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Miva

Miva

Overview

What is Miva?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Miva is a versatile eCommerce engine that caters to both B2B operations and businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate the platform's high …
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Miva Merchant Review

1 out of 10
April 08, 2015
We used Miva Merchant to build e-commerce websites for clients. We worked with small businesses and individuals on their e-commerce needs. …
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Popular Features

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  • Order processing (6)
    7.8
    78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Miva?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.miva.com/miva-ecommerce…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a commerce platform designed for both online stores and retail locations. Shopify offers a professional online storefront, a payment solution to accept credit cards, and the Shopify POS application to power retail sales.

What is Wix?

Wix is a free, hosted website builder, designed to be user-friendly and customizable without requiring coding from the user. It is well-known for its eCommerce solution, which allows users to build an online store.

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Product Demos

MIVA Demo copy 2

YouTube

Miva – Business Consulting WordPress Theme Download, Installation and Import Demo Content

YouTube

MIVA - Illusion (demo)

YouTube

REPAY for MIVA Demo

YouTube

Miva demo video

YouTube
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Features

Online Storefront

Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.

8.3
Avg 7.7

Online Shopping Cart

Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.

7.5
Avg 7.6

Online Payment System

Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.

7.7
Avg 8.3

eCommerce Marketing

Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites

7.3
Avg 7.5

eCommerce Business Management

Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations

8
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is Miva?

Miva is an ecommerce platform which provides businesses with a flexible website and fully-customizable catalog and checkout system with control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store.

Miva is invested in its core competency as an ecommerce platform provider, continuously developing solutions to modern merchants’ most pressing needs. The vendor states Miva excels at supporting businesses whose complex product catalogs or specialized industry requirements have proved too challenging for other ecommerce platforms to handle. With over two decades of experience serving businesses that sell everything from aftermarket parts and fresh-caught seafood to custom diamond rings and swimming pools, Miva invites sellers to bring them the problems other platforms can’t handle.

How Miva Supports a Ecommerce System:

  • Interface provides web management for non-technical users
  • Platform designed to enable B2B and DTC sales on a single website
  • Extensive native functionality minimizes the need for third-party apps and plugins
  • Unlimited product variations for high SKU count (from thousands to millions) catalogs and dependent SKUs
  • Managed ERP integrations with Miva Connect
  • Back-office integrations through Miva’s JSON API
How Miva Helps Merchants Create a Store That Sells More:
  • Built-in subscriptions and reordering for frictionless repeat purchasing
  • Online sales quotes help sales teams automate their sales processes
  • Custom product builders help customers bundle products into kits and custom orders
  • Advanced shipping logic supports complex shipping and compliance requirements
  • Smart pricing options for customer and rule-based pricing

Miva Features

Online Storefront Features

  • Supported: Product catalog & listings
  • Supported: Product management
  • Supported: Bulk product upload
  • Supported: Branding
  • Supported: Search & filter
  • Supported: Mobile storefront
  • Supported: Product variations
  • Supported: Website integration
  • Supported: Visual customization
  • Supported: CMS
  • Supported: Customer service tools

Online Shopping Cart Features

  • Supported: Abandoned cart recovery
  • Supported: Tax calculator
  • Supported: Shipping calculator
  • Supported: Checkout user experience

Online Payment System Features

  • Supported: PayPal integration
  • Supported: Returns & refunds
  • Supported: Single-click checkout
  • Supported: eCommerce security
  • Supported: B2B features

eCommerce Marketing Features

  • Supported: Promotions & discounts
  • Supported: Personalized recommendations
  • Supported: SEO
  • Supported: Product reviews
  • Supported: Customer registration

eCommerce Business Management Features

  • Supported: Multi-site management
  • Supported: Order processing
  • Supported: Inventory management
  • Supported: Accounting
  • Supported: Shipping
  • Supported: Custom functionality

Additional Features

  • Supported: Online Sales Quotes

Miva Video

Lotus Sculpture outgrew Yahoo Stores and moved to Miva to keep his business on track.

