Ecwid by Lightspeed vs. Salesforce Agentforce Commerce vs. Shopify Plus

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.

Incentivized

Global Sites; larger commerce organizations but not too large where the % rev-share would affect its feasibility in a feature comparison. Salesforce is rock solid in infrastructure and rarely has outages or issues; it scaled appropriately for holiday peak and was able to accomplish anything we put our minds to as long as we staffed development appropriately. The latter, however, is not to be overlooked. Developers are necessary and expensive.

Incentivized

Shopify Plus makes order management simple and less error prone. Connecting our ERP allows us to seamlessly manage our product listings, fulfill orders, and sync customer data. Limitations to the number of product variants requires attention from our staff to make sure our products sync without issue. Other than being arbitrary, there's really no need to limit the number of product variants.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Traffic - When we have sales, our traffic will increase exponentially and their cloud can handle the huge uptick in traffic we receive without overloading our servers.
• Site updates - it continually monitors in the background for any upgrades or updates needed so we don't have to go in and do it ourselves. A real time saver!
• Integration - outside plugins and add-ons are easy to install with Salesforce commerce cloud as it allows a seamless integration of extra plug ins onto our site.

Incentivized

• Syncs directly with ShipBob WMS.
• Shopify Scripts and the Script Editors allows us to tailor our checkout screen.
• Gives us advanced sales reporting, showing trends, performance, year to year, and even projections.
• Scalable for high volume, handles spikes in traffic without downtime.

Incentivized

• 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

• The UX within the Business Manager portion of Demandware, the primary interface for marketers, is generally a confusing, inconsistent mess. Particularly infuriating are the lack of consistency for search and sort behavior within the tool.
• A number of useful features, such as the ability to set schedules or tie features to unique customer segments, have seemingly arbitrary limitations imposed.
• Demandware's idea of leveraging the community to be a learning resource and a sounding board for new ideas and features is a nice theory, but in practice it doesn't work for businesses with a lot of customization. I'm left with the impression that individual support is not a priority.

Incentivized

• When linking to our communication service some customers have several emails with orders and only one email generates orders. It would be nice if we could combine all of this information into one account.
• If a customer has multiple accounts you are also unable to edit the email address as it is already used, another reason merging accounts would be helpful.
• Some of the processes in Shopify are too easy to complete. I’m certain scenarios a peony of “are you sure you would like to complete(this action)” would be extremely helpful and avoid mistakes that are not reversible.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

A huge factor influencing our decision to remain on the Demandware platform is that our new parent company is standardizing all its luxury brands in the US on it. We are fortunate. However, even if we had remained an independent company, I believe we would continue on the Demandware platform for all the reasons outlined in this review. I appreciate the stability the platform has provided to our eCommerce site in the last three years as well as the continuous improvements and technological advances being rolled out that will allow us to keep the site fresh, engaging, modern and stable. I've heard many horror stories from colleagues on other platforms who struggle with the expense and complexity involved with making what should be minor and simple changes and updates to their sites.

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.

The overall ease of using the system. Consolidation in location for our team members. Mobile application for on the go research, as many of our team members are constantly traveling to job sites or to meet clients. No more duplicate calls to current customers, since we have 12 different divisions that span the company. Mostly the ability to look at the database when our team members begin cultivating a new
lead/prospect with a potential customer to see if anyone within the team has a
relationship with that person or the company they work for.

Incentivized

It is extremely easy for merchants to get to know how Shopify Plus works. Comparitive to other platforms such as Magento and WooCommerce it is extremely lean and easy to operate, meaning clients who migrate over to it find it very intuitive to use. There is also a lot of guides and up to date information online

Incentivized

Always available. Very reliable

We have only had one instance where the platform went down in the time we have been using it.

Good overall performance both in desktop and mobile

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.

They are very responsive and a support technician will be assigned quickly. Even if there is further clarification needed for the ticket, or a solution is not immediately available, you feel that someone is there and staying on top of the issue. Most common issues are resolved quickly and satisfactorily.

Incentivized

Always are quick to answer our questions and help us find a solution

Incentivized

The in-person training was thorough. Trainer was pretty dry, but covered everything really well.

Fast and simple implementation of Ecwid's solutions. Easy to learn and navigate

Implementation went fairly smoothly.

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.

Incentivized

When I think of Salesforce products, I sometimes think of them interchangeably as one big lump. It's hard not to be incredibly immersed in the ecosystem day in and day out and taking advantage of resources like Trailhead. While Microsoft Dynamics compares in quality and offerings, it doesn't offer the same engagement and resources as Salesforce in its communications, social, and marketing, which makes a difference in terms of relevance and help. Commerce Cloud comes with the support you need to succeed and the tools you need to grow. In a high demand consumer world, we need products like this to keep up and get ahead. The minute we catch up, we're behind. Salesforce helps you stay on pace and create the unique and personalized experiences customers everywhere expect.

Incentivized

Shopify had the quickest go-to-market and most robust API among the products we compared. CommerceCloud required a VERY LONG integration phase that we just didn't have time for. BigCommerce fell short on the number of features and API coverage that we needed. Overall Shopify gave us the most bang for the buck.

Incentivized

Good scalability. I use the second plan and there are 2 more plans that I could use if I needed other features or services

• 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.

Incentivized

• In my experience I see most of the retailers see better sales after moving to Demandware.
• Site performance is really good if the application built with best practices suggested by Demandware.
• Service integrations have some limitations in terms of quota etc but still all are inside manageable grounds.

Incentivized

• The pricing of Shopify Plus over the regular Shopify Account solution is about 10x if not 20x the cost. But with this cost comes the increased reliability and trust you have in your eCommerce Software solution/website. We still have a great ROI with the Shopify Plus Pricing.
• With Shopify Plus, we have been able to drill deeper into a more robust eCommerce experience for our customers
• With Shopify Plus, we have been able to customize our Website further with recommended apps, features, and customizations based on our Dedicated Account Reps expertise.

Incentivized