Campaign Monitor has the features enterprises want

10-second breakdown:

Campaign Monitor comes with tons of high-level features wrapped up in a user interface that doesn’t take a masters in IT to understand. There’s a lot to love here, that’s why Campaign Monitor is one of the best email services around for big business.

Campaign Monitor is used in medium (51-1,000 employees) and enterprise companies (1,000+ employees).

The good:

Many beginning users will love how easy to use Campaign Monitor is. With a slick user interface and intuitive design they allow you to get your email marketing efforts underway.

Lots of unique features that you won’t find with other providers such as drag and drop templates for mobile-friendly emails, nine templated workflows, and detailed analytics.

While more expensive Campaign Monitor’s premier plan adds an email design consultant, online training and onboarding, as well as dedicated customer support making it work your money.

The bad:

Campaign Monitor does not offer and form of live support. They do have email support and a searchable help section to cover common questions.

Lack of integration with third party platforms hinders your ability to quickly upload contacts directly into Campaign Monitor.

How it works:

Right out of the gate Campaign Monitor impresses with its clean and extremely user-friendly interface. Everything is only a couple clicks away and straightforward to navigate. If you’re new to email marketing or not as tech-savvy it’s no big deal, you’ll still get everything done in a timely manner. Campaign Monitor went out of their way to make the interface as clutter-free and downright intuitive to use as humanly possible.

All of the basic email marketing features are here like designing and sending out emails, personalized emails, tracking and reporting with the nice bonus that all of them have the same friendly, inviting feel to them.

All of the system analytics continue the user-friendly trend, they are easy to access and run. You can get a birds eye view of open rates, clickthroughs and unsubscribes as you would expect, but Campaign Monitor makes it easy to drill down to a personal level as well. You can see what a lead has done with your email, and even when. If they opened it up before dinner, put it away, then opened it up again before achieving it, big brother Campaign Monitor watches every step.

If you want to get creative, Campaign Monitor added their high level of polish to A/B testing as well. You’re limited to splitting an email two ways on the subject line, sender, or content but it’s streamlined and very easy to get your tests up and running.

Campaign Monitor understands that mobile is the future, so they designed their email builder to be forward thinking. Whenever you build a new template email, Campaign Monitor will automatically insert optimizations for smaller device screens as you go. It doesn’t matter what size screen your clients have, they’ll get your message loud and clear.

One thing to note, if you tend to heavily rely on software support departments, the lack of support options for cheaper pricing options might be a little concerning. Only the most expensive tier gets phone support, the others can only email in and live chat is simply not available. On the bright side, Campaign Monitor’s email support is open 24/7, so if you’re up late trying to get this newsletter out before tomorrow, they can still help guide you through it.

Campaign Monitor’s pricing is similar to the industry average, they offer three different plans and the price for each varies depending on the number of consumers in your email list. Their free trial works a little differently than the competition, you get the full featured product and you don’t have to pay until you actually start sending out emails.

It’s a little lackluster considering that completely free accounts with emailing are the norm for tiny lists of a few hundred people, but at least you get the opportunity to take it for a spin before making your decision.

Campaign Monitor’s first option is their ‘Basic’ plan. At 500 members on your list, it costs $9 per month and scales up to $299 per month for 50,000 people. Basic comes with all of the core email marketing features, but only gets email support and the number of emails you’re allowed to send out per month is limited.

The ‘Unlimited’ plan costs between $29 and $699 per month based on the size of your email list and allows you to send out an unlimited number of emails per month. It comes with everything basic offers and includes priority email support for faster replies, access to specially trained ‘deliverability experts’ who will assess your emails to make sure they don’t get blocked by spam filters and unlimited spam testing – you can send test emails through popular spam filters to see if they make it through.

The third and final plan is Campaign Monitor’s ‘Premier’ package. It costs between $149 a month and $899 for 500 up through 50,000 people and like Unlimited, you can send out as many emails as you desire. It comes with everything Unlimited offers and also tosses in your own customer success manager, online training and access to their email design consultant.

What if you only send out a newsletter every few months, or maybe even once a year for the holidays? Campaign Monitor offers a unique ‘pay per campaign’ plan instead of the monthly ones listed above. You are only billed when you send out an email blast, and it’s $5 base for the campaign with an additional $0.01 per recipient.

As of this review Campaign Monitor is one of only a handful of companies to offer a feature like that, if you have a larger list that won’t fit into a free plan on a competitor’s program and you only want to send email blasts a few times a year, this is a perfect fit.

With tons of premium features and powerful email templates, Campaign Monitor is a great choice for medium and enterprise clients looking to step up their email marketing or any sized business that has an email list but only sends out blasts a few times a year.

http://authority.org/email-marketing/campaign-monitor/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150529141497

MailChimp is one of the best low cost beginner options

10-second breakdown:

Synonymous with ‘free emailing,’ MailChimp offers great email marketing features for small and medium sized companies. Perfect for bootstrapped businesses or soloprenuers.

MailChimp is used in small (0-50 employees), and medium companies (51-1,000 employees).

The good:

MailChimp has a free plan that is a great starting point for any small business. The Forever Free plan lets you send 12,000 emails/month to less than 2,000 accounts.

MailChimp offer lots of features such as alerts for pay-as-you-go customers, Inbox Preview, chat support(paid plans) and campaign reporting. There are also no message limits on paid plans.

MailChimp is one of the few email marketing providers that integrates with third party platforms, such as FreshBooks, Google Drive and Salesforce, allowing you to automatically download your contacts fast.

The bad:

There is no live support offered. You can contact customer support through email and there are plenty of tutorials, guides, and knowledgebase articles to help answer your questions.

MailChimp doesn’t take paypal as a form of payment which may hinder many small businesses.

How it works:

MailChimp provides everything you need to get started sending out email campaigns, they include a visual drag and drop editor for your emails, you can make custom forms to encourage users to opt-in to your email list, automate emails to go out when you specify, and have all the analytic tools you might want. The entire program is kept very simple and clutter free, all sorts of organizations and businesses use MailChimp so they focused on making it as accessible as possible.

Although it’s not available on the free plan, MailChimp offers some world class analytical tracking. They provide you with interactive graphs to view all email activity. They include the usual open rates, click through rates, bounces and more, but MailChimp steps it up a bit by including more details like open by location, unsubscribe rate and more. They also integrate with Google Analytics to give you even more insight into your campaigns and allows you to see how much revenue each campaign is bringing in.

MailChimp’s mobile app offers a couple unique features too. It covers all the basics like viewing how your campaigns are doing and keeping on top of social media, but also allows you to add new subscribers in right from the app. If you’re hosting a booth at a trade show you could bring a tablet and get email signups right from your table.

Getting started isn’t difficult with the help of MailChimp’s free learning resources. They include video tutorials on how to perform certain functions or run specific reports and even a few ebooks you can download and keep. The really cool part about their learning library is that it extends further than just technical support. There are guides for things like getting the most out of your marketing campaign and how to write emails that boost your clickthrough rates.

