Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Miva

Miva

Overview

What is Miva?

Miva Merchant is a point-and-click, online store development and management system that allows merchants to build their online store through a web browser, and lets developers provide aftermarket enhancements for the online store.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Miva is a versatile eCommerce engine that caters to both B2B operations and businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate the platform's high …
Continue reading

Miva Merchant Review

1 out of 10
April 08, 2015
We used Miva Merchant to build e-commerce websites for clients. We worked with small businesses and individuals on their e-commerce needs. …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Popular Features

View all 20 features
  • Order processing (6)
    7.8
    78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is Miva?

Miva Merchant is a point-and-click, online store development and management system that allows merchants to build their online store through a web browser, and lets developers provide aftermarket enhancements for the online store.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.miva.com/miva-ecommerce…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

5 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a commerce platform designed for both online stores and retail locations. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales.

What is Wix?

Wix is a free, hosted website builder, designed to be user-friendly and customizable without requiring coding from the user. It is well-known for its eCommerce solution, which allows users to build an online store.

Return to navigation

Product Demos

MIVA Demo copy 2

YouTube

Miva – Business Consulting WordPress Theme Download, Installation and Import Demo Content

YouTube

MIVA - Illusion (demo)

YouTube

REPAY for MIVA Demo

YouTube

Miva demo video

YouTube
Return to navigation

Features

Online Storefront

Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.

8.3
Avg 7.7

Online Shopping Cart

Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.

7.5
Avg 7.6

Online Payment System

Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.

7.7
Avg 8.3

eCommerce Marketing

Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites

7.3
Avg 7.5

eCommerce Business Management

Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations

8
Avg 7.8
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Miva?

Miva is an ecommerce platform which provides businesses with a flexible website and fully-customizable catalog and checkout system with control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store.

Miva is invested in its core competency as an ecommerce platform provider, continuously developing solutions to modern merchants’ most pressing needs. The vendor states Miva excels at supporting businesses whose complex product catalogs or specialized industry requirements have proved too challenging for other ecommerce platforms to handle. With over two decades of experience serving businesses that sell everything from aftermarket parts and fresh-caught seafood to custom diamond rings and swimming pools, Miva invites sellers to bring them the problems other platforms can’t handle.

How Miva Supports a Ecommerce System:

  • Interface provides web management for non-technical users
  • Platform designed to enable B2B and DTC sales on a single website
  • Extensive native functionality minimizes the need for third-party apps and plugins
  • Unlimited product variations for high SKU count (from thousands to millions) catalogs and dependent SKUs
  • Managed ERP integrations with Miva Connect
  • Back-office integrations through Miva’s JSON API
How Miva Helps Merchants Create a Store That Sells More:
  • Built-in subscriptions and reordering for frictionless repeat purchasing
  • Online sales quotes help sales teams automate their sales processes
  • Custom product builders help customers bundle products into kits and custom orders
  • Advanced shipping logic supports complex shipping and compliance requirements
  • Smart pricing options for customer and rule-based pricing

Miva Features

Online Storefront Features

  • Supported: Product catalog & listings
  • Supported: Product management
  • Supported: Bulk product upload
  • Supported: Branding
  • Supported: Search & filter
  • Supported: Mobile storefront
  • Supported: Product variations
  • Supported: Website integration
  • Supported: Visual customization
  • Supported: CMS
  • Supported: Customer service tools

Online Shopping Cart Features

  • Supported: Abandoned cart recovery
  • Supported: Tax calculator
  • Supported: Shipping calculator
  • Supported: Checkout user experience

Online Payment System Features

  • Supported: PayPal integration
  • Supported: Returns & refunds
  • Supported: Single-click checkout
  • Supported: eCommerce security
  • Supported: B2B features

eCommerce Marketing Features

  • Supported: Promotions & discounts
  • Supported: Personalized recommendations
  • Supported: SEO
  • Supported: Product reviews
  • Supported: Customer registration

eCommerce Business Management Features

  • Supported: Multi-site management
  • Supported: Order processing
  • Supported: Inventory management
  • Supported: Accounting
  • Supported: Shipping
  • Supported: Custom functionality

Additional Features

  • Supported: Online Sales Quotes

Miva Video

Lotus Sculpture outgrew Yahoo Stores and moved to Miva to keep his business on track.

Miva Integrations

Miva Competitors

Miva Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesAll
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

Miva Merchant is a point-and-click, online store development and management system that allows merchants to build their online store through a web browser, and lets developers provide aftermarket enhancements for the online store.

Shopify, Volusion, and WooCommerce are common alternatives for Miva.

Reviewers rate Order processing highest, with a score of 7.8.

The most common users of Miva are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).

Miva Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)90%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)8%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)2%
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(29)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Miva is a versatile eCommerce engine that caters to both B2B operations and businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate the platform's high level of customization, allowing them to tailor the customer experience and backend connections to their specific needs. This flexibility extends to design and code adjustments, making it easy for users to optimize their sites for SEO and Google snippets. Miva prioritizes security by ensuring compliance with PCI/PDA-SS requirements, giving customers peace of mind when it comes to protecting their data. The platform also seamlessly integrates with popular third-party services like PayPal, Power Reviews, Shipworks, and Authorize.net.

