Store locator FAQ

Handled Locator is a hosted store locator: you keep your locations in a dashboard and paste one line of script into your website to show a searchable map of them. Plans start at $19 a month, the map runs on your own Mapbox or Google Maps key, and the whole thing can also be managed from Claude or ChatGPT.

A store locator is a searchable map on a business's own website that shows visitors where its locations are and which one is nearest them. A visitor types a town or postcode, and the locator sorts results by distance, shows opening hours and contact details, and links straight to directions. The same tool is called a dealer locator, stockist finder or "where to buy" page depending on the industry.

Import your locations from a CSV, choose a layout, and paste one line of script into the page where the map should appear. On Shopify you can install our app and add its Store locator block in the theme editor, or paste into a page in Show HTML mode; on WordPress a Custom HTML block, on Squarespace a Code Block, on Webflow an Embed element, and on Wix an Embed HTML element. The app and plugins are optional everywhere, and nothing needs redeploying when you later change a setting.

Store locators, dealer locators, where-to-buy and stockist finders, service-area finders and searchable directories. Each location is a storefront with an address, a service area with a coverage radius, or an online-only stockist, and tags, territories and Spotlight rules shape what each visitor sees.

No. The snippet only identifies your account, so changes to locations, design, filters and wording reach the live locator without touching your site again. The only reason to edit it is to lock one page to certain tags or a starting place with the data-tags and data-near attributes.

No. The only technical step is pasting one line of script into a page, which every major site builder has a block for. All 85+ available settings, including colors, fonts, layouts, filters, map styles, markers and wording, are controlled in the dashboard. Custom CSS is available but not required.

Setup follows three steps: import and review your locations, choose and style a starting design, then paste the embed into your site and check the published page.

Handled Locator starts at $19 a month for 200 locations, with $39 for 2,000 and $79 for 10,000. Competitors that include the map in the price typically run $25 to $99 a month for comparable tiers. Above 10,000 locations, pricing is scoped per customer rather than published.

There is a 7-day free trial with no card required, but no free plan afterwards. When the trial ends the locator stops serving on your site until you choose a plan. Nothing is deleted, and picking a plan restores it immediately.

Your locator stops serving on your website and visitors stop seeing it. Your locations, settings and styling stay exactly as you left them, so choosing a plan brings everything straight back. We would rather say this plainly than let a site go quiet unexplained.

Yes, in either direction, from the billing screen. Moving down is only blocked if you currently hold more locations than the smaller plan allows, in which case you would remove some first.

Starter is $19 a month for 200 locations and 2 seats, Pro is $39 for 2,000 locations and 5 seats, and Business is $79 for 10,000 locations and 20 seats. Every plan gets the same locator, every setting, analytics, the Claude and ChatGPT connector and brand matching. The Location API, webhooks and Zapier need Pro and Business.

Yes. Paying annually charges 10 months' price for 12 months of service, so Starter is $190 a year, Pro $390 and Business $790. It is also one card charge a year instead of twelve, and a plan change keeps whichever billing term you are on.

The account owner cancels from the billing screen with Cancel subscription. The plan stays active until the end of the period already paid for, and the cancellation can be reversed before then. Your locations and settings are not deleted.

Yes, by email from the Team page, as an Editor (locations, appearance and analytics) or an Admin (everything except billing). Starter includes 2 seats, Pro 5 and Business 20, and pending invites count towards them. Roles apply to the whole account, not to single locations.

One per account. The embed snippet carries your account and no configuration id, so a second locator with its own colours, layout and wording cannot be set up. What you can do is place the same locator on many pages and narrow each one to certain tags or a starting place.

Add them one at a time under Locations, import a CSV on the Data page, or sync them on a schedule from Google Sheets, Airtable, Webflow CMS or HubSpot. You can also paste a list of addresses into Claude or ChatGPT through the connector, or create them through the Location API on Pro and Business. Addresses are geocoded for you.

Yes. Save the sheet as CSV, upload it on the Data page, confirm the proposed column mapping, and review ready rows, duplicates and addresses that could not be found before anything is written. The importer reads names, addresses, coordinates, contact details, descriptions, categories, location type and territory postcodes. Opening hours, timezones and custom fields are not import columns, so set those per location, through the API or from Claude or ChatGPT.

Import the report as it arrives. Rows that list the same store once per product are folded into one location with every product as a tag, stores already imported are skipped rather than duplicated, and a file with the same headers maps itself the way you mapped it last time. A store missing from the next report stays on the map until you hide or delete it.

