Optimizely Configured Commerce vs. Shopify Plus

The eCommerce catalog side has a lot of benefits to it and has been much easier to work with and customize than the CMS side. It is this integration and using both for a branded marketing website that has the user journey from browsing and leading into the eCommerce side that has been the bigger challenge, outside of the overall stability of the releases with the bugs we have encountered. I think the solution is well suited if you are mainly a catalog site. We, however, sell machinery and solutions that are not sold via the eCommerce site and we need to showcase them on the website. However, we have a core industrial catalog of consumable products that support the machine and solutions purchases which are very well suited for the eCommerce catalog. It is the CMS/Catalog integration that has caused a need for more customizations to the platform and as a result increased costs to maintain, lowering our overall ROI from the solution. We are also a bit hamstrung by having to rely on our development partner to make changes that our digital agency is better suited to do for us in the CMS. It is requiring extra cost and resources as a result. If more functionality could be surfaced, it would be much better.

Incentivized

Shopify Plus makes order management simple and less error prone. Connecting our ERP allows us to seamlessly manage our product listings, fulfill orders, and sync customer data. Limitations to the number of product variants requires attention from our staff to make sure our products sync without issue. Other than being arbitrary, there's really no need to limit the number of product variants.

Incentivized

• Integration Jobs/Connections - Providing a good out-of-the-box solution to hook into ERPs and common endpoints.
• Design and Development Partner Network to work with - If you have customizations in mind, the Optimizely partner network will give you the chance to find a suitable partner to meet your needs.
• Good layout/flow/settings breakdown - There are a lot of "redundant" settings, but the more management access, the better.

Incentivized

• Syncs directly with ShipBob WMS.
• Shopify Scripts and the Script Editors allows us to tailor our checkout screen.
• Gives us advanced sales reporting, showing trends, performance, year to year, and even projections.
• Scalable for high volume, handles spikes in traffic without downtime.

Incentivized

• Need the ability to look at more of our user data
• Need the ability to refresh our sandbox environment with production data in quicker, more efficient ways
• Classic CMS is very limited in ways end users like myself can edit widget content

Incentivized

• When linking to our communication service some customers have several emails with orders and only one email generates orders. It would be nice if we could combine all of this information into one account.
• If a customer has multiple accounts you are also unable to edit the email address as it is already used, another reason merging accounts would be helpful.
• Some of the processes in Shopify are too easy to complete. I’m certain scenarios a peony of “are you sure you would like to complete(this action)” would be extremely helpful and avoid mistakes that are not reversible.

Incentivized

Quite flexible and easy to use for daily marketing user tasks, like updating page listings, promotions, and copy. More in-depth tasks like managing product attributes, rearranging product taxonomy placement, and CMS editing are not user-friendly and require a careful and detailed process to follow.

Incentivized

It is extremely easy for merchants to get to know how Shopify Plus works. Comparitive to other platforms such as Magento and WooCommerce it is extremely lean and easy to operate, meaning clients who migrate over to it find it very intuitive to use. There is also a lot of guides and up to date information online

Incentivized

It's a mixed bag. The team has been very nice, but there has been an underlying feeling of condescension because we have complained or "caused trouble" over the inadequacy of the CMS component. Also, support for modifications or UI changes has been terribly slow. Understandably, COVID has made life hard for everyone, but there is an expectation that we complete our work immediately, but their team will "put it in queue" when we have a request or find a bug. Further, we certainly feel that we were sold a list of capabilities that we have not seen come to fruition. Finally, the change of ownership 3 times (Insite -> Epi -> Opti) over our implementation period has been both confusing and disruptive.

Incentivized

Always are quick to answer our questions and help us find a solution

Incentivized

I was not very involved with this process. It has been 3 years since we made a decision and I can't even remember the name of the other companies we were considering. I was in a different role then so I was less involved with the eCommerce department. I do remember really liking the people we were working with. That played a huge role in our selection since we would be working with them for years on the site.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Automation of updates and integration with ERP has saved time and provides reliable data for the website in sync with ERP
• Integration with external PIM has saved time and provides reliable sync with content data for the website. Changes and improvements have been slow and difficult.

Incentivized

• The pricing of Shopify Plus over the regular Shopify Account solution is about 10x if not 20x the cost. But with this cost comes the increased reliability and trust you have in your eCommerce Software solution/website. We still have a great ROI with the Shopify Plus Pricing.
• With Shopify Plus, we have been able to drill deeper into a more robust eCommerce experience for our customers
• With Shopify Plus, we have been able to customize our Website further with recommended apps, features, and customizations based on our Dedicated Account Reps expertise.

Incentivized