Miva Merchant goes beyond being an online cart and offers a robust templating system and powerful customization capabilities using Miva Script. Customers find it to be a cost-effective choice for comprehensive e-commerce systems that provide all the necessary functionalities at an affordable price point. The platform has gained popularity among developers for its ongoing development, responsive support, and active community. One of its standout features is its user-friendliness, even for non-tech-savvy individuals, thanks to its intuitive interface and excellent customer service available 24/7. With Miva, users can create functional and user-friendly websites that remain under their control while striking a balance between ease of use and customization options.

The platform's configurability allows businesses to overcome security and SEO challenges effortlessly, while its ability to handle high traffic loads without issues ensures seamless operations even during peak periods. Miva serves as a reliable backend sales platform, providing modern front-end interfaces for retail and wholesale customers while offering integrations to automate various processes. Users value Miva's exceptional customer support, with knowledgeable staff delivering timely and insightful responses. Many online companies rely on Miva Merchant for merchandising and content management, particularly those offering a wide range of products.

However, some users have encountered challenges such as MAP pricing implementation, inventory management with POS systems, and integrating live data feeds. Despite these hurdles, Miva Merchant has been successfully utilized to create and launch ecommerce websites, providing wireframe design, strategy, implementation, and ongoing support. Users appreciate the platform's powerful and customizable nature when building online storefronts for clients. They have managed over 1000 products seamlessly through Miva Merchant, allowing customers to place orders, track shipments, and create accounts. The flexibility and customization options of Miva Merchant have received praise for facilitating unique online store designs and streamlined workflows. Its extensive community of developers enables the creation of custom templates, giving stores a unique look and feel. In addition to the built-in scripting language and modules, users have found that Miva Merchant offers further customization options to meet their specific needs.

The exceptional assistance provided by Miva's support staff, online documentation, and user community has been commended by users. This level of support is particularly valuable for users who may be new to the platform or facing technical challenges. Miva Merchant has proven to be a cost-effective and flexible choice for many businesses seeking an ecommerce solution.

However, it is worth noting that some users have experienced reliability issues with hosting, as well as a lack of critical management features and delayed updates when compared to other ecommerce platforms. As a result, some users have chosen to migrate from Miva Merchant to alternative platforms like Shopify and Big Commerce, citing cost and feature considerations as key factors in their decision.

Despite these challenges, Miva Merchant continues to come recommended by service providers due to its flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and feature set. The platform remains popular among developers and businesses alike for its ability to create and manage online catalogs and ecommerce projects effectively. With its customizable design options, secure infrastructure, powerful integrations, and ongoing development support, Miva proves to be a trusted solution for those seeking full-featured ecommerce systems.

Limitless Customization Options: Users appreciate the platform's limitless customization options, with several reviewers stating that they can fully customize their store design and functionality to accommodate any design elements. They find it convenient to use external API options via XML and JSON, which adds even more flexibility to their customization capabilities.

Easy to Learn and Use: Many users find the platform easy to learn and program, specifically mentioning PHP, JQuery, and other programming languages. Some reviewers have praised its user-friendly interface and intuitive features, making it effortless for them to navigate and utilize the platform effectively.

Solid Architecture and Reliable Performance: The solid architecture of the platform is highly appreciated by users who find it reliable. Several users have mentioned that they trust the platform's performance as the company invests in its future development, ensuring a stable and dependable experience for their businesses.

  1. User-Friendly Admin Area: Some users have found the Miva admin area to be not very user-friendly and outdated in terms of its user interface UI. They have expressed frustration with navigating and using the admin area, which can make managing their online store more challenging.

  2. Limited Theme Engine: Several users have mentioned that the current Miva Merchant lacks a clean and standards-compliant theme engine like WordPress, making it less desirable compared to other options. This limitation restricts their ability to customize the look and feel of their online store according to modern design trends.

  3. Cumbersome Page Content Editing: Users have pointed out that editing page content in MIVA is a cumbersome and old-school task, lacking a WYSIWYG editor. This means they need to rely on manual HTML coding or use external tools for editing content, which adds complexity and time-consuming steps to their workflow.

Based on user reviews, the most common recommendations for Miva are to consider its power, affordability, and functionality. Users highly recommend it for businesses with unique needs and coding knowledge. They suggest investing in support and customization, including hiring expert programmers or development teams. Users also emphasize the importance of attending Mivacon conferences, engaging with documentation and forums, and taking advantage of Miva's robust support services. Additionally, reviewers advise evaluating the size of the business and desired level of control before choosing a platform. They recommend comparing features, exploring hosting options, and considering costs to ensure Miva's flexibility meets specific business requirements.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-22 of 22)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Paco Goebel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva is the backend sales platform for our websites. They provide a very modern front end for our retail and wholesale customers as well as many integrations to automate our processes. One of their key strengths is customer support, so I've had a great experience working with them and our outside development team addressing our specific needs and functions. If they don't already have a module you can add on, they can either build it, or there are many outside development teams who can tackle the problem for you. The support staff at Miva are incredibly knowledgeable and US based, so an answer is always delivered in a timely manner, and probably with deeper insight than you'd ever expect! Miva works with their customers at such a personal level that I feel comfortable reaching out to any number of people at their company from the CEO all the way down and can expect a human response!
  • Customer support
  • Customization
  • Documentation
  • Flexibility
  • Integrations
  • Usability
  • Wholesale sales
Miva has been incredibly easy to work with for our site buildouts. They have provided excellent support in all the situations where we needed them. Our sites need to accomidate retail and wholesale sales, with many different price levels as well as tax situations and if it wasn't already built in, they had modules that could handle our situation.

