Beware of Brightpearl! Anyone using them with magento?

[a8star]

I have recently signed up with Brightpearl, paid for implementation but am left feeling like I have been part of an experiment. I keep hitting a dead end with their support regarding a few major issues which they have yet to provide a solution to.

Please can anyone using the Brightpearl system on Magento get share their experiences?

I have been having issues since go live date when I actually started using the software around middle of June 2013.

I am now thinking should I contact trading standards.

Implementation £2.7k
Annual fee £3k

A lot of money for a small business and it was a big step for me.

They have not yet delivered the product they promised.

 

[OliverTrent]

That sucks man, I hope you get things resolved

 

[Jack@GillespieBS]

Hi a8star,

By the sounds of things you have received very poor support from Brightpearl which isn't on.

I work for a company who independently support users of integrated software including Brightpearl.

We've been contacted by clients like yourself needing support with Brightpearl and we have rectified some of the problems they have faced.

Feel free to call or email if you want some free advice on the problems you are facing, and we'll see if we can help.

Jack Newcombe
GillespieBS
0330 330 1078
jack at gillespiebs.co.uk

 

[pre0rm]

I wanted to add our experience to this and get an update from yourself about any progress you've made. We're been using Brightpearl since August and have very mixed opinions.

We sell on Ebay, Amazon and with our own online shop. Our shop and Amazon both integrate okay but the Ebay integration is awful. The system downloads all order details as soon as the customer clicks buy and not when they actually check out. This means if they add more items, change the shipping address, or their order qualifies for any discounts, none of this is reflected in Brightpearl. We have over 200 Ebay orders each day and the Brightpearl advice is that it's a known issue, they're working on it and we need to check the details manually. Quite frankly, I think the Ebay integration isn't actually fit for release and they shouldn't be advertising it as such. The amount of work involved for going through every single order on BP and Ebay, then changing shipping addresses, prices and and order details is unbelievable.

There are many other little things which really are poorly thought through. One example is if you're searching for a customer. You can search for them using their user name, unless they've paid, in which case you have to use the name on their Paypal account. This often means going into Ebay, searching for a sale, following the link to Paypal, getting the Paypal account name and then returning to Brightpearl just to find an order. There's very little ease of use with Brightpearl.

We paid very similar prices to you with regards to the annual cost and then £2000 for the "Accelerate Launch Pack" which was sold as a sure fire way to get Brightpearl set up quickly and working properly. In reality, it was me preparing a lot of spreadsheets of data, sending them to a contractor who didn't even work for Brightpearl and him uploading the data. The biggest waste of money I've made since starting my own business and a very poor start to my relationship with Brightpearl.

We're paid up for a year so we will keep using it. I would never recommend it and unless some major progress is made in the next few months, I don't think we'll be continuing our subscription.

 

[edmondscommerce]

Interesting thread, sad to see that its not up to standards

I hope they pull their finger out and get it sorted for you

 

[ProjectOcto]

Those errors are simply unintelligible! When a non-developer such as yourself (I'm presuming) can see there is a problem, then that's a problem!

I can only *hope* on their part that it is one particular developer who perhaps doesn't know what they're doing. If its company wide then they have a problem. May account for the low price too (across the scale of things but yes, still pricey for some small businesses) but it's no excuse.

Best wishes getting things sorted out....

 

[Kalsan]

Please can anyone using the Brightpearl system on Magento get share their experiences?

I think I am in the same boat as you. I really think Brightpearl is for small business users. Brightpearl is not fit to deal with businesses who process many orders a day or list vast amount of sku's.
The sales team tell you "yes" to everything and then when it comes to implementation you find out it doesn't do what was promised.

The implementation pack they offer is useless and not worth the money, the online guides and videos tell you more. The team of support staff that help you don't know the system properly.

Advice to businesses is to tread carefully with Brightpearl and don't believe all the sales pitch they give you. If you have time test the system thoroughly. I would ask for an extension if you are still not sure after the 30days free trial.

Hopefully they will get better but I think the system has failings which medium to large companies will just not accept.

 

[strikingedge]

Surprised to hear this - Bightpearl has a pretty good rep in the industry and I know of a few companies using it.

I was aware they had some hiccups when they dropped their own shopping cart in favour of integrating with other carts.

We looked at Brightpearl but instead decided to go with a best of breed option - picking the best online accounts software for our needs, best CRM, best cart, best inventory manager etc. and then link them up.

A lot of SAAS software talks to other SAAS software either natively or via third party integrations - or you can get a developer to link them up relatively easily through the API's.

This probably negates the need to get all your software from one vendor - and I guess the concern with Brightpearl has always been that they're trying to do too much and will fall behind more focused competitors.

 

[iKam]

We looked at Brightpearl but instead decided to go with a best of breed option - picking the best online accounts software for our needs, best CRM, best cart, best inventory manager etc. and then link them up.

Hi strikingedge

Just out of interest do you mind sharing the various pieces of software you use?

