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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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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 website builder used to grown an online presence. The platform allows users to build their website from scratch, choose from designer-made templates, or use an AI website builder to add sections, images, and text.

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Product Demos

MIVA Demo copy 2

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

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MIVA - Illusion (demo)

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REPAY for MIVA Demo

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Miva demo video

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Features

Online Storefront

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

8.3
Avg 7.8

Online Shopping Cart

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

7.6
Avg 7.7

Online Payment System

Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.

7.3
Avg 8.3

eCommerce Marketing

Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites

7.2
Avg 7.7

eCommerce Business Management

Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations

7.8
Avg 8.0
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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 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 7.4.

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)

Reviews

(1-5 of 8)

A bit long in the tooth, but still a solid option.

Rating: 7 out of 10
December 15, 2014
EK
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva
8 years of experience
Over the years, I have created several websites for clients using MIVA Merchant. It has been used to create an online storefront. The software is quite powerful and includes many options. I like to use it for clients who need more than just a basic online storefront.
  • The ability to use commercially available modules is a big plus for MIVA Merchant. It has helped me create websites that have more advanced features such as rewards programs, custom shipping settings and checkout fields.
  • MIVA Merchant has been around for a long time and it has a very helpful community.
  • The software is very stable - I've run into very few problems with upgrades.
Cons
  • The user interface (UI) of the admin area is quite antiquated. There have been some slight improvements in recent years, but this really looks like an app that has been around since the 1990s.
  • While designing a website to use MIVA Merchant isn't terribly difficult for an experienced designer, it has been surpassed by just about everything else out there. It doesn't have a clean, standards-compliant theme engine like WordPress, etc.
  • MIVA has moved hosting for their software to their own service, which isn't cheap. And their hosting accounts come with very little disk space (although it is PCI compliant).
  • This is not a content management system (CMS). For anything that a client wants to update, I usually try to pair MIVA Merchant with a WordPress powered main site. Editing page content in MIVA is a very old-school task. It doesn't even come with a WYSIWYG editor, though you can buy one from their module store.
  • Doesn't appear that too many new modules are coming out these days.
I think MIVA Merchant is best for large, standalone stores. It allows for more tweaking of code than a lot of ecommerce software that I have used. Even though the interface isn't the gold standard, there still something to be said for the number of options it has and the number of modules available.

However, I think it's probably not the best solution if you just need a small, simple store. There are other software packages out there that can do the job a little more efficiently and cheaply.

One of the best ecommerce shopping carts available

Rating: 10 out of 10
December 23, 2015
CJ
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva
6 years of experience
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).
Cons
  • 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.

Merchant’s Perspective – Used Miva For Many Years, But Had To Move On

Rating: 1 out of 10
March 20, 2015
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva
3 years of experience
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
Cons
  • 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.

Miva Merchant Review

Rating: 10 out of 10
January 18, 2016
SS
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva
17 years of experience
Miva Merchant ecommerce design and development is at the core of our organization. We try to solve any ecommerce pain points our clients may experience. The Miva Merchant platform is extremely flexible and open to customization without the ability of the end-user breaking pertinent functionality.
  • Streamlined software updates without breaking existing design/functionality.
  • Totally flexible front end UI – the sky is the limit – we haven’t run into anything we can’t do on the Miva platform
  • PCI/PA-DSS compliance/certification of the platform – in lieu of recent events (Target, etc.) this is definitely a strong point of the Miva merchant platform
Cons
  • Integrated social capability is currently lacking (can be added, though)
  • Automated feed services to third parties is missing (again – can be added as an add-on)
  • Admin could be more user friendly (I hear that will happen in PR9)
Totally depends on the business – I suppose long-term business goals are questions that need to be asked to determine if a less sophisticated cart should be used, or if the client would have to re-platform, if his business grows. Totally depends on the business

Powerful Built-in Features & Extensibility

Rating: 10 out of 10
May 30, 2022
HA
Vetted Review
Verified User
Miva
10 years of experience
We have been using Miva for 10+ years. We run a company that sells building and maintenance supplies to the self-storage industry nationwide. Miva was initially recommended to us by a developer who did custom programming. It took us a while to get our footing and the product seemed complex at first because of our specialized needs. Over the years a few things happened: We became more comfortable with the product, Miva continuously rolled out refinements and we came to appreciate that a lot of what seemed like complexity was really a very robust and capable system that allows for significant customization. We looked at leaving Miva early on, but are glad we stayed. Most stores will find Miva just what they need right out of the box. Others, like us, may use Miva's built-in scripting language, pay for some custom development, or use one of the many free or paid modules to customize the product further. We have found the forums, support staff, online documentation, and Miva's own and 3rd party developers to be exceptional. Some people gripe about the price - we did too- but after reviewing many of the other options in our case we would pay the same or more, for a lot less.
  • Robust and logical admin interface
  • Great templating system and scripting
  • Excellent documentation and support
Cons
  • Lots of features may initially challenge some users who are used to carts with basic functionality and drag and drop design, shortcodes, and the like
  • Some editing of the website will require tech-savviness. For example on some larger updates templates will need to be edited to enable some new functionality
  • Most add-on modules provide bigger system functions to drop in, occasionally again with some tech savviness or professional installation or configuration possibly required. Some often requested smaller functionality has to be custom developed probably because the module developers focus on the bigger products. For example, I see frequent requests for the ability to buy products by dimensions, or someone wants to add a date and time stamp of some sort. If they either self-developed or subsidized development or had some other way to foster the development of smaller drop-in blocks, modules, or templates that might be something useful to consider for the future.
Well suited for medium to large volume stores or stores that anticipate long-term growth. Does a lot right out of the box and is probably suitable for most users. For more complex stuff or modifications, it would be useful to have at least one person who is tech-savvy, willing to work through documentation, or willing to pay for assistance when you need to extend functionality. Less savvy companies might also consider adding a professional support plan.
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