ChannelOnline vs. Zoho Commerce

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

Zoho Commerce is not a viable platform for and online store for smaller companies who do not have a large amount of products to sell - the amount of effort that was required for initial set up would be quite vast and possibly not quite worth the effort. It is however GREAT for larger companies that have a large amount of products to sell and desire a low maintenance method of selling products online, even if the products are made to order.

Incentivized

• Detailed product information
• Product reviews
• Supplier Relationships

• Sales Reporting Features
• Product Documentation and Training
• Customer Relationship Management
• Account Management
• Supplier Integration
• New Release Information
• Search Engine Indexing
• Custom Solutions

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

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

We are down for 5-20 minutes once or twice a month

Support Staff is very nice and friendly. Most are knowledgeable but other than phone support they're lacking in every category

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

• 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.