 stars.
3.20/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
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= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
= Poor
Bottom Line: Retail Pro is a retail management solution designed for larger specialty retail businesses. In this review, we highlight Retail Pro’s best features.
Read Full Review

Retail Pro is a locally installed retail management solution that houses point of sale and inventory, customer, and employee management capabilities in a large, yet intuitive feature set.

Designed for specialty retail businesses such as apparel, beauty, electronics, luxury and jewelry, sporting goods, franchises, and venues, the system is a powerful solution for large and enterprise businesses.

The system is specialized to help support businesses who have regional requirements, including support for localized taxation and reporting capabilities and system translation to local languages.

The system is visually dated, but it does provide users with an easily navigable user interface, and the level of customization helps users to design and create a retail system that’s unique and ideal for them.

Example of a Retail Pro blank report into which users can input their own queries.

Retail Pro allows users to create their own reports. Image source: Author

The bad news is Retail Pro doesn’t offer much in the way of pricing information. This is always disappointing, as potential users bear the brunt of negotiating a good deal for themselves, without knowing what other users are paying for the same price.

Though we can’t provide an exact figure, locally installed systems always come at a high cost to install and set up -- not to mention the ongoing costs of system upgrades, and less-than-frequent system updates.

Overall, Retail Pro is a comprehensive system that packs a punch in terms of its features for large and enterprise businesses. With over 30 years’ experience, the vendor has carved out a niche for this product in the retail market. Unfortunately, the system is too vast and expensive for small businesses to take advantage of.

Agiliron
Read Review
Rating image, 2.80 out of 5 stars.
2.80/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
 = Best
= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
= Poor
Bottom Line: Agiliron is a multichannel commerce solution packed with retail features. We highlight Agiliron's features, pricing, and more in this review.
Read Full Review

Agiliron is a multichannel commerce solution for businesses who want to integrate their online and offline sales channels operations into a single solution. It’s a good fit for retail and wholesale businesses, and is aimed towards medium, large, and enterprise businesses. Agiliron can also host e-commerce stores at no additional cost.

Agiliron’s features include:

  • Inventory management
  • Multichannel commerce
  • POS
  • Support for B2B and B2C commerce
A selection of applications that integrate with Agiliron.

Agiliron integrates with a large number of applications for seamless synchronization. Image source: Author

In terms of pricing, Agiliron offers a monthly pay-as-you-go model, and doesn’t require a contract. There are three pricing bands, which all come with one user login and two sales channels:

  • Premier: Priced at $85/month when billed annually and $99/month when billed monthly, the Premier package includes unlimited orders, QuickBooks integration, POS, CRM, e-commerce store, e-commerce integrations, eBay and Amazon integrations, and unlimited email support.
  • Enterprise: Priced at $169/month when billed annually and $199/month when billed monthly, this package includes all features in the Premier plan, plus unlimited phone support, advanced business intelligence, B2B store, multiple stock locations, warehouse mobile app, EDI integrations, custom communication templates, and advanced inventory management.
  • Global Enterprise: Priced at $255/month when billed annually and $299/month when billed monthly, this pack includes all of the Enterprise features, plus channels across multiple countries and support for multicurrency operations.

Agiliron’s customer support options are a little lacking. The Enterprise and Global Enterprise pricing plans include unlimited phone support, but it’s only available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Pacific Time), Monday to Friday. Users can also email support requests at any time, and the vendor claims a 24-hour response time.

Epicor Retail Cloud
Read Review
Rating image, 2.70 out of 5 stars.
2.70/5 Circle with letter I in it. Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor. We want your money to work harder for you. Which is why our ratings are biased toward offers that deliver versatility while cutting out-of-pocket costs.
 = Best
= Excellent
= Good
= Fair
= Poor
Bottom Line: Epicor Retail Cloud is a retail management solution designed specifically for speciality retail businesses. In this review, we highlight Epicor Retail Cloud’s best retail features.
Read Full Review

Epicor Retail Cloud is an enigma. Epicor is a huge name in the software world, but there’s little known about this retail product.