One area they need work on is for wholesale sales that require prebooking for later delivery and backordering out of stock items to be filled upon later deliveries. We've found another integration specialist who is working with us to fill our needs and they are excited to work with Miva so it may not be an issue for long.
Marc Vasquez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Miva to drive our eCommerce engine for our B2B operations. We have used it to bring our ERP system to our customers in a way they can interact with that is familiar and comfortable. Miva has been a groundbreaking change to how we are able to do business. We have many business units, each working with distributors or agencies in different ways, on top of a large support staff that manages orders. Since we have so many locations and different workflows, we needed something that was flexible. We evaluated many solutions when looking for a platform that could scale with us, and Miva was the clear choice and winner. One of the main drivers of that was the ultimate ability to customize the platform to work for our business and scale. You can adjust and edit all facets of the customer experience and a large number of the backend connections that just wasn't an option in many other platforms. Offering customized products to a different customer base was another headache that we were able to solve easily with Miva. Miva supplied us with the necessary toolset to create great websites.
  • Customization of the platform is limitless
  • External API options via XML and JSON
  • Easy to learn and program (PHP, JQuery, etc)
  • Solid Architecture - Reliable
  • Invests in the platform for the future
  • Native Integrations
  • Mobile App
  • Passwordless Login / Wallet
I feel that in the manufacturing and B2B space, Miva excels. They have the right talent on their team to ensure the technology works and scales with your business. From my experiences, Miva works with you to ensure that there is a fit. They are looking to build a partnership, and they have the ability to really understand your needs and uses. If you have a complex use case, or website need - Miva is the fit. There has not been anything that we have thrown at the platform that it cannot handle in some function. Their API library is constantly expanding, and we have even been able to improve tools that we wrote when we first started with Miva in the new API to get more function and speed. If you are simply looking to dropship goods, offer a very small product catalog, or not customize a template for different types of users, Miva may not be a great fit. Miva can do those things, but it really shines when you are working with large datasets of both customers, orders, products, and images.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I'm a software engineer, not a merchant. I've been working with Miva for more than 20 years. My specialty is writing plug-in modules that customize the store's behavior. Miva Merchant is extremely versatile and flexible. It's quite powerful and easy to use out of the box, but modules can do anything you can imagine to enhance your site and streamline your workflow. A module can change the way your products are displayed, provide special fees or discounts, and modify shipping costs. It can connect to other servers to upload or download data, so you don't have to do it by hand. I'm not aware of any other e-commerce package that can beat Miva in this. The company is big enough to be stable and reliable, but small enough that they treat customers like real human beings. They have some very smart people in charge, and the top executives even answer my emails personally (although I'm careful not to abuse the privilege). There's also an active user community, and a set of Web forums where experienced users answer questions for newbies. The company also participates in these.
  • One of my clients sells online professional training courses. I wrote a module for him that lets customers take their exams on the Web site. It saves their work, computes their score, and even prints out a diploma when they pass.
  • Miva Merchant has built-in support for the most common payment processors ( PayPal Authorize.net, etc.) and shipping carriers (UPS, FedEx, Post Office, etc.). But if you want to use one that they don't support, I can write you a module for that. Or I may have one already that will work for you; I've written a lot of them.
  • Miva Merchant isn't just for online shopping. Some merchants use it to handle telephone orders, or for purchases in their brick-and-mortar stores. I've written modules to help with this.
  • As a software engineer, I find their technical documentation to be sketchy and hard to use. But that's only a problem for those of us who write modules or do other deep dives into the internal functioning.
If you have a really small business -- a handful of products, and very low income -- Miva Merchant might be overkill. But if you want to start small, and be able to grow without migrating to another e-commerce package, Miva is an excellent choice. They do provide free stores for development, so you can try it out before you sign up to do actual commerce.
Rebecca Blackburn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I'm not your typical "tech-savvy" online retailer, so you're going to want to read this review. I'm the target audience for Wix and Shopify, and I have chosen not to use them. This is why: Our company has used Miva Merchant for our online retail presence for over 20 years. It's easy to use, especially considering my degrees are in psychology and absolutely nothing to do with tech. Their tech support is insanely good compared to other companies. They answer all of my questions, even the dumb ones. And there a lot of dumb ones. I need the versatility of Miva Merchant for the look and feel of the website almost daily. I have a very rudimentary "web" background from the 90's-early 2000s when my parents owned the company. Since I've only recently re-entered this company when my parents retired, I'm way behind the curve on what I can do (but I am constantly learning). This is where Miva Merchant really shines for me. I want to be more independent with caring for the upkeep of the website. Miva Merchant has tons of guides on using their platform, but the engineers and techs at Miva Merchant are willing to help and have made my experience jumping back into online retail a breeze. To be honest, I've looked at other platforms like Shopify Plus and Wix. It's just not what we need. We have so many product lines and recently added a wholesale line. I need a platform that's tailor-made for retail and this works for our small business. We're about to completely overhaul the look and feel of the website and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else when this happens. If I had to pinpoint one aspect of why I have chosen to stay with Miva Merchant, it's customer service. They don't farm it out. I can call or email 24/7 and I get immediate service. I never call them and get a foreign company with impersonal, handbook-driven customer service. I will emphasize that point especially if you are 1) new to online retail or 2) upsizing your online presence.
  • customer service
  • tech support
  • diverse retail platform
  • some integrations are limited or difficult (apple pay, etc.) but I have not found these to impede the functionality
If you are familiar with online retail, you will find it easy to use and love the diverse way of arranging your store and products. If you are brand new to online retail, Miva Merchant has partners that can help you design the perfect present that is easy to maintain.
June 03, 2022

