eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) retail software is built to optimize many aspects of retail operations. Even now in its emerging state, AI retail software can help retailers improve customer service, personalize marketing efforts, optimize inventory management, predict retail trends, and better understand customer preferences.
While many AI retail tools are available, few are exceptional. We conducted over 40 hours of research to help you curate the list of the best performing AI retail software of 2024.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Top AI Retail Software Comparison
See our top picks for the best artificial intelligence retail software, what scenario they are best for, and their starting price.
| Free Forever Plan | Starting Price | Best For | Top Strength | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stackline | No | Custom quote | Real-time data analytics on various e-commerce metrics | Comprehensive analytics and insights |
| Market360 | No | Custom quote | Digital shelf analytics | Data-backed decision support |
| Crisp Data Platform | No | Custom quote | CPG companies | Centralized data management |
| ScanUnlimited | Yes | $70 month-to-month | Finding fast-selling and profitable wholesale products on Amazon | Save time on product research |
| ContactPigeon | No | Custom quote | Retailers looking to enhance their customer engagement | Omnichannel engagement |
| Triple Whale | Yes | $129 per month | Direct-to-consumer brand running an online storefront | No-code custom metric builder |
| Numerator Insights | No | Custom quote | Consumer behavior tracking | Customizable and easy-to-export reports |
| Premise | No | Custom quote | Collecting real-time and on-the-ground data | AI-charged video and voice insights |
| Etailinsights | No | Custom quote | Marketing teams looking for prospect intelligence | Highly customizable |
| Syndigo | No | Custom quote | Retailers seeking to optimize their product information management | Easy execution of in-store merchandising plans |
Stackline: Best for Real-time Data Analytics on e-Commerce
Stackline is a retail intelligence company that provides data and insights to help brands and retailers increase sales and improve their e-commerce performance. Its services include market trend analysis, competitive benchmarking, and advertising optimization. Its platform allows companies to track their performance against competitors, identify growth opportunities, and make data-driven decisions to improve online sales.
Stackline’s Shopper OS platform gives brands and retailers the tools to understand and engage with consumers throughout their shopping journey. The platform serves as a command center and includes several Stackline retail artificial intelligence tools and software, such as multi-retailer CRM for collecting and managing customers’ first-party data across retailers, a messaging tool for communicating with customers, a shopper analytics solution for measuring customer insights across retailers, channels, and platforms, and rating and reviews for collecting syndicated ratings and reviews across online retailers.
Stackline’s key area of strength is its ability to provide comprehensive, real-time data analytics on various e-commerce metrics, such as sales trends, search rankings, and advertising performance.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Improved forecasting | Limited integrations |
| Comprehensive analytics and insights | Initial complexities for those unfamiliar with eCommerce analytics |
Pricing
Contact the company for a custom quote.
Features
- Integrates with over 30 third-party platforms, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, Chewy, and Best Buy.
- Predictive scenario planning.
- Advertising automation.
- Content creation and catalog management.
- Extensive analytics and reporting.
Market360: Best for Digital Shelf Analytics
Market360 is a digital shelf data analytics platform designed for major brands, manufacturers, retailers, and distributors. It best suits businesses looking to optimize their online presence, enhance their digital shelf performance, and drive sales across various customer touch points.
One of Market360’s key strengths is its AI-powered technology that provides real-time insights and data-driven recommendations to help businesses make informed decisions. It allows users to monitor product availability, understand the impact of out-of-stock products, analyze competitor pricing and promotions, optimize product range, and streamline onboarding processes.
Market360’s customizable setup, access to global data, and dedicated support from e-commerce experts further enhance its effectiveness in helping businesses grow sales and stay ahead of the competition.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Data-backed decision support | Relatively expensive |
| Quality support and responsive sales team | Complex initial setup |
Pricing
Contact the company for a custom quote.
Features
- Combines product information management and digital asset management in one solution.
- Voice and text AI.
- Product availability monitoring.
- Competitor analysis.
Crisp Data Platform: Best for Consumer Packaged Goods Companies
The Crisp Data Platform caters to the data needs of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies, offering a centralized hub for data management, analytics, and collaboration. The platform stands out for its ability to ingest, harmonize, and integrate data from over 40 retailers and distributors, providing CPGs with a single source of truth.
For CPG companies, the Crisp Data Platform offers a range of out-of-the-box retail and supply chain analytics that deliver actionable insights. Whether leveraging Crisp’s pre-built analytics or working with their own BI team and integrating with partner applications, CPGs can tailor the platform to their specific needs and optimize their operations.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Centralized data management | Customization complexity |
| Collaborative commerce support | Initial learning curve |
Pricing
Contact the company for custom quotes.
