BluePark or bigcommerce - which is best

[apples69]

BluePark or bigcommerce - which is best for a newbie to get a web site up and running without any html experience and which offers best support?

Please advise

 

[jamieclick]

It really depends on what you are looking for.

Have you not thought about getting a site built for you. I know it cost's more to set up but then you dont have the monthly fee's and no limits really.

I dont like the monthly plans as you never own the site but this is only IMO.

What features are you going to need from a site?

Jamie

 

[apples69]

jamieclick, what kind of a price could you design a site for which would have unlimited products

 

[jamieclick]

Hi,

It really does depend on your needs. It could be as little as £199 + VAT for a basic site.

Feel free to drop me an email with your needs and i'll give you an idea of costings.

Jamie

 

[ICEY]

I've used both Interspire (the non hosted version of BC) and Bluepark and have trialled BC too.

Interspire didn't work properly with UK VAT and I couldn't work out during the trial period whether Big Commerce had improved on that situation, it looked the same to me whilst trialling it but until the payment processors were working properly (which I didn't want to set live obviously), it was hard to see whether they had resolved the VAT issues so for me it was an absolute no go as I didn't have the confidence that it would work for us. However, BC has some great features.

I use Bluepark and have been delighted with it. It also has some great features (I would love to have a hybrid between BC and BP it would give me everything I need plus more) but the best thing about BP is the stability and the guy who develops it Rich is brilliant with all support issues. BP has some amazing integrated features as well including newsletters, live chat, gift certificates, and wish lists. It is very feature rich. I have four sites on BP.

 

[JMRidley]

I'm using bigcommerce and absolutely love it. Have been using for about 9 months and we have about 800 products. I didn't know any html when I started and you could use BC without knowing it, however, I'm taught myself a little bit because one of the features I love is how easy it is to change the look of the site by making slight modifications to the style sheets etc. It's really well set up for Search Engine Optimisation - we've just got going with this recently (another thing I've taught myself) but are doing well with the pages optimised so far. Also love features such as the automatic production of a Google Product Feed which we get a lot of sales through. Re payment gateways, we have set up RBS Worldpay, Google Checkout and Paypal and all are working fine.

Icey - was curious about your comment re VAT - what were you expecting the system to do? We list prices including VAT so don't need the system to calculate this for us but wondering if I'm missing something.

 

[ICEY]

We sell all over the world and Interspire was very much based on the US system whereby you could price excluding tax and add tax on.

You could also set up your pricing to include and show VAT as is required by our taxation system, however, if someone ordered from outside of the EU the system would not deduct the VAT element which meant that we had to manually refund each and every order and type a manual invoice.

For UK and EU orders there wasn't a problem.

 

[apples69]

Icey, can you tell me more about BluePark, is it as easy as BigCommerce to use, does it have the same or better features and is it hosted on BluePark servers or do you have to host it?

Can a newbie without html experience like me use it and get a professional site up and running?

Interspire is a one off payment, whereas Bluepark is £25 a month

Can you show me the site you have developed using Bluepark?

 

[apples69]

JMridley, why did you go with Bigcommerce where your paying a monthly fee over Interspire which is a one off payment?

Did you look at BluePark as well?

I'm stuck with choosing between the 3

 

[Fill-Your-World]

We switched over to Bluepark from Jshop about a year ago now and have never looked back.

We had a more complex VAT structure that Jshop just couldnt handle (along with many other things) and searched for months for a solution adequate to deal with it. The only ones that could were Actinic (wasn't going to go there!) and Bluepark. Bluepark is remarkably sophisticated for a lesser known solution and the range of features is wonderful.

BP is a hosted solution yes. I was initially put off by the monthly fee structure, as has paid a one-off fee for Jshop, but now I can really really see the benefits of paying monthly. The support is also quite frankly outstanding, much better than you would receive for a license purchase solution. New features are being released all the time and honestly I could bore you all day with how much I love BP, but I really really do!

We now have 3 BP sites:
Fill Your Pants
Fill Your World
Smartipants EU

Fill Your World is the only one we havent had paid design work done on. It is a trade only site so doesnt really need to be pretty! My skills as far as this kind of thing are very limited, but if you have a good basic knowledge I can see that BP is pretty easy to customise design wise.

 

[ICEY]

Icey, can you tell me more about BluePark, is it as easy as BigCommerce to use, does it have the same or better features and is it hosted on BluePark servers or do you have to host it?

Can a newbie without html experience like me use it and get a professional site up and running?

Interspire is a one off payment, whereas Bluepark is £25 a month

Can you show me the site you have developed using Bluepark?

It isn't dissimilar to the way BC works but in my opinion is actually easier to get your head around.

I personally am quite happy to pay a monthly fee - BP is updated very regularly and is very stable so for me it spreads the cost of running the sites. My advice is to take a free trial of both and have a play. For me BP have some great features and BC also have some great features but once again I would say really make sure the tax works.

I bought Interspire and had a nightmare with it - cost a small fortune, it cost even more to develop it and even more money to try to find a fix to the VAT issue and when ISC put out updates it cost me even more money to add them and sort out the fixes I had to pay for. It has reinforced my desire to stay with a hosted pay monthly version.

I will send you a message with my websites.