Miva Integrations

Miva Competitors

Miva Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesAll
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Shopify, Volusion, and WooCommerce are common alternatives for Miva.

Reviewers rate Order processing highest, with a score of 7.8.

The most common users of Miva are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).

Miva Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)90%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)8%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)2%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(29)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Miva is a versatile eCommerce engine that caters to both B2B operations and businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate the platform's high level of customization, allowing them to tailor the customer experience and backend connections to their specific needs. This flexibility extends to design and code adjustments, making it easy for users to optimize their sites for SEO and Google snippets. Miva prioritizes security by ensuring compliance with PCI/PDA-SS requirements, giving customers peace of mind when it comes to protecting their data. The platform also seamlessly integrates with popular third-party services like PayPal, Power Reviews, Shipworks, and Authorize.net.

Miva Merchant goes beyond being an online cart and offers a robust templating system and powerful customization capabilities using Miva Script. Customers find it to be a cost-effective choice for comprehensive e-commerce systems that provide all the necessary functionalities at an affordable price point. The platform has gained popularity among developers for its ongoing development, responsive support, and active community. One of its standout features is its user-friendliness, even for non-tech-savvy individuals, thanks to its intuitive interface and excellent customer service available 24/7. With Miva, users can create functional and user-friendly websites that remain under their control while striking a balance between ease of use and customization options.

The platform's configurability allows businesses to overcome security and SEO challenges effortlessly, while its ability to handle high traffic loads without issues ensures seamless operations even during peak periods. Miva serves as a reliable backend sales platform, providing modern front-end interfaces for retail and wholesale customers while offering integrations to automate various processes. Users value Miva's exceptional customer support, with knowledgeable staff delivering timely and insightful responses. Many online companies rely on Miva Merchant for merchandising and content management, particularly those offering a wide range of products.

However, some users have encountered challenges such as MAP pricing implementation, inventory management with POS systems, and integrating live data feeds. Despite these hurdles, Miva Merchant has been successfully utilized to create and launch ecommerce websites, providing wireframe design, strategy, implementation, and ongoing support. Users appreciate the platform's powerful and customizable nature when building online storefronts for clients. They have managed over 1000 products seamlessly through Miva Merchant, allowing customers to place orders, track shipments, and create accounts. The flexibility and customization options of Miva Merchant have received praise for facilitating unique online store designs and streamlined workflows. Its extensive community of developers enables the creation of custom templates, giving stores a unique look and feel. In addition to the built-in scripting language and modules, users have found that Miva Merchant offers further customization options to meet their specific needs.

The exceptional assistance provided by Miva's support staff, online documentation, and user community has been commended by users. This level of support is particularly valuable for users who may be new to the platform or facing technical challenges. Miva Merchant has proven to be a cost-effective and flexible choice for many businesses seeking an ecommerce solution.

However, it is worth noting that some users have experienced reliability issues with hosting, as well as a lack of critical management features and delayed updates when compared to other ecommerce platforms. As a result, some users have chosen to migrate from Miva Merchant to alternative platforms like Shopify and Big Commerce, citing cost and feature considerations as key factors in their decision.

Despite these challenges, Miva Merchant continues to come recommended by service providers due to its flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and feature set. The platform remains popular among developers and businesses alike for its ability to create and manage online catalogs and ecommerce projects effectively. With its customizable design options, secure infrastructure, powerful integrations, and ongoing development support, Miva proves to be a trusted solution for those seeking full-featured ecommerce systems.

Limitless Customization Options: Users appreciate the platform's limitless customization options, with several reviewers stating that they can fully customize their store design and functionality to accommodate any design elements. They find it convenient to use external API options via XML and JSON, which adds even more flexibility to their customization capabilities.

Easy to Learn and Use: Many users find the platform easy to learn and program, specifically mentioning PHP, JQuery, and other programming languages. Some reviewers have praised its user-friendly interface and intuitive features, making it effortless for them to navigate and utilize the platform effectively.

Solid Architecture and Reliable Performance: The solid architecture of the platform is highly appreciated by users who find it reliable. Several users have mentioned that they trust the platform's performance as the company invests in its future development, ensuring a stable and dependable experience for their businesses.

