Kibo Software offers Kibo eCommerce (formerly Mozu), designed to support retailers with online offer creation and deployment, content publishing and landing pages, and many tools and widgets out of the box with a retail-oriented ecommerce solution.
Mozu was acquired by Kibo Software from Volusion in October 2016.
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Volusion
Score 5.0 out of 10
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Volusion is a cloud-based ecommerce solution from the company of the same name in Austin, TX. It features an intuitive dashboard, built-in marketing and promos, SEO, templates, and tools to customize look and appearance.
The platform has flexibility at its core and we have made full use of that capability. Even if Kibo [eCommerce] hasn't been ready to provide features and functions we need, we have the opportunity to build them ourselves. The platform started as Mozu and while it was relatively well-developed for DTC, it lacked a lot of basic B2B functionality. As a result, when we were ready to move into that arena, we built a lot for ourselves (including a multi-level account system and a tool to manage it). Keep in mind, too, that Kibo eCommerce is part of a larger suite of tools. The company has purchased a mobile Point-of-Sale system, Baynote, Certona, Monetate, and an OMS. If you need a full-scale solution, they can offer a lot. As I mentioned previously, their support and documentation need shoring up. They're not terrible, but they hinder (rather than help) when it comes to fulfilling the platform's promise of letting the customers be self-service in building out their capabilities.
Volusion is a good company if you're starting out. The problem is that, if you want more complexity out of the program, you're kind of stuck. Also the regular time out errors and slow downs can be very frustrating. Packages that miss overnight deadlines because your system stops working can cost you customers. In today's highly competitive market, that's just something that's hard to put up with. If you have a lower volume of business you might be able to work around these issues.
Templates are pre-built for a good end user experience. I've gone through the process of building custom sites as well as tweaking both free and paid templates that Volusion's design team provides.
Their support team didn't use to be as helpful, but in recent years have answered nearly all questions I've had. Their support section within the database provides detailed walkthrus as well.
Order processing is easy once you've been trained on the system. We got to a point where nearly the entire process was automated from initial purchase through shipping.
Prebuilt Integration - There is not currently a large number of preexisting integrations, but custom integrations are fairly quick
Time to Deploy - Don't get me wrong, We have deployed in the timeline we expected, but if you are trying to get something off the ground fast, Kibo might not be right for you. It is a robust platform that take some time to get up and running.
Complicated Shipping - if you have a complicated shipped process, you might want to look for a tool to help, Kibo does not have very robust out of the box shipping capabilities.
API calls use the previous call as a reference, even if you weren't the one we made the previous call. Can lead to data gaps, so you often have to set a manual date range to look back to make sure you aren't missing any data.
When you spend so much time with a product like this and not only have you witnessed its growth, but you almost feel like you are next those that make the decisions of building features a certain way, you can't help but want to stay and be a part of their continued growth. It's simply a great product. Can it improve? By all means! But it will only improve because of users and avid resellers like me.
One positive note is that I have always been able to get someone on the phone in support whenever I have called, even at 1 AM. Getting someone on the phone is only half the battle though. In the first few months of using Mozu it often seemed that support didn’t know anymore about Mozu than we did. This has slowly started to change, but as a daily user you are likely to be on par with support in terms of knowing what to do when you encounter a problem. The support phone number is really most useful for having them put in a support ticket for you rather than typing it all out yourself and emailing it. It is very rare that the support reps are actually empowered to solve the problem at hand. Unless the issue you are having is user error, they will just take your information and pass it on the proper department. Your request or problem will then be ignored for months on end. Some day, it might actually get fixed but you are unlikely to be notified that this has happened. Most of these issues are assigned an internal ID that they use for tracking. Support is more than happy to pass this ID along, but it is useless. There is no way to actually see where the issue lies in the endless queue of similar issues.
You have to wait on hold for at least 45 minutes every call—the tech support person never knows the answer right away so they put you on 10 minute holds only to come back and say they're still looking for answers. The chat function could take days to get a response. Our "Dedicated Account Manager" never checks in or answers, nor are they ever in the office when we call. It's like they try to be as unavailable as possible until you forget why you even called in the first place. Insane.
At the time of our implementation Mozu did not have any processes or procedures set up around going live. We basically were forced to just wing it and hope for the best
It is best to use the built-in features and recommended services for the most turn-key experience (ie. Skipjack for payment processing so that it can all be done from the Volusion backend).
We had a custom, in-house ecommerce website before moving to Kibo. It was brittle, slow, and wasn't going to scale nearly well enough or fast enough to keep up with our requirements
While k-eCommerce was very glamorous to us because it integrates with our main workflow, it just didn't have some of the marketing features that are so integral to the way we do business online. The set-up costs were also way too high. Volusion is so affordable and feature heavy, it makes it very difficult for any shopping cart provider to compete. You can find others who are competitively priced and have similar features, but they simply aren't as robust (at least for the way we use it)
Honestly, when you're in the dashboard, the UX is simply horrendous. I mean, everything that should be 1-2 clicks away is 4-6 clicks away, and each pages takes at least four seconds to load. You just find yourself wasting a lot of time waiting for things to load. This should be more simple.
