Fed up with EKM, what's next?

[Steve_g]

Hi all, been with EKM for a few years and they have just put the last nail in the coffin for me.

Want to move to a new solution but no idea what's about. Currently we use ekms vps service, looking to spend about the same (around 180 a month ) the software needs to be compatible with channel grabber and tradebox and it needs to be a clean transition as any downtime will be lost income. I'm not a designer so will be looking for someone to transfer the current design over to new new system as best as possible.

Any ideas or recommendations are most welcome.

Steve

 

[Faevilangel]

You have 2 options:

1) Another hosted solution such as bluepark etc, you will always be liable to what they want to do though

2) Get a self hosted software such as Opencart or Magento, will cost you a lot more than £180 but you won't have the monthly cost and will be able to customise the site as you wish.

Depending on type of products, number of products and features you would be looking at around £1k-5k for #2.

 

[Steve_g]

Cheers for the reply,

I did look at bluepark recently but they dont have the best API dont wont work off the shelf with Channel-grabber or Tradebox.

The site is pretty busy 40k+ unique hits a month a growing, its a pretty standard site with about 1200 products, i was looking more towards Opencart or Magneto

Do you know what the support would be like? i assume it will be pretty limited? i only as as im currently live with a lot of bugs (API, back end, slow speeds, site offline etc) and would like someone to call if i have any issues .

Would it be too hard to migrate over? will it do much (if anything) to my ranking (currently rank very well due to a lof of hard work by our SEO firm)

Money isnt too much of an issue, as long as it all goes as planned

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated.

Steve

 

[Faevilangel]

Cheers for the reply,

I did look at bluepark recently but they dont have the best API dont wont work off the shelf with Channel-grabber or Tradebox.

The site is pretty busy 40k+ unique hits a month a growing, its a pretty standard site with about 1200 products, i was looking more towards Opencart or Magneto

Do you know what the support would be like? i assume it will be pretty limited? i only as as im currently live with a lot of bugs (API, back end, slow speeds, site offline etc) and would like someone to call if i have any issues .

Would it be too hard to migrate over? will it do much (if anything) to my ranking (currently rank very well due to a lof of hard work by our SEO firm)

Money isnt too much of an issue, as long as it all goes as planned

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated.

Steve

If you do it yourself then you're limited to getting support from their forums etc, but if you get a company to build for you then they should be able to support you with upgrades etc

With 1200 products, there is a few things that can go wrong and might need work tweaking how they are imported into oc/magento e.g. uploading images, and data etc.

Find someone who is an expert in the software and keep your current site running while you're building the new one so you don't lose custom and can keep running the business

 

[a8star]

I did reply but my post got removed?

I used opencart years before switching to magento.

Magento is a beast but when you get it working right its great.

I use magento with 24k SKUS. The magento forums are not very helpful. If you post on there you can go months without getting a response.

 

[Bluepark]

I did look at bluepark recently but they dont have the best API dont wont work off the shelf with Channel-grabber or Tradebox.

Hi Steve, I was in the office when you made the call the other day and overheard the conversation.

For the sake of accuracy I must say we have an exceptionally powerful API. It was released a couple of months ago, neither Channel Grabber nor Tradebox have built an integration yet. There is nothing stopping anyone from doing this, our API is more advanced than most and more than capable. Outside of these companies building their own integrations, it just needs a developer and a budget.

Also, regarding VPS, we've had many ex-customers from your current provider transfer to us - many of them having been using VPS. We've yet to see a customer who actually needed a VPS solution from us.

 

[Steve_g]

Thanks for posting Rich, been keeping an eye on bluepark for a while waiting for compatibility with our software, I will call tb and cg this week and see if anything is in the works for integration, if not I will look into a developer and costs.

How easy is it to migrate over? Do you have designers on hand to implement our current design (as best it can) and what kind of cost are we looking at for the migration?

Cheers

Steve

 

[Faevilangel]

Steve just to sit on the fence, if you have 1200 products and pretty high needs then it might be worth moving from hosted solutions as you're always going to come up against limits set by the system e.g. product limits, bandwidth limits, feature limits.