Features
- The platform connects suppliers to data from 40+ retailers and distributors.
- Crisp seamlessly integrates with retailers, distributors, and other data sources to provide a unified view of the data.
- Crisp offers data provisioning capabilities to control access to specific data subsets.
ScanUnlimited: Best for Finding Profitable Wholesale Products on Amazon
ScanUnlimited is a wholesale product sourcing tool designed to help Amazon sellers manage inventory and make informed sourcing decisions. It allows users to quickly search through many products to find profitable items in high demand on the Amazon Marketplace. With features like Product Detail, users can dive deep into Amazon listings to gather essential metrics for better decision-making.
ScanUnlimited offers the ability to upload supplier product catalogs, analyze results with advanced filters that let you specify your buying criteria, and organize listings into product folders, all within a browser-based interface. The Power-Up beta feature provides historical data on listings, helping users avoid competing against Amazon and identifying listings with consistent sales ranks.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reduces product research time | Users must have an Amazon professional seller account |
| Unlimited file upload | Limited customer support |
Pricing
- Limited: Free plan.
- Unlimited: $60 per month billed annually or $70 month-to-month.
- Unlimited Plus: $90 per month billed annually or $100 month-to-month.
Features
- It lets you scan up to 600,000+ products per hour.
- Automatic profit recalculations.
- Bulk scan.
- Automatic backups.
- Keeps charts with sales rank history.
- Chrome extension.
ContactPigeon: Best for Enhancing Customer Engagement
ContactPigeon is a marketing automation platform that helps businesses enhance their customer engagement and drive sales through personalized, targeted campaigns. The platform offers features such as email marketing, behavioral targeting, customer segmentation, and analytics to help businesses create effective marketing campaigns.
ContactPigeon uses artificial intelligence to serve retailers by analyzing customer data and behaviors to personalize marketing campaigns. The platform segments customers based on their preferences, purchase history, and interactions with the brand. This allows retailers to send targeted and relevant messages to different customer segments, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Omnichannel engagement | Limited integration with third-party apps |
| Real-time data insights | Users say the chat feature can be improved |
Pricing
Contact the company for custom quotes.
Features
- It offers integrations with eCommerce, CMS, CRM, and other marketing platforms, such as Shopify, Open Cart, Loyalty Lion, Salesforce, and HubSpot.
- Analytics and dashboards.
- Campaign automation and delivery optimization.
- Customer segmentation.
Triple Whale: Best for Direct-to-Consumer Brand eCommerce
Triple Whale is an eCommerce analytics and data platform designed for direct-to-consumer Shopify brands. It provides real-time financial reporting, marketing analytics, and customer data to help eCommerce businesses track key metrics such as customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, contribution margin, and return on ad spend.
By integrating with various software, such as TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Google, Klaviyo, and Amazon, Triple Whale offers insights into the performance of different marketing channels, enabling businesses to make informed decisions about optimizing their ad budgets.
One of its standout features is the Triple Pixel, which analyzes first-party data to connect ad clicks and conversions. This is particularly beneficial for tracking ad attribution.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| No-code custom metric builder | Expensive |
| Support up to 50 currencies | Low-tier plans lack product analytics features |
Pricing
- Free forever: Two users max and up to 12 months of historical data.
- Growth: $1,200 per year or $129 per month.
- Pro: $1,990 per year or $199 per month.
- Enterprise: $2,790 per year or $279 per month.
Features
- Available for iOS and Android.
- View channel-specific performance data from connected ads email, SMS, post-purchase surveys, and CX enablement platforms.
- Post-purchase survey.
- AOV and LTV analysis.
Numerator Insights: Best for Consumer Behavior Tracking
Numerator Insights offers various AI-based retail services, including shopper surveys, competitor tracking, and promotional analysis, to help companies stay ahead in the retail industry.
The market intelligence company provides data and insights to help companies make knowledgeable decisions about their retail and e-commerce strategies. It collects and analyzes data on consumer behavior, product sales, and market trends to help businesses understand their competitive landscape, identify growth opportunities, and optimize their marketing and sales strategies.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Customizable and easy-to-export reports | Some users say the tools sometimes load slowly |
| Consumer behavior tracking | Somewhat expensive |
Pricing
Contact the company for a custom quote.
Features
- It provides retailers with visibility into omnichannel consumer behaviors.
- Shopper and consumer insights.
- Category and brand management.
Premise: Best for Real-Time and On-the-Ground Data
Premise is a platform that allows individuals to participate in data collection tasks and earn rewards for completing them. Tasks can include taking photos of retail displays, checking prices at stores, or answering questions about a specific location. Premise uses crowdsourcing to gather valuable information and observations from users worldwide.