  1. User-Friendly Admin Area: Some users have found the Miva admin area to be not very user-friendly and outdated in terms of its user interface UI. They have expressed frustration with navigating and using the admin area, which can make managing their online store more challenging.

  2. Limited Theme Engine: Several users have mentioned that the current Miva Merchant lacks a clean and standards-compliant theme engine like WordPress, making it less desirable compared to other options. This limitation restricts their ability to customize the look and feel of their online store according to modern design trends.

  3. Cumbersome Page Content Editing: Users have pointed out that editing page content in MIVA is a cumbersome and old-school task, lacking a WYSIWYG editor. This means they need to rely on manual HTML coding or use external tools for editing content, which adds complexity and time-consuming steps to their workflow.

Based on user reviews, the most common recommendations for Miva are to consider its power, affordability, and functionality. Users highly recommend it for businesses with unique needs and coding knowledge. They suggest investing in support and customization, including hiring expert programmers or development teams. Users also emphasize the importance of attending Mivacon conferences, engaging with documentation and forums, and taking advantage of Miva's robust support services. Additionally, reviewers advise evaluating the size of the business and desired level of control before choosing a platform. They recommend comparing features, exploring hosting options, and considering costs to ensure Miva's flexibility meets specific business requirements.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Marc Vasquez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Miva to drive our eCommerce engine for our B2B operations. We have used it to bring our ERP system to our customers in a way they can interact with that is familiar and comfortable. Miva has been a groundbreaking change to how we are able to do business. We have many business units, each working with distributors or agencies in different ways, on top of a large support staff that manages orders. Since we have so many locations and different workflows, we needed something that was flexible. We evaluated many solutions when looking for a platform that could scale with us, and Miva was the clear choice and winner. One of the main drivers of that was the ultimate ability to customize the platform to work for our business and scale. You can adjust and edit all facets of the customer experience and a large number of the backend connections that just wasn't an option in many other platforms. Offering customized products to a different customer base was another headache that we were able to solve easily with Miva. Miva supplied us with the necessary toolset to create great websites.
  • Customization of the platform is limitless
  • External API options via XML and JSON
  • Easy to learn and program (PHP, JQuery, etc)
  • Solid Architecture - Reliable
  • Invests in the platform for the future
  • Native Integrations
  • Mobile App
  • Passwordless Login / Wallet
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.
Online Storefront (9)
92.22222222222221%
9.2
Product catalog & listings
100%
10.0
Product management
100%
10.0
Bulk product upload
100%
10.0
Branding
100%
10.0
Mobile storefront
100%
10.0
Product variations
100%
10.0
Website integration
80%
8.0
Visual customization
100%
10.0
CMS
50%
5.0
Online Shopping Cart (2)
80%
8.0
Abandoned cart recovery
80%
8.0
Checkout user experience
80%
8.0
Online Payment System (1)
100%
10.0
eCommerce security
100%
10.0
eCommerce Marketing (3)
83.33333333333334%
8.3
Promotions & discounts
100%
10.0
Personalized recommendations
70%
7.0
SEO
80%
8.0
eCommerce Business Management (5)
98%
9.8
Multi-site management
100%
10.0
Order processing
100%
10.0
Inventory management
100%
10.0
Shipping
90%
9.0
Custom functionality
100%
10.0
  • Ability to add new websites rapidly
  • Standard language for our ERP to talk to one platform
  • Customization has enabled more return customers