Innovative Company

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva Merchant gave us the possibility to have a functional website, a website that is under our control, and a user-friendly website. All those were problems that now are in the past.
  • We are more than happy with Miva Merchant's support team, they are excellent at responding to any inquiry and ready to help on the spot.
  • Also, Miva Merchant's online resources to facilitate the proper and most effective use of its product are priceless.
  • Miva Merchant is a responsible, reliable, and innovative company that takes care of its customers in the best possible way!
  • Miva Merchant has people dedicated to supporting you with ideas and suggestions to make your website a success.
  • I guess it could have more tools to categorize and classify products easier and be able to add or cut some features on the listings in bulk. I have been having a bit of trouble with that.
  • I do believe Miva Merchant is a costly product for medium businesses. A bit more than what it should be.
In my experience, MIVA should be great for any business that can afford it and is willing to exploit all it offers (great resources)

MIVA Merchant could be a bad investment for small to medium companies; unless they have direct sales as their main profit generator and have the financial ability to invest in MIVA to develop as a successful ecommerce business as well.

Humberto Abreu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have been using Miva for 10+ years. We run a company that sells building and maintenance supplies to the self-storage industry nationwide. Miva was initially recommended to us by a developer who did custom programming. It took us a while to get our footing and the product seemed complex at first because of our specialized needs. Over the years a few things happened: We became more comfortable with the product, Miva continuously rolled out refinements and we came to appreciate that a lot of what seemed like complexity was really a very robust and capable system that allows for significant customization. We looked at leaving Miva early on, but are glad we stayed. Most stores will find Miva just what they need right out of the box. Others, like us, may use Miva's built-in scripting language, pay for some custom development, or use one of the many free or paid modules to customize the product further. We have found the forums, support staff, online documentation, and Miva's own and 3rd party developers to be exceptional. Some people gripe about the price - we did too- but after reviewing many of the other options in our case we would pay the same or more, for a lot less.
  • Robust and logical admin interface
  • Great templating system and scripting
  • Excellent documentation and support
  • Lots of features may initially challenge some users who are used to carts with basic functionality and drag and drop design, shortcodes, and the like
  • Some editing of the website will require tech-savviness. For example on some larger updates templates will need to be edited to enable some new functionality
  • Most add-on modules provide bigger system functions to drop in, occasionally again with some tech savviness or professional installation or configuration possibly required. Some often requested smaller functionality has to be custom developed probably because the module developers focus on the bigger products. For example, I see frequent requests for the ability to buy products by dimensions, or someone wants to add a date and time stamp of some sort. If they either self-developed or subsidized development or had some other way to foster the development of smaller drop-in blocks, modules, or templates that might be something useful to consider for the future.
Well suited for medium to large volume stores or stores that anticipate long-term growth. Does a lot right out of the box and is probably suitable for most users. For more complex stuff or modifications, it would be useful to have at least one person who is tech-savvy, willing to work through documentation, or willing to pay for assistance when you need to extend functionality. Less savvy companies might also consider adding a professional support plan.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We left Miva for Shopify in September 2021. We used Miva for almost four years. But it became too costly compared to alternatives like Big Commerce and Shopify, and they've really fallen behind as a platform. Shopify has many more features, is much easier to use, and costs us 1/3rd the monthly rate we were paying Miva.
  • Rock Solid Hosting
  • Great Support
  • Good Shopping Cart Platform
  • Far too costly compared to alternatives
  • Not easy to learn or use
  • Limited integrations to other popular services like: Trust Pilot, Google Shopping, etc.
  • [In my experience, ]company management is stubborn and deaf to customer input
MIVA used to fill the space for companies that weren't small, but also weren't huge. Now [I believe] they're just plain too expensive for the little guy, and also for the small and medium sized online retailers. Seems they've thrown competitive pricing to the wind, and have given into blatant greed. [In my opinion, Miva Merchant is] definitely not worth what they try to charge.
January 18, 2016

