Adobe Business Catalyst was a cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores with a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It has been end of life (EOL) since 2020.
$10
per month
inkFrog
Score 5.9 out of 10
N/A
inkFrog headquartered in Phoenix provides auction management and ecommerce listing software for vendors selling through major ecommerce platforms (e.g. Amazon, eBay, etc.).
The service provision is good the accounts customer service is poor so I would struggle to give BC a better than average review, if only they could offer customers a better accounts service then the value would be much higher.
Inkfrog is a useful upload tool for adding stock from your website to eBay and now also to Amazon, although we don't sell via the latter and we only list to eBay UK. I think it works better as an upload tool than an all-in-one eBay shop management tool and some tasks are easier to do directly on eBay itself. eBay also offers insights - such as offering trending prices - that Inkfrog doesn't. However it is useful in terms of being able to bulk adjust item pricing to include the cost of eBay selling fees. Inkfrog is probably ideal if you have a recognisable product to sell - with our offering it struggles with mapping shop categories (we use lots of sub and sub-sub-categories). Certain listing capabilities cannot be reproduced, such as quantity discounts, and I've never got to grips with mapping products with options and variations, so a lot is left out of our full inventory. Ultimately you will still need to find some time in your day to manage your eBay store - Inkfrog is not 100% reliable sometimes. Inkfrog will also take some of your time and a lot of patience, but ultimately is a huge timesaver for uploading products so it is worthwhile.
Probably one of the easiest e-commerce platforms to work in, it does take setup, but compared to a lot of other e-commerce solutions, this is probably the best one that I have seen that can be designed and implemented custom.
Their template system works very well and allows you to create and re-use templates across Adobe Business Catalyst.
Their pre-built modules are great, giving people a great way to use common web elements without having to use a plug-in or find some solution, it is simply built in and generally works exactly as you would expect.
Adobe Business Catalyst is more of an all-around solution, providing elements that most smaller companies would have a hard time figuring out, since it includes the ability to build websites, send and track e-mails, analytics. It really is a powerful tool that would typically require a fair amount of coding knowledge and expertise but with the system already built, it can be easily modified and edited by those with limited or no coding knowledge at all.
inkFrog handles product variants really well. Their platform pulls the SKUs and information directly from BigCommerce and then lets me easily customize each variant with different pictures which is really helpful.
It also makes adding multiple listings very easy. Since it imports the item specifics and description directly from BigCommerce I don't have to go through each listing one by one and I can just bulk upload our products onto eBay.
inkFrog also lets me set different templates for shipping, or profiles from different items and then I can apply those in bulk to items which saves a huge amount of time since I don't have to go through every item and change specifics.
Multi Client Management: The dashboard for managing multiple clients as a reseller is a little difficult to get to. There is also no very easy way for me to manage multiple clients at once. I have to log into and out of individual client accounts to do billing or management.
Lack of Server support: There are certain server protocols and languages that are not supported using BC. For example I cannot build a custom php database and upload to BC. I am required to use their tools.
The pre-built themes are really bad. Thankfully we don't have to use them and created our own.
The other issue regarding these themes is that they are locked behind a paywall and are a premium feature; subpar themes should not be charged to consumers.
InkFrog also connects with other marketplaces that we also sell on, such as Amazon. Unfortunately, it does not work as well with other marketplaces as it does with eBay, which is a shame since we would prefer to have it all in one place.
Actually with Business Catalyst there is no renewal; once you are a partner, you are a partner for as long as you like. It is an investment in your business not simply a product you purchase...and as an investment in partnership with Adobe, both are committed to each other's success.
Overall it is a "plug and play" interface. The majority of the work is done in other software interfaces. Managing billing, user roles and custom reports are all that you need to manage in the actual BC user interface. For my business this is an incredible benefit as I have to leave my preferred software less.
The support provided by Adobe is excellent. Though the knowledge base, forums, blogs and online chat questions most all answers can be found. In the event that you are unable to find an answer or you have a unique situation simply post a question to the forums. These forums are regularly monitored by Adobe and its users.
As far as the CMS for BC goes, there is none out there that compares. In the past we have utilized Joomla, Wordpress, Mambo, Drupal, Concrete 5 and others. None of them were as easy to use and train on that Adobe's Business Catalyst. Our alternative to BC is WordPress when our clients want a less expensive solution. For the most part that works OK but we have had issues with plugin incompatibility among other issues. We lost at least two clients because of similar issues. The other great part about BC's solution is that we can still work with our favorite site creation tool - Dreamweaver. The whole process continues to be more and more simplified with added features to the system. No other solution (that we've found) offers such an easy way to create custom web sites that are easily editable by our clients.
We looked at Sellbrite. We really liked Sellbrite in view of its glowing reviews and integration with Etsy. However we didn't fully trial the program so I am not able to comment here more than to say that Inkfrog is by far the most economical option. We currently pay around $10 per month, whereas Sellbrite is nearly $50.
As someone who uses it on behalf of other clients, our ROI with BC is definitely positive. We needed a mid-range CMS without huge licensing costs to satisfy mid-range clients who have some dynamic needs but doesn't need the expense or liability of enterprise level products. Without it we would have lost possible customers or taken bigger hits on projects because of the costs involved with satisfying their mid-level needs
Our clients are all usually very positive about the BC platform and are able to use it themselves which lessens our Support time/cost.
To use the Web App element,. which we do on almost every site, you need to pay for the highest plan. This brings along with it many features most of our clients would never use. A more basic plan with that Web App capability would be a big improvement on our costs.
Overall inkFrog has had a positive impact. It has really freed up huge amounts of time that would be normally spent manually managing eBay listings one by one.
It also has had a very positive impact by using the inventory management which again frees up huge amounts of time since I don't have to go through and manually manage all of our listings. We also do not oversell items anymore which is a giant plus.
inkFrog's template customization has also really really helped by making our listings much more aesthetically pleasing and more professional looking which builds a lot of trust with our eBay customers.
