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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.

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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 …
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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. …
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Popular Features

View all 20 features
  • Order processing (6)
    7.7
    77%
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Pricing

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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

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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.

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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
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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.

7.6
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
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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 7.7.

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%
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Comparisons

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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)
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Paco Goebel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Eric Karkovack | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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
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
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/
Jeffrey Collins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
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
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.
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