Yes. Map your latitude and longitude columns during import and those rows skip address lookup entirely, using your coordinates as they are. The same applies to the Location API: send lat and lng and nothing is geocoded.

No. There is no form for visitors to add or suggest a location, and the enquiry form sends a message to a location rather than creating one. To accept submissions, collect them in a form that writes to a Google Sheet or an Airtable view, review them there, and let a scheduled sync add the rows you keep.

Either by place or by text, whichever you choose. Place search turns a town, postcode or address into a point, with autocomplete, and sorts locations by distance with an optional radius filter. Text search filters the loaded locations instantly as the visitor types, and suits a small network or a directory.

Yes, when search is set to filter by text, which matches the address plus the location's name, description and custom fields by default. Place search looks up towns and postcodes instead, so it does not match names. In that mode, a link to your locator with ?loc_q= and a name opens it already filtered.

Only if you turn it on. By default visitors press Use my location, which asks the browser for permission at that moment; you can instead prompt as the locator loads, or open the map approximately near the visitor from their connection without any prompt. The browser position stays in the browser and is not stored.

You choose between an empty state with an expand-search button, which steps the radius up to the first preset that finds something, and showing every location with a note. Online stockists stay available in their own tab either way, though the locator does not switch to it by itself. A Spotlight rule can also add a banner to searches that find nothing, such as a link to order online.

Yes. Every result has a directions button that opens Google Maps, Apple Maps, or whichever suits the visitor's device, and an optional print view. Directions taps are counted in your analytics.

Yes. Place search works worldwide through Mapbox or Google and can be restricted to the countries you serve, distances show in miles or kilometres, and online stockists can be limited to the countries they ship to. The interface can be translated per visitor language, though location details are shown as written.

Yes. Create tags under Categories, put related ones in groups such as Products or Services, and each group becomes its own filter as a dropdown or inline checkboxes. Filters can match any or all selections, show counts, and sit alongside an Open now filter that uses each location's hours.

Yes. A tag can carry a small uploaded image or one of the built-in icons, shown in the filter and beside the tag on result cards. A product shot is enough for a shopper to recognise the bottle or box they are looking for.

Yes. Give a tag a colour and an icon and its locations' pins take both. A location with several tags uses the first in your category order, and a single location can have its own marker colour that overrides the tag.

Yes. Tag each retailer with the products it carries, group the tags into a product filter with images, and list online retailers in their own tab. Distributor reports import directly, and a product page can link to the locator with that product already filtered using ?loc_tags=. Tags record what you maintain, not live shelf stock.

Yes. Add each provider as a storefront, or as a service area with a coverage radius if they travel to the customer, and tag them by trade or certification so visitors can filter. Turn on the enquiry form and a visitor's message is emailed to the provider whose postcode territory covers their address, or to a fallback or the nearest provider when none does.

Yes. Give a location a priority and it ranks above the rest, within a radius you set so a flagship in another city never outranks the store nearby. Spotlight can also feature chosen locations at the top for searches in a drawn area, a radius, a postcode list or a date window.

Custom fields are your own name and value pairs on a location, such as a booking link, a manager's name or a parking note. In Layout & fields each one is shown as a fact or as a button with its own label, colour and icon, and text search can match them. Set them per location, through the Location API or Zapier, or from Claude or ChatGPT; CSV import does not read them.

Yes, one photo per location, uploaded or linked by URL on the location's Details tab. Layout & fields decides whether it appears in result cards, the map popup or the detail view.

Yes. Add weekly hours per location and the locator shows states such as Open until 5 PM, Opens at 9 AM or Closed today, calculated in the location's own timezone, with an optional Open now filter. The weekly table groups days with the same hours (Mon–Fri 9 AM–5 PM) and uses a 12- or 24-hour clock to match the visitor. Each day takes one opening period, and hours are set in the dashboard, the Location API or from Claude or ChatGPT rather than by CSV import.

Yes. Add a custom field such as Book now holding each location's booking URL, then place it as an action in Layout & fields to get a button on the card, popup and detail view. It works with any booking system that gives each location a URL, such as Calendly, Acuity, Square Appointments or your own page.

Yes. Choose a list-only or grid-only layout if you do not need a map, set search to filter by text so it matches names, descriptions and custom fields, add tag filters, and sort by name.

Nearly everything a visitor sees: 85+ settings cover layout, colours, fonts, corners, spacing, search and filter placement, result cards, popups, markers, clusters and map style, and every word of the interface is editable. There is no Handled branding on any plan, and custom CSS covers whatever the settings do not.

