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WooCommerce Integration Works Well; Dealing With Avalara Will Text Your Patience and Increase Your Stress
January 20, 2022

WooCommerce Integration Works Well; Dealing With Avalara Will Text Your Patience and Increase Your Stress

Abram Herman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • AvaTax
  • Returns

Overall Satisfaction with Avalara

Unfortunately, I can't recommend this product. Communication and customer support are abysmal in my experience. It does a good job of interfacing with our Woocommerce site to properly calculate sales tax based on customer's location and our nexus, but if you run into any issues you're in for a frustrating experience in my opinion. Don't expect them to keep you properly informed on what's happening with sales tax rules in the 50 state (I thought that's what we were paying them for, but apparently not), and it feels like you're pretty much on your own if you have questions about how or when you need to collect and remit sales tax. I would consider myself very tech-savvy and able to navigate new technologies effectively; that being said, I feel their website is utterly confusing and not at all user-friendly. This means you'll often have to reach out to customer support to figure out what needs to be done, which brings me back to: the customer service is abysmal. It's been incredibly frustrating using Avalara for the last couple of years, and I'm currently looking at switching to other providers.
  • Automate sales tax calculation on Woocommerce sites
  • Automate filing of sales tax returns in multiple states
  • Customer service
  • Communication
  • Pricing
  • Website navigation
  • Assistance with navigating multi-state sales tax
  • Customer service
  • Customer service
  • Customer service (yes, I intended to add it 4 times)

Do you think Avalara delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Avalara's feature set?

No

Did Avalara live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Avalara go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Avalara again?

No

  • Made sales tax calculation on website automated
  • Added frustration to my life
  • Woocommerce
  • Quickbooks Desktop
The setup was easy enough. The people you get to talk to while setting up your account and onboarding are generally helpful and easy to work with. However, from my experience, don't expect to ever talk to a human again—especially a helpful one—after they have you set up and locked in with a subscription.
The Woocommerce integration works well and is fairly easy to set up. Other than that, I have mostly just experienced frustration with Avalara.
  • Avalara Returns
The website navigation is bad and confusing, in my opinion. This makes the Returns filing process harder than it needs to be and if you run into an issue you'll have to try and get a hold of customer service, who are generally not helpful based on my experience.
n/a
If you're looking for a company that makes multi-state sales tax compliance, collection, and remittance easy, I would not recommend Avalara.

Avalara Feature Ratings

Type of tax
4.0
Sales and Use Taxes
4
Cross-border Taxes
Not Rated
VAT / GST Taxes
Not Rated
Energy and Fuel Taxes
Not Rated
Tax Reporting & Compliance
5.4
Geolocation for Tax Assessment
10
3rd-Party Software Integrations
10
Tax Data Reporting
5
Compliance Administration Management
1
Tax Exemption Processing
Not Rated
Tax Document Management
Not Rated
Complex Tax Scenario Management
1

Relationship with Avalara

They were very helpful and accessible during the setup period.
Based on my experience, impossible to get a hold of anyone on the phone after you're set up. Email-based support is generally unhelpful in my opinion.
n/a
Don't. I would recommend looking at other options.