One thing to note, MailChimp doesn’t offer any kind of design or spam filter guidance. Many competitors will include access to professionals, at least on higher paid pricing plans. MailChimp’s email editor is robust and there are templates, but if you’re looking for a professional opinion you’re out of luck.

While MailChimp might be known as the ‘poor man’s email service’ with its attractive free tier, they also offer a few paid tiers that come with enough perks to potentially sway your decision. There are three in total – ‘Forever Free’, ‘Monthly’ and ‘Pay As You Go’.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room, although it might be limited in features, MailChimp’s free plan is famous among small businesses and penny-pinchers alike for how easy it is to set up and the generous amount of emails you get to send.

The ‘Forever Free’ plan gives you up to 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails a month. There’s no contract, and no credit card required, if you try to go over the limit they’ll simply prompt you to upgrade to a new plan.

There are a few notable features missing for hardened email marketers like autoresponder capabilities and tools to make sure you pass through spam filters but overall its earned its reputation for one of the best free plans in the industry.

MailChimp’s Monthly plan is their full-featured email service, filled with the features missing from Forever Free. It ranges in price from $10 a month for 500 or fewer contacts all the way up to $475 for email lists 100,000 long. If you have a larger list than that, MailChimp recommends you give them a call for a custom consultation to get set up.

The Monthly plan includes all of the basics that Forever Free promised, and rounds out your package with email automation, delivery by time zone and support through email and live chat. MailChimp offers a ‘Pro Package’ you can tack onto the monthly plan if you’re a power user. It costs a flat $200 per month in addition to your package and gives you fifty additional merge fields to use in your emails, predictive demographic charts, A/V testing up to 8 different versions and priority support.

Pay-As-You-Go gives you the freedom to only pay for what you need, rather than a monthly fee you pay for ‘email credits’ up front and then burn through them when you want to send out an email blast. For businesses that only send out a few blasts a year, this is a godsend. Keep in mind that it can get expensive fast, prices start at $.03 per email if you buy 2,000, and go down to $.01 per email if you purchase 25,000 or more.

Although it can get expensive if you exceed their sending limits. MailChimp is a great option for small to medium sized organizations who are just looking to collect customer information and keep in contact. Its attractive interface and helpful guidance tools make it easy to operate regardless of past technology experience.

http://authority.org/email-marketing/mailchimp/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150529032307

Get Response take the email marketing cake across the board

10-second breakdown:

Capable of handling any sized company, GetResponse is our number one email marketing choice for its intuitive interface, loads of features and affordable price. Read on to see the full value this email marketing provider has to offer.

GetResponse is used in small (0-50 employees), medium (51-1,000 employees) and enterprise companies (1,000+ employees).

The good:

GetResponse has a free 30 day trial that has all the bells and whistles as the paid version so you can truly see what you’re getting for your money. No credit card required.

Flexible plans and pricing are available to suit your business needs. All of the plans are paid monthly, but if you can afford to purchase a full year GetResponse offers you an 18% discount.

Unlike some other providers GetResponse allows you to import your contacts from other third party services such as Google or Salesforce. This can save you from manually typing in thousands of contacts.

The bad:

There is no money back guarantee. GetResponse doesn’t offer any refunds if you cancel your account which could equal a lot of money lost if you purchased the annual plan.

There is only one payment method available, which is by credit card. Many small businesses and entrepreneurs may be disappointed that PayPal is not accepted.

Some users complain that the UI is clunky or even confusing. Some functionality is missing and it isn’t as intuitive as other interfaces.

How it works:

Using GetResponse is very straightforward and it doesn’t take many clicks to do all of the basics like creating campaigns, importing contacts and checking statistics. One of GetResponse’s best features is their autoresponder customization, it’s one of the most comprehensive in the entire industry.

Your autoresponders can be customized to trigger either from time or specific actions. Time-based followups are fairly normal, you could send your subscribers a message a week after signing up for instance. Where things get interesting are the action based messages. Some common triggers to send out an email are email opens and clicks, purchasing something from your business, a birthday or completion of an online form. You could use it to send out a birthday discount or shoot an email to anyone that spends a set amount of time on your homepage, assuming you have their email.

Setting up the autoresponders is drag-and-drop easy to boot. GetResponse recently released a new beta version called ‘Marketing Automation’ that you can use to create automatic workflows. If you’ve ever drawn a mind-map before, you’ll be vaguely familiar with the process, you can link up actions or times with emails, and even create complicated chains of events.

GetResponse also goes above the competition with their reporting and analytics options. They include all the basics you would expect like open rates, unsubscribes, click throughs etc, but add their own twist as well. They offer a ‘one-click segmentation’ feature that identifies people who didn’t open your newsletter, and puts them off into their own group. You could remove them from your contacts if they are a repeat offender, or opt to send them a different newsletter instead to see if you can boost engagement.

Another handy reporting feature is ‘Metrics Over Time,’ it will analyze when most of your subscribers take action after reading your emails. From there you can modify the time you send out your emails to hopefully boost captures.

The A/B testing is worth a mention as well, GetResponse allows you to split test up to 5 different messages on the same email. That’s more splits than all of the competition, some of which don’t even offer the service at all.

If support is important in your buying decision, GetResponse is definitely worth a second look. They offer the usual chat and email support, and also include phone support – something a lot of competitors in the email marketing space skip. They keep chat support open 24/7 for all of the small business night owls.

GetResponse keeps all of the pricing for its plans transparent, and manages to be competitive at the same time. There’s a handy chart that compares all four of their plan’s features, and even has a few videos describing some of the features. While there’s no free version, they do offer a lengthy 30-day free trial. Each of the plans comes with no contract, but if you’re willing to commit to a longer term up front, GetResponse offers 18% off your plan for a one-year agreement and 30% if you can commit to two years.

The first plan up is GetResponse’s ‘Email’ plan. This plan and all of the others are based on the number of contacts in your email list, it starts at $15 a month for only a thousand contacts and scales all the way up to $450 a month for 100,000 contacts. The Email plan comes with all of the basic features, but is limiting – you can only have one user and 1 landing page at 1,000 views a month.

‘Pro’ is the next plan up, the cheapest plan starts at $49 per month for 5,000 contacts – if you have less than that Email might be the better option. For the extra monthly charge you get up to 3 users, unlimited landing pages with unlimited visitors and A/B testing.

Next up is the ‘Max’ plan, it starts at $165 per month for a minimum of 10,000 list contacts. It comes with everything Pro did, but increases the user count to 5 and tosses in a SalesForce integration, your own custom domain and campaign consulting that you can use to get advice or help setting up your system.