Miva Merchant Review

Sabine Sharp | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva Merchant ecommerce design and development is at the core of our organization. We try to solve any ecommerce pain points our clients may experience. The Miva Merchant platform is extremely flexible and open to customization without the ability of the end-user breaking pertinent functionality.
  • Streamlined software updates without breaking existing design/functionality.
  • Totally flexible front end UI – the sky is the limit – we haven’t run into anything we can’t do on the Miva platform
  • PCI/PA-DSS compliance/certification of the platform – in lieu of recent events (Target, etc.) this is definitely a strong point of the Miva merchant platform
  • Integrated social capability is currently lacking (can be added, though)
  • Automated feed services to third parties is missing (again – can be added as an add-on)
  • Admin could be more user friendly (I hear that will happen in PR9)
Totally depends on the business – I suppose long-term business goals are questions that need to be asked to determine if a less sophisticated cart should be used, or if the client would have to re-platform, if his business grows. Totally depends on the business
Chris Janus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use Miva Merchant as an ecommerce solution for my clients. Miva Merchant is easily capable of handling everything from smaller stores/individual sales to large and enterprise level businesses. The design is fully customizable in Miva, so I can implement my own or others' custom designs into a store and also adjust the code for SEO, google snippets, etc. Miva is extremely secure and passes all PCI/PDA-SS requirements which is extremely important. Miva is fully compatible with a number of popular third-party services like PayPal, Power Reviews, Shipworks, Authorize.net, etc and can be easily integrated with others.
  • Expandable Functionality: Store functionality (gift certificates, coupons, shipping,etc) can be customized via code on the page templates, or third-party services/modules can be integrated to add features. Even better is that more and more of the third-party features are being built into the core features with new releases!
  • Design: The store design can be fully customized to accommodate almost any design elements. Access to the page template code allows you to make customizations such as adding third-party code snippets (order tracking, live chat software, etc), adding if/then logic statements for dynamic customization, or to add a full custom design to the entire store.
  • Security: PCI/PDA-SS compliant - There are not a lot of carts out there that are fully PCI compliant, and this is especially critical now (credit card companies are really beginning to crack down on this).
  • The Miva admin area hasn't been the most user-friendly in the past. However, the admin in the the upcoming new Miva Merchant 9 Release has been completely revamped, is VERY user-friendly, and is formatted for desktop as well as mobile devices.
  • Some fairly standard ecommerce functionality like Gift Certificates, Coupons, Sale Prices, etc have previously required third-party modules or template customization. However, many of these features are being built into Miva Merchant upcoming releases.
How many products are in the store? What type of products do you sell, and do they have any variations/attributes (eg size, color, model #, etc)? How much traffic does your store get monthly, or what are your monthly sales? What methods of payment do you offer? What shipping methods do you offer for your orders? Do you offer affiliate accounts? How custom of a design are you looking for?

Miva is very well suited for small business to enterprise level business sites or for stores that require lots of customization.
Timothy Schneider | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use MIVA Merchant as our platform of choice for developing both online catalog and eCommerce project for clients. While we might consider WordPress for clients with a very small inventory, MIVA is the only other platform we use. The ongoing development of the platform, responsive MIVA support and the active community of developers make this a very good choice for us.
  • Ongoing development. MIVA has, over the years, added features and functions to the platform that keeps it both secure and feature-rich. With recent releases, for instance, MIVA is PCI compliant and many of the most used 3rd party modules have been incorporated.
  • MIVA Support. Support is responsive and can be very technical.
  • Active forum of developers. This is a great resource for those times when a client has asked for a function I've not seen used in MIVA. Developers on the MIVA forums often have suggestions or solutions to share.
  • The internal search function is somewhat basic. Ideally the a search would potentially use multiple data fields.
  • Selling digital items for download isn't yet an option.
  • MIVA isn't responsive so that it reduces nicely on mobile devices.
Few scenarios would cause me to steer a client toward another platform for a catalog or eCommerce project. Other than the monthly hosting cost (generally around $50 per month for MIVA), comparable platforms offer no great benefit over MIVA. I do have clients that have opted to have small eCommerce projects developed in WordPress, which does often have a lower cost and shorter production time. I would also offer the WordPress option to clients selling soft goods or needing a responsive site as these aren't MIVA features yet.
April 08, 2015

Miva Merchant Review

Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used Miva Merchant to build e-commerce websites for clients. We worked with small businesses and individuals on their e-commerce needs. The manager of our company had decided that Miva Merchant would be the best, most secure, e-commerce site to use.
  • It has a user friendly experience when purchasing and checking out.
  • It was easy to teach the client how to upload products to their site.
  • It had many options for payment gateways.
  • Miva Merchant has it's own language which had a high learning curve for me to understand.
  • Customizing the template to match a html/css static site was difficult because you needed those Miva Merchant code pieces to be in the correct places.
  • It used to let people store user's credit card information and process the payment later, which, when hacked, is really bad.
It's really important for the Miva Merchant site, once built, to be able to be passed onto the client to be able to manager on their own. Is it easy for a client to be able to go in and be able to edit their own e-commerce?
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Established retail company launched an online store with Miva Merchant over 5 years ago. Early on it was a very suitable platform and met our needs well, particularly its somewhat unique versatility. However, things have been in steady decline for some time. Their hosting was incredibly unreliable and lacked critical management features for no good reason. What you get initially with Miva is really only the shell of a proper online store. Things have gradually gotten better in regard to the features included, but companies who've been on the platform for years and paid for third-party modules and specialized development work receive no benefit. They're consistently about three years behind the pack compared to other major eCommerce platforms and have recently resorted to questionable tactics to increase the revenue they derive from people who use their system. I do feel some online merchants with highly specialized needs could find the customization options offered by Miva compelling, but the start up and ongoing costs for a real storefront are quite severe and lack many useful features compared to other more popular store systems.
  • General versatility, though changes commonly require the aid of a true Miva developer to implement
  • Compatible with many payment gateways and a fair assortment of third-party services
  • Developers employed directly by Miva to handle merchant projects are personable and responsive to most requests
  • Prospective and established merchants considering the Miva platform should be warned that they've recently implemented an onerous new fee when more than one person accesses the store admin area at any given time. Specifically, Miva merchants will now be on the hook for $50 per additional simultaneous user per month. If we had remained on Miva, this would have increased our annual costs of using the platform by at least $3,000, perhaps more. The president of Miva claims this is standard for SaaS e-commerce platforms, but I know of none that do and this change makes their platform incredibly unattractive for merchants who expect their business to grow in the future. Furthermore, certain third-party services can be detected by the Miva HQ tracking system as admin users, also triggering an additional seat fee.
  • Exorbitant pricing for adding some basic features that feels like a petty cash grab. For instance, we opted for the $1,000 mobile optimization package and received a bare bones mobile-friendly site with no appearance refinements aside from crudely plopping our logo at the top. They forgot to optimize a few key pages, like the product search results, and it seemed like whoever did it rushed through the work in an hour or two. Other projects they helped with went better, but there's frequently minor coding errors we've had to clean up ourselves.
  • Features released with updates practically always require developer assistance to test and properly enable.
  • Issues that should be treated as bugs are instead left for third-party modules to correct. For example, if a wholesale customer adds items to their cart before logging in, those items retain the standard retail price when the order is placed. We informed Miva tech support of this, expecting that they might look into fixing the problem, but were instead told that we should buy an add-on module that forces a cart recalculation at checkout. Why should this be the responsibility of an extra module to correct? It should be noted that a year or two ago Miva purchased the Emporium Plus plugin catalog, including the cart recalculation module, yet that is still omitted from the core platform.
I am aware of some interesting applications of the Miva platform where it may be the optimal choice, but for the vast majority of store owners the negatives greatly outweigh the positives, and, despite some skilled and personable staff, management seems unwilling to make changes that might set the platform, and their official hosting arm, on a better course. Unfortunately, given the fevered competition among eCommerce platforms, I don't really see how they might turn things around unless there's major changes made at the top of Miva and their basic approach to maintaining their system.
Steven Seale | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are an independent Miva Merchant support organization that helps clients leverage the power of the Miva Merchant e-commerce platform. Our own Web site uses the Miva Merchant system as it's shopping cart system so we are drinking our own kool-aide as well. Ten years in this community we have seen Miva Corporation and the Merchant product and selection of features and service grow substantially. Most of our clients are looking for full featured e-commerce systems that are more open than something like IBM WebSphere Commerce Server and at a greatly redued cost. Miva Corporation's Merchant application fits our clients functional requirements at a very affordable price point.
  • The ability to quickly change the look and feel of any given page in the store. The storefront, category, product description, and all checkout pages are easily customize-able using simple HTML language.
  • With minimal effort, more sophisticated changes and behaviors of the store can be modified using MivaScript, the language Miva Merchant is built upon.
  • New features are very easy to add using a huge selection of 3rd party feature modules that typically sell for less that $100. Miva has so many features already built in, but if there is a major common feature not already in the code, it's almost a sure bet that there is a affordable and easy to install module that will meet your e-commerce business requirements.
  • Miva corporation provides a high level of free support 7 days a week and 24 hours a day.
  • The system could really use a better order reporting and management system
  • Robust shipping functionality for UPS, USPS, and Federal Express should be included in the system if possible.
  • Softgood/secured content delivery would be a welcome added feature.
If you need an e-commerce system that is flexible and full featured at a reasonable price point I would say Miva Merchant is very hard to beat.
Eric Karkovack | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Over the years, I have created several websites for clients using MIVA Merchant. It has been used to create an online storefront. The software is quite powerful and includes many options. I like to use it for clients who need more than just a basic online storefront.
  • The ability to use commercially available modules is a big plus for MIVA Merchant. It has helped me create websites that have more advanced features such as rewards programs, custom shipping settings and checkout fields.
  • MIVA Merchant has been around for a long time and it has a very helpful community.
  • The software is very stable - I've run into very few problems with upgrades.
  • The user interface (UI) of the admin area is quite antiquated. There have been some slight improvements in recent years, but this really looks like an app that has been around since the 1990s.
  • While designing a website to use MIVA Merchant isn't terribly difficult for an experienced designer, it has been surpassed by just about everything else out there. It doesn't have a clean, standards-compliant theme engine like WordPress, etc.
  • MIVA has moved hosting for their software to their own service, which isn't cheap. And their hosting accounts come with very little disk space (although it is PCI compliant).
  • This is not a content management system (CMS). For anything that a client wants to update, I usually try to pair MIVA Merchant with a WordPress powered main site. Editing page content in MIVA is a very old-school task. It doesn't even come with a WYSIWYG editor, though you can buy one from their module store.
  • Doesn't appear that too many new modules are coming out these days.
I think MIVA Merchant is best for large, standalone stores. It allows for more tweaking of code than a lot of ecommerce software that I have used. Even though the interface isn't the gold standard, there still something to be said for the number of options it has and the number of modules available.