Thanks in advance

 

[antropy]

I have been having issues since go live date when I actually started using the software around middle of June 2013.

What are all the issues you're having?

 

[iKam]

I think I am in the same boat as you. I really think Brightpearl is for small business users. Brightpearl is not fit to deal with businesses who process many orders a day or list vast amount of sku's.
The sales team tell you "yes" to everything and then when it comes to implementation you find out it doesn't do what was promised.

The implementation pack they offer is useless and not worth the money, the online guides and videos tell you more. The team of support staff that help you don't know the system properly.

Advice to businesses is to tread carefully with Brightpearl and don't believe all the sales pitch they give you. If you have time test the system thoroughly. I would ask for an extension if you are still not sure after the 30days free trial.

Hopefully they will get better but I think the system has failings which medium to large companies will just not accept.

Are you going to stay with Brightpearl or move on to another system?

 

[AImports]

We have just started with Brightpearl and things are not going all that well. I have been promised that there are some improvements being made which will help with some of our problems.

I agree that it is really made for smaller businesses with a small amount of products. Also I agree that their sales staff give false promises about the capabilities of this software.

 

[dx3webs]

We have a few of our magento customers using Bright Pearl. This always seems to need us to intervene to get things working. Generally it seems to need a lot of dedicated resources (ram mainly) and plenty of headroom (quiet server)
What sort of hosting package do you have?
The BP support is very generic and often send over some bizarre recommendations.

 

[Kalsan]

Are you going to stay with Brightpearl or move on to another system?

At the moment yes we are sticking with Brightpearl however I know some of the team members have started looking at alternatives.

 

[iKam]

At the moment yes we are sticking with Brightpearl however I know some of the team members have started looking at alternatives.

Oh right, cool. Good luck with your search there's many many many more people coming on to the market now. Brightpearl just seem to spending most of their cash on Marketing for now. Without knocking the pricing of BP they don't even have their own direct APIs with carriers except Royal mail.

 

[iKam]

We have a few of our magento customers using Bright Pearl. This always seems to need us to intervene to get things working. Generally it seems to need a lot of dedicated resources (ram mainly) and plenty of headroom (quiet server)
What sort of hosting package do you have?
The BP support is very generic and often send over some bizarre recommendations.

BP support just read out extracts from their online support section from their website.

Also BP have removed the ability to integrate a magento store through the online system, to add one you fill in the forms then it sends them an email and they contact you.

 

[Cupertino Networks]

I too wanted to add our experience to this thread. We use Brightpearl with Magento, eBay and Amazon. We started in May 2013 and went live in August 2013. I read some of the posting on this thread and am a bit surprised, since we have had a good experience so far.

Before Brightpearl, we use the M2E Magento plug-in to keep Magento, eBay and Amazon orders in sync. M2E did a good job for us on the demand side but it does not cover the supply side. As a result, the process of receiving purchases into inventory was broken. So we always had to visit the stockroom before committing for big order.

Brightpearl filled that void - we now receive all inventoryable items on purchase orders and our inventory accuracy is good. We love the inventory allocation feature, since sometimes orders take a few days to close and we can reserve the inventory.

Now we only use M2E to list from Magento to eBay; once items are listed, we track and close them through Brightpearl. We plan to turn M2E off once Brightpearl's ebay shipping profile includes support for ebay calculated shipping (they support flat rate shipping today).

Yes - the implementation and annual fee took a big gulp to swallow, for a small business like ours. Their implementation analyst was very good and also did 1-on-1 training with us, which was very helpful. We are not shy about calling their support line (we have Gold level support). They have been very responsive and always follow-up on problems until closure. So in relation to the value provided as we scale our business, the implementation and annual fee provides good return on the investment.

To recap, our experience has been good. We invested significant time and effort in learning Brightpearl software and Brightpearl processes. But it has helped our business grow whereas earlier we were out of control.

 

[Jack@GillespieBS]

I too wanted to add our experience to this thread. We use Brightpearl with Magento, eBay and Amazon. We started in May 2013 and went live in August 2013. I read some of the posting on this thread and am a bit surprised, since we have had a good experience so far.

Before Brightpearl, we use the M2E Magento plug-in to keep Magento, eBay and Amazon orders in sync. M2E did a good job for us on the demand side but it does not cover the supply side. As a result, the process of receiving purchases into inventory was broken. So we always had to visit the stockroom before committing for big order.

Brightpearl filled that void - we now receive all inventoryable items on purchase orders and our inventory accuracy is good. We love the inventory allocation feature, since sometimes orders take a few days to close and we can reserve the inventory.

Now we only use M2E to list from Magento to eBay; once items are listed, we track and close them through Brightpearl. We plan to turn M2E off once Brightpearl's ebay shipping profile includes support for ebay calculated shipping (they support flat rate shipping today).

