Lately I have noticed a growing number of comments complaining about BigCommerce‘s less than impressive support. It’s not a problem I have had but none the less I thought I would start 2012 by looking at alternatives to BigCommerce.
Ashop Commerce has been around for about a decade, has Australian roots and is priced competitively so it seemed like a great shopping cart for the “I hate BigCommerce” crowd.
Ashop Commerce features
- Comprehensive SEO features and tools
- B2B Wholesale Support
- Supports Australia Post, FedEx, UPS, USPS
- Supports al major payment processors including Paypal and Google Checkout.
- Large collection of beautiful free themes see Ashop Commerce Templates
- Built in newsletter system
- Built in affiliate program
- Built in customer support tickets
- Digital Product delivery – including product key management
- Language Editor to translate your entire store
- Coming next month eBay integration to sell old stock on eBay automatically.
Whats missing from Ashop Commerce?
- Daily Deals
- Mail Chimp. Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor Integration
- Product Bundling
- Amazon Integration
Things I like about Ashop Commerce
Proper Wholesale customer support. Want to show wholesale customers one set of prices and everyone else another? Tick one box and you can – finally someone made it easy.
Support. They have enough support resources for their client base and offer multiple ways to get issues resolved fast. I got a phone call after 7pm on a Friday night – what more could you want?
Export your database as a database. Perfect for people that want to run their own reports and tools.
Unlimited bandwidth. Nothing confuses people more than plans with bandwidth limitations. It causes uncertainty and is a non-issue for 99% of shopping cart owners anyway.
Fair Price Structure. You can start from $16.95/month with $0 setup. If you want more features pay more. They call it MSaaS (Modular Software as a Service) – you will call it paying for only what you use – I know alot of people that will switch to Ashop just because of this.
Very clean interface, very easy to see most details and very easy to customise to suit. It looks and feels like a standard desktop application and recent changes have improved speed to the point it that it runs like one too.
The Australia version has Australian defaults. The USA version has USA defaults. I know this sounds like a very small details but it is attention to detail like this that makes using a shoping cart every day easier and more intuitive.
Things I would change if I could
I can not set a custom page title for product pages – I have some control, but I love SEO so I want more. Greedy? Yes probably but in a competitive market you need to be.
Images do not automatically resize to suit the design, you need to do this as an extra step. For some people this would be a bonus though so don’t necessarily put this in the con column.
The trial is only 10 days – it is full featured which is more than other carts but 10 days is a little short if you need more than one person to play with the cart and give it a proper evaluation.
The content area of the website is table based. This means very little to most business people but it makes it harder to apply fine detail level design changes. Not a show stopper, but hopefully they start cleaning it up during 2012.
Ashop Commerce Screenshots
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- Export database
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- Shipping
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- Template Designer
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- Dashboard
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- User Permissions
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- New Product
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- SEO
Would I recommend Ashop Commerce?
Yes. Look for a complete review and a comparison between BigCommerce and Ashop Commerce in February but for the time being I would happy recommend Ashop Commerce. If it meets your requirements you will have a great time with this software, as always give the free trial a spin and see how good it is firsthand.
Ashop Commerce First Look Review,
Ashop looks great. It’s nice to see an alternative to BigCommerce. Too bad they don’t have a licensed version. It’s also nice to see a non-php cart although saas clients probably don’t care about the coding\platform.
Americommerce is ASPX as well and Volusion is ASP (although surely they have upgraded to .Net by now)
You’re right though, people using SaaS really don’t care as long as it doesn’t crash.
Hi Andrew,
What are your thoughts on Vendder? Considering it because it charges $25/month + 0% Transaction Fee, whereas Shopify charges $30/month + 2% Transaction Fee.
Thanks!
It looks ok, and uses a lot of the same technology as Shopify, but personally I would be paying transaction fee and getting the peace of mind that comes with Shopify’s long and established history
Thanks. I’m leaning that way too partly because despite searching high & low, I couldn’t find any indepth user reviews too (just a few 2-3 liners, albeit positive).
That said, what I’ve also been wondering is, is it worth using Shopify/any hosted solution if they don’t provide full payment service? I..e. Shopify does not provide merchant account, you have to get it yourself. So if starting with just paypal, am I missing anything by just putting up basic shop website with paypal buttons?
You can easily get your own merchant account from paypal. Some people think paypal only provides paypal type payment service. However, you can sign up for their website payments pro account which gives you a full merchant account so you can accept credit cards. Customers have no idea you’re using paypal to process credit cards just the same as if you had a merchant account through some other bank.
I would never use shopping cart software that charges a transaction fee. There are too many platforms that don’t. Merchant fees are already enough. No need to have a cart eat away at your profits.