Its website leaves a lot to the imagination, with very few details on the product, save a few lines of marketing copy. And you’ll find next to no user reviews across the web. What we gleaned was that despite its modern, sleek, and extensively straightforward user interface, the reason for the lack of user reviews is that, well, no one is using it.

The product is designed for speciality retail businesses such as lawn and garden businesses, pet stores, and thrift stores. It contains point-of-sale capabilities, integrated payment processing, customer loyalty features, and inventory management.

Epicor also remains silent on its pricing options, so there’s no telling which features users can expect to receive, or if there are pricing bands available rather than a flat fee.

Example of Epicor Retail Cloud’s product-ranking feature, including a visual bar chart of rank weighting.

The product ranking feature helps users evaluate best selling items, broken down by categories. Image source: Author

However, we were impressed with the level of user support for onboarding. As well as offering on-screen help and support to users across its features, there are also interactive tours, guided learning, and videos to onboard users smoothly.

It’s also well designed, and its interface is one of the most modern we’ve seen in a retail management solution for a while.

The product was launched in 2019, so we’re guessing it hasn’t had a chance to land on its feet yet. Plus, Epicor offers a more well-rounded retail solution called Epicor Eagle, which is a popular solution that retail businesses might be more drawn to.

Overall, while Epicor Retail Cloud provides a beautifully designed product, we hope eventually its features will be shown to be as helpful and intuitive as its user interface.

What The Ascent looks for in a great retail management software

We look at three main factors when evaluating retail software: its features, customer support options, and its pricing.

Features

Retail management systems are more than just inflated POS systems for retail stores. These solutions should come with enough comprehensive features that allow you to run the bulk of your business operations from one platform.

POS features make up the core of retail management solutions, and almost all come with them as standard. Other important features of retail store management software include:

Not all solutions will offer every feature we mention here, but at the very least, a good retail management solution will offer inventory, customer and employee management, reporting, and a decent POS dashboard.

Support

It's important that retailers receive a good level of customer support from their vendor. Issues with your retail software platform can disrupt business and halt sales. We like to see vendors offer at least one 24/7 customer support option, and a range of other less time-critical support options, too.

Ease of use

With so many features housed in one system, retail management systems need to be user friendly and functional.

Modern interfaces are nice to have, but we look at the bigger picture -- how much of a learning curve is associated with the product, how quickly users can be onboarded, and how much ongoing support or training is needed for users to use the software to its fullest potential.

How your business can benefit from using retail management software

Retail management solutions offer a range of benefits for businesses. Aside from POS capabilities, let's take a look at what other advantages the use of a retail management tool can bring businesses both large and small.

Better inventory management

Unless you're running a retail business with minimal stock, you'll need sophisticated retail inventory management software to help you track, control, and optimize inventory decisions.

Retail store inventory software helps you keep inventory costs down and customers happy by:

  • Automatically updating stock levels when items are sold, returned, or inventory is received
  • Giving users alerts when stock levels are low (some systems even automatically reorder stock based on minimal levels you set)
  • Monitoring costs and profit margins of items so that you can make informed inventory decisions

Improved decision-making

Retail management platform-reporting features help retailers turn their sales, customer, and employee data into valuable insights that can help you better understand them.

For example, POS reports can show you:

  • Your best and worst selling products and product categories, which in turn influence inventory decisions
  • The days, months, and times of day you make most sales, which will help you make staffing decisions
  • How your employees or sales team are performing, which in turn helps you redirect training resources

Support for multichannel and multilocation businesses

Most retail management software supports users' multilocation businesses, and multichannel mediums, meaning there's no need for disparate and siloed systems to support each.

All inventory, customer, employee, and sales data is synced to one centralized system, and is updated and available across all devices, stores, and channels.

Our Small Business Expert

Rhiân Davies
Rhiân Davies is a content writer and digital marketing specialist, specializing in HR and recruitment. Her work has appeared on MarTechSeries, HR Technologist, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.