Last but not least is the ‘Enterprise’ level, it’s for lists that are 100,000 strong and beyond. There’s no pricing available on the website, GetResponse wants you to schedule a demo with them before you commit. Enterprise comes with everything the other packages do, includes up to 10 users and tosses in your own account manager, a dedicated IP address, the ability to rebrand their services and a dedicated infrastructure on their servers.

GetResponse has it all, it’s a feature-rich package that manages to be simple to navigate as well. Combine that with the low price point and it’s a clear winner – our number one email marketing recommendation.

http://authority.org/email-marketing/get-response/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150528924587

Firstrade is great for beginners who want to avoid the large fees of other brokers

10-second breakdown:

Beginners who follow the “buy and hold” strategy will find all the functionality they need with an easy-to-use platform inside Firstrade. From signing up all the way to making your first investments, the process is laid out to be as clean and simple as possible.

The good:

The navigation and interface just makes sense to anyone who goes on the site. The process of opening an account stands out from other services and the dashboard just spews simplicity (and it’s not bad looking). Firstrade has really made an effort to push their UX/UI to a whole other level.

The mobile app is one of the cleanest in the industry (no surprise here). Basic, but useful functionality and the whole process just flows together making trading just as fun as on your desktop.

The fees are better than many other flagship online brokers, and the terms are surprisingly simple and easy to understand. You won’t have a problem figuring out how much a trade will cost you, it’s all laid out.

The bad:

Unfortunately, simplicity can also be a negative and most of the tools aren’t as powerful as many other trading platforms out there.

Options trades can be made, but the research and other capabilities aren’t good enough to attract the heavy options player.

How it works:

Right out of the gate, signing up with Firstrade is a breeze. You’ll be prompted and guided through the process in no time flat. No minimum deposit is just another sign of their ease of access. After you get signed in, you’ll feel like you understand everything fairly quickly.

While the fees are far less than other flagship brokers, you will notice that there aren’t as many bells and whistles in the research department. Morningstar research is the only company that Firstrade uses for analysis. While this is plenty of data for your stocks, ETF’s and mutual funds; it’s far less than other platforms provide.

Your client dashboard is just as pretty as the rest of the site and everything is right there for you to clearly see. Your panel is customizable so you can put widgets where you like them, but if you’ve used other brokers in the past it will feel a bit less professional-grade.

Once you get to the actual trading platform, things take a slight turn for the negative. “X-Stream”, as it’s called, tries really hard. You can live-stream up to 20 different stocks and do your trading with the tools and deep-ish research capabilities. However, it’s not desktop-based. This fact wouldn’t be a problem if the web application wasn’t based in the Java programming language and doesn’t work on all web browsers.

Next, the advanced charting has over 30 different indicators, but the average trading software has a far higher number than that (typically above 80). Essentially, you’re stuck with a limited amount of data which makes Firstrade a less than stellar option for the frequent trader. The buy and hold crowd may even want to take notice here. The indicators available are good, but there are many missing to tell you the long-term health of a given equity.

You may notice that there is a paid “advanced” version of the software. Access to this software (also web-based and on Java) will cost you a nominal monthly fee, but as far as we can tell it’s not much better than the original and frequent investors will find better tools included with other software products available (even options with the same and lower trading fees).

Alerting is something that Firstrade has going for it. You can customize the alert parameters to a certain degree to have the platform warn you of certain events including price rises or drops in percentage, trading volume, 52-week highs/lows, ask or bid price has reached the customized amount, among others.

Options traders will probably want to stay clear entirely as the research is just not there. Data is an essential part of any strategy and you will find far more of it in other places online.

There is an app available to do your trading mobile-style, but it’s only on iPhones and Android phones. As you’d expect, it is well-made, easy-to-use, but lacking the features you may want.

It’s a decent stock trading platform. It’s perfect if you want a broker that is as beginner friendly, as say, ETrade and super simple to find your way around. All said, it’s not the most feature-rich option and lacks many capabilities that are typically considered “standard” in a lot of other products.

We aren’t telling you to avoid this option altogether. There is an ideal client for this software. It’s made for the person (or people) who want to do just like Warren Buffet and think that “if you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t own it for ten minutes”. If that quote sums up your investment style AND you’re not too technically savvy, then you’ll feel right at home with Firstrade. If not, take a look at our other top brokers.

For complete rankings of all online trading platforms, go here.

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TradeStation is only for the seriously active investor who wants powerful tools

10-second breakdown:

Not for the faint of heart, TradeStation was made for the diehard investor who has a deep understanding of the markets and portfolio. Lots of advanced tools and a required number of trades to hit in order to avoid fees. A great options for those heavily active day traders out there.

The good:

One of the deepest analysis and research systems in all of online stock trading. Capabilities like chart customization with well over 100 different indicators and charts that can go back up to 40 years on a given stock. You won’t be bored, but you will have to know how to use it all.

The program itself is flexible and allows for certain third party modifications and enhancements to build a system that you can really use.

This tool is made for the professional investor which is a big bonus for someone wanting to avoid the “beginner” style of so many online brokers.

The bad:

Unless you trade a minimum of 5,000 shares per month, or have an account balance of $100,000 you’ll have to fork over nearly $100 each month until you meet those requirements.

Fees are a bit higher than the discount services, but fall in line with many of the flagship brokers.

How it works:

There are so many reasons to love TradeStation, especially if you invest everyday. No matter how diversified your portfolio is, the action can be found with this broker. Again, it’s not for the beginner or even casual investor. The terms are serious business to guarantee only certain people are attracted to the platform.

To get an account started, you’ll need a minimum of $5,000 (the highest of brokers we’ve reviewed) and you’ll need to trade 5,000 or more shares each and every month to avoid the $99.95 monthly fee (you could also have $100,000 in your portfolio to avoid the fee). Much of the info needed is the same and you’ll be guided on a process like opening up other financial accounts.

After you’re approved, it’s game on. Investment options include stocks, options, forex and futures which will appeal to those who love to put their money across multiple opportunities. However, their stock/options trading is definitely the highlight of the company.

Once you’re ready to start your research, you may be a bit overwhelmed. The site itself claims to have “hundreds of products that amplify the power of TradeStation”. That said, you’ll have to take your time going through the list of offerings (many free, but some are paid) to build the investing machine of your dreams.

TradeStation still operates primarily off of a desktop platform. A web-based alternative is available, but the capabilities are bare bones and it’s not what most of their customers use, except in the event they are away from their desks. The desktop version is geared for those who stare at the streams all day and it can be tweaked to allow for a multi-monitor setup.

It’s entirely customizable to suit your needs, and the number of add-ons is daunting to begin with. Give it an honest go and you’ll be giddy by the time you start seeing the potential platform you can create.

Just a few of the add-ons include “Person Pivots Daily”, an algorithm to calculate the projected Daily Pivot Point Support & Resistance numbers (a helpful free tool for highly-active traders), “Eclipse” a tool that helps accredited trading pros recognize intraday trends ($99/mo), and “Ichimoku Indicators” an analysis tool that can spot trends to help refine your plans (it’s free as well). There are literally dozens of different tools, here’s a link to their category page for all the products.

