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Heartland Retail
Cloud point of sale and inventory management sold alongside Heartland card processing
As of 30 August 2026, Heartland Retail starts at $150/month. A multi-store retail operations system for specialty retailers, sold as part of a payments relationship. Softwr lists it under E-Commerce. Heartland Retail is made by Heartland Payment Systems, launched in 1997, available on Web.
Overview
What Heartland Retail does
Heartland Retail is a cloud point of sale, inventory and reporting system aimed at specialty retailers running more than one location. It covers till transactions, stock across stores, purchase orders and receiving, customer records and sales reporting, and it is sold by Heartland, a merchant services business that sits inside Global Payments. The product is a retail operations layer rather than an online store platform, so a merchant selling on the web pairs it with a separate e-commerce platform and relies on an integration to keep stock and orders in step. The thing that actually distinguishes it commercially is that the software is attached to a card processing relationship. Payment processing, not the monthly software fee, is where the economics of this category live, and the rate you negotiate on card volume will dwarf the subscription within a year for most stores. That has two consequences worth understanding before signing. The quoted software price is not the price, and the processing agreement is the contract that is hard to leave, because unpicking it means replacing the till software at the same time as the merchant account. It is bought by multi-location specialty retail, apparel, outdoor, homeware and similar, where the buyer needs stock visibility across sites and a purchasing workflow more serious than a single-till system offers. The trade-off is the bundle. You accept a processing relationship in exchange for software that is priced as though it were cheap, you accept that the online storefront is a separate purchase and a separate integration to maintain, and you accept that Heartland sits inside a large and acquisitive payments group where product ownership, roadmaps and support arrangements can change without your input.
What people use it 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
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Heartland Retail
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Heartland RetailvsSquare
Square: Powering the economy
- Heartland RetailvsMagento
Magento: Open-source ecommerce platform for enterprise retail
- Heartland RetailvsShopkeep
Shopkeep: Cloud-based POS for small businesses
Pricing
What Heartland Retail costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Core
$150 /mo
- POS system
- Inventory management
- Customer management
- Email support
Professional
$350 /mo
- All Core features
- Omnichannel
- Advanced analytics
- Priority support
Capabilities
Features
Multi-store inventory
Tracks stock levels, transfers and receiving across several locations from one catalogue
Cloud point of sale
Runs the till in the browser or on tablets, so a new location needs no local server
Purchasing and receiving
Raises purchase orders against suppliers and reconciles them on delivery
Customer records
Holds purchase history against a customer so store staff can see it at the till
Sales and stock reporting
Reports sell-through, margin and stock position by store, category and period
Integrated card processing
Takes card payments through the Heartland merchant relationship the software is sold with
E-commerce integrations
Syncs catalogue and orders with a separate online store platform rather than hosting one
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Behind it
Who makes Heartland Retail
- Company
- Heartland Payment Systems
- Based in
- Jeffersontown, KY
Keep looking
Where to go from Heartland Retail
- Heartland Retail alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Heartland Retail pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Heartland Retail badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All E-Commerce softwareThe full category
- Best E-Commerce softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best E-Commerce software for
Compare Heartland Retail with
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- Square
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- Bluepark
- Shein
- Squarespace Commerce
- Temu
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- NCR Voyix
- Klarna
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Heartland Retail, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Heartland Retail
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