Jim Sutton’s Weblog

As I posted a few days ago, we have had several years of experience running a store powered by E-Commerce software from Monster Commerce (now Network Solutions). Network Solutions has decided to “upgrade” all of its customers (including ourselves) to a new version of the software (called Network Solutions Pro E-Commerce) which is fundamentally defectively designed to have less functionality/capacity than their earlier package while often exhibiting usability problems with negative impacts on productivity.

Fundamentally, while the previous package was not great, it did meet our business needs. Our business needs have not changed, but Network Solutions’ Pro E-Commerce lacks required functionality that was in their previous package.  I’ve escalated the issue to Network Solutions Executive Support Group, but they’ve responded that, “I am very sorry, but the new package [Network Solutions Pro-ECommerce] will not work for you.”

This provides us with the interesting (and expensive) challenge of finding a new E-Commerce package and moving our business to that package.  One of the frustrating things in that effort is that the shortcomings in the current Network Solutions Pro E-Commerce package do not become obvious at the level of the sales material on the web site–we did not find the killer issues until our store was actually migrated to Pro E-Commerce.

That, of course, raises the concern that in attempting to evaluate alternate E-Commerce packages, the devil may similarly be in the details that aren’t shown on the web sites of the vendors.

For example, I visted he ProStores web site, and I cannot find out enough in-depth information to tell if we might run into the same or similar problem if we switched to ProStores.  I’ve tried calling, but it is similarly difficult to get detailed enough information from live people to ascertain whether we would run into similar issues if we switched.

ShopSite has similar issues with respect to not being able to tell if the product would work.

So, we are disappointed in Network Solutions’ response to this problem they have created and that Pro E-Commerce has moved backward in functionality, but I will use this opportunity to chronicle our search for a better E-Commerce solution.

(3 November 2008):

We’ve started our search for an alternative E-Commerce solution to Network Solutions’ Pro E-Commerce.  This is a direct result of the fact that we’ve not ye received any commitment to restore the functionality removed from the current version of Network Solutions’ Pro E-Commerce package.  One of the barriers to overcome is that we have large amounts of data on manufacturers, products, customers, orders, etc., that we have to figure out how to move. 

Since Network Solutions does not provide an FTP interface to our web site, we’re not sure of an economically feasible way to move all of that data over.

Our initial preference is to move to another off-the-shelf E-Commerce package.  We’ve spoke with a couple potential vendors, and they seem to be pushing strongly for a custom solution.  Aside from potential cost of a custom solution, we remain concerned about maintenance of the site on an on-going basis.