Anybody use PaceRetail?

[Marlene]

Hi,

I'm new here, hi to everyone
I was wondering if anyone have any experience with Paceretail.co.uk, as I'm thinking to open my second shop with them. Their features sound promising, and as I'm just testing water, I'd love to find something with great bandwidth (they state it's unlimited), reliable checkout process (have very bad experience with EKM so far) and few more features?

Your help would be greatly appreciated :redface:

 

[luckyg]

Hi,

I'm new here, hi to everyone
I was wondering if anyone have any experience with Paceretail.co.uk, as I'm thinking to open my second shop with them. Their features sound promising, and as I'm just testing water, I'd love to find something with great bandwidth (they state it's unlimited), reliable checkout process (have very bad experience with EKM so far) and few more features?

Your help would be greatly appreciated :redface:

So far, what have you seen on pace that isnt on ekm?

I took a quick look at pace there, £30 seems steep.

EKM peed me off last year too and i quit them.

 

[Marlene]

Hi Lucky,

Thanks for the reply, they are quite similar, but I have major problems with EKM at the moment, their checkout system is horrible, and I loose sales because of it, so I'm looking for some reliable solution

 

[quikshop]

Hi Marlene,

We have quite a few x-EKM shop owners using our eCommerce service. Please feel free to look around our website, if you have any questions you can PM me through this forum or give us a call at your convenience.

 

Hi Marlene

I had a pm from someone recently using Pace - I have no experience of them myself - but she was having a terrible time and being charged £65 a time to add new categories to her shop, a totally unecessary payment for an SSL certificate (not required if you are not actually physically taking card details on your site) and allsorts, so investigate carefully!

£30 is a lot per month, I can recommend my host...who I've just noticed is lurking above...Internet Retailer (quikshop) its £18.95 a month and should more than adequately do everything you're looking for . Why not give their demo shop a whirl on their website? You'll find quite a few other happy fellow internet retailer customers lurking on ukbf too

 

[Bob77]

Hi

I have never used pace retail, but roundcart are a similar provider of shopping cart websites, we have used them and been very happy with the
support and sales too.

Good Luck

 

[Connexions]

why use pace when you can use iwebshop

charging £65 to change a category is laughable, infact i just got back up off the floor after falling off my chair.

*finishes promoting himself, well someone has to do it *

 

[musicbusiness]

Why not just pay around £40 A YEAR for webspace/domain and OSCommerce. Bob's yer uncle. Yea, you'll have to maintain it and add products yourself but that's a good thing because it gives you flexibility.

www.weycrest.co.uk is my preferred vendor.

 

[nish]

Pay monthly ecommerce shops never going to work in the long run. Its expensive and eventually cost more. I had quite few clients coming to me after failed projects with such eshops. Look for open source solution. There are plenty of reliable and robust shopping cart software available.

1. Joomla + Virtuemart
2. OsCommerce
3. Magento
4. Ubercart
5. Freeway

to name the best I came across, they are all absolutely free, but need someone with experience to customize and setup payment gateways...etc.

Good luck
Nish

 

Pay monthly ecommerce shops never going to work in the long run. Its expensive and eventually cost more.

I'm sorry mate but that is such utter cr@p!!! I run several very successful businesses using a hosted ecommerce solution and have done for 4 years, as do a large number of other customers on the same software. The benefit of a hosted solution is that someone else looks after the maintenance and programming side, which if you go open source is down to you. If you cannot make a success of a hosted solution then the problem is with the products, content or general running of the site itself and nothing to do with the fact that its a hosted product. Someone incapable of understanding that online retail is not some easy get rich quick scheme will do no better - and in fact could easily do much worse using an open source solution they have to maintain themselves. To quote you

but need someone with experience to customize and setup payment gateways...etc.

which is the exact reason hosted solutions are good!

From experience of advising other online shop owners or would be shop owners over the past 4 years the biggest reasons for failure are the fact that there is a notion that you just stick products on a website and miraculously customers and come and buy from you, and not that you have to carry out an work, or SEO, marketing or advertising of your site.

As the saying goes a bad workman always blames their tools.

 

[awebapart.com]

Pay monthly ecommerce shops never going to work in the long run. Its expensive and eventually cost more.

...

Look for open source solution... they are all absolutely free, but need someone with experience to customize and setup payment gateways...etc.

Going the 'free' DIY route can be a false economy, because in most cases you have to pay for professional developer time, not just at setup, but on an ongoing basis, since you should be improving your site on an ongoing basis. Even if you just invest in one day's professional development time to setup, maintain or improve your system each year, that is around £300 per year at good developer rates (@ £300 per day), and seriously you could need more than 1 day's work a year if you are serious about your site (and a hell of a lot more if you base your DIY system on osCommerce).

It can take quite a bit of development to bring an open source system up to the level of a hosted managed solution. For instance, paceretail use zencart as a base for their service, not the default zencart system, but their improved version of zencart, so for a business to take zencart and get a similar system the diy route they would have to pay someone else to develop and integrate in those improvements.

When a business decides to go the DIY route and take on their own open source system, that is a big complex piece of software that they are taking responsibility for, and such pieces of software require financial investment to maintain and improve. If you pay the odd developer for one-off pieces of work then who is responsible for your overall system? You are.

Compare this to a hosted managed ecommerce service, at around £300 per year, where by its very nature the ecommerce service provider is improving the system as part of the service, and providing hosting and support too, then good hosted managed ecommerce services don't look so expensive. Ecommerce systems should not be placed on the cheapest of hosting plans, so with good hosted managed systems you should also be getting decent hosting as part of the service.

One alternative is to go the commercial ecommerce system route, but even commercial software isn't usually a one-off payment, there are upgrades to consider - who here hasn't paid extra money on an ongoing basis to upgrade their desktop version of Windows or MS Office - support contracts etc

By all means choose the DIY open source route over hosted managed solutions for other reasons, but don't do it based on cost, think about and factor in all the costs of different solutions, and whilst you are thinking about this, consider those large companies that make the decision to go the hosted managed ecommerce route with high end suppliers like Venda simply because for them it makes good business sense to do so.

 

Couldn't agree more Paul!

 

[davisonconsultancy]

Just to correct a previous post, Pace Retail do not charge £65 for each new category. The webshop owner can create as many categories and products for no additional cost. Pace Retail also offer an initial upload of the store owners product details and product images provided they are available in spreadsheet or CSV format, at no cost.

Why do they charge more than EKM etc, well it's all down to service and support, check out their Pace Retail testimonials.

If anyone would like further information, let me know.

 

Just to correct a previous post, Pace Retail do not charge £65 for each new category. The webshop owner can create as many categories and products for no additional cost. Pace Retail also offer an initial upload of the store owners product details and product images provided they are available in spreadsheet or CSV format, at no cost.

Why do they charge more than EKM etc, well it's all down to service and support, check out their Pace Retail testimonials.

If anyone would like further information, let me know.

But you do charge for new category pages - not new shopping categories themselves, but new pages to the site, which is what I was making a point of...or are you telling me that your customer who spoke to me about all the issues she's been having was telling lies?

 

[davisonconsultancy]

This is not correct, Pace Retail do not charge for new Category pages as the webshop provides content management so the user can add their own content and images.
The only time Pace Retail would charge for such an addition would be under the following conditions:

- the user requires a specialist to format the page, eg: complex HTML and/or web design skills.
- the existing layout is to be changed, hence requires some development work.

All such work is quoted for on a fixed priced basis so that the customer knows exactly what the costs are.

I would certainly like to speak to your friend in order to ensure any misunderstanding is cleared up, perhaps you could oblige?

 

This is not correct, Pace Retail do not charge for new Category pages as the webshop provides content management so the user can add their own content and images.
The only time Pace Retail would charge for such an addition would be under the following conditions:

- the user requires a specialist to format the page, eg: complex HTML and/or web design skills.
- the existing layout is to be changed, hence requires some development work.

All such work is quoted for on a fixed priced basis so that the customer knows exactly what the costs are.

I would certainly like to speak to your friend in order to ensure any misunderstanding is cleared up, perhaps you could oblige?

Oh ok well happy to stand corrected so thank you for clearing that up!
To my knowledge the additional page was just required for posting articles/text on, so I'm not sure where that fits in?

With it being a pm I dont think it would be fair to give out their details as its not a friend but someone who has made specific contact, but I'm happy to suggest they ask more questions to clarify regarding the costs that have been quoted to them so that they get a greater understanding of why and whats involved.

 

[davisonconsultancy]

Appreciate your respect for the PM, perhaps you could pass on my details to them, as we are always looking to improve our service.

This thread did raise a valid point with alot of Webshop suppliers, including ours, in that a customer does not have a clear definition of what is chargeable and not chargeable. So we will be publishing a Price List shortly along with definitions of what is included for each element. Hopefully, this transparent pricing will help the discerning customer.

 

[Optegris]

Not sure I agree with some of the points Paul raises above as it does depend heavily on the licensing and hosting costs for the eCommerce product.

Take ours as an example. The monthly leased license is £35/month and a full license is £299. So your first year ownership cost is £420 leased compared to £299 owned.

Now in the second and subsequent years the license leased would still cost £420 pa but an owned license just has the hosting cost of £60 pa as the continued upgrades/support are optional.

So a leased license does indeed give you a low entry route but long term may not be viable.

This of course assumes you are doing the design yourself but as the initial design is unlikely to change dramatically since the store software should allow you to make changes

 

[edmondscommerce]

Why not just pay around £40 A YEAR for webspace/domain and OSCommerce. Bob's yer uncle. Yea, you'll have to maintain it and add products yourself but that's a good thing because it gives you flexibility.

www.weycrest.co.uk is my preferred vendor.