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 only one where we had access to not only the core of the platform, but every part of our page templates. Most platforms will give you a box to stay in, but Miva lets you define the box, and when it doesn't fit your needs, you can adjust it to bring it where it will benefit your company most. Some of the major benefits that we couldn't find on other platforms: Ability to incorporate APIs at any stage of customer journey Unlimited Custom / Complex Product Configurators and Builders Easy to understand the structure and hierarchy of pages and templates.
15
Order Entry
Sales
Shipping
Finance
2
Basic HTML, PHP, JQuery and web development skills.
  • Easy to Use
  • Scalable
  • Works how we need it to
  • Offer customizable kits to customers
  • Allow customers to build and save part numbers on demand
  • New features like Pagebuilder will help us improve marketing efforts and simplicity.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
I needed a solid product that had the features we had to have to go to market.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
  • Fact Finding / Evaluation
  • Wireframe
  • Testing
  • Go Live
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
Be sure to include all users that will use the product, or will be affected to ensure early buy-in and notice of things that won't work as expected.
  • User Training
  • Unexpected Problems with External Connected Software
They do a great job of understanding your business, and your assigned a Project Manager that keeps you in the know as the project is moved along.
Unlimited support is included in our plan.
Yes
Found a bug in a template and they were quick and transparent to help us understand how and when it will be resolved. Development is very transparent with it's users.
One night we had a bot decide to send a lot of traffic to our sites, in an attempt to DDoS our site. Miva's team was alerted at 3am, and began working to mitigate the issue, and keep us informed of what was going on. It was comforting to know that I didn't have to stay awake 24/7 ensuring sites were online. Miva's NOC team is there 24/7/365 and goes the extra mile.
  • Reliable
  • Consistent Answers
  • Knowledgeable Support Reps
  • Truly always ready to help
Sales was amazing to answer our questions, provide demos and connect us with the right people internally to answer any questions we had.
They have truly become part of our business. We rely on them not only to provide a software program, but business support when trying new things in eCommerce.
Chris Janus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use Miva Merchant as an ecommerce solution for my clients. Miva Merchant is easily capable of handling everything from smaller stores/individual sales to large and enterprise level businesses. The design is fully customizable in Miva, so I can implement my own or others' custom designs into a store and also adjust the code for SEO, google snippets, etc. Miva is extremely secure and passes all PCI/PDA-SS requirements which is extremely important. Miva is fully compatible with a number of popular third-party services like PayPal, Power Reviews, Shipworks, Authorize.net, etc and can be easily integrated with others.
  • Expandable Functionality: Store functionality (gift certificates, coupons, shipping,etc) can be customized via code on the page templates, or third-party services/modules can be integrated to add features. Even better is that more and more of the third-party features are being built into the core features with new releases!
  • Design: The store design can be fully customized to accommodate almost any design elements. Access to the page template code allows you to make customizations such as adding third-party code snippets (order tracking, live chat software, etc), adding if/then logic statements for dynamic customization, or to add a full custom design to the entire store.
  • Security: PCI/PDA-SS compliant - There are not a lot of carts out there that are fully PCI compliant, and this is especially critical now (credit card companies are really beginning to crack down on this).
  • 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.
How many products are in the store? What type of products do you sell, and do they have any variations/attributes (eg size, color, model #, etc)? How much traffic does your store get monthly, or what are your monthly sales? What methods of payment do you offer? What shipping methods do you offer for your orders? Do you offer affiliate accounts? How custom of a design are you looking for?