These tools aren’t for your weekend retirement account on-the-side type of investment strategy. Many of the tools attract successful day traders and hedge fund managers, which should give you a clear picture of whether or not it’s for you. We are talking deep analysis capabilities for individuals who understand what is happening to a given equity based on the numbers they see.

To get even more geeky with it, TradeStation has an open-source style (called “EasyLanguage”) to allow third-party developers and users to create new apps/tools to share them with the rest of the community. This sort of creative permission has allowed some of the best charting tools and analytic devices to come about and they are exclusively available through TradeStation.

Side Note: You can even sell your creations in the open marketplace (called the TradeStation TradingApp Store). Although, if it’s that good you’ll want to keep it for yourself, right?

If options are your primary strategy, there is a program within the TradeStation framework that is just for you. It’s called “OptionStation Pro” and will potentially revolutionize your trades. One of the neatest things is the ability to view data in both 2D and 3D (a feature only seen through this broker). The data available is also some of the best around with real-time streaming Greek and analytics that help make the best strategy (like theoretical forecasts, expiration assistance, and customizable data sets).

The last “warning” we can give you is that this platform isn’t for casual investors. Even if you fancy yourself a seasoned, part-time day trader; we beg you to take an honest evaluation to see if you can use the platform to it’s full potential.

If so, there really aren’t any other platforms that speak to the top 5%-10% of self-investors as well as TradeStation does. If you’ve got the ambition (and minimum account opening balance), it very well could be the broker for you.

For complete rankings of all online trading platforms, go here.

http://authority.org/online-stock-trading/tradestation/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150484005412

Liquid Web Review: Everything you need to know

Overview: Liquidweb focuses on medium to large businesses and offers its customers top of the line dedicated hosting with unsurpassed customer service and security.

Pricing:

VPS: $50/mo for VPS hosting

Cloud Dedicated: $50/mo for managed hosting

Managed Dedicated: $199/mo for managed hosting

Ideal Customer: Any enterprise or corporate level business looking for specialized hosting services with fully managed options.

Trends:

Unique Features:

Managed VPS Hosting: Managed VPS Hosting is a special feature from Liquidweb which comes with many other uses and advantages. VPS, meaning Virtual Private Server is a virtualized server which technically mimics both dedicated and shared hosting. Shared hosting is when you share segments of a server with other users, this is useful when you run a small or new website with little traffic. A dedicated server is when you rent an entire server for yourself, and this is useful for much more high traffic yielding sites. A VPS server, however, offers you the benefits of both and if you are considering a dedicated server but not 100% sure, then you should certainly check out a VPS host. A VPS host can provide you with many benefits such as added privacy (as you don’t share your OS with anyone else), an ability to customize (your own OS means all server applications are yours and hence easier to adapt and change), added control (your VPS server can restart without affecting others), and dedicated resources such as RAM available to you whenever you need it.
Liquidweb offers various different types of VPS servers, from the basic 1GB RAM and 50GB SSD disk space (for $50 a month) to 8GB RAM and 300GB SSD disk space for $219 a month. They can however, cover you for much more RAM if you so require.

Included with the VPS service is the Storm VPS Server which provides you with many additional benefits. Firstly, you are provided with Cloudflare CDN. Cloudflare has two distinct features in that it helps secure your site (by acting as a proxy), as well as helping to optimize your site (by optimizing your HTML). Cloudflare therefore allows you to preserve bandwidth and resources by allowing threats to be detected and stopped well before they reach your site. Liquidweb’s Cloudflare promises the following attributes with full site coverage including improved performance on any site, faster page load times, reduced bandwidth usage, server dashboard integration, together with improved SEO and conversion rates. Another benefit of using Storm VPS hosting is the built-in backups. Storm VPS backups can be enabled to allow you to take full server snapshots (including full server backups, on-demand backups, whole serve restoration, and automatic daily backups) and hence provide data recovery as and when you need it. They also provide you with security in the form of firewall protection, server hardening, daily security audits, and HTTP intrusion protection. Another feature added to Liquidweb’s Storm VPS Managed Server is the ability to prevent small-scale DDoS attacks. Comprehensive protection is available for larger scale attacks if required.

Liquidweb’s Managed VPS packages all support 100 percent network uptime, monitoring, and a 30 minute response time guaranteed. Together with this, you also get instant provisioning, real-time monitoring, free incoming bandwidth, API access, free storm firewall, an available Plesk, 5TB outgoing bandwidth, the ability to easily upgrade or downgrade, RAID protected SSD VPS, as well as daily billing available so you only pay for what you use.

Storm Add-Ons: Liquidweb offer Storm Hosting Add-Ons to enhance and improve your Storm Hosting environment. These include Block Storage, Object Storage, Load Balancer, and a VPN. Block Storage allows you to create and move block storage volumes separated from your instances. This makes it easier than ever before to create an exceptional amount of storage space. Object Storage provides you a cost effective way of allowing you to store and access an almost limitless amount of data through a simple API call (replacing the need to rely on additional servers). Object Storage provides you with 3 copy redundancy (3 copies of your data are stored across a distributed system), durable cloud-based storage, and is Amazon S3 compatible. Load Balancer offers you intelligently distributed traffic across multiple nodes (it comes with full redundancy built in, handles HTTP and https traffic, and is fully managed by network engineers). Lastly, a VPN simply allows you to connect across a secure plane of communication to access various geographical areas.

Hybrid Hosting: The power of the Hybrid server was unlocked and discovered when Managed Dedicated Servers were provisioned in conjunction with the new Storm Server. There are many advantages of Hybrid Hosting with Liquidweb. These include dedicated servers with flexible cloud hosting, the ability to directly attach to storage networks, high availability database integration, managed dedicated load balancers, and advanced network infrastructure options.

Pros:

• Customer Service: Response time is part of their uptime guarantee and they have a 20 second response time guarantee on all support calls.
• Uptime Guarantee: A 100% network uptime guarantee for Dedicated and VPS also comes with a 30 minute hardware replacement guarantee and a 30 minute initial response time guarantee.
• Security:Redundantly Built Network with each facility having multiple backup emergency generators, reinforced walls, on-site security, and fully managed facilities have trained technicians on-site 24 hours a day.
• Money back guarantee: Liquidweb offers a 30 day money back guarantee on shared hosting plans.

Cons:

• No shared uptime guarantee: Shared hosting does not come with an uptime guarantee.
• Backups: Backups are an added on cost for Dedicated and VPS. Shared hosting can only do DIY backups through CPanel.
• Higher Price: Liquidweb has a higher price tag than others for shared hosting, but with fewer features and no guarantees.

Summary:

Liquidweb have a well formed reputation for being strong providers of security, but above that, they are strong leaders in client help and support. To illustrate this, their claim of being able to answer the telephone (and live chat) within 59 seconds guaranteed is second to none in the market. They have plans going upwards from $50 a month depending on the store and service you require.

Takeaway: If you are unhappy with the level of support and guidance you are getting from your current server then Liquidweb may well be your solution. They have taken in many customers who were astounded by their swift and knowledgeable support structure. On the flip side however, pricing plans do not start cheap, therefore you will need to determine if you need the level of services they provide for your website and business.

http://authority.org/web-hosting/liquid-web/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150483804397

Servint Review: Everything you need to know

Overview: ServInt prides itself on providing personalized hosting solutions. They offer flexible and customizable options for businesses and developers.

Pricing:

Shared VPS: $27/mo for VPS hosting.

Cloud VPS: $69/mo for VPS hosting.

Dedicated: $239/mo for dedicated hosting.

Ideal Customer: With ServInt’s scalability and premium hosting options they cater more to growing businesses than beginning webmasters.

Trends:

Unique Features:

Cloudflare: Cloudflare is a unique feature available to all ServInt users and setting it up usually takes less than 5 minutes. Once your website is part of Cloudflare it gets passed through their global network, which provides you with two distinct advantages. Firstly, malicious attacks and threats such as comment spam, email harvesters, cross-site scripting, SQL injections, abusive bots and crawlers, and DDoS attacks are all prevented through Cloudflare acting as a proxy between your ServInt server and external visitors to your site. Visitors, crawlers, bots, and attackers all have to pass through Cloudflare’s globally distributed network which then filters out and decides who to let in and block, leaving your site protected and attack free. By stopping these threats way before they actually reach your website, it allows you to preserve your bandwidth and resources for your much needed legitimate website traffic. Another unique advantage Cloudflare provides is optimization for your website. The delivery of your web pages are automatically optimized (allowing for fast page load times for your visitors), and by using local storage on browsers and mobile devices your site is left best rendered. Cloudflare also optimizes your HTML so that even third party resources cannot affect and slow down your page loading times.

Together with the above, there are many other benefits to using Cloudflare. Cloudflare provides the latest CDN technology with a total of 63 data centers worldwide. A CDN (Content Delivery Network) essentially helps you to distribute your content around the world allowing it to be closer to your visitors using geographically dispersed servers (so users can use a network of servers spread around the world, instead of them all overloading your one specific web host server). Therefore by using Servint’s Cloudflare CDN you can provide website load times that are 2 times faster, with 65% fewer requests, and can save you up to 60% of your bandwidth. Another feature that Cloudflare provides is a custom built and fully owned DNS service. A DNS service (which stands for Domain Name System) is a system which contains a database of network names and addresses around the world so when you type in a website into your browser, it can automatically be matched and recognized. Cloudflare has one of the fastest DNS services around and provides a DNS that is very secure, global, and powerful. Lastly, Cloudflare also provides you with site analytics and mobile apps. Site Analytics is a feature not always available on other packages and where you can obtain information about website traffic, visitors and threats. Cloudflare apps allow you to install web apps on your site faster and quicker.

Jelastic PAAS: Jelastic PAAS is a feature available on ServInt designed specially for software developers and ISVS allowing you to deploy a working cloud solution in hours instead of months. It provides everything you need for a turnkey cloud solution. Some of the specific features you can get with Jelastic includes monitoring, provisioning, authentication, billing, health checking and statistics, together with support and maintenance. Some of the advantages of using Jelastic PAAS includes faster deployment (applications can be deployed in seconds), GIT and SVN support, simpler management (with easy to use dashboards), enterprise class availability (isolated containers mean failures do not strike other environments), full elastic scalability (with automatic vertical scalability as well as horizontal scaling, meaning that if application demand shrinks, resources are sent back to the cloud ensuring optimized application density), together with an assurance that almost any application can be supported (with no complex APIs to have to code on any required changes to your application).

Managed Migration: Do you have a host you are very unhappy with but are afraid of the hassle of switching servers? Are you looking to switch hosts but unsure how to migrate all your information and data across. ServInt offers a Managed Migration Service which takes all the hassle and effort out of moving servers. ServInt will move all your files and databases from your current hosting company together with bringing over any custom configurations you require. All you are required to do is create a new account (where you can get ServInt Managed Migration for free) and then repoint your DNS. The services apply to ‘cPanel to cPanel’ migrations as well as ‘Plesk to cPanel’ migrations.

Pros:

• Cloudflare: Acting as a virtual doorman to your website Cloudflare offers a level of security that is not found at many other hosts.
• Customer Support: Their options are front and center on the website with chat, phone number, and email links always at the top of the page. They promise 24/7 chat and online support. Concierge members also have 24/7 phone support.
• Managed Migration: No need to worry about the stress of switching hosts, let ServInt manage the process for you. And the best part is that it’s free when you establish a new account.
• WP Friendly: Servint has special WP hosting for WordPress users and Bloggers. They will install the software for you upon request and even has WP technical support if you need it.

Cons:

• No Uptime Guarantee: There is no uptime guarantee listed on their website however they make a strong case for their customer support to be able to quickly handle any issues.
• Fully managed hosting: While ServInt does have managed options, concierge and premium, you will have to contact their expert team to price the premium option.
• Not for beginners: Servint does have a wide variety of options for businesses, bloggers, and agencies but those new to the web may be overwhelmed here.

Summary:

Starting at $27 a month and going up to $329 a month ServInt is certainly a more upscale and premium product compared to other servers such as GoDaddy and Bluehost. However, they offer a large variety of services in return for this such as Linux, WHM, VPS, CentOS, together with the above unique features described.

Takeaway: The availability of phone support and instant help from ServInt has mixed response reviews, however, there is no doubt that if you are a professional or business looking to scale up your website then ServInt offers ample services unavailable as easily elsewhere. On the flip side, if you are newly setting up a personal blog with little traffic, this premium service may not be suited to you.

http://authority.org/web-hosting/servint/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150483604787

SquareSpace helps you stay stylish with your site to attract a modern crowd

10-second breakdown:

SquareSpace is devoted to helping your store look good, which ultimately leads to more people on your site for a longer time. With half the battle won, you just have to sell good stuff and compel them to try it out. Easy to set up and very versatile for designers and visually appealing products.

The good:

The design of your online shop is bound to look good with this software. Beautiful templates and very intuitive tools to get you setup quickly. They’ve put a lot of work into the elements that draw the eye of your shoppers and if you don’t have much UX experience, it will help you (and your products) look their best.

There are multiple types of products that are sellable on SquareSpace. Digital and physical goods are both supported and well thought out. Downloads can even be facilitated by the platform which isn’t the case with some other ecommerce solutions.

Analytics data is rich and useful to help you figure out ways to keep eyeballs on the screen longer and sell more product overall.

The bad:

There is no third-party widget marketplace; which means less innovation from the seller point of view.