However, I think it's probably not the best solution if you just need a small, simple store. There are other software packages out there that can do the job a little more efficiently and cheaply.
Gordon Currie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

As we are a Miva Merchant Partner, we provide workflow and add-on tools for the Miva Merchant platform. In addition, we run our fulfillment, licensing, and CRM systems on Miva Merchant as well. We are able to keep all our systems 'in-house' without excessive use of third-party SAAS and clunky PHP.

While Miva Merchant can be used as an online cart, it is much more - especially since it is customizable on two different levels - a fairly simple high-level templating system that allows for reasonable customization, and a lower level compiled language (Miva Script) that allows for extremely powerful customization.

Of course, you get what you pay for. If you expect champagne at beer prices, look elsewhere (and please let me know when you find it).

  • Based on a templating system. Almost every part of a page is built from templates, that can not only be customized, but contain HTML. JavaScript and a subset of the Miva Script language for powerful and responsive dynamic page experiences.
  • PCI compliance and overall security. Miva puts significant effort into the security of their platform.
  • Room for growth. A business can start out using only base capabilities, and fairly easily add more as their business needs grow.
  • Training and documentation. Miva Merchant is fairly complex, and while they continue to make good progress in providing resources for all levels of expertise (beginner to expert), there are still a number of gaps. To take the step beyond the initial levels of online storefront requires expert assistance for most businesses (unless they have some substantial IT/technical resources available).
  • Market for add-on and add-in products. (Note: this is significantly biased by our own business experience selling workflow and feature products for Miva Merchant.) The long-term goal for Miva has been stated to essentially involve having integration partners (selling their time) and larger companion product partners (selling products that work with, but usually NOT within Merchant). There is clearly a gap of potential customer needs that they are attempting to build into the core platform. Of course, no one can cover all needs! While Miva Merchant is not hostile to third-party product companies, neither do they have an explicit place in their long term roadmap. It is my opinion that their strategy of minimizing third-party add-on developers may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and I shudder to imagine a time when all significant features only come from the developers within Miva. As good as they are (quite good) they suffer from the inevitable myopia that ALL companies have - they are NOT their customers!
In general, unless someone has a tiny business, or expects minimal growth (and why are they in business? is it a hobby?) - I would recommend Miva Merchant. They are solid out of the box, support has gotten very good after a number of years of improvement, and there is room from growth - so you don't have to switch systems when your business grows faster than expected, or you go through a significant change (such as B2C moving to B2B etc.). Miva Merchant is very scalable.
David Limon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I currently offer E-Commerce consulting, marketing, and management services for a broad range of online companies most of which are using Miva Merchant as their shopping cart platform. The online stores I work with are offering anywhere from 20 to 180,000 products online. The shopping cart is primarily used to merchandise products and as a CMS system.Some of the more challenging issues my clients face are work arounds for MAP Pricing (Minimum Advertised Pricing), integrating in-house POS systems with Miva to manage inventory, and integrating live LTL freight rates directly into the shopping cart. All of these feats can be achieve but may require you to think outside of the box. The good thing about Miva is that you are only limited by your imagination as far as what you can do with the platform.
  • Miva Merchant is extremely robust and has very few limitations unlike most other shopping carts.
  • Offers the most bang for your buck! You can run a multimillion dollar online store using their smallest package at $50 per month with ease. No joke!
  • There are many 3rd party modules available for added flexibility.
  • Support staff is great and you can find answers to many questions in their forum (where senior techs tend to hang out). Video tutorials are available too!
  • There is a learning curve and newbies must have patience when setting up a new store out of the box.
  • I was never a big fan of the mobile layout. Fortunately a Responsive design is now available (and rocks)!
  • The ability to tie into 3rd party POS systems more easily would be a nice added feature (but I guess that would require the POS system to be integration friendly as well).
Hands down this is the best shopping cart on the market for small, medium, and large online stores. The ability to easily scale up or down in size makes this a favorable shopping cart for all. Some great resources for getting started can be found here:
Miva Training Videos: http://www.mivamerchant.com/videos
Miva's Documentation (PDF): http://www.mivamerchant.com/pdf/MivaPR8_09-01-13.pdf
Miva's Official Forum http://extranet.miva.com/forums/
December 01, 2014

