Retail POS How We Earn Money
Retail POS Plus participates in affiliate programs run by POS vendors and their affiliate networks (for example, Shopify's program is administered through Impact). When you click certain links on our site and sign up or make a purchase, the vendor or network may pay us a referral commission. You pay the same price either way — commissions are paid by the vendor out of its own margin, not added to your bill.
What Commissions Do — and Don't — Affect
They don't affect our evaluations. Editorial scores are computed from our published eight-criterion methodology before affiliate terms are considered, and commission rates are never an input to a score. We don't accept payment for rankings, placements or positive coverage, and you can verify the outcome yourself: different systems win different categories across the site (overall, small stores, inventory depth, hardware) — the pattern of an evidence-driven ranking, not a paid one.
They do keep the site running. Commissions fund the research, fact-checking and updates behind every page — including re-checking vendor pricing so the numbers you read carry a “last checked” date.
Where Disclosures Appear
You'll find a disclosure notice near the top of every page that contains commercial links — reviews, comparisons, best-of rankings and industry guides. It links back to this page. Site-wide, our footer also carries a disclosure note.
How to Identify Commercial Links
Affiliate and commercial links typically point to vendor websites (for example, shopify.com, squareup.com, lightspeedhq.com or clover.com) and appear as “Visit [vendor]” buttons or links within recommendation sections. They may carry tracking attributes so we receive credit for the referral; some links are currently plain vendor links and may become tracked affiliate links as programs are approved — the editorial content around them doesn't change.
The Editorial Firewall
- Writers and editors evaluate products against the published methodology; affiliate relationships are not shared with them as an input.
- Scores, pros/cons and “best for” calls are set by editorial judgment applied to verified facts — and published regardless of whether a commission exists.
- Vendors do not review or approve content before publication, and no vendor can buy changes to a score or ranking.
- If we make a factual error, we correct it — see our correction policy.
Questions about this disclosure? Contact us or email matthew@retailposplus.com.