Yes. Once a Starter, Pro or Business plan is active, we configure your locator to match your site and include one revision, with no separate design fee. On any plan, including the trial, Start from your website in Appearance reads a public URL and prepares an editable draft for you to finish yourself.

Layout, colours, typography, spacing, corners and borders, buttons, search and filter placement, result-card and popup fields, the mobile arrangement, and marker artwork, sizing and clusters, applied as a normal configuration you can keep editing. It does not include a website redesign, new product features, custom integration code or designing a map style in Mapbox or Google. Email hello@handledlocal.com with your account email, site and brand assets to start it.

Streets, Light, Dark and Satellite, on either Mapbox or Google Maps. For a fully branded base map, paste a published Mapbox Studio style URL or a Google cloud Map ID and the locator uses it instead.

Yes, under Appearance. Your CSS is scoped to the locator's shadow root, so it can restyle the widget without touching the rest of your page and your site's own stylesheet cannot break the locator. Most brands never need it, since colours, fonts, corners and spacing are settings.

Yes. It adapts to the width of the page section it sits in rather than only the screen, and on a phone the results collapse into a sheet the visitor taps to switch between list and map. Use my location becomes icon-only on narrow screens so the search box stays usable.

Yes, on the examples page, and each one is a real running locator rather than a screenshot: logo pins for food brands, clustered pins for stockists, a filtered grid for dealer networks and a coverage radius for mobile services. Any of them can be your starting design.

Yes. An online-only location has no address and appears in the locator's own online tab, carries tags so filters apply to it too, and can be limited to the countries it ships to. The tab stays available when nothing is nearby, but the locator does not switch to it by itself.

Yes, both. A service area is a location with a coverage radius the map draws. A territory is a list of postcodes or prefixes such as 750* owned by one dealer, who is then pinned first or shown alone for addresses inside it and, with the enquiry form on, receives the enquiries sent from there. Counties and states cannot be picked by name, and drawn shapes belong to Spotlight, which changes what is shown but never routes an enquiry.

Spotlight is a set of rules that change what a visitor sees based on where or when they search. A rule fires on every search, on searches that find nothing, inside a radius, a drawn area or a postcode list, or when a tag filter is on, and then shows a banner, features, restricts or hides chosen locations. Any rule can have start and end dates, and a checker in the dashboard tests rules against a place before visitors see them.

Yes, within one design. Each embed can be locked to certain tags with data-tags and opened on a place with data-near, so a product page shows only its stockists and a regional page opens on its region. Every page shares the same colours, layout and wording, since an account has one locator.

Yes, the interface. Add languages under Language and each visitor sees the closest match to their browser's language, with untranslated phrases falling back to your primary wording. Location names, descriptions, tag names and custom fields are not translated: they are stored once and shown as written.

Yes, on every plan. The Analytics page reports sessions, directions taps, the share of sessions that take an action, searches that found nothing and how far searchers are from your nearest location, plus popular filters and top locations, for 7, 30 or 90 days or a custom range, with CSV export. The widget also fires browser events you can send to your own analytics.

It keeps map usage between you and the provider. Mapbox or Google bills that traffic directly at its own prices, while the Handled subscription covers the locator product, location capacity and team seats.

Create a free Mapbox account, open the Access Tokens page, and copy the default public token. Restrict it to your own domain before you use it, since a public map token is visible in any page's source. The dashboard walks you through these steps at the point you need the key.

Yes. Both providers are supported and you can switch without changing the embed or location data. Start with streets, light, dark or satellite, then connect a published Mapbox Studio Style URL or Google cloud Map ID when you need a custom base map.

Yes. Handled can draw transparent PNG, WebP or safe SVG artwork instead of a pin, with a configurable 16 to 96 pixel size and either a centered or bottom-edge coordinate anchor. Pins, dots, logo markers, numbering and three cluster shapes remain available too.

A public map key is designed to be visible in page source; that is how the map loads in the visitor's browser, and it is true of every locator product including the ones that supply the key themselves. Safety comes from restricting the key to your own domain in the provider's console, which we prompt you to do.

Yes. Install Handled Locator from the Shopify App Store and add its Store locator block to a page in the theme editor. If you would rather not add an app, open the page, switch the editor to Show HTML and paste the embed instead.

Yes. Install the Handled Locator plugin from WordPress.org for a native block and a [handled_locator] shortcode, or skip the plugin and paste the embed into a Custom HTML block.

Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow and Wix each have a step-by-step install guide, and any page you can paste HTML into works identically. The locator is a single custom element that renders in a shadow root, so it cannot collide with your site's CSS and your site's CSS cannot break it.

