Likelihood to Recommend Ecwid is absolutely perfect for any business that is looking to start out with online sales and mobile point-of-sale. Many times, business owners may have limited experience in setting up a website or point-of-sale. Having to spend on this expertise with a limited budget can be frustrating. Ecwid allows you to have great results even if you are a novice.
Read full review In my experience, Podia has been well suited in every way! I am a small company with a couple of independent contractors, and I don't know how to build my own website. I am not very techy. I get lots of compliments on how my website looks! I have had some people support me with setting up my group emails for my email list and setting up automations, and these techy people complained that they needed to do more customization in the email formatting and programming, so I switched to
Mailchimp for those needs. Otherwise, I have been very happy with Podia and I am grateful to have a platform that offers so many services/features. It's affordable and user friendly. My clients and students are happy using it, too
Read full review Pros Clarity - there has been very little confusion and need to reach out to Customer Support for help Consistency - no big, crazy updates or changes have been made to the format of Ecwid during my time using it, so I know when I log in to preform my business tasks I can always locate what I need and accomplish what is at hand easily Simplicity - everything is so clear and straightforward. It's like e-commerce for dummies. Read full review Web Builder Storefront Digital course creator Bundling workshops/programs easy to update and add to my website customer service is awesome Read full review Cons Recurring billing - ability to bill subscription customers without having to go to my payment gateway Robust order management - very limited in managing orders, therefore I had to subscribe to a different software Expensive customization - if you want to customize anything, it is very expensive Read full review I sometimes wish there was more that I could customize on my website and digital programs I wish their email service (for broadcasts/group emails) had more features and customization I would like to use my brand font Read full review Likelihood to Renew The value given by Ecwid is unmatched. When combined with the ease of use of the product, it is a no-brainer to continue to use the product. The only thing that could cause us to switch is if some feature we needed which is not available which is unlikely based on the feature list we reviewed when making the decision to go with them.
Read full review Usability I gave a 9 instead of a 10 only because I haven't figured out a function or two. I believe it has less to do with Ecwid's overall usability and more to do with my own understanding and skill level, but regardless, it may also have something to do with the limits of Ecwid's functions.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Always available. Very reliable
Read full review Performance Good overall performance both in desktop and mobile
Read full review Support Rating I have always received the support I need in a timely manner. I enjoy receiving emails every week on trending business topics and new suggestions. They often serve as a reminder for me to include new e-commerce tools into our strategy. And I've always had great experiences with reaching out to the support team with specific questions.
Read full review Implementation Rating Fast and simple implementation of Ecwid's solutions. Easy to learn and navigate
Read full review Alternatives Considered We sell a product that requires certain controls to sell and most of the companies we researched had specific policies preventing us from selling on their platform. We aren't selling anything dangerous, they are parts of ammunition (the shell casings) and not entire ammunition rounds. Most other vendors restrict the sales of firearms and ammunition, but even when just selling a part used to create ammunition, we were still restricted. I'm not really sure why they restrict sales of products like ours from different vendors. Ecwid had no such restrictions and were happy to confirm that for us.
Read full review Kajabi had lots of features all in one place. I liked their digital course creator program. I liked the ease of their their membership site program/host, too. It had an app for my clients to use. There were some problems with not being able to customize the look of pages, but they allowed coding/programming if you had training, so I sometimes hired someone to do that for me. I couldn't figure out how to use their website builder, so I didn't do much there. When it came down to it, I could use Podia and it was cheaper and easier to use.
GoDaddy was my website host for a few years. I did a lot on there. It was my website builder and host and I liked it. It was easy to use. My website looked great. It had more features than Podia with blogging and connecting to social media. I had a storefront but it wasn't great for selling digital products. Back then, it wanted to show my inventory and shipping options, which don't apply for services and digital products. I did a little with my digital courses on there, but in the end, I liked other sites better for this. It didn't work out.
Weebly was just a starting point for me when I create my first digital course. I liked how it looked and it was easy to build, but there are better options for this sort of thing now.
Read full review Scalability Good scalability. I use the second plan and there are 2 more plans that I could use if I needed other features or services
Read full review Return on Investment We have not been able to measure the ROI as of yet, as we cannot get out of the gate with customization required. It can be implemented quickly for basic online stores. Once the system is configured, ROI will dramatically go up. Read full review Increased sales by $8000 from January to June (Added 2 more programs quickly and easily) Saved almost a thousand dollars in the first year in costs by switching to Podia Improved customer satisfaction by using 1 site instead of 4 Read full review ScreenShots Ecwid by Lightspeed Screenshots