Miva is very well suited for small business to enterprise level business sites or for stores that require lots of customization.
  • Clients are able to easily make changes to products/categories, and they are able to control many other aspects of the site with additional customizations (and additional features that Miva adds in with new releases...) Products/categories can be mass-uploaded via a flat file (eg excel spreadsheet, text file, etc) to add/update thousands of products at a time which definitely makes for increased efficiency.
  • Clients have excellent support available whether directly through Miva support or the strong online Miva community. If there's a problem with something, you're not stranded by yourself with no way out or completely relying on an open source community.
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 templates they give you. Also, Miva is fully PCI compliant which is a VERY big deal over other shopping cart systems out there.
1
Web Design & Development/Sales/Project Management/Tech Support
1
Miva Merchant has been around longer than the majority of carts out there by far, and it continues to grow and add more functionality and features with every release. Clients not only need a secure ecommerce cart to handle their business, but they also need customer support. Miva continues to expand as a company and offers 24/7 support through a number of channels (including phone support!). If there's a problem, clients always have someone they can talk to to help get it resolved.
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.
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.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Established retail company launched an online store with Miva Merchant over 5 years ago. Early on it was a very suitable platform and met our needs well, particularly its somewhat unique versatility. However, things have been in steady decline for some time. Their hosting was incredibly unreliable and lacked critical management features for no good reason. What you get initially with Miva is really only the shell of a proper online store. Things have gradually gotten better in regard to the features included, but companies who've been on the platform for years and paid for third-party modules and specialized development work receive no benefit. They're consistently about three years behind the pack compared to other major eCommerce platforms and have recently resorted to questionable tactics to increase the revenue they derive from people who use their system. I do feel some online merchants with highly specialized needs could find the customization options offered by Miva compelling, but the start up and ongoing costs for a real storefront are quite severe and lack many useful features compared to other more popular store systems.
  • General versatility, though changes commonly require the aid of a true Miva developer to implement
  • Compatible with many payment gateways and a fair assortment of third-party services
  • Developers employed directly by Miva to handle merchant projects are personable and responsive to most requests
  • Prospective and established merchants considering the Miva platform should be warned that they've recently implemented an onerous new fee when more than one person accesses the store admin area at any given time. Specifically, Miva merchants will now be on the hook for $50 per additional simultaneous user per month. If we had remained on Miva, this would have increased our annual costs of using the platform by at least $3,000, perhaps more. The president of Miva claims this is standard for SaaS e-commerce platforms, but I know of none that do and this change makes their platform incredibly unattractive for merchants who expect their business to grow in the future. Furthermore, certain third-party services can be detected by the Miva HQ tracking system as admin users, also triggering an additional seat fee.
  • Exorbitant pricing for adding some basic features that feels like a petty cash grab. For instance, we opted for the $1,000 mobile optimization package and received a bare bones mobile-friendly site with no appearance refinements aside from crudely plopping our logo at the top. They forgot to optimize a few key pages, like the product search results, and it seemed like whoever did it rushed through the work in an hour or two. Other projects they helped with went better, but there's frequently minor coding errors we've had to clean up ourselves.
  • Features released with updates practically always require developer assistance to test and properly enable.
  • Issues that should be treated as bugs are instead left for third-party modules to correct. For example, if a wholesale customer adds items to their cart before logging in, those items retain the standard retail price when the order is placed. We informed Miva tech support of this, expecting that they might look into fixing the problem, but were instead told that we should buy an add-on module that forces a cart recalculation at checkout. Why should this be the responsibility of an extra module to correct? It should be noted that a year or two ago Miva purchased the Emporium Plus plugin catalog, including the cart recalculation module, yet that is still omitted from the core platform.
I am aware of some interesting applications of the Miva platform where it may be the optimal choice, but for the vast majority of store owners the negatives greatly outweigh the positives, and, despite some skilled and personable staff, management seems unwilling to make changes that might set the platform, and their official hosting arm, on a better course. Unfortunately, given the fevered competition among eCommerce platforms, I don't really see how they might turn things around unless there's major changes made at the top of Miva and their basic approach to maintaining their system.
  • Ever increasing support costs associated with the platform, despite it lacking features common to all major eCommerce systems
  • Customer experience is significantly lacking compared to other store platforms
  • Most third-party eCommerce service providers don't support Miva or require hefty implementation costs because of Miva's dwindling usage
  • Volusion,Magento,Magento Community Edition,Shopify,Bigcommerce,3dCart
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 unattractive compared to competing platforms in practically every way possible. Their management does little to instill confidence, by all appearances preoccupied lately with making a quick buck, and I suspect the writing is on the wall. Since Magento hit the scene in a big way, Miva is no longer unique or best positioned for advanced store customization, and the costs, both in time and money, for launching a fully functional Miva store are ridiculous in comparison to simplified scalable solutions such as Volusion, 3dCart and Shopify.