Premise is beneficial for various data collection tasks, such as conducting market research and surveys, monitoring supply chains, tracking prices, and more. The tool features anti-spoofing measures, location verification, image analysis, customized dashboards, and raw data export.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| AI-powered video plus voice insights | Dependent on contributor availability |
| AI-powered analysis | Some contributors reported a slow payout process |
Pricing
Contact the company for custom quotes.
Features
- Audience analysis for social and behavior change.
- Mobile apps – Android and iOS.
- Geospatial analytics.
- Availability tracker.
- Price tracker.
Etailinsights: Best for eCommerce Prospect Intelligence
Etailinsights is marketing intelligence software for eCommerce businesses. It offers a range of AI features and tools to help users gather prospect intelligence, track website technologies, conduct marketing campaigns, and monitor competitors.
The platform includes tools for prospecting, allowing users to build prospect lists based on criteria such as estimated online revenue, orders per day, total number of products, eCommerce technology, and more. It also provides industry intelligence to help users understand specific industry segments’ challenges and pain points.
Its AI technology profiler tool allows users to analyze competitor websites and track changes in their technology stack. This helps businesses stay informed about their competitors’ strategies and ensures they remain competitive.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Highly customizable | Pricing may be prohibitive for smaller businesses |
| Comprehensive prospecting tools | Initial learning curve |
Pricing
Contact the company for custom quotes.
Features
- Prospect list building based on revenue and technology criteria.
- Technology tracking for eCommerce platforms.
- Competitor profiling.
Syndigo: Best for Optimizing Product Information Management
Syndigo is a leading provider of product information management (PIM) and syndication solutions for the retail, e-commerce, and CPG industries. Its platform allows brands and retailers to manage and distribute product information and content across multiple channels, improving the online shopping experience for consumers and streamlining the supply chain process.
Syndigo onboards new vendor content, manages product assortments, enhances product detail pages with rich media content, optimizes store layouts, executes shelf merchandising strategies, and implements data management and governance solutions. Its VendorSCOR tool allows retailers to audit and improve website product content by setting unique standards for vendors to follow.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy execution of in-store merchandising plans | Potential learning curve for users unfamiliar with PIM and data management tools |
| Vendor content audit and improvement tools | Complexity in implementing and managing the platform |
Pricing
Contact the company for custom quotes.
Features
- VendorSCOR for auditing and improving product content.
- Content and data management.
- Master data management (MDM).
- Customer domain MDM.
- Digital asset management (DAM).
How to Choose the Best AI Retail Software for Your Business
When shopping for the best AI retail software, it is critical to consider the aspect of your retail operation that needs to be augmented with AI’s power. For example, Premise may be best for collecting data but may not be as efficient as ContactPigeon when it comes to customer omnichannel engagement.
While Etailinsight is a leader in terms of prospecting intelligence, it may not serve those looking to optimize their product information management and syndication processes effectively, but Syndigo will.
We recommend selecting your organization’s best AI retail tool based on the features you need. Also, consider your budget, ease of use, implementation flexibility, and customer service and support.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About AI Retail Software
How is AI revolutionizing the retail industry?
AI and generative AI is revolutionizing the retail industry by:
- Providing personalized shopping experiences for customers.
- Optimizing pricing strategies.
- Improving inventory management.
- Enhancing customer service through chatbots and virtual assistants.
- Enabling retailers to predict customer demand and trends more accurately.
What are the challenges with AI in retail?
Some challenges with AI in retail include data privacy concerns, the need for skilled personnel to implement and manage AI systems, integrating AI technology with existing systems, and ensuring that AI algorithms provide accurate and unbiased results.
What is the future of AI in retail?
The future of AI in retail is expected to continue to grow and evolve, with more retailers adopting AI technology to streamline operations, improve customer experiences, and stay competitive in the market. Retailers will likely use AI for more personalized marketing campaigns, improved supply chain management, and enhanced customer service.
Bottom Line: Best AI Retail Software
AI retail software can be a game-changer for retailers looking to streamline operations, drive sales, and enhance the customer experience. By leveraging AI technology, retailers can gain valuable insights into customer behavior, optimize inventory levels, and personalize marketing efforts.
While there are many tools on the market, retailers must choose the right AI software that aligns with their specific business needs and goals to maximize the benefits of this innovative technology. Note that AI retail software solutions are an emerging and developing technology, so retailers should stay informed about the latest advancements and continually evaluate and update their technology stack to remain competitive.
For a full portrait of the AI vendors serving a wide array of business needs, read our in-depth guide: 150+ Top AI Companies 2024