“How do dozens of chain stores connect to headquarters?” is a hurdle every retail, food service, maternal and baby, and beauty business owner must clear when expanding. First, full disclosure: Yuxinan is a multi-site networking product made by Siwenlide, and we are an interested party in this article, so we do not rank anyone. We simply lay out the mainstream approaches to chain store networking and the real costs. All prices are the public list prices on each vendor’s official website as of October 2026. How you choose is up to you.

In one sentence: what makes store networking expensive is never “bandwidth,” but “number of stores × per-device licensing and hardware.” Per-device billing models vary enormously in the store scenario; across 30 stores, the annual difference can run into tens of thousands of yuan.

1. First, Get Clear on What Store Connectivity Actually Connects

Chain stores’ networking needs are completely different from those of office buildings. They usually fall into three categories:

• Business backhaul: POS checkout, membership, and inventory systems need real-time connections to headquarters servers or the HQ ERP;
• Surveillance backhaul: store camera feeds must be viewable by headquarters at any time;
• No IT in stores: store staff can only plug in a power cord and a network cable, so devices must be plug-and-play, and any problem must be handled remotely by headquarters.

So the key metrics for store networking are not peak bandwidth but: no public IP required, zero configuration for store staff, centralized management at headquarters, and per-store costs that grow linearly with store count without spiraling out of control.

2. Overview of Three Mainstream Approaches (Public Prices as of October 2026)

Competitor prices are taken from each vendor’s public website pages as of October 2026 (for Pgy, per its official website’s public pages as of October 2026: business edition client license ?148/year each, hardware license ?328/year each, with tiers from ?148–518/year). The official websites prevail; this does not constitute a quotation commitment. Private line prices vary widely between carriers by region and require a local quote.

3. The Cost Math for 30 Stores, Line by Line

Taking the typical scale of “30 stores + headquarters,” here is the Yuxinan math at public prices:

• Enterprise Standard: 1 hardware unit per store × ?498/year, plus 1 software endpoint at headquarters × ?198/year;
• Total ?15,138/year, or about ?505/year per store, with the boxes and bandwidth included (15M forwarding per endpoint; P2P direct connections are not speed-limited);
• Need more bandwidth: Enterprise Flagship hardware ?860/unit/year (20M), High-Speed Edition ?1,198/unit/year (35M).

For the same 30 stores, Pgy offers two routes, and the math is completely different. One is the software client option: install a client on each store’s POS computer, licensing 148 × 30 = ?4,440/year. Nominally the cheapest, but that computer must stay powered on all year; if a staff member shuts it down or reinstalls the system, the link drops. In essence, you end up maintaining the POS computer as if it were a network device. The other is the router option: one router per store, hardware licensing 328 × 30 = ?9,840/year, with the routers themselves purchased separately; over three years, licensing alone comes to ?29,520. At the Standard Edition pricing above, Yuxinan is ?15,138/year with hardware included, more than either Pgy route. What the difference buys: licenses that follow the account (no repeat purchase when a device is replaced), centralized headquarters management, and enterprise capabilities such as subnet approval and inbound protection. There is also a hidden item: what the license follows. Pgy hardware licenses follow the device, so if a box fails, a replacement consumes a swap quota (3 + 10% × units purchased per month); Yuxinan licenses follow the account, so replacing a device costs nothing extra. When comparing costs, always calculate “first year” and “third year” separately, then ask one more question: “does the license follow the device or the account?”

With fewer stores it gets even lighter: for up to 5 stores, Enterprise Basic with 5 hardware units × ?316 plus 1 software endpoint at ?98 comes to roughly ?1,678/year. If you want to validate first, the free trial edition at ?0 (2 endpoints) lets you get headquarters and one store running end to end.

4. Three Pitfalls Specific to Store Scenarios

1. At a mall store, the broadband is not yours to choose. Many malls only allow the property management’s shared broadband, with no public IP and no access to the router. This is exactly why networking solutions that “need no public IP” exist. Put this item on your requirements list before signing the lease.
2. Store staff will unplug things. The box losing power or being unplugged is routine, so after power is restored it must reconnect automatically with zero manual intervention. When choosing a solution, ask: “after a power cycle, does anyone need to intervene?”
3. Business must not stop when the management plane goes down. Cloud management platforms will have maintenance windows or failures, so confirm whether stores still forward traffic after the management plane is unreachable. Yuxinan’s approach is to keep forwarding based on the local cache and sync once the management plane recovers, so store checkout is never interrupted.

5. How to Choose

• Up to 3 stores, validating first: start with the free or entry-level edition; don’t buy hardware from day one.
• 10–100 stores, POS and surveillance backhaul: a per-device subscription that includes hardware and supports centralized management is the least trouble; stores have no IT staff, which matters far more than bandwidth.
• Extremely sensitive to latency and jitter (e.g., production lines, warehouse AGVs): then consider a dedicated line or a hybrid solution, and budget at the RMB 100,000+ per year level.
• Stores in places without broadband, such as construction sites or trade shows: choose devices that support 4G uplink, with wired and 4G backing each other up.

Yuxinan’s pricing tiers and feature boundaries are published permanently on the official website: Yuxinan product site; for a point-by-point comparison of the three options (including where Peanut Shell fits), see Which multi-site networking provider is best; for how the annual total is calculated, see How much does multi-site networking cost per year; for how to manage store IT as a whole (networking is only one part of it), see How to manage IT for chain stores and multi-branch businesses.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is it safe to run the store POS system over this network?
A: All networking traffic is encrypted end to end, and private keys never leave the store device. The head-office console can authorize and revoke store by store, so if a device at one store is lost it can be revoked individually without affecting the other stores.

Q: Our store broadband comes from the property management and it’s terrible. Can we still use it?
A: Yes. When a P2P direct connection cannot be established, traffic is relayed, with bandwidth according to your plan. For small-packet workloads such as POS and membership systems, latency fluctuation on poor broadband is more common than insufficient bandwidth, so we recommend running the free version in a real store environment for a week before deciding.

Q: We already have a batch of routers from another brand. Do we have to replace them?
A: Not necessarily. The existing store routers can stay in place for general internet access; the box is responsible only for the business backhaul network, and the two networks do not interfere with each other.

Q: What happens once we scale to 100 stores?
A: Endpoints are added individually (?196–249 per unit per year, depending on the plan tier), and bandwidth can be added in 1 Mbps increments (?198 per Mbps per year); beyond the scale covered by the plan tiers, a custom version can be discussed.

Q: Will video surveillance streams lag when sent back?
A: It depends on the store’s uplink bandwidth and on whether traffic goes over a P2P direct connection. Direct connections are not rate-limited; relayed traffic follows the plan bandwidth. For stores with many cameras, we recommend configuring it so that preview uses the sub-stream and only playback pulls the main stream, which can save more than half the bandwidth.

Pricing basis: publicly listed prices on the Yuxinan official website as of October 2026; competitor information is taken from the public pages of each vendor’s official website for the same period and is subject to those official sites; this does not constitute a quotation commitment.