Moving away from them gives you 100% freedom to do what you want

I am not against the types of bluepark, they are perfect for smallish sites but once you start getting into hundreds of products then they can become a hindrance.

 

[Bluepark]

Thanks for posting Rich, been keeping an eye on bluepark for a while waiting for compatibility with our software, I will call tb and cg this week and see if anything is in the works for integration, if not I will look into a developer and costs.

How easy is it to migrate over? Do you have designers on hand to implement our current design (as best it can) and what kind of cost are we looking at for the migration?

Cheers

Steve

Absolutely, we can transfer across your existing design. We can also transfer across your existing product catalogue and can set up 301 redirects for you. The cost is extremely accessible by any measure, just email in to request a quote. We literally just charge for the time.

Steve just to sit on the fence, if you have 1200 products and pretty high needs then it might be worth moving from hosted solutions as you're always going to come up against limits set by the system e.g. product limits, bandwidth limits, feature limits.

I am not against the types of bluepark, they are perfect for smallish sites but once you start getting into hundreds of products then they can become a hindrance.

The advocates of open source always make this argument regarding hosted solutions. I can't speak for our competitors, but - for example - we have a client that has 155,000 products and the system copes perfectly well. 1,200 is not a large number of products. In terms of bandwidth, we are uncapped and unlimited. Feature-wise, we compare very favourably with our open source competitors.

The freedom that comes with open source goes hand in hand with the responsibility of managing your own server and software, upgrading the software with each version release, managing third party plugins which may or may not break when upgrading, etc. Then there's configuring the server to pass PCI DSS scans, managing unexpected traffic, creating and restoring backups, etc.

This is so often glossed over, but is a transparent process on a hosted (and well-managed) ecommerce platform such as Bluepark.

I'd also like to add that we have clients who take 4+ million turnover per year on our shared hosting platform.

 

[HankMcSpank]

In my opinion, if you're not a techie or partial to a particularly large tome on php coding...then runaway from Opencart.

I'm actually using opencart...but I'm just a small time trader (100 hits per day ...only about 80 products on my website) ...but even for someone as small as my business the Opencart support model makes me cack my pants - basically when you hit a problem, you ask on the user forum...and then nobody replies - most of the time, when I have a problem, I ask on forum & then find myself like Sandra Dee staring at the phone waiting on Dany Zucko to call.

Seriously...if your business has gained critical mass...go with a proper hosted solution (or third party that knows opencart inside out) where at least when you have a problem you can phone someone, go purple & cover them with spit....if you're small & just starting out, then perhaps go with opencart, buy a black sabbath T shirt... drink lots of coke to the point of gaining man boobs ......& stay up all night trying to address the problems & quirks you'll inevitably have with it. (& don't get me started on the jungle that is 'paid extensions')

 

[Faevilangel]

Hank there are a lot of knowledgable OC devs (including me) who are willing to help if you post the question on here, I found the OC forums are quiet and can lack answers.

another good place to get answers is stackoverflow.com, tag the question with opencart and you normally get an answer within minutes.

 

[zigojacko]

We've handled quite a lot of migrations away from EKM, mainly to Magento which on the brief insights into your requirements, I'd likely recommend as being the most stable, robust and flexible platform to serve your business best long-term.

The key is hiring the right person for the job (as with anything), many will claim to be able to work with the likes of Magento and OpenCart but the reality is, they know little more than basic set up and plugging in an off-the-shelf theme and wouldn't know where to start if they have to build upon the platform actually using the open-source nature of it.

 

[ProjectOcto]

As ever, it's PEOPLE that make websites successful - not just the software choice. Zigojacko, Hank McSpank and Bluepark all make the same essential point.

If you want to learn code and manage the site yourself (keeping ££ costs down, but spending more time on it), go open source and have a ball. Hit a problem though and its good luck on the forums!

If you want to spend more time on your business, and are willing to pay for expert support and guidance and features, then go hosted.

It's a 'DIY v Expert' decision, really.

 

[kulture]

You say "hit a problem" but once you are up and running, then problems only happen if you tinker with it. As for upgrades, then if you are not 100% confident hire an expert for that one job.