Likelihood to Recommend 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 Any business that needs to keep track of orders and payments would benefit from Shopify Plus. Customers information, orders, and payments are all saved and available for reference. You are able to refer to past orders to review trends and offer future purchase suggestions. Shopify Plus is also easy to use so it does not take long to train employees how to use this system.
Read full review Pros 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 Scales incredibly well. Forget about hardware concerns, load balancing, downtime, etc. and focus on eCommerce. We've seen merchants go from a few thousand dollars per month to having million dollar days, all on Shopify without having to worry about performance or scaling systems. Great new features consistently being added, ahead of the curve on almost everything Solid API to build on and work with, a few annoying quirks here and there for super complex use cases but overall very well documented and works well Most Merchant Success Managers are good and genuinely want to be helpful A fantastic user interface, very logical and easy to use Tons and tons and tons of out of the box integrations. Easily the best integration marketplace of the e-commerce platforms. There's an app for that. Read full review Cons 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 The Account Managers/Reps have become more scripted and seem like they are busier and handling more clients than before. It doesn't seem as personal and special anymore like when we first upgraded to Plus. Shopify still has missing features in their software that might not have an app in their app marketplace available that fills this void. The 24/7 support doesn't seem as dedicated as they once were. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 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 Support Rating 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 Always are quick to answer our questions and help us find a solution
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 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.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Shopify Plus has been a very cost effective solution for us. As our business grows, it's easy to train new hires on how to use Shopify Plus. What we've lost in the missing features of Shopify we've made up for in the other areas. Read full review ScreenShots Optimizely Customized Commerce Screenshots