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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Digital Commerce

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AIBM Digital Commerce is an e-commerce platform that is designed to deliver omni-channel shopping experiences, including mobile, social, and in-store. In June 2019, IBM Digital Commerce was acquired by HCL Technologies.N/A

    Microsoft Azure

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

    $29

    per month

    Pricing
    IBM Digital CommerceMicrosoft Azure
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Developer
    $29
    per month
    Standard
    $100
    per month
    Professional Direct
    $1000
    per month
    Basic
    Free
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Digital CommerceMicrosoft Azure
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM Digital CommerceMicrosoft Azure
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    34 Answers
    Features
    IBM Digital CommerceMicrosoft Azure
    Online Storefront
    Comparison of Online Storefront features of IBM Digital Commerce and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Digital Commerce
    7.6
    3 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Product catalog & listings8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Product management8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk product upload8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Branding8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile storefront8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Product variations8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Website integration8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visual customization8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    CMS4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Shopping Cart
    Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of IBM Digital Commerce and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Digital Commerce
    6.0
    3 Ratings
    24% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Abandoned cart recovery6.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Checkout user experience6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Payment System
    Comparison of Online Payment System features of IBM Digital Commerce and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Digital Commerce
    6.0
    3 Ratings
    33% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    eCommerce security6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    eCommerce Marketing
    Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of IBM Digital Commerce and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Digital Commerce
    7.0
    3 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Promotions & discounts7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Personalized recommendations7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    eCommerce Business Management
    Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of IBM Digital Commerce and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Digital Commerce
    6.2
    3 Ratings
    26% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-site management8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Order processing5.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Inventory management6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Shipping6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Custom functionality6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of IBM Digital Commerce and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Digital Commerce
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    8.4
    27 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.126 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.624 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings8.926 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings8.224 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Digital CommerceMicrosoft Azure
    Small Businesses
    Ecwid by Lightspeed
    Score10 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Shopify
    Score8.7 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Adobe Commerce
    Score8.1 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Digital CommerceMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.7
    (96 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.3
    (36 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Digital CommerceMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    I think WebSphere Commerce is well suited for customers looking to sell products online that need robustness and scalability as a priority. It provides a complete order cycle out of the box, or you can integrate with your existing order fulfillment. Online shopping models like digital subscriptions or a marketplace are not well suited as it requires a lot of customization
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • Websphere commerce provides efficient contract based pricing. Contract based pricing greatly helps in handling prices for different business
    • Catalog filtering is one other strength of websphere commerce, as it helps to filter the show only those products that the customer is entitled to
    • Extended site model is one other strength of WCS as it greatly helps in having multiple e-commerce sites for different demographics, for branding etc
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
    • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
    • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
    • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • The e-Marketing spots contain content associated with marketing activities to target customer segment - needs some improvement. The algorithm to set up the priority of each of the Web Activity with in eMarketing spot is little bit confusing.
    • The catalog load can be simplified.
    • WebSphere Commerce is a huge application - someone needs to spend at least 5-6 years to learn about the whole application.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
    • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
    • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    IBM
    The scalability and various configurations of the product allows for a wide range of e-commerce site features. It provides a storefront to begin with so it helps with speeding up development.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
    Read full review
    Usability
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    IBM Digital Commerce was a lot more customizable and had a good engine for us to make enhancements. We were not locked down to certain integrations and we were able to utilize a lot of the features outside of the box vs using a prescribed set of features and functionality that other tools would force us to use
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • For our clients in the apparel industry, the flexibility that WCS provides to scale up really helped their online business to grow tremendously.
    • Our client in the restaurant industry can't quite leverage what WCS has to offer though as it doesn't really fit their shopping model.
    • Another positive impact is that it allows our clients to streamline their commerce system in interacting with their backend.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
    • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
    • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots