Powerful Built-in Features & Extensibility
May 30, 2022
Powerful Built-in Features & Extensibility
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Miva Merchant
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
- 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.
- Extensibility has enabled us to create special features using availability groups and some scripts so that we can have 'portals' for larger customers. These have their specified products, paint colors, and special pricing. At their request, we can add contractors who are doing work for them so they can see these private folders. It has been a value-added feature we have been able to offer to these larger customers.
Do you think Miva delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Miva's feature set?
Yes
Did Miva live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Miva go as expected?
I wasn't involved with the implementation phase
Would you buy Miva again?
Yes