Looking for a RetailNext Alternative? Compare Vemcount

RetailNext customers count with the vendor's own Aurora sensors. Those sensors expose no web interface, which means no other software platform can read them. In practice the sensor, the largest single item in a people counting budget, is tied to the software contract for its whole life. If the support situation changes, if a data protection review raises questions you would rather not have to answer, or if you simply want different software in three years, the sensors have to be replaced along with it, and across an estate that is an expensive journey. Vemcount is built the other way round. Over more than 20 years Vemco has integrated more than 40 different hardware vendors, and Vemcount works today with current 3D and AI sensors from independent manufacturers such as Xovis, Irisys, Brickstream, Hikvision, Avigilon Alta, Eco-Counter, Axis, Hella Aglaia, Intenta, TDI and VIVOTEK. You pick the right sensor for each entrance, keep counters you already own and change either the hardware or the software later without losing the other. RetailNext's sensors are the one family we cannot connect, because it is not technically possible.

Aurora sensors stream video to RetailNext servers in the USA. The counting lines are drawn there and the counting itself happens there. Two consequences follow. Every entrance carries a continuous video upload, so bandwidth consumption is high and the store network has to be sized for it. And video of your customers leaves the building and the region as a matter of routine, which your data protection officer will want to assess, particularly in Europe. The sensors Vemcount works with do the counting on the device. Lines are configured on the sensor, people are counted there, and only the counts travel to the platform. The bandwidth per sensor is negligible, a temporary connection drop does not lose the count because the device buffers it, and no video needs to leave the store. During a pilot, measure the traffic per sensor on both systems. The difference is not subtle.

Sensors get blocked by a display, lose power or drop off the network. What matters is what the software does next. RetailNext fills the gap with aggregated data, an estimate derived from other periods, and the figure appears in reports like any measured value. The user cannot see whether a number is real or estimated. Vemcount treats the two differently. The sensor health checker reports when a sensor stops delivering, so the store or the service partner can act on the actual problem. Where aggregated data is used to keep the trend readable, it is shown as aggregated. When the sensor pushes its real data, the estimate disappears automatically and the measured figure takes its place. For anyone using footfall to pay rent, staff a store or judge a campaign, knowing which numbers were measured is not a detail. Pull one sensor offline during your pilot and look at how each system presents the gap the next morning.

RetailNext's real time view refreshes at one minute or more. Vemcount shows a person on the dashboard about two seconds after they pass the sensor. At one minute you can review what happened. At two seconds you can act on it, and that is the difference between a live occupancy figure you can enforce at the door and one you glance at afterwards. Vemcount turns the live data into action. Alerts go out by SMS, WhatsApp, webhook, on-screen or audio notification when occupancy, queue length or any other threshold is crossed. Through MQTT the platform triggers third party devices directly: a siren when a limit is reached, a sliding door that holds until the count drops, a building management system that adjusts ventilation to the number of people in the space. RetailNext does not offer this. If real time matters to your operation, test the latency side by side rather than reading about it.

RetailNext focuses on people counting and in-store analytics data. That is a clear scope and it does that job. Vemcount is designed as the starting point of a platform. You begin with counting and add what the business needs next. The sales module connects any POS, with 19 native connectors, to give conversion, sales per visitor and average basket against traffic per store and per hour. Tracking and Re-ID show routes, dwell and repeat visits. VemTenant gives property owners footfall and turnover reporting per tenant, which is why more than 800 malls run on Vemco software. VemSpace covers space and facility management, integrating not only people counters but a large portfolio of IoT devices on LoRaWAN, Sigfox and NB-IoT: air quality, temperature, desk and room occupancy, energy and more. 3D maps and further modules are available today, and VemIndex, an advanced benchmarking module, is planned for release in November 2026. One platform, one login, one data model, growing at the pace you set.

With RetailNext, what you see is what you get: the reports and views the platform provides. Vemcount has a BI layer on top of the data with two ways of working. Snap Reports are one click: choose the report, get the data, on screen or scheduled to each recipient in their own language, in any of 8 languages. Advanced reports and dashboards are where you really work with the data: combine footfall, sales, occupancy and IoT data across sites and periods, build the views your finance and operations teams ask for, and publish them across the organisation. For companies that want an AI advisor on their data, AI is built into the platform, so a regional manager can ask why conversion dropped on Saturday and get an answer grounded in the actual figures. Vemcount is enterprise software built to enterprise security requirements, for organisations that need more than in-store analytics data. Ask both vendors to reproduce one of your real monthly board reports during the pilot.

RetailNext publishes a per sensor per month subscription that bundles the Aurora hardware, the software and the warranty. The sensor stays part of the subscription rather than an asset you own, and because no other software can read it, it has no use outside that contract. Vemcount separates the two decisions. The software is licensed as SaaS per location, with users, API access and reports included. The sensors you buy outright and own, rent per entrance with service included, or keep from your existing installation if they are on the supported list. Sensors typically outlive a software contract, and independent sensors keep their value at renewal time. Compare both offers over five years on your real store and entrance count, and ask what happens to the hardware at the end of the term. That question tends to settle the decision.