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Miva is a versatile eCommerce engine that caters to both B2B operations and businesses of all sizes. Users appreciate the platform's high …
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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- Order processing (6)7.777%
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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…
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- 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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- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
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
- 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
- Mailchimp
- Avalara
- QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise
- QuickBooks Desktop Premier
- QuickBooks Desktop Pro
- PowerReviews
- Authorize.net
- Visa Acceptance Solutions (CyberSource)
- ShipWorks
- PayPal Payments Pro
- Endicia
- ShipStation
- Affirm
- Chase Paymentech
- PayPal Express Checkout
- PayFlow
- UPS
- FedEx
- USPS
- Canada Post
- StoneEdge
- 4psite
- King Webmaster
- FirstData Global Gateway
- Intuit Merchant Services
- AccurateTax
- eBridge Connections
Miva Competitors
- Shopify
- Volusion
- WooCommerce
- BigCommerce
- Magento Commerce Cloud (formerly Magento)
Miva Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Countries | All |
| Supported Languages | English |
Miva Downloadables
- Marketview Liquor was struggling using a custom in house shopping cart that hindered their business. They chose Miva to unlock their online sales potential.
- Crown Automotive is a Business to Business specialist selling Jeep parts, they needed to expand online and only Miva could handle all of their unique requirements.
- Coolest Shoes in California ran into lots of problems with open source PrestaShop and switched to Miva to streamline their operational issues and keep them focused on their business.
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.
Reviewers rate Order processing highest, with a score of 7.7.
The most common users of Miva are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Miva Customer Size Distribution
| Consumers | 0% |
|---|---|
| Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 90% |
| Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 8% |
| Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 2% |
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(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!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
June 04, 2022
Review from a "non-tech" business owner
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I'm not your typical "tech-savvy" online retailer, so you're going to want to read this review. I'm the target audience for Wix and Shopify, and I have chosen not to use them. This is why: Our company has used Miva Merchant for our online retail presence for over 20 years. It's easy to use, especially considering my degrees are in psychology and absolutely nothing to do with tech. Their tech support is insanely good compared to other companies. They answer all of my questions, even the dumb ones. And there a lot of dumb ones. I need the versatility of Miva Merchant for the look and feel of the website almost daily. I have a very rudimentary "web" background from the 90's-early 2000s when my parents owned the company. Since I've only recently re-entered this company when my parents retired, I'm way behind the curve on what I can do (but I am constantly learning). This is where Miva Merchant really shines for me. I want to be more independent with caring for the upkeep of the website. Miva Merchant has tons of guides on using their platform, but the engineers and techs at Miva Merchant are willing to help and have made my experience jumping back into online retail a breeze. To be honest, I've looked at other platforms like Shopify Plus and Wix. It's just not what we need. We have so many product lines and recently added a wholesale line. I need a platform that's tailor-made for retail and this works for our small business. We're about to completely overhaul the look and feel of the website and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else when this happens. If I had to pinpoint one aspect of why I have chosen to stay with Miva Merchant, it's customer service. They don't farm it out. I can call or email 24/7 and I get immediate service. I never call them and get a foreign company with impersonal, handbook-driven customer service. I will emphasize that point especially if you are 1) new to online retail or 2) upsizing your online presence.
- customer service
- tech support
- diverse retail platform
- some integrations are limited or difficult (apple pay, etc.) but I have not found these to impede the functionality
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100%
10.0
- SEO is easy to navigate and adjust
- Shopify Plus and Wix
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.
April 29, 2015
MIVA Merchant. Almost Perfect.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use MIVA Merchant as our platform of choice for developing both online catalog and eCommerce project for clients. While we might consider WordPress for clients with a very small inventory, MIVA is the only other platform we use. The ongoing development of the platform, responsive MIVA support and the active community of developers make this a very good choice for us.
- Ongoing development. MIVA has, over the years, added features and functions to the platform that keeps it both secure and feature-rich. With recent releases, for instance, MIVA is PCI compliant and many of the most used 3rd party modules have been incorporated.
- MIVA Support. Support is responsive and can be very technical.
- Active forum of developers. This is a great resource for those times when a client has asked for a function I've not seen used in MIVA. Developers on the MIVA forums often have suggestions or solutions to share.
- The internal search function is somewhat basic. Ideally the a search would potentially use multiple data fields.
- Selling digital items for download isn't yet an option.
- MIVA isn't responsive so that it reduces nicely on mobile devices.
- We have lost some business due to lack of easy MIVA connectivity with popular POS systems.