Surprisingly limited mobile site configurations given the mobile state of the internet at large.

How it works:

Right out of the gate you should know that SquareSpace isn’t exclusively an online shop builder, but a DIY website tool that allows you to create a store if you so desire. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a solid option. It’s especially useful for anyone who wants to build a content-based site that has the functionality built-in to sell products.

To get started, you’ll need to pick the plan that’s right for you. This platform only has two for online shops, here’s the breakdown of both:

Basic: With the basic plan, you can sell an unlimited number of products with no transaction fees. You get a free domain if you purchase a year’s worth of service and all sites are mobile-friendly (a must in ecommerce). Inventory tracking, tax calculators, and label-printing are also standard.

Advanced: The advanced plan comes with all of the features of basic as well as abandoned cart recovery, deeper analytics, and real-time shipping data.

One of the biggest selling points about SquareSpace is it’s seeming superpower to turn even the most design deficient users into web development pros. It’s not only easy to build a site, but you’ll be surprised at how stunningly beautiful your creation is. In online shopping, your site has to look as good as the pictures of your products, so if you need help in the visual department, take a good look at this platform.

One of the downsides here is the low number of shopping specific templates. While there are fewer than ten, the ones that are there look phenomenal, modern, and they all look just as good on smartphones/tablets. The templates are also fit for any products and aren’t made with one type of company (e.g fashion) in mind.

It’s not the biggest problem in the world, because the site-building capabilities with SquareSpace makes everything customizable. One of the coolest things is the ability to add a store onto a fully-functioning site. This makes it a great way for consultants, bloggers and other content-focused businesses to have a site that draws traffic and a store that can sell your services, digital or even physical goods.

Upon sign-up, you’ll have access to the dashboard. Even though it’s not their sole focus, adding and viewing your offers and orders is really good-looking and easy to understand. You just click, add a product and it will ask you if it’s physical, digital, or even a service (not something we’ve seen in a lot of other solutions). Then you can manipulate the details and even the page your product will sit on. It’s all super easy and you can have a store full of manually entered products in one sitting.

Add-ons aren’t really a thing with this solution. Other platforms have dozens of features that come standard or marketplaces that can include hundreds of gizmos to improve your site. It’s really basic, but effectively functional. The advanced plan has cart abandonment and the features they do have mostly come standard, but if you’re into bells and whistles you won’t find that here.

As far as taking payments, you’ll have to sign up for a Stripe account. SquareSpace doesn’t have integrations with other payment gateways (not even PayPal). Be sure to take this into consideration, even though Stripe is awesome. Another bonus is the included SSL and PCI compliance. There are a few other ecommerce platforms that offer this, but very few that include it at all levels with the price.

If you’re into making content (e.g blog, podcast, etc.) then Squarespace may be the option for you. Simple and beautiful sites are their strong suit. The functionality is enough to have a very successful site and the pricing is very inexpensive for what you get.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/squarespace/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438368327

Rackspace review: Everything you need to know

Overview: Rackspace claims to be the largest managed cloud based provider and as such they offer expertise across the board with top engineers helping you with the world’s leading cloud services.

Pricing:

Managed: Contact Rackspace for pricing for managed hosting

Intensive: Contact Rackspace for pricing for managed hosting

Fanatical : Contact Rackspace for pricing for managed hosting

Ideal Customer: Any small to enterprise level business looking for an established provider specializing in managed Cloud hosting.

Trends:

Unique Features:

OpenStack Public Cloud: Often times development teams struggle to create applications in private environments. Rackspace has not only created a public cloud space that is currently used by thousands of engineers and industry experts, but also has multiple tools that help make the entire process easier than most other cloud providers. The “cutting edge” features combined with a fully-controlled environment makes this particular cloud server a playground for developers looking to work quickly on their iterations. The host promises that your server can be set up in less than 60 seconds by using either their custom control panel or the OpenStack API. This speed allows you to focus on the important things (like coding). This cloud platform is entirely scalable to your needs. Your agency won’t have to worry about having the resources to handle traffic or the files. Everything is controlled from a single intuitive panel where you can allocate resources and access all those tools. Speaking of tools, we’ll mention a few that you’ll be able to get your hands on. Auto Scale can take the guess work out of your resources and will grow or reduce your environment based on changes in your traffic. Orchestration gives you the ability to build custom templates (or use pre-existing production-ready template from Rackspace’s catalog). Each OpenStack user also gets real-time monitoring and alerts that is even customizable at the enterprise level. After you’re set up and developing there is a detailed reporting system that will give you a glimpse into the health of your creations infrastructure that will help you improve performance over time.

Professional Services: Depending on the size of your team and overall operation it may be necessary to utilize a multi-cloud system. Multiple environments can be a huge hassle, even if they are under the same host. This problem has prompted Rackspace to create a service to help larger developers with this unique problem. Professionals will listen to the goals and struggles that you have endured in order to provide the advice you’ll need when matching your clouds to your workloads. These experts won’t just offer ideas, but help you to create the roadmap to an efficient, productive set of environments. Specifically, there are a few services included in their “Professional Services” category. IT Transformation will give you real-world guidance to migrating, building, and securing your resources across multiple cloud platforms. You can also employ Migration Services to help the move from a single server to a complex development system. Making a transfer to a more complicated strategy takes a lot, but Rackspace has put valuable resources together to help make the transition quick. There are maintenance plans, DevOps Advisory Workshops, and on demand services. The pros can be as hands-on as you like in so many aspects including health checks to assist in things like performance testing and vulnerability scans. Database platform services are also available including help with “everything from planning and design to application support.”

Web Content Management: Your apps and websites aren’t just products; they are content that needs to be handled. However, development folks are focused on building new content and sometimes lack in the managing department. In another intuitive move, Rackspace has created a service for managing the files for their clients. There are so many nuances to a well-performing site, it makes perfect sense for hosting experts to handle yours. Page load time, updated content, downtime the list goes on and on. Not only is poor site performance bad for SEO, it’s ultimately bad for your customers. Rackspace will essentially manage your site’s infrastructure for you. Their teams are experts in the ways of building an optimized environment for your products to thrive. Instead of slowing down your development you can lean on the skills of an award-winning content delivery network and have a custom landscape built for speed and uptime, guaranteed. Of course, you’ll be updated and aware of everything involved every step of the way. Really, it’s a great way to concentrate on the growth of your business without the hassle of managing your site’s content.

Pros:

• Customer Support: Rackspace offers 24/7/365 support with phone number, live chat and email contact links front and center on their website
• Hybrid Cloud: RackConnect lets you link your dedicated server to their fully managed cloud for scalability and security.
• Uptime Guarantee: They offer a 100% uptime guarantee for their network with advanced network backup technology.
• Top Cloud Experts: Rackspace will help you manage and migrate anything you need to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Cloud/Azure, and Openstack Cloud.

Cons:

• Pricing: Rackspace doesn’t provide any clear pricing on their website. There are tools that claim to give you an estimate, but mostly you have to contact them directly.
• Managed only: They offer only managed and dedicated cloud hosting, no shared or VPS available.
• Not for beginners: Rackspace is designed for businesses up to the enterprise level and some of their services cost thousands of dollars.

Summary:

Rackspace boasts over 3000 cloud engineers on staff and a rather extensive list of other professionals and certifications. They manage many large household name businesses and promise the same level of dedication for your business. Professional services, infrastructure, and content services are all available to help your business reach it’s full potential.

Takeaway: Rackspace is perfect for businesses that want piece of mind that their website is completely taken care of. Security and cloud scalability from the top cloud managed company. If you are a developer or tech-savvy webmaster that likes to have a hands on approach then this service isn’t for you.

http://authority.org/web-hosting/rackspace/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438174422

PinnacleCart is the stress-free way to start your first online shop

10-second breakdown:

PinnacleCart gives beginners the confidence they need to start a store with all of the basics, but will also allow them to grow into a rich set of advanced features. There are other options that are easy, but this software really seems to grow with it’s users and help them learn along the way to success.

The good:

PinnacleCart has some very impressive SEO features that can help your shop be found by more people naturally. Taking advantage of those searching for the things you sell is like free marketing that can last a long time and make you a large profit-margin. You’ll still have to do a lot of work (SEO can be tough), but it’s a great start.

Designing your site is one of the easiest experiences of all the other ecommerce platforms (except maybe Shopify). Templates and easy-to-find elements will help you to create the look and feel that you wanted; maybe even better.

The dashboard is clean and clear to keep you in the know about how your shop is performing. You can have multiple administrators which is a bonus for larger operations with multiple back-end staffers.

The bad:

PinnacleCart doesn’t have it’s own payment gateway, so you’ll have to get a third-party solution (they support 30 different ones).

Certain other limitations include limits on storage resources and bandwidth (could be a bummer for high-traffic stores).

How it works:

PinnacleCart is a scalable all-in-one commerce solution. They identify as a small business themselves and feel like they can relate to and help small businesses better that other ecommerce solutions. PinnacleCart offers four different hosted pricing plans. All plans include unlimited products, daily backups, US based support, PCI/PA-DSS Compliant, Zero transaction fees, free migration, and free Doba integration. The rest of the plan specifics are as follow:

Start Up: This basic plan offers 1GB Website Storage and 2GB Website Traffic. Those resources should be enough to get you several dozen products and around 4,000-5,000 visitors a month.

Small Biz: This plan offers 3GB Website Storage, 8GB Website Traffic, and Quickbooks Auto Sync. At this level, you’ll be at several hundred products and around 20,000 visitors a month.

Entrepreneur: This is PinnacleCart’s most popular plan. It offers 10GB Website Storage, 20GB Website Traffic, and Quickbooks Auto Sync. Up to a couple thousand products and 50,000+ visitors a month.

Enterprise: This is the largest and therefore most expensive plan made for large companies and corporations. This plan offers 50GB Website Storage, 100GB Website Traffic, and Quickbooks Auto Sync. You’re probably not going to need to worry about storage or traffic levels with these resources unless you are a drop shipper with tens of thousands of products or have a very large amount of traffic.

PinnacleCart also offers two VPS options for their enterprise level customers.

VPS1: With this plan you get 50GB disk space, 200GB Bandwidth, and includes 2 virtual stores. More can be added at an additional cost.

VPS2: With this plan you get 100GB disk space, 400GB Bandwidth, and includes 5 virtual stores. More can be added at an additional cost.

With both VPS accounts you get unlimited email accounts and an unlimited number of databases.

The hosted plans all offer a 14 day free trial. This is a truly free trial, no credit card is needed to start. If you decide PinnacleCart isn’t for you after you’ve made a purchase, you can cancel anytime without fees or penalties.

Once you decide to buy there is a quick start guide to get you started. The control panel and dashboard are simple and easy to use. The only other things you need to get started are a reliable internet connection and an updated web browser.

PinnacleCart is also mobile friendly, they integrate with iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices. They also help you with your social media presence. The PinnacleCart Social Media Commerce Platform allows customers to like and share your products to their friends using Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more. This add-on is free to all PinnacleCart’s customers.

Setting up your store is fairly stress-free. PinnacleCart offers you 30 different free templates to get started. No worries if you don’t like it later, you can easily switch it out. “Design Mode” let you fully customize your store, their drag and drop functionality makes it easy. PinnacleCart let’s you have unlimited products listed on your site. This includes physical products, digital products, and gift certificates.

As far as functionality, PinnacleCart offers just about everything you could need for your virtual storefront. They help you handle everything from printing packing slips and invoices, accepting credit cards, inventory tracking, currency converting, and the list goes on.

They also help you understand how business is going by integrating with Google Analytics and Adwords. You can view numerous reports that break down customer flow, revenue, top viewed products, and see how customers are finding your site.

PinnacleCart support a variety of payment processors but Chase Paymentech is their preferred payment gateway. You can contact their customer service rep to see how you can integrate other services or processors. Customer Service is available by phone, web ticket, and email. They also have a decent knowledgebase to help you get through any questions you may have.

PinnacleCart offers clear pricing and their setup is straightforward. For those that have some online storefront experience this should prove to be a quick start and a clear winner. Any large or high volume retailers should check out their VPS options.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/pinnaclecart/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438174302

3D Cart fits your budget while giving you great open box features for your shop

10-second breakdown:

3D Cart is a great budget-friendly option that has more features than you’d expect for the price. While it’s not as robust as some of the top players, it is definitely worth further inspection for those bootstrapped new store owners.

The good:

Every plan has more features than most other ecommerce solutions on the market and for a lower price than most of the competition. In an industry that is by and large pay to play for features, it’s a refreshing thing to see. If you want some advanced features to help your store improve, this could be the right service.

There are free shared SSL’s available if you are willing to have your shopping cart go to a sub-domain from 3D Cart. Doing so does break the experience and could create some confusion, but if you are starting out and don’t want to fork over the sometimes hefty SSL fee; it doesn’t hurt.

The live chat support is very responsive (usually in less than an hour).

The bad:

The templates for stores aren’t nearly as pretty as some of the competitors. This is unfortunate, since most owners want their shops to look appealing.

If your store gets a bump in traffic, you could end up paying a bandwidth overage charge if you break your plan’s preset limits.

How it works:

3D Cart is a straight-forward all-inclusive style platform. You choose a plan, build your store, and load up your products. Your site is hosted through your account and their pricing makes it a bargain to be looked at thoroughly. It’s one of the smaller solutions on the market and that can benefit users in a variety of ways, but the first step is choosing a plan to suit your needs. Here’s a brief breakdown:

Nano: The smallest plan is built for shops with fewer products (you’re only allowed up to 25). It also allows for up to 2000 visits per month and 1GB of bandwidth. It’s great for craft vendors and other small operations wanting to break out of the third-party platforms.