I agree but depending on how big your biz (if you have staff to spread workload) is and how many other things you have to monitor/take care of, the convenience is tempting. Especially in the beginning.
You can always use bigcommerce, magentogo, or the new lemonstandnow if you want a hosted solution that’s easy to get going. Those are hosted platforms without transaction fees. You just pay monthly. That’s how it should be.
Hi,
I have been using Business catalyst for the last 2 years and I am done pulling my hair out. So I am comparing hosted providers and your reviews have been really helpful, thanks. I had never heard of Ashop till now. It looks good and I have now narrowed down my pick to BigCommerce, Ashop and Volusion. However, I will wait for your review of BigCommerce and Ashop- hope it’s not too far off!
Thanks again,
Katie
Is that a subtle hint to write a BigCommerce vs Ashop review Katie? What sort of shop are you planning to start (use the contact form if you want to keep it private) I will see how I can help you narrow it down.
Ashop looks like the shopping cart I need, but they do not have multilanguage setting for my site, as I would be selling to visitors with different languages. Is there something comparable that has multi-language support?
Hi,
first of all, I´d like to say thank you to Andrew and so many people who contribute with their experience in these shopping cart reviews. I´ve been reading about 3dCart, BigCommerce, Pinnacle Cart, Volusion and AShop, all of them look good, all have good and not-so-good things but overall seem good products, one of them will be my shopping cart.
Something that surprises me is I had not find any comment about “multilanguage support” until i read previous comment by Jeff and would like to have your opinion about this: I´m going to sell online from Spain, initially the store will be in spanish but I also want english. Yesterday I asked 3dCart support they told me they don´t support multilingual, Volusion support told me I could do that but had to do it myself (?).
Main question: best shopping cart for bussiness located in spain?
I completely agree that 10 days isn’t much time to fully test all the functions of a shopping cart service. As you said, there are a few important features missing, but so far Ashop is looking pretty good.
Thanks for the info…my brain hurts from comparing shopping carts to get the ‘perfect’ set of features..I am such a feature junkie like so many….Somehow after looking at Ashop, I found InstanteStore, and they look pretty awesome too…just thought I’d throw that in..if anyone has any experience with them will you post…the features seem amazing, but can find very little info as far as reviews, complaints, etc. but maybe that’s a good thing.. thanks!
Have a look at Shopify again….. I have been doing the rounds like everyone else posting on Andrew’s site, and it appears that Shopify are no longer charging their “Transaction Fee”. This will certainly make a big difference to quite a few people I guess as that seems to be the major reason to bash Shopify. I’m still torn though, function of BC, Australian background and likely ebay integration of AShop, and the pretty of Shopify.
Shopify is still absolutely charging a transaction fee (June 2012)
See shopify.com/pricing
I have been testing the free trials of several different carts and can’t believe how complicated all of this can be. So far, I seem to prefer Core Commerce and Pinnacle Cart. Pinnacle Cart has a hosted and a licensed software which is awesome for keeping costs down and taking care of my business as it grows but Core Commerce has the most user-friendly store set-up, along with Big Commerce.
Does anyone have opinions about these three?
Also, everyone claims the best SEO… thoughts?
Thanks!
I just checked out Core Commerce and will complete the trial. The price is competitive and the best is that they claim to to permit picture uploads from an iPad. I really need this feature. It’s my number one need as I’m on the move a lot and don’t always have access to a computer.
Who supports an iPad?
Core Commerce insisted they did. EvEn the manager said they do. I was told to issue a ticket to find out how to upload a pic from iPad. Shouldn’t their support already know that? Anyway, Ashop, Big Commerce, Core Commerce, Americommerce, etc, do not permit uploads from an iPad! I need this because I use the iPad to take photos of products and people with hem, then would like to upload while on location or from out of town. I don’t want to drag a computer around, have transfer pics, then upload. Does anyone know a cart that is in the new century?
Hi Andrew, dose ashop support wordpress plug in?
Not that I am aware of
hi,
is there a NEW 2012,Ashop or Corecommerce or bigcommerce Review please.
Need wholesale,language translation & currency,facebook shop,Amazon,google products,other shopping sites ect…
In trying a free trial of Ashop, I found it very easy to use and customize, BUT have issues with their so called “real time shipping”. I thought real-time shipping would allow me to pull my rates with UPS. Nope. It only pulls full list rates. Sometimes shipping makes a difference as to whether or not a customer buys or not buys. If they are paying full list rates from UPS, they probably will not buy from me.
Ashop states that maybe sometime in the future this may change. Will I wait? No.
Still searching for my ideal site that has tiered pricing levels/groups, robust API login for shipping, and ways to customize the look and feel of my site (with widgets) without being locked into a specific template. Design must be super flexible.