CommentSold vs. Optimizely Configured Commerce

Prior to using CommentSold I was manually invoicing customers which took up time (and caused a lot of paperwork). Commentsold has saved me a TON of time. I also really like the waitlist feature. When items are restocked we often get sales without having to do anything. Like I mentioned before, I do wish that CommentSold synced with Shopify a little more seamlessly. There are some things that take more time to do because I have to do it on Shopify and CommentSold (like rearranging product photos, assigning items to collections etc)

The eCommerce catalog side has a lot of benefits to it and has been much easier to work with and customize than the CMS side. It is this integration and using both for a branded marketing website that has the user journey from browsing and leading into the eCommerce side that has been the bigger challenge, outside of the overall stability of the releases with the bugs we have encountered. I think the solution is well suited if you are mainly a catalog site. We, however, sell machinery and solutions that are not sold via the eCommerce site and we need to showcase them on the website. However, we have a core industrial catalog of consumable products that support the machine and solutions purchases which are very well suited for the eCommerce catalog. It is the CMS/Catalog integration that has caused a need for more customizations to the platform and as a result increased costs to maintain, lowering our overall ROI from the solution. We are also a bit hamstrung by having to rely on our development partner to make changes that our digital agency is better suited to do for us in the CMS. It is requiring extra cost and resources as a result. If more functionality could be surfaced, it would be much better.

Incentivized

• Setting up for live sales and being able to be live on multiple platforms at once
• Setting up the App was very easy
• Sending push notifications directly to my customers
• Reporting is simple and informative

• Integration Jobs/Connections - Providing a good out-of-the-box solution to hook into ERPs and common endpoints.
• Design and Development Partner Network to work with - If you have customizations in mind, the Optimizely partner network will give you the chance to find a suitable partner to meet your needs.
• Good layout/flow/settings breakdown - There are a lot of "redundant" settings, but the more management access, the better.

Incentivized

• We also use Shopify and I wish that CommentSold integrated with it a little better. For example, I wish gift cards worked both places. And I wish the collections synced.
• We sometimes have issues getting our lives to work on Instagram
• Customer service is good but I wish they still had the programs where we worked directly with CommentSold reps to help build our business

• Need the ability to look at more of our user data
• Need the ability to refresh our sandbox environment with production data in quicker, more efficient ways
• Classic CMS is very limited in ways end users like myself can edit widget content

Incentivized

Quite flexible and easy to use for daily marketing user tasks, like updating page listings, promotions, and copy. More in-depth tasks like managing product attributes, rearranging product taxonomy placement, and CMS editing are not user-friendly and require a careful and detailed process to follow.

Incentivized

It's a mixed bag. The team has been very nice, but there has been an underlying feeling of condescension because we have complained or "caused trouble" over the inadequacy of the CMS component. Also, support for modifications or UI changes has been terribly slow. Understandably, COVID has made life hard for everyone, but there is an expectation that we complete our work immediately, but their team will "put it in queue" when we have a request or find a bug. Further, we certainly feel that we were sold a list of capabilities that we have not seen come to fruition. Finally, the change of ownership 3 times (Insite -> Epi -> Opti) over our implementation period has been both confusing and disruptive.

Incentivized

We use CommentSold AND Shopify. We would prefer to use only one but each has different features that we can't let go of. If CommentSold improved their in-store check out and website personalization options, we would consider dropping Shopify

I was not very involved with this process. It has been 3 years since we made a decision and I can't even remember the name of the other companies we were considering. I was in a different role then so I was less involved with the eCommerce department. I do remember really liking the people we were working with. That played a huge role in our selection since we would be working with them for years on the site.

Incentivized

• Our online sales have increased 50% since starting CommentSold
• We're slowing increasing app downloads every day
• We are building a relationship and connections with customers who watch our live sales

• Automation of updates and integration with ERP has saved time and provides reliable data for the website in sync with ERP
• Integration with external PIM has saved time and provides reliable sync with content data for the website. Changes and improvements have been slow and difficult.

Incentivized