Yes. Handled Locator runs an MCP server, the open standard that lets an AI assistant use a product's tools with your permission. Connect it once and you can add locations from a pasted list of addresses, tag them, add custom buttons, restyle the widget, change visitor-facing wording and get your embed code, all from a conversation. It works the same way in Claude and ChatGPT, and from Claude Code or Cursor with an API key.

No. Every configuration change goes through a proposal step that shows the exact before-and-after values, and nothing reaches the live widget until you say apply. That step is enforced by the server rather than by the assistant's manners: the apply tool refuses to run without a proposal it can check. Every version is kept, so a change can be rolled back in one sentence, and the rollback creates a new version rather than erasing anything.

No. You paste one endpoint, https://app.handledlocal.com/api/mcp, and sign in with your normal Handled Locator account to approve the connection. There is no key to create and nothing to install. Developer tools such as Claude Code and Cursor authenticate with an API key instead, created in the dashboard under Settings, then API & developer tools, and a read-only key can look without changing anything.

Yes, on every plan including the free trial. A trial account can connect on day one. The assistant only ever reaches the one locator on the account you sign in with, and disconnecting removes its access without touching anything you built.

A REST Location API to list, create, update and delete locations, a Query API that returns locations nearest a point, and signed webhooks, all on Pro and Business with account-scoped keys created under Settings, then API & developer tools. On every plan the embedded widget has a JavaScript API and browser events, and the MCP server lets Claude or ChatGPT manage the locator.

Yes. The locator dispatches versioned browser events when it is ready, a visitor searches, gets no results, selects a location, opens directions or clicks an action, and they bubble to document so Google Tag Manager can pick them up. Payloads leave out the visitor's query, coordinates and contact details.

Yes. On Pro and Business, the Location API writes locations with a key that allows writes, and webhooks tell your system when a location or lead changes. On any plan, a scheduled sync can read from Google Sheets, Airtable, Webflow CMS or HubSpot. Nothing writes back into those systems for you.

Yes. The Query API returns locations nearest a point with their distance, filtered by radius, tag or text, ranked by the same function the widget uses. Use a read-only key for anything public, since it cannot write. It is on Pro and Business, and online stockists are left out of distance queries because they have no coordinates.

A two-line snippet for any page that accepts HTML, a Store locator block from the Shopify app, and a block or shortcode from the WordPress plugin. The snippet takes data-tags and data-near to lock a page, links can pre-fill a search with loc_near, loc_tags, loc_q and loc_radius, and your own search form or script can drive the locator from elsewhere on your site.

Up to 10,000 per account on the published plans. That is a tested figure rather than a marketing one: 5,002 locations returned in 4.0 seconds in testing, with the first result on screen in 1.65 seconds. Past the ceiling the API reports that it has truncated rather than silently returning less.

Enterprise covers 10,000+ locations or custom requirements. Handled scopes volume, seats, support, integrations and engineering around your data and customer needs. Email hello@handledlocal.com with a rough location count and the behaviour you need.

The widget stays under 100 KB gzipped in total, including search, filters, results and the map adapter. It loads after your page rather than blocking it and has been verified on a third-party origin in Chromium, Firefox and WebKit.

Yes. A location can be a coverage zone rather than a point, with a radius the map draws, which is what a mobile, delivery or installation business needs. Visitors searching inside that zone match the location even though there is no shopfront at a specific address.

Handled starts at $19 and asks you to connect your own map-provider key, so Mapbox or Google bills map usage directly. Self-serve plans differ by price, location capacity and seats, with every working feature included. One initial done-for-you brand match and one revision are included after activating any paid plan. What established alternatives may have that we do not: generated location pages, managed two-way CRM or ERP synchronization, and more than one locator per account.

There is no generated page per location, no managed bidirectional CRM or ERP synchronization, and only one locator per account. Location names and descriptions are not translated per language, and territories cannot be picked by county or state. Pro and Business accounts can use the Location API and webhooks to connect their own systems.

Yes. Connect one spreadsheet, choose a stable location-ID column and map the fields Handled should control. Every manual run previews creates, updates, conflicts and rows missing from the source; sync every 15 minutes, hourly or daily applies safe changes while leaving conflicts and missing rows unchanged. Handled reads the selected file and never writes back to it.

Yes, as CSV at any time, in the shape you put them in. Your data is not the lock-in and you do not need to ask us for it.

No. The locator sets no cookies on your visitors, does not track them across sites, and builds no profile. It sends the request needed to answer a search, and a place name typed into the search box goes to a geocoding service to turn it into coordinates. Neither is stored.