I second that - I would never advise going for a hosted solution.. thats your entire business in the hands of someone else - what if they go bust or some other catastrophe??

If you want to have control over your site and also keep costs to a minimum you can't go wrong with an osCommerce (or derivative) site hosted on your own hosting account.

 

[Optegris]

I second that - I would never advise going for a hosted solution.. thats your entire business in the hands of someone else - what if they go bust or some other catastrophe??

If you want to have control over your site and also keep costs to a minimum you can't go wrong with an osCommerce (or derivative) site hosted on your own hosting account.

And if the host goes bust you are in the same situation.

This discussion goes beyond the host, we are looking at long term development costs not short term considerations.

 

[quikshop]

I second that - I would never advise going for a hosted solution.. thats your entire business in the hands of someone else - what if they go bust or some other catastrophe??

If you want to have control over your site and also keep costs to a minimum you can't go wrong with an osCommerce (or derivative) site hosted on your own hosting account.

The only thing missing from that statement was the usual one peddled by those who make money re-selling out of the box free software installations... "open source is free"

 

[awebapart.com]

what if they go bust or some other catastrophe??

That is something to consider for any long term strategic supplier. Get a semi-bespoke custom solution based on some existing system and you have to ask yourself what if the suppliers of the underlying system go bust or stop developing, and what if the company that provided the custom solution go bust. There are plenty of cases of custom website suppliers going bust. Take your custom code that someone else has developed to another supplier and see whether they will take it on (a lot of suppliers wont, and they'll say it's easier to start again).

I would never advise going for a hosted solution.

That seems like a strange thing to say. Different business have different requirements, which are met by different solutions. My company offer a hosted managed solution, but I get calls on a regular basis from businesses who, after listening to their requirements, I recommend that they look elsewhere for a bespoke solution.

 

[edmondscommerce]

lots of vested interests here - if you are reading this thread and trying to make a decision just bear that in mind!

And if the host goes bust you are in the same situation.

This discussion goes beyond the host, we are looking at long term development costs not short term considerations.

If you are running your own open source ecommerce system and your host goes bust you just upload your files to a new host. downtime estimated 48 hours.

If your hosted service goes bust you don't have any files to upload. You would have to find a way of getting your files and database from the hosted provider who have gone under, have stopped answering their phones...

 

lots of vested interests here - if you are reading this thread and trying to make a decision just bear that in mind!



If you are running your own open source ecommerce system and your host goes bust you just upload your files to a new host. downtime estimated 48 hours.

If your hosted service goes bust you don't have any files to upload. You would have to find a way of getting your files and database from the hosted provider who have gone under, have stopped answering their phones...

Just as with an open source software you should be taking regular backups of files and databases for your own protection, to move to another host is simple, most decent ones have a file upload facility.

You saying this thread has many vested interests but surely you have a vested interest too, afterall you're making money from offering open source based solutions, and thats the solution you are pushing.

The fact of the matter is that by having an open source solution or any non hosted solution for that matter you need to either be able to understand enough html and coding to be able to make changes to your site, or a budget to be able to pay for those changes.

What a hosted solution gives you is the ability to concentrate on the product and business and not need to learn the technical stuff - I have seen a hell of a lot of badly made open source sites and there have been hundreds of members come on this site bemoaning the issues they are having with developers, or are struggling to build their own sites, or have had their own built sites compromised.

There are a lot of aspects to consider, site security and stability being one of them, the ability to have a site which can quickly & easily grow with you when you business grows is another, be easy to maintain, be user friendly and accessible...plenty of these can be a difficult job to get right with open source if you dont know what you're doing.

By using a hosted solution to start out you can test your ideas quickly and easily in a fairly safe environment then if it suits you can move to a bespoke solution when you know what you are doing and what you need your site to be able to achieve.

 

[quikshop]

If you are running your own open source ecommerce system and your host goes bust you just upload your files to a new host. downtime estimated 48 hours.

Talking of vested interests... your arguments are naive and deliberately misleading to further your own service.

What makes you assume someone using open source software and a separate hosting service would want to / understand how to keep up to date locally stored copies of their shops files and business data?

Our hosted solution has 24 hour daily back-ups of the database and entire web product, held in data centres in Canary Wharf and a custom designed centre in Manchester.

At this time and moment we are less likely to go out of business than some UK Banks

Trying debating on the merits of the different solutions rather than trying to scaremonger

 

[edmondscommerce]

sorry - i was not excluding myself from the vested interests statement there, in fact in a similar thread I explicitly stated it

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=685520#post685520

I'm now going to back out of a potential "your solution is better than mine" slagging match..

cheers ;-)

 

[Optegris]

Vested interests have nothing to do with this. I spend a fair amount of every working day visiting UKBF and other business forums to give free and impartial advice.

Yes of course, where appropriate, I will promote our own products (that's called advertising ) but not at the expense of poor advice...

As for one product being better than another, that is down to the buyer to decide...