Anyone familiar with Monstercommerce shopping cart?

Little info found on the net about Monstercommerce.

[customcraftsman]

I've been looking at shopping carts and I really like the layout available from Monster Commerce. I can have product links on the left hand side and general information buttons (e.g. FAQ, about us, privacy & security, etc) across the top. Also, it looks to be very user friendly on both the backend and the frontend.

However, I haven't seen anyone comment on this shopping cart in forums like this one. There are testimonials on monstercommerce.com but I'd like confirmation from third party sources that this shopping cart is a good one and easily spidered.

Anyone have any experience with this shopping cart? Any info you can give me would be helpful.

[cgj5204]

Hi i don't use them but for there small business cart there is a forum
[forums.monstersmallbusiness.com...]
maybe there you can find help,

[jacker]

One of my merchants is currently using MonsterCommerce and their feedback is all positive. It is only one source, but it is reliable.

Cheers
James

[customcraftsman]

Thanks to you both for your link and information. It's most appreciated!

[bmcgee]

MonsterCommerce shopping cart - definitely good.

However, if you plan on doing search engine optimization, watch out! It will suddenly become not good.

Also, if you are considering using their in-house SEO (one person for 10,000 different sites? hmm...), I would recommend you really look at their case studies and evaluate for yourself how good this service is.

[customcraftsman]

bmcgee,

Could you please explain what to look out for when performing SEO on a Monster Commerce site? I would like to add key words to titles, text, jpeg labels, and links for SEO purposes. Is there some reason that this is not possible? Is there a work around? Thanks

[Captain]

bmcgee,

I am interested why you think MonsterCommerce is not good for SEO as well.

Perhaps you reviewed an old Version? Version 4.0 comes with a static .html catlog builder for building search engine friendly product pages. V4 also maintains enhanced SEO features for the dynamic engine as well.

I respect your opinions, I also agree that if you evaluated a 3.X version (your points are valid).

I invite you to take a look at version 4.0. Version 4.0 was written from the ground up and it is excellent from an SEO perspective.

Maybe you are biased because you are a competing e-commerce company? Your profile says you are... :)

[BillGray]

You are asking the right questions, I looked at monstercart and decided against it, I was not impressed. I evaluated 3 carts Actinic (an HTML monster, but it got well spidered, but the downside was to add or amend a product or category, in fact any changes to an infinite time to process if you have a couple of products it is fime 7/10 any more than a 1000 0/10) monstercart i viewed for 5 minutes and new instantly I would never do what I wanted. Miva Merchant 4.20 Compliled (nothing Less) is what I opted for, flexible, module add ons, and easy to administer

[Captain]

Bill...

I think you evaluated the wrong program... The MonsterCart solution is not the MonsterCommerce solution.

www.monstercommerce.com
www.monstercart.com

They are two different solutions, two different companies.

[KevinC]

I'm actually in the process of starting a new project with monstercommerce 4.0 - a little early to tell but so far I am very impressed with the features available. It does have the option to output your entire catalog into html pages for you. Although it looks like google is not gonna have trouble with the dynamic pages anyway.

I use another solution for a different e-comm site and compared to monstercommerce it feels like trying to build a house with tooth pics.

[customcraftsman]

KevinC,

That's interesting. I specifically asked someone at Monster Commerce if their pages were static or dynamic and they said static. Now it sounds like they are dynamic. I'll have to ask them about this again. Thanks for the tip.

[cgj5204]

Yes there pages are dynamic but there is a catalog builder
here is a link
[kb.monstercommerce.com...]

[chadandrew]

Captain, Can you give a few reasons why I would choose your solution over the yahoo store? I'm in the middle of making a decision from the following, and now will add your product to the mix;

Miva
Yahoo Store
OsCommerce
MonsterCommerce

Online ecommerce store offering my own products with datafeeds and products from other companies I represent in an affiliate arrangement.

I need to capability to offer an affiliate program in the future.

You're pricing and the mid-level from Yahoo prices out about the same, any things that really stick out about your solution? I will be using the fourthworld product to create static pages from the database, so that particular feature is not a big plus for me.

Thanks

[Captain]

chadandrew,

I think you will find the MonsterCommerce 4.0 platform to be one of the best solutions in the market. It provides innovative features and allows broader design flexibility.

Evey solution has it's pros and cons. The platforms you listed are very good companies.

If I had to name one distinguishing factor between MonsterCommerce and the other providers listed... it is service. Service is MC's competetive advantage.

Feel free to PM me for further discussion.

[bmcgee]

Captain,

I simply stand by what I stated earlier. The materials presented to us regarding ability to perform SEO on the Monster Commerce platform are not the level they need to be, in my opinion. As to what version was reviewed, I don't know. This was 2-3 months ago that we had discussions with Monster Commerce on behalf of a client. If you have released a new version since then, then maybe things have changed. However, at no time did a representative state a new version was coming out that addressed the issues of concern.

As for my recommendation that any prospective customers looking to use Monster Commerce scrutinize any case studies offered by the company - well, that is only common sense.

In the interest of fair discussion, are you affiliated with Monster Commerce in any way? It appears that you may be, although your profile fails to show that.

Are you a happy customer, or an employee?

[Captain]

bmcgee,

Version 4.0 was released 4 weeks ago and was re-written from the ground-up. You evaluated version 3.X.

I am the President and Chief Operating Officer of MonsterCommerce, LLC.

Thanks!