Mid tier ecommerce platform

[skuba]

Hi

I am looking for a new ecom platform for a client. Since it's not a big company i am looking mostly for mid tier solutions.
I was wondering if you have looked into or has any experience with one of these platforms:

Storefront by LaGarde
Monster by Network Solutions
Volusion
CoreCommerce



Or is there one that you have liked?

Thanks a lot

[webwest]

We use Miva Merchant exclusively

[jsinger]

Definitely check out Shopsite.

[skuba]

Thanks guys. But when you were analyzing Miva or Shopsite, did you compare with any of the other ones?
Thanks

[jsinger]

Shopsite compares VERY well with all the defunct carts that appeared over the years. :)

Nowadays the main concern shouldn't be the feature set but whether the cart company will survive these tough times. Shopsite is regularly enhanced and its rare bugs are patched within days of discovery. The user group is large and vibrant. There is almost no downtime. Shopsite is located in Utah. The company is not publicly owned, which is a major plus in my opinion.

How about Yahoo stores? Publicly owned, but a cart with a great track record too.

What are your client's specific requirements?

[virgvv]

A lot of this depends on what exactly your client needs, of course. But I thoroughly researched this recently for one of my clients and for my family store, and would put CoreCommerce at the top of that list. User-friendly, easy to customize, and tons of features for the price. Owned by Sum Effect, the folks who sell DigiShop (as the licensed version). I used DigiShop for a former store and liked it.

I put the family store on BigCommerce, which is the hosted version of Interspire. It runs pretty much neck and neck with CoreCommerce, in my opinion. It's new, though (the hosted version, not Interspire). Customer support has been good. Very easy to use, and the template coding is the cleanest I've seen on any cart.

To be honest, I thought ShopSite was too expensive for the features it offers. Ditto for Volusion, Pinnacle Cart, and some of the others.

Hope this helps.

[skuba]

Thanks for your opinion.

Of course the main requirement is reliability.

But as far as features, I want to make sure it:
- is SEO friendly
- allows combo products, for example buy blue widget and green widget for $100 total
- Handles promo codes

Thanks

[virgvv]

CoreCommerce has the kind of product bundling you're describing: buy x and y, get xx% off. I found few carts that do this; most just allow for category discounts or buy one get one free type promotions. Can't remember if Volusion or Storefront have true product bundling.

[virgvv]

As for promo codes and SEO friendliness, those are pretty standard features for most carts these days.

[RhinoFish]

one nice thing about ShopSite is that it's already PCI-DSS certified - that's gonna be important if you take Visa after July 2010.

[KevinC]

don't walk, RUN away from network solutions. I was a long term monster customer. They bought monster, have not shut it down and forced all merchants to move to netsol.

you've never experienced the bad support that they provide. The new netsol cart seems ok, but the service of the company is enough that I wouldn't use it if it was free.

I'm looking at big and core also - but the PCI compliance thing is confusing.

[jsinger]

don't walk, RUN away from network solutions.

I said almost the same thing a few years ago in my first post here regarding Network Solution's acquisition of Monster Commerce. Monster Commerce, once a popular cart, seems to have disappeared. Anyone still using it?

[KevinC]

nope its done, they have closed the product down.

[samc]

has anyone had any experience with Aivea? I have a client who has been on OSC and somehow they have a Aivea bug.