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E-Commerce · head to head

Heartland Retail vs Magento

Heartland Retail logo

Heartland Retail

E-Commerce

Cloud point of sale and inventory management sold alongside Heartland card processing

From
$150/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Magento logo

Magento

E-Commerce

Open core commerce platform, free as Magento Open Source and licensed by revenue as Adobe Commerce

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Magento has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Heartland Retail the software is sold as part of a card processing relationship, so the monthly licence understates the real cost and the processing rate is the number that determines what you pay over a year.; Magento it is open core rather than open source, so B2B, customer segmentation, content staging and the Adobe analytics and recommendation services sit behind the Adobe Commerce licence, and discovering that mid-project converts a free platform into a revenue-banded contract.
  • They diverge on capability: Heartland Retail covers Multi-store inventory, Magento covers Two editions.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Heartland Retail and Magento actually diverge.

Attributes where Heartland Retail and Magento differ
AttributeHeartland RetailMagento
Starting price$150/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionopen-source
Free tierNoYes
Founded19972008

Identical on both: platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (E-Commerce).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Heartland Retail

  • Multi-store inventory
  • Cloud point of sale
  • Purchasing and receiving
  • Customer records
  • Sales and stock reporting
  • Integrated card processing
  • E-commerce integrations

Only in Magento

  • Two editions
  • Complex catalogue handling
  • Multi-store and multi-website
  • Native B2B in the paid edition
  • Multi-currency and multi-region
  • Composer module system
  • GraphQL and REST APIs
  • Hyva and Mage-OS ecosystem

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Heartland Retail

  • A specialty retailer opening a third or fourth site that needs one stock position across all of themnot Magento
  • Replacing a legacy on-premise till system that requires a server in the back office of every storenot Magento
  • A retailer whose buying team needs purchase orders and receiving rather than just a cash registernot Magento
  • An existing Heartland processing customer consolidating software and payments under one suppliernot Magento

Magento

  • A retailer with tens of thousands of SKUs and attribute-heavy catalogue logic that SaaS platforms restrictnot Heartland Retail
  • A multi-brand or multi-region group needing separate websites, currencies and tax treatment from one back officenot Heartland Retail
  • A B2B seller needing company accounts, negotiated pricing and quoting inside the storefrontnot Heartland Retail
  • An enterprise with an in-house or retained development team that treats commerce as owned softwarenot Heartland Retail

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Heartland Retail

  • The software is sold as part of a card processing relationship, so the monthly licence understates the real cost and the processing rate is the number that determines what you pay over a year.
  • Leaving means changing till software and merchant account together, and since the payment terminals, the reporting history and the staff training are all tied to the same supplier, the switching cost is far higher than a software migration alone.
  • It is not an online store platform, so a merchant selling on the web still buys and maintains a separate e-commerce platform, and the stock and order integration between the two is an ongoing operational dependency rather than a one-off setup.
  • Historical sales and customer purchase history rarely migrate cleanly out of a point of sale system, so a retailer who switches typically starts with an empty history and keeps the old system read-only, paying for it, for years.
  • Heartland sits within Global Payments, a group that has repeatedly restructured its portfolio through acquisitions and divestitures, so which entity owns and invests in this specific product is not stable over a long contract term.

Magento

  • It is open core rather than open source, so B2B, customer segmentation, content staging and the Adobe analytics and recommendation services sit behind the Adobe Commerce licence, and discovering that mid-project converts a free platform into a revenue-banded contract.
  • The Adobe Commerce licence is priced on bands of gross merchandise value, so the platform bill increases as the store succeeds and is largely unrelated to the infrastructure or support you consume.
  • A production installation needs a search engine, a cache, a reverse proxy, a message queue and a database tuned together, so hosting is a DevOps engagement rather than a plan, and the first serious traffic event is where under-sizing becomes visible.
  • Minor version upgrades regularly break third party modules, so staying current means a regression testing and remediation project several times a year, and merchants who skip upgrades to avoid that end up running software with unpatched vulnerabilities.
  • The specialist developer market is small and expensive relative to other platforms, so an agency retainer becomes a permanent operating cost and losing that agency is a genuine business continuity problem rather than a procurement inconvenience.

Pricing, plan by plan

Heartland Retail

$150/month
  • Core$150/month
    • POS system
    • Inventory management
    • Customer management
  • Professional$350/month
    • All Core features
    • Omnichannel
    • Advanced analytics

Magento

Free
  • Magento Open SourceFree
    • Unlimited products
    • Multiple storefronts
    • Advanced marketing
  • Adobe Commerce$20000/year
    • All Open Source features
    • 24/7 enterprise support
    • Managed cloud hosting

Which should you pick?

Choose Heartland Retail if

  • You need multi-store inventory.
  • You also want cloud point of sale.
Heartland Retail review

Choose Magento if

  • You need two editions.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want complex catalogue handling.
Magento review

Questions people ask

Is Heartland Retail or Magento better?
Neither clearly leads. Heartland Retail starts at $150/month and Magento at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Heartland Retail or Magento?
Magento has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $150/month for Heartland Retail and Free for Magento.
Does Heartland Retail or Magento run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use Magento for free?
Yes. Magento has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Heartland Retail starts at $150/month.
What is Heartland Retail best used for?
Heartland Retail is most often used for a specialty retailer opening a third or fourth site that needs one stock position across all of them, replacing a legacy on-premise till system that requires a server in the back office of every store, a retailer whose buying team needs purchase orders and receiving rather than just a cash register, an existing heartland processing customer consolidating software and payments under one supplier. Of those, a specialty retailer opening a third or fourth site that needs one stock position across all of them and replacing a legacy on-premise till system that requires a server in the back office of every store are not what Magento is typically brought in for.
What can Heartland Retail do that Magento cannot?
Heartland Retail covers Multi-store inventory, Cloud point of sale, Purchasing and receiving, Customer records. Magento covers Two editions, Complex catalogue handling, Multi-store and multi-website, Native B2B in the paid edition.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Heartland Retail: Can I use it as my online store?

No. It manages the shop floor and stock. Selling online means a separate e-commerce platform and an integration to keep the catalogue and stock aligned.

Magento: Is Magento free?

Magento Open Source is. Adobe Commerce is not, and it holds back B2B, segmentation, content staging and the Adobe analytics and recommendation layer. Establish which edition a requirement needs before you commit.

Heartland Retail: Do I have to use Heartland for card processing?

The product is sold as part of a payments relationship, and that is where the supplier's margin sits. Ask explicitly what the software costs standalone before assuming you have a choice.

Magento: How is Adobe Commerce priced?

On bands of gross merchandise value, so the licence grows with revenue rather than with usage. Model it against your three year forecast, not this year's turnover.

Heartland Retail: What should I negotiate hardest on?

The card processing rate and the contract term, not the software subscription. Ask for interchange-plus pricing in writing rather than a blended rate.

Magento: What does it really cost to run?

Licence if applicable, plus tuned infrastructure, plus a specialist agency or in-house team. For most deployments the people and hosting exceed the licence.

Heartland Retail: What happens to my sales history if I leave?

Assume products and current stock export cleanly and that years of transaction history do not. Budget for keeping the old system available read-only during any transition.

Magento: Why do agencies keep mentioning Hyva?

The stock front end stack is slow to develop against, so Hyva, a commercially licensed replacement front end, has become a common default. It is another licence to budget for.

Magento: What happened with Magento 1?

It reached end of life and left merchants on unsupported, unpatched software facing a full replatform. It is the reference point for how long to assume support for any edition you adopt.

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