- For the most part, focussing on MIVA as the primary eCommerce platform my company offers has been very positive choice for me and my clients. The choice of MIVA has allowed me to focus on learning a singular platform where I have the ability to modify the look & feel as well as the function of the store. For my clients, MIVA presents an easy to use administrative interface (Magento, by comparison, is a nightmare) with plenty of functionality.
- Magento,osCommerce,WordPress,Avactis
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 production updates and the committed third party module developers.
- Implemented in-house
April 08, 2015
Miva Merchant Review
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used Miva Merchant to build e-commerce websites for clients. We worked with small businesses and individuals on their e-commerce needs. The manager of our company had decided that Miva Merchant would be the best, most secure, e-commerce site to use.
- It has a user friendly experience when purchasing and checking out.
- It was easy to teach the client how to upload products to their site.
- It had many options for payment gateways.
- Miva Merchant has it's own language which had a high learning curve for me to understand.
- Customizing 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.
- It used to let people store user's credit card information and process the payment later, which, when hacked, is really bad.
- It was nice that it kept track of orders from the back end of the site.
- Better customer service for someone who is just starting to use Miva Merchant. The Miva Merchant code is not easy to understand. Even for a seasoned developer who specializes in html, css, java, and php.
- Faster Lead Conversion
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 longer work for that company and I use WordPress and Woocommerce to build e-commerce and it's much easier for me to understand. Once you know how to customize a WordPress template, Woocommerce is so easy to understand.
- Vendor implemented
December 04, 2014
A Shopping Cart Solution for Online Businesses of Any Size
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I currently offer E-Commerce consulting, marketing, and management services for a broad range of online companies most of which are using Miva Merchant as their shopping cart platform. The online stores I work with are offering anywhere from 20 to 180,000 products online. The shopping cart is primarily used to merchandise products and as a CMS system.Some of the more challenging issues my clients face are work arounds for MAP Pricing (Minimum Advertised Pricing), integrating in-house POS systems with Miva to manage inventory, and integrating live LTL freight rates directly into the shopping cart. All of these feats can be achieve but may require you to think outside of the box. The good thing about Miva is that you are only limited by your imagination as far as what you can do with the platform.
- Miva Merchant is extremely robust and has very few limitations unlike most other shopping carts.
- Offers the most bang for your buck! You can run a multimillion dollar online store using their smallest package at $50 per month with ease. No joke!
- There are many 3rd party modules available for added flexibility.
- Support staff is great and you can find answers to many questions in their forum (where senior techs tend to hang out). Video tutorials are available too!
- There is a learning curve and newbies must have patience when setting up a new store out of the box.
- I was never a big fan of the mobile layout. Fortunately a Responsive design is now available (and rocks)!
- The ability to tie into 3rd party POS systems more easily would be a nice added feature (but I guess that would require the POS system to be integration friendly as well).
- Using Miva Merchant I have generated $1,000,000 in online revenue within the first year, twice (at two different companies).
- The built in SEO Friendly links and ability to import/export Meta Tags allowed me to more easily index well for highly competitive keywords in Google's natural SERP's.
- Miva's built in payment modules allowed my clients to easily accept all major credit cards, PayPal, and Amazon all at checkout which was a contributing factor to higher conversion rates.
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 of it's ability to accomplish tasks "outside of the box" were easier and cost less. In addition you can host Miva on a dedicated server for $440 per month while using Magento's Enterprise edition cost waaaay more than that.
March 21, 2014
Miva Merchant makes sense for our business
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Many of our customers use Miva Merchant. We develop software that integrates with the shopping cart, and we also implement websites who use Miva, either for the entire site or in conjunction with other packages. Miva provides a great balance between ease of use and ability to customize.
- Ability to design the entire page from opening to close. We can implement any desired design into the package.
- A robust API that allows us to program additional features to work with the shopping cart.
- Excellent hosting capabilities, but without a requirement that users MUST host with them.
- A strong community of users who offer support and advice, as well as active participation in the forums by Miva's own employees.
- Currently there is no coupon capability out of the box. I'm excited to see this new feature that's expected to be in the upcoming release.
- The open community has helped our sales because we quickly became known as an expert in the area, and customers came to us instead of us having to cold call them.
- The ability to extend the platform with third-party modules, or even to write custom modules specifically for a particular client, made Miva a perfect choice for almost every site.
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 own level of knowledge of the different packages. Some of the competition software provides the same level of customization, but certain not all of them do.
Yes
Yes, the support and/or development teams fixed the bugs that I found or provided workarounds as needed.