Miva

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Miva
Score 5.6 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Miva Merchant is a point-and-click, online store development and management system that allows merchants to build their online store through a web browser, and lets developers provide aftermarket enhancements for the online store.N/A
Pricing
Miva
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Miva
Free Trial
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMiva employs a revenue-based pricing model. The Miva platform is best suited to growing mid-size and enterprise merchants that have complex business needs and are making (or planning to make) $1 million or more in annual online revenue.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Miva
Considered Both Products
Miva
Chose Miva
Miva is so much more customer oriented and willing to work with and for you. There are many modules you can install to get specific functionality to work, but if there's none available, they are more than willing to work with you to accomplish your needs. Miva actually listens …
Chose Miva
Each player has positive features and value to add to a business. BigCommerce and Shopify have brand recognition that has lead to them being the more common choice in eCommerce. Overall, they have their place for simple B2C sites, and less complex B2B sites. Miva was the …
Chose Miva
Versatility and customer service. There is nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of a task and having to do tech support via a computer-generated chat box. Miva Merchant gives you a live tech support engineer 24/7.
Chose Miva
Miva is more costly than its competitors. [In my opinion] it's harder to set up and use and user interface is cumbersome. Requires costly customization for integration to services you get from Big Commerce or Shopify right out of the box. No Google Shopping integration. No …
Chose Miva
Magento - BigCommerce - Shopify. In essence it all depends on the end client needs and project specifications. Miva Merchant seems to be the most flexible in the bunch at the most attractive pricing (SaaS model)
Chose Miva
Miva Merchant can be customized to fit nearly any design, and it has nearly unlimited custom stand-alone, product and category pages for unique and varying layouts. With some other carts, they don't always allow much, if any, design customization outside of the few options or …
Chose Miva
MIVA Merchant is a good choice for both developers and store owners with small to medium size businesses. The platform is secure, feature-rich, easy to modify and easy to administer. MIVA Merchant is actively being developed and so constantly improving via both the official …
Chose Miva
Miva Merchant has it's own language which had a high learning curve for me to understand. Customize the template to match a html/css static site was difficult because you needed those Miva Merchant code pieces to be in the correct places. Now that I'm older and wiser, I no …
Chose Miva
Many years ago, Miva was a good eCommerce platform compared to others, typically offered by a hosting company for free or a small charge. However, it's fallen way behind the pack now and the declining interest in their system and ever increasing fees make it exceptionally …
Chose Miva
OS Commerce, PHP Cart, and many other open code systems. We find the native feature set ample and the developer community quite active and easy to identify. Some platforms can be difficult to find good qualified consultants/coders that can make good quality, well performing, …
Chose Miva
All of these products are nice in their own way. MIVA's big advantage is their selection of modules, although I have to say WooCommerce is starting to catch up in that area. While MIVA has begun to show its age, it's still a solid way to manage a store that contains a lot of …
Chose Miva
Third-party development programs are not good or non-existent. That is a HUGE warning sign.
Chose Miva
The closest solution I found to Miva is Magento. Magento seems to be gaining popularity at a rapid pace but I think this is only because they have done a better job at marketing their product (it's an eBay Company). When comparing the two I gave the slight edge to Miva because …
Chose Miva
Other software that I have used are: ShopSite, X-Cart and Quick Shopping Cart. They are less flexible and customization is limited.
Chose Miva
Miva Merchant for me as a Module Developer I believe scales better than the above. Has better customer support, and as a developer has the most open API.
Chose Miva
Because I have worked with Miva Merchant longer than any other shopping cart package, I'm comfortable doing anything that needs to be done within the package. I find it easier to develop modules for Miva than to do plug-ins or extensions for other carts, primarily based on my …
Chose Miva
I have used others, but don't recall all the names. In the end though - we always go back to Merchant. Its just easier, and we have full access to our data.
Chose Miva
Working with Miva directly reduced the need to utilize someone to help us integrate and become accustom to the platform. Magento does have more flexibility with personalized messaging from my experience however.
Chose Miva
When we started using Miva, (in 2003) the other alternatives simply weren't available. Miva was the eCommerce solution our hosting provider offered.

Over the years, we considered migrating to several other services, including Volusion, Amazon Storefront, and Zen Cart. Zen Cart …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Miva
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
Miva
8.3
2 Ratings
8% above category average
Product catalog & listings8.62 Ratings
Product management8.62 Ratings
Bulk product upload9.12 Ratings
Branding8.62 Ratings
Mobile storefront9.12 Ratings
Product variations8.62 Ratings
Website integration7.82 Ratings
Visual customization8.62 Ratings
CMS5.52 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
Miva
7.5
2 Ratings
1% below category average
Abandoned cart recovery7.32 Ratings
Checkout user experience7.82 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
Miva
7.7
2 Ratings
8% below category average
eCommerce security7.72 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Miva
7.3
2 Ratings
2% below category average
Promotions & discounts8.12 Ratings
Personalized recommendations6.82 Ratings
SEO6.82 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
Miva
8.0
6 Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-site management9.11 Ratings
Order processing7.86 Ratings
Inventory management7.22 Ratings
Shipping7.72 Ratings
Custom functionality8.12 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Miva
Small Businesses
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Miva
Likelihood to Recommend
5.1
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(16 ratings)
Usability
6.7
(5 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(4 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(5 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Miva
Likelihood to Recommend
Miva
I feel that in the manufacturing and B2B space, Miva excels. They have the right talent on their team to ensure the technology works and scales with your business. From my experiences, Miva works with you to ensure that there is a fit. They are looking to build a partnership, and they have the ability to really understand your needs and uses. If you have a complex use case, or website need - Miva is the fit. There has not been anything that we have thrown at the platform that it cannot handle in some function. Their API library is constantly expanding, and we have even been able to improve tools that we wrote when we first started with Miva in the new API to get more function and speed. If you are simply looking to dropship goods, offer a very small product catalog, or not customize a template for different types of users, Miva may not be a great fit. Miva can do those things, but it really shines when you are working with large datasets of both customers, orders, products, and images.
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Pros
Miva
  • The ability to quickly change the look and feel of any given page in the store. The storefront, category, product description, and all checkout pages are easily customize-able using simple HTML language.
  • With minimal effort, more sophisticated changes and behaviors of the store can be modified using MivaScript, the language Miva Merchant is built upon.
  • New features are very easy to add using a huge selection of 3rd party feature modules that typically sell for less that $100. Miva has so many features already built in, but if there is a major common feature not already in the code, it's almost a sure bet that there is a affordable and easy to install module that will meet your e-commerce business requirements.
  • Miva corporation provides a high level of free support 7 days a week and 24 hours a day.
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Cons
Miva
  • The Miva admin area hasn't been the most user-friendly in the past. However, the admin in the the upcoming new Miva Merchant 9 Release has been completely revamped, is VERY user-friendly, and is formatted for desktop as well as mobile devices.
  • Some fairly standard ecommerce functionality like Gift Certificates, Coupons, Sale Prices, etc have previously required third-party modules or template customization. However, many of these features are being built into Miva Merchant upcoming releases.
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Likelihood to Renew
Miva
For most clients, the MIVA Merchant platform, in combination with 3rd party plugins from ADS, Emporium Plus, eMediaSales and Sebenza, has all of the bells and whistles they need. While MIVA is lacking in a mobile friendly option and the ability to easily sell soft goods like mp3's or eBooks, these additions are coming to MIVA soon. The lack of connectivity to popular POS systems is also a negative for us. We will certainly continue to offer MIVA Merchant to clients.
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Usability
Miva
I won't say usability is all bad with Miva; basic product configuration isn't complicated and assigning products to categories works well. However, when you go beyond the most elementary tasks, things almost always become needlessly cumbersome and the information stored by the platform is inherently poorly organized. They've really hyped that Miva 9 released last year features a re-worked admin interface, but from our perspective they've simply given it a fresh coat of paint, made the layout passably mobile friendly, but yet still have not in a substantive way addressed the glaring deficiencies at the core of the platform itself. Adding custom admin area bookmarks is a band aid, not a proper fix.
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Reliability and Availability
Miva
I work with multiple Miva sites daily, and uptime is fantastic. Outages are rare from my experience, and any issues have generally been short and handled quickly.
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Support Rating
Miva
I would give 10, but there were a couple of times when I was misinformed and I had to do some unnecessary work. When you have to work on every product individually and then you discover you could have done it in bulk it kind of makes you roll your eyes back. I also have an issue still with some shipping settings that no one seems to understand. But the support team is super friendly, they are trying
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Implementation Rating
Miva
Creating the Miva store originally took a reasonable amount of time, 2-3 months, but we were unable to migrate our orders and customer accounts from the old platform. Additional refinements were required over the following 6 months to refine the functionality and features so that they worked properly for our store and fulfillment process.
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Alternatives Considered
Miva
Versatility and customer service. There is nothing more frustrating than being in the middle of a task and having to do tech support via a computer-generated chat box. Miva Merchant gives you a live tech support engineer 24/7.
Read full review
Scalability
Miva
Miva has proven to be a great solution for smaller mom-and-pop stores through large enterprise-class businesses with tens of thousands of products. Performance is just as strong on enterprise-class stores as on considerably smaller stores, and an increasing number of marketing/sales tools are continually being added to the core Miva functionality to keep up with current marketplace demands.
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Return on Investment
Miva
  • Running a business in general (and this applies to e-commerce of course) involves not enough time to do too many things. Any place one can automate/streamline/ simplify some of these myriad things, you gain more time to focus on high value activities. We have found that the more we have been able to leverage Miva's capabilities (often with our own tools), the more time we can spend on marketing, sales and product development.
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