Since we migrated from Miva, conversions have markedly improved, order fulfillment takes half as much time, responding to customer service requests is centralized and immensely easier, and we have literally dozens of new and valuable features available that we can consider making use of in the future, all included as part of the new platform and easy to roll out. We can even get in touch with knowledgeable and personable support staff in mere minutes, no Design Club membership or extra charge needed.

As is very apparent here, others have different perspectives on Miva; some far better, one or two perhaps worse. I am certainly not unbiased, but I have tried in this commentary to be as level headed and honest as I can about our company's experience with Miva and why it was ultimately not simply appropriate, but required for the health of our business that we make a change to something better. Whether you're considering launching a new online store or perhaps doing a migration, I will only advise that you read and learn as much as you can about Miva and the company backing it. The official website paints a very rosy picture in simplified bullet points, and many developers who specialize in creating Miva stores have chimed in here and elsewhere sharing far more glowing opinions than mine. However, as the old saying goes the proof is in the pudding and, if you're looking for an e-commerce platform that you hope to use long term, do everything in your power to be sure it's one you genuinely believe you'll be happy with, not simply the platform preferred by an outside company or developer handling the project.
We repeatedly voiced our concerns to our Miva rep and their management, but ultimately found no compelling reason why we should remain. There are some vocal fans out there who may attack this review. To those merchants and developers happy with how the platform fits their needs, I genuinely wish them the best and hope they have continued success. However, for our particular circumstances, where keeping up to date with new store features is of paramount importance, Miva Merchant is way behind the pack and continues to putter along at a snail's pace. I really hate to be so negative, but there's really no way to sugarcoat how disappointing their platform's become and how next to nothing has been done to improve matters.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation
  • Unable to migrate orders and customer accounts from previous platform
  • Required many third-party modules so that the Miva store had basic functionality
  • Extensive custom programming was needed to implement common store features
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.
Yes
The Miva Design Club offers a slightly discounted hourly rate for common design changes. However, certain tasks needing advanced developer work must be performed outside the Design Club arrangement. Assigned Design Club rep was polite and effective, but there were occasions when he was difficult to get in touch with, including an emergency situation.
The Miva development staff generally did a good job at implementing requested new features and making functionality revisions. However, the costs can get quite steep depending on what you're asking for. Things more often than not went quite well once a project and its pricing was mutually accepted. However, it can be very difficult to get a human on the phone or by email if there's a genuine emergency. Other reviewers here have had more positive things to say, but in our experience we would be on hold on average for 30 minutes before speaking with someone when calling the tech support line.
Yes
No. If a wholesale customer added items to their cart on our Miva store before signing in, those items retained the retail pricing when the order was placed. Reported the problem to Miva support. Instead of fixing the core platform, we were directed to purchase a paid add-on module. Plugins are entirely appropriate for many things, but not fixing something such as this.
  • Create product categories
  • Assign products to categories
  • Add and configure basic shipping methods
  • Highly inconsistent support availability. They proclaim they offer 24/7 support, but we had an issue with an engine update they installed for us breaking the ability for customers to place orders on our store and it took no less than 4 hours for us to get help. Was on hold listening to muzak for a solid hour before a someone answered and said she'd have a developer check what the problem was and reach out later. Repeated emails and calls to our designated account manager were unanswered until the following day. Most other times we called their general support line it took a half hour before a human answered.
  • Adding new custom content pages requires you to note and manually assign all necessary modules for each page. Pages cannot be easily duplicated.
  • Customer records in the Miva admin are bare bones, offering just their saved address and possibly wish list data. You have to go to the orders section and do a search there if you want to see someone's actual order history. No ability to add internal notes about a customer account.
  • Extremely limited report tools included with the core platform, which the company seems to have little to no interest in expanding.
  • When you purchase third-party modules, they commonly require that you license them on an annual basis if you want to stay up to date, typically somewhat less than the initial purchase cost. Otherwise, you only receive technical and security updates for a single year. The Miva system does not alert you if a module has an update available, even if there's a severe issue, instead you have to manually check that one by one.
Yes, but I don't use it
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.
December 01, 2014

