- Original Poster
- #1
Hopefully someone can help us with this !
We're a fairly small e-commerce business; about 3000 orders a month, around 5000 SKU's, selling on a Big Commerce website, ebay, Amazon and a physical "real world" shop.
For the last couple of years, we've been using Linnworks to manage all the back-end functions. We've lived with ongoing minor niggles, mainly the synchronisation process being reliant on a stable internet connection which we don't always have, together with a known memory leak issue, the two combined leading to daily errors in inventory quantities and consequent overselling. We just assumed that all software has some bugs, and better a selection of known ones than to go through the learning curve of finding new software and learning about an interesting new selection of bugs.
However, this Bank Holiday weekend, we found that Linnworks' "24/7" support, is actually 24/5 as they don't have support at the weekends or Bank Holidays (you know, those times where customers don't work so go online and place orders....). The fault suffered has meant we've had to put eBay & Amazon into holiday mode, and have no idea how we'll create postage labels to get things shipped on Tuesday. So I'm reviewing our choice of software, as it seems too much of a risk for such a business critical package to be effectively unsupported at all our busiest times.
I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts (and experiences) on alternatives ! I've already ruled out ChannelGrabber, as their support also doesn't work at weekends, and I'm slightly wary of Channel Advisor due to both the cost and some fairly negative reviews I've seen (are these problems which have been resolved ?)
Or am I wrong to assume I need a single package to do what we need ? Would we be better off with separate pieces of software to do each job ? The key things are updating inventory across multiple channels, processing & posting orders, and creating supplier purchase orders, and a simple EPOS system for the shop which feeds inventory changes across to other channels.
Thanks !
We're a fairly small e-commerce business; about 3000 orders a month, around 5000 SKU's, selling on a Big Commerce website, ebay, Amazon and a physical "real world" shop.
For the last couple of years, we've been using Linnworks to manage all the back-end functions. We've lived with ongoing minor niggles, mainly the synchronisation process being reliant on a stable internet connection which we don't always have, together with a known memory leak issue, the two combined leading to daily errors in inventory quantities and consequent overselling. We just assumed that all software has some bugs, and better a selection of known ones than to go through the learning curve of finding new software and learning about an interesting new selection of bugs.
However, this Bank Holiday weekend, we found that Linnworks' "24/7" support, is actually 24/5 as they don't have support at the weekends or Bank Holidays (you know, those times where customers don't work so go online and place orders....). The fault suffered has meant we've had to put eBay & Amazon into holiday mode, and have no idea how we'll create postage labels to get things shipped on Tuesday. So I'm reviewing our choice of software, as it seems too much of a risk for such a business critical package to be effectively unsupported at all our busiest times.
I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts (and experiences) on alternatives ! I've already ruled out ChannelGrabber, as their support also doesn't work at weekends, and I'm slightly wary of Channel Advisor due to both the cost and some fairly negative reviews I've seen (are these problems which have been resolved ?)
Or am I wrong to assume I need a single package to do what we need ? Would we be better off with separate pieces of software to do each job ? The key things are updating inventory across multiple channels, processing & posting orders, and creating supplier purchase orders, and a simple EPOS system for the shop which feeds inventory changes across to other channels.
Thanks !