Why We Pick Miva Merchant

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We don’t actually use MIVA Merchant at our organization but recommend it to our clients. Miva Merchant is a good choice because of its flexibility, cost effectiveness and its other features. Manufacturing Solutions Center is a service provider for the small to medium manufacturers. We work to help solve problems and test products. Ecommerce is one of the services we provide.
  • Price Groups. This feature is beneficial to the developer and their customers because it allows creation of as many groups as needed. Developer can change the price of products based on membership in a group. They can also assign price change to all or certain products in a group. Registered customers benefit from membership discounts, which encourages customer loyalty.
  • Availability Groups. This feature is excellent because it allows developer to control what categories and products customers see in the store based on membership in a group and only visible to customers who registered and are a member of that group.
  • Manage Orders. End users like the Manage Orders features. Orders have various filters available such as Order Number, Date Range, Order Status, Batches and Batch Report. The most useful feature is the Batches which is a collection of orders, grouped together and given a name with just 1-click.
  • Coupon capability. If end users want to offer coupon discount, they will have to purchase through a third-party. It will be an excellent feature to have.
  • Product layout. The product layout from previous Miva Merchant is much better. Merchant 5.5, the product “Code, Price and Quantity in Basket” is at the bottom of the product instead of with “Colors”, “Size”, and “Quantity” on the right hand side. Custom image sizing does not display well.
  • More Custom Fields/Dropdown options. Our end user has to purchase Addendum from a third-party to use the custom field.
  • Some of our customers are having problem viewing our store after we upgraded to Miva Merchant 5.5. Our products page is empty.
Features, user interface, and flexibility of the software
Jeffrey Collins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
We use Miva Merchant for ourselves and use it for our clients. The only drawback as a reseller is the cost is prohibitive to host outside of Miva Merchant's own hosting solution.
  • Ease of use. Very easy to set up and use.
  • Expandability. With the use of various Modules already available it is easy to expand Miva Merchant. If there is not Module available, there are third parties who can make one for you for your custom application.
  • Miva Merchant will work for 95% of the target audience without the need of additional Modules.
  • Miva Merchant should have built in Soft Goods Downloads.
  • Miva Merchant should have a built in way to make a Subscription Site to serve videos and protected content.
  • Miva Merchant should have a built in way to output to a PDF to support catalogs and flyers from Miva Merchant.
There is only one Module I know that allows you to sell Soft Goods or Down Loads with Miva Merchant. This is a big weakness. You cannot make and easy Subscription Site with Miva Merchant. You pretty much have to host with Miva Merchant it you are a reseller for Miva Merchant. They have made the licensing cost prohibitive to be a reseller for Miva Merchant.
Susan Petracco | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Many of our customers use Miva Merchant. We develop software that integrates with the shopping cart, and we also implement websites who use Miva, either for the entire site or in conjunction with other packages. Miva provides a great balance between ease of use and ability to customize.
  • Ability to design the entire page from opening to close. We can implement any desired design into the package.
  • A robust API that allows us to program additional features to work with the shopping cart.
  • Excellent hosting capabilities, but without a requirement that users MUST host with them.
  • A strong community of users who offer support and advice, as well as active participation in the forums by Miva's own employees.
  • Currently there is no coupon capability out of the box. I'm excited to see this new feature that's expected to be in the upcoming release.
I think Miva is a perfect solution for many businesses. I would hesitate to recommend it to a small business who wants to maintain it themselves without the assistance of either an internal or third-party web developer. For example, some one-person businesses need a very turnkey solution and are willing to sacrifice certain features in favor of a more plug-and-play shopping cart. Miva does have a bit of a learning curve, and some technical expertise is useful. Aside from that, I think it works for most businesses. It is PCI/PA-DSS compliant. Once you've learned SMT and/or MivaScript, it's easy to customize either the look and feel, or the functionality. And it's robust enough for enterprise applications.
Bill Gilligan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Miva Merchant on all of our sites (4-5 at any time). Miva Merchant is highly configurable and easy to use. There has never been an issue we could not overcome - from security to SEO. Additionally, we have put it to the load test - having been featured on the Dr. Oz show twice, it handled all traffic with no issues whatsoever. We also installed it on a cloud setup with multiple load balancers and virtual servers - and no hiccup whatsoever.
  • Easy to use by the customer.
  • Easy to use by support staff
  • Easy to configure for any situation with numerous modules and built in functionality. And - its always your data.
  • Safe and secure - passes all security tests
  • Honestly, I am aware of no areas that need improvement at this time. The crew at Miva are always working to bring enhancements.
If you only have a few items - maybe less than 10-15, use something simpler. But if you're going to list more, this is the platform you want.
Deirdre Daily | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Prior to using Miva Merchant, the organization was lacking an ecommerce website. Miva aided with wireframe design, strategy, implementation, launch and support.
  • Customized the platform to suit our needs.
  • Aided with ecommerce strategy with their immense experience
  • Aided in integration with fulfillment tools
  • Adhering to predetermined timelines more accurately, account for changes in plan
  • Educate organization more of the opportunities available to serve custom messaging and test in order to help optimize conversion performance
The cost to develop was great for a medium size business.
Lee Amon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva Merchant is a complete, powerful, and fully featured eCommerce platform. Using Miva, we built a unique online store and managed over 1000 products. Customers could place orders along with gifting and shipping instructions. They could create accounts, and track the orders. Miva integrated nicely with our order management and inventory system (Stone Edge Order Management)

Miva 5.5 (the current version) comes with a number of standard templates, or you can create your own. Because Miva has been so widely used for so long (it was one of the very first eCommerce platforms) there is a large community of developers who can create custom templates to give your store a unique look and feel.
  • Very flexible storefront design - You can use a standard Miva template or design your own. Miva dynamically produces all pages. You can add, delete, inactivate, and otherwise manage all products
  • One of the things I always liked about Miva was the open API. This allows third party ISVs to create modules that extend the functionality of Miva. We used modules for coupons, gift certificates, gift messages, and advanced shipping options
  • They also provide great hosting support
  • There is a large community of Miva users and third party developers. There is an active forum
  • Several of my customers wanted to be able to place one order, and specify products going to different locations (send the chocolate to Aunt Jean, the bath gifts to Aunt Sophie, etc.) Miva can't do this. Customers have to place separate orders for each shipping address
Size of the store - For a very small store, and very simple store, Miva might be too expensive, and an open source solution such as Zen Cart or Magento might be indicated. As far as I know, there is no limit on how big a store can get
Return to navigation