Why We Pick Miva Merchant

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We don’t actually use MIVA Merchant at our organization but recommend it to our clients. Miva Merchant is a good choice because of its flexibility, cost effectiveness and its other features. Manufacturing Solutions Center is a service provider for the small to medium manufacturers. We work to help solve problems and test products. Ecommerce is one of the services we provide.
  • Price Groups. This feature is beneficial to the developer and their customers because it allows creation of as many groups as needed. Developer can change the price of products based on membership in a group. They can also assign price change to all or certain products in a group. Registered customers benefit from membership discounts, which encourages customer loyalty.
  • Availability Groups. This feature is excellent because it allows developer to control what categories and products customers see in the store based on membership in a group and only visible to customers who registered and are a member of that group.
  • Manage Orders. End users like the Manage Orders features. Orders have various filters available such as Order Number, Date Range, Order Status, Batches and Batch Report. The most useful feature is the Batches which is a collection of orders, grouped together and given a name with just 1-click.
  • Coupon capability. If end users want to offer coupon discount, they will have to purchase through a third-party. It will be an excellent feature to have.
  • Product layout. The product layout from previous Miva Merchant is much better. Merchant 5.5, the product “Code, Price and Quantity in Basket” is at the bottom of the product instead of with “Colors”, “Size”, and “Quantity” on the right hand side. Custom image sizing does not display well.
  • More Custom Fields/Dropdown options. Our end user has to purchase Addendum from a third-party to use the custom field.
  • Some of our customers are having problem viewing our store after we upgraded to Miva Merchant 5.5. Our products page is empty.
Features, user interface, and flexibility of the software
  • Miva Merchant's platform offers flexibility for everything from template editing to overall configuration.
  • Miva Merchant gave me the ability to build a store for my customers that met all of theirs needs without hiring a team of programmers.
  • Miva Merchant allows me to enter products, upload images (with auto thumbnail), change navigation tab with little or no programming skills.
Other software that I have used are: ShopSite, X-Cart and Quick Shopping Cart. They are less flexible and customization is limited.
Miva Merchant serves its purpose-a great shopping cart that can handle the task of customization and great customer support. We like the look and feel, functionality and versatility. Miva Merchant’s third-party software vendors are also friendly and supportive of their products as well as knowledgeable of Miva Merchant.
  • Vendor implemented
  • Professional services company
Wolfpaw Computers
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
No, we don't have any issue in regards to implementation of Miva Merchant. Wolfpaw Computers installed it for us.
  • Love Miva Merchant's PR8 Reference Guide. Instructions were easy to follow and implement. It's like a Miva Bible.
  • Creating/assigning price group is a breeze. Simply create the products once and assign.
  • Customization is my most favorable feature!
  • For me, Payment Setting, is probably the most cumbersome to perform because there are multiple steps you have to perform before you can disable it.
Miva Merchant allow individual of various skills to create the perfect online store! The wizards inside Miva Merchant that has step by step allow someone with little or no programming skills to a skilled programmer who can customize to his or her heart content.
Bill Gilligan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Miva Merchant on all of our sites (4-5 at any time). Miva Merchant is highly configurable and easy to use. There has never been an issue we could not overcome - from security to SEO. Additionally, we have put it to the load test - having been featured on the Dr. Oz show twice, it handled all traffic with no issues whatsoever. We also installed it on a cloud setup with multiple load balancers and virtual servers - and no hiccup whatsoever.
  • Easy to use by the customer.
  • Easy to use by support staff
  • Easy to configure for any situation with numerous modules and built in functionality. And - its always your data.
  • Safe and secure - passes all security tests
  • Honestly, I am aware of no areas that need improvement at this time. The crew at Miva are always working to bring enhancements.
If you only have a few items - maybe less than 10-15, use something simpler. But if you're going to list more, this is the platform you want.
  • Our company is 7 years old, and we have made the INC 500 list two years in a row. 2012 and 2013. I have to give some credit to Miva Merchant - easy, fast, substantial. The ROI is there - and quickly.
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.
I can't say enough good.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
The only issue is being sure of your SEO when updating from a standard format to a fluid format.
  • building a duplicate site alonside the existing - which we did but setting a second virtual server, and then to go live - renaming the domain
nope
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