Yes - the implementation and annual fee took a big gulp to swallow, for a small business like ours. Their implementation analyst was very good and also did 1-on-1 training with us, which was very helpful. We are not shy about calling their support line (we have Gold level support). They have been very responsive and always follow-up on problems until closure. So in relation to the value provided as we scale our business, the implementation and annual fee provides good return on the investment.

To recap, our experience has been good. We invested significant time and effort in learning Brightpearl software and Brightpearl processes. But it has helped our business grow whereas earlier we were out of control.

Great to hear you are having success with the system.

Where you say "We invested significant time and effort in learning Brightpearl software and Brightpearl processes" speaks volumes about the need to understand the system to get the full benefit out of it. I've got first hand experience of people coming to us where they haven't fully understood the system and have been processing things wrong, which ultimately leads to (costly) mistakes. Done right these streamlined processes will be saving you time and money!

Jack

 

[edmondscommerce]

Good to hear the other side of the story

So in a nutshell BrightPearl is fine as long as you use it properly, it is actually better than M2E in a lot of regards, primary difference being price I suppose

I do wonder what it would take to get Magento handling the inventory issue though as that seems quite trivial.

 

[Cupertino Networks]

Would like to add an update to our Jan 28 2014 posting. Since then, we have been plagued with data integrity issues, mostly on the Amazon integration side but a few on the ebay integration side too. This does result in rework since items are often pulled from inventory, packed and labelled before we realize the order is duplicate.

Also we have been plagued with duplicate BrightPearl (BP) listings for a single Amazon SKU. This has resulted in orders for which there is no inventory. Our Amazon data defect rate dropped to fair (does not currently meet Amazon's target) due to cancellations.

We are working actively with BP support to address these issues. They say a fix is coming for the Amazon interface - we have been waiting for a few months. A curious what other BP customers are seeing since BP say that our problems are not seen by other customers. In summary, the functionality is very good but data integrity is problem.

 

[Kalsan]

We are still having issues with Brightpearl. They seem to have tried to fix many issues. Apparently the number of sku's on an order has increased which is good. However I find Brightpearl very slow and the load times of some pages is way too long.

Recently I have had problems with the integrations (eBay, Shopify, Amazon and Magento). It does not seem to be able to cope with the integrations all together.

 

[Kalsan]

Would like to add an update to our Jan 28 2014 posting. Since then, we have been plagued with data integrity issues, mostly on the Amazon integration side but a few on the ebay integration side too.

That does not sound good, hope you can fix it all.

How many product sku's do you have on Brightpearl? and how many of those are on eBay and then Amazon?

 

[pre0rm]

We also use Amazon and Ebay with Brightpearl but have very few problems with the Amazon integration. It's the one part of BP that doesn't really cause us any issues. However, we don't use Brightpearl to update our stock levels on Amazon or Ebay simply because we don't trust it.

On the Ebay side, we get some orders come through where the order lines are all duplicated. It's quite hard to pick up but because we're aware of it, we keep an eye out for unlikely looking orders and then manually check them on Ebay. We monitored it for Brightpearl after first reporting it in March. It happens to a little over 1% of our orders. They're looking into it but haven't got back to us at all since April 1st. I think it's just another issue on a long list of their Ebay integration problems.

 

[pre0rm]

Kalsan- we also find it to be extremely slow sometimes. I spoke to one of Brightpearl's salesmen at the Internet Retail Expo and he said load times shouldn't ever exceed 5 seconds. It's very rare we get it under 5 seconds.

 

[brat42]

We went live around 9 months ago and reported most at the bugs towards the beginning of going live. This figure is around 25 bugs, most of which I would classify as medium to high in frustration (they add hours on to our combined staff time every month).

Brightpearl is slow, bug ridden, with only a handful of bug fixes being made every month. Pages takes between 6 and 10 seconds to load (even on version 4.68). The Bigcommerce integration is appalling (orders take up to six hours to come in automatically). The tax calculations are all over the place too which is significant.

We've just started in the last week on updating listings via Brightpearl for eBay...ugh. Another five or six bugs to report.

The most annoyed bit is that they cannot provide resolution times and all bugs I reported in 2013 are still unresolved.

 

[Charlie McBroom]

Hi guys,

I am really surprised to see this, I had always heard quite good things about Bright Pearl (being a direct competitor of Linnworks).

I am surprised that they have had so many issues with Magento - We've found Magento a very simple platform to integrate with at Linnworks; does your Magento store have a lot of customisations/plugins/extensions? This may be an issue possibly.

I think the main problem is when you have a sales team answering the questions then they are going to tell you what you want to hear.

I would like to hear more about the set up of your websites, if they have any plugins or customisations.

 

[Kalsan]

Hi all
I have been told by someone that Brightpearl has some bad Finances at the moment. Think people should be cautious and make sure they do not hand over too much money. Can someone else check them out and see if they see them same.

 

[Cupertino Networks]

It's been about six months since my last update. Am glad to say that Brightpearl (BP) addressed our issues with the Amazon interface. They deleted our Amazon interface and we started over. That addressed most of our data integrity issues with Amazon. Good job - BP..