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 If you are having students create websites or information pages about something they are studying in class, this is a great option. The fact that students can spend less time getting situated and learning the app and get right to work researching and creating their pages is great. For middle to high school, this is a fantastic app to use. However, if you want more nuanced analytics or want students to focus on blogging more than webpage building, this is limited.
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 Drag and drop interface makes it very easy to add all types of content, including images, text, video (and YouTube videos), embeddable applications and more. It's very easy to set up navigation features like cascading menus and sticky navigation (where the menu stays put - may depend on the template chosen though). A technical backend is fairly straight-forward for setting up a fav icon, 301 redirects, SEO, Google Analytics, etc. Robbin Block Creative Marketing Strategist, Instructor, Moderator, Author
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 Weebly doesn't have a lot of templates to choose from, so if you don't have any experience with CSS or HTML, it's hard to customize your site to an extent. Weebly isn't fully SEO friendly. They don't allow you to add H1 tags to pages out of the box. You can't create folder structures when it comes to web page URLs. You can put web pages under a main menu dropdown, but they don't allow you to put all sub-menu items in a structured folder (like site.com/folder/page-1 and site.com/folder/page-2). 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 Weebly is consistently adding features that line up with our needs. The ease of use makes it the perfect program for us since we have users of multiple age brackets and knowledge of web design. We love that we can give users access to only the pages they are affiliated with
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 It is simple to use and offers enough customization to make a website that is personalized. Templates are pretty standard and the help section is laid out well by topic with frequently asked questions. Some design knowledge is helpful, but through trial and error anyone can get a hold of the reins fairly quickly.
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 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 Weebly's designs, plugins, and customization options are a little more advanced in some cases than other similar programs.
WordPress requires a different level of expertise and knowledge of code, keywording, and plugins, so I wouldn't even compare them.
Wix is a little more user-friendly because you can drag and drop your design, which was very convenient for customizing your site. I didn't personally select Weebly, but it is user-friendly and nearly anyone comfortable with a computer could figure it out. Weebly support is also pretty good.
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 Weebly has allowed our business to create a connection with our customers by offering home decor, cooking and styling tips. Weebly gives us the chance to relay information to customers regarding merchandise, current sales and promotions, store hours and locations etc. Which has helped increase business. Weebly has given our not very tech savvy business the opportunity to have a website and stay relevant with our competitors. Read full review ScreenShots Optimizely Customized Commerce Screenshots