Likelihood to Recommend It would be ideal for a small solution provider looking for an entry level option to handle many of the company's functions at the same time. If customer relationship management, sales reporting, having a indexed eCommerce site, or having the ability to connect to 3rd party solutions is important to you; I would not go with ChannelOnline
Read full review Our experience may be unique because we opted for an Epi core team to implement our website/console set-up and connection to our PIM and ERP. The experience may have been different with a 3rd party or it may not have. That said, we have been live with our primary website for almost 2 years and I still do not consider it was ever "done". We have been going back and forth on functionality issues and bugs since launch. I have low confidence that changes made the previous day will 100% be online the next - so my team rechecks the work they did the previous day to ensure everything is online. The addition of a second channel and enhancement requests have compounded the issues. I feel this product would work fine with singular or less complex market SKU offerings.
Read full review Pros Detailed product information Product reviews Supplier Relationships Read full review Episerver has a robust discount engine. This engine, combined with "visitor groups" allow our marketing department to categorize customers and offer a variety of discounts to targeted customers at specific times. Episerver has a full-featured, storefront experience that can handle everything you might want for an e-commerce website. Episerver offers A/B testing that can be helpful for trying out new content ideas and tracking the results. Read full review Cons Sales Reporting Features Product Documentation and Training Customer Relationship Management Account Management Supplier Integration New Release Information Search Engine Indexing Custom Solutions Read full review Support. Episerver used to have direct support and access to the tech team to discuss and resolve issues. The new support portal is not enough for developer needs. Quality Assurance. We find issues in the Episerver code that should have been resolved in QA before release. Sales. Episervers sells the framework as a solution while showing Alloy. While it helps Episerver sell more, it puts the implementation partner into trouble as the client thinks they bought the solution. Episerver does not provide a solution. It provides a framework that you can build a solution on. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Updates aren't valuable and don't see us ever being ahead of the competition with this solution. Feature enhancements that are released are just attempts to stay relevant with other ERPs in the industry. If you're trying to take your company to the next level this isn't going to be your solution unless you're a very small company
Read full review Really want to be able to spend more time and resources on rolling out new things with Episerver but at the moment we seem to be fixing alot of issues and pain points with the way our system was setup.
Read full review Usability The interface is pretty easy to use and get used to. It's the lack of account, product and customer management usability that hinders ChannelOnline
Read full review The administrative interface is largely intuitive and relatively easy to use. The complexity of business needs and ability to customize can affect this (i.e. you have to set up and develop with the user in mind), but the basic structure is largely solid. There are some areas of redundancy (such as Commerce Manager overlapping with other administrative areas) that can sometimes cause confusion or offer some functions in one place, whereas other related functions are managed on a completely different page.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We are down for 5-20 minutes once or twice a month
Read full review Support Rating Support Staff is very nice and friendly. Most are knowledgeable but other than phone support they're lacking in every category
Read full review We had an incredible team at Episerver Supporting us with the go live, reviewing our integration, and pushing our integration partner to deliver a quality product
Read full review Implementation Rating Fully understand what is OOTB feature of the platform before proceeding to develop. Then implement a customization of key features once you can prove they are working as OOTB to make them more user friendly and productive for the business. Eg pre order and e gift card
Read full review Alternatives Considered Optimizely Commerce Cloud offers a very wide range of features for admin users. There is less a need for an IT specialist or programmer to be involved when changes need to be made.
Read full review Scalability New features are released twice a year. Often these releases are fixing bugs and will rarely be an enhancement that will take your company to another level of effectiveness
Read full review Return on Investment It handles most business functions so the value is definitely there. Account Management is really inconvenient and will cost you hours of pay if you're in a business with a relatively medium-high employee turnover. It won't easily integrate at all with your website. Lead Management is pretty much non existent. Quotes and orders are fairly easy to manage so employee efficiency could rise. Training and readily available documentation on ChannelOnline is weak. This is especially true for new features. Read full review Positive: We have a usable website - better than what we had before and we are seeing a constant increase in adoption. Positive: Counter associates are using the website to help customers. Negative: Too much time being spent QCing previous work. Read full review ScreenShots Optimizely Customized Commerce Screenshots