Mini: This level of the platform allows for up to 200 different products and a higher traffic level of 4000 visits every month and 2GB of bandwidth.

Starter: At this level, it’s going to be enough for many smaller ventures with 1000 products and up to 8000 visitors/mo and 4GB of bandwidth. The starter plan allows for 10 different email accounts (up from 5 for the two lower levels).

Professional: This level is called professional for a reason. Up to 10,000 products (probably more than most would need, unless you’re drop-shipping) 20,000 visitors/mo and 10GB of bandwidth. This plan also comes with an unlimited number of email accounts.

Professional Plus: This level allows for an unlimited number of products and up to 50,000 visitors a month along with 25GB worth of bandwidth resources.

High-Traffic Premium: For the top-tier shops that have a ton of regular traffic, this could be your option. Unlimited products and 60GB worth of bandwidth to hold all of that traffic (well over 100k/mo).

High-Traffic Plus: The highest plan available through 3D Cart with all of the features of the lower plans and a staggering 250GB of bandwidth; enough for a ridiculous amount of visitors each month.

Other initial features that you’ll get when you sign up for any account will be a free domain (if you don’t have one already), Facebook and mobile versions of your store (a must in today’s mobile/social environment), and phone support options. With all these extras being offered for every plan, it really makes the case that 3D Cart is one of the best options for micro and small online store owners.

This software is also entirely cloud-based which means your store will be faster and can be ran from just about any device with a solid internet connection. All of the management happens through the web and it’s fairly hands-off compared to other ecommerce tools. You simply log in and instantly have access to start building your store.

Designing your shop is easy, but could be pricey. There are several dozen free themes that are all mobile responsive and everything you need to get your products in front of the eyeballs of your customers. However, they aren’t that pretty. In fact, most of them are just above the basic level. Where this is really going to be a problem are the boutique shops that have stylish products and will need a stylish design. There are other templates for sale, but can cost upwards of a couple hundred bucks. That is a one time fee and would be worth it, especially if you need a good looking site. There is also a design service for a custom design, but that goes to a much higher cost.

There is on-boarding assistance, but right now it costs $249. If you are clueless and would like the help it could be worth it, but the platform isn’t difficult and fairly intuitive even for those who aren’t technical. The hardest part is choosing a payment gateway. 3D Cart doesn’t charge a transaction fee, but the processor you choose will.

Side Note: There are several processors to choose from and you can take a look at our top choices here.

Once you upload your products, it’s time to set up for the traffic that will be coming. There are so many awesome features to attract and retain visitors and all of them come with every account type (from nano up). For starters, you can sell either physical or digital goods and there is a one-page checkout system (proven to increase conversions). Tax and shipping calculators for your customers, order tracking, wish lists, registries, and coupon codes/discounts are just a few ways you can better serve your audience.

For you, there are multiple SEO tools, inventory tracking that helps maintain stock levels and simple product management help with uploading new sku’s and categorizing them for easy display.

All of these features are standard. You get an account and you get all of the goodies. This alone makes 3D Cart a very appealing choice for budget seekers who want power without the hefty price tag of some better known options.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/3d-cart/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438174117

PrestaShop is a free software that puts you in control of your online store

10-second breakdown:

PrestaShop was built with big online shops in mind who want to build a semi-custom design in a self-hosted environment. A bit more hands-on than your full-service ecommerce shop builders and it’s not for beginners. Programming experience is almost necessary. All told, it’s a powerful way to build a shop that is truly unique and fast.

The good:

Beautiful themes and lots of them. There are over 2000 templates to choose from in the gallery and every one is really good looking in its own right. Almost all of them are responsive to take advantage of the large number of mobile shoppers nowadays and uploading them and adding your text is a very easy process.

SEO is a strong suit for PrestaShop. Organic traffic that is targeted to keywords based on the products you sell is a powerful weapon in the hands of an ecommerce shop. Free potential customers isn’t something to scoff at.

Page speeds are faster than other competitors, which could help that SEO situation as well as keep more people from skipping the site before they see what you’ve got to sell.

The bad:

The learning curve is undeniably steep for people with little coding experience. If you don’t understand programming at all, you’re going to have trouble getting started.

The software is free, but everything else will cost you including hosting, add-ons, and maybe a designer.

How it works:

PrestaShop isn’t an “all-inclusive” style of shop building software. In fact, it doesn’t share a lot in common with most of the solutions (Except Magento Community Edition). This product is an open-source software that comes in two different versions. Both products are completely free to use. While you don’t pay for the platform, there are other things that you’ll need to supply on your own. Here are the basics:

Domain name and hosting: This is a software and not an all-in-one solution, you’ll need to have your own domain and hosting account (here’s our list of top choices). There is a cloud-hosted option with PrestaShop that’s worth looking into. If you’re looking for a more inclusive option; many other ecommerce platforms (e.g. Shopify) do have just about everything you need included.

SSL and Payment Processor: In order to make money, you’ll need to take credit cards and have some security on the site that will make it safer for customers. Integrating these things is entirely on you. We’ve put together a list of the top credit card processors we like. Check it out.

Development Help: You’re probably going to need a developer to work on your shop. There are templates, but without coding knowledge it’s just not going to look the way you want.

Choosing a hosting type is incredibly important with PrestaShop. There are only two options, entirely self-hosted or hosted through PrestaShop Cloud. There aren’t a lot of reasons not to use the cloud version. It’s free, you can use your own domain name, and it’s much (like way) easier to deal with. It’s a lot less coding, too.

If you use the cloud, you’ll simple sign into a dashboard that can handle most of the inner workings of the software. There is a pretty intuitive setup wizard that helps you pick and attach a theme and punch in your first products. If you choose the self-hosted route, you’ll have to manually put everything together and upload the software to your server before you can get to this process.

Picking a template will be daunting, especially if you’re the thorough type. There are over 2000 professionally-designed third-party templates. PrestaShop only gives you the basic template that comes stock and all of the other options are paid. Prices vary more than other platforms from less than $50 to more than $500. This high number of choices is great if you want the feel of a unique design without having to do a lot of coding. Other platforms have so few templates many of the stores look the same. Probably not happening here.

Either way, once it’s set up things are noticeably easier than with other open-source shop builders.

Entering the product’s data, categories, and features can be done right when you add the product to your store. Order management is also simple and one feature we like is the ability to email your customer right from the order page. This is really cool if you like personalizing the experience. A simple email note from you could mean a world of difference and could gain the loyalty of more buyers.

Support is tricky. You can pay for support (gets costly), but with so many of the features and templates designed by third parties, you may not get the help you need. There is a lot of educational material and an active forum, which could help.

PrestaShop really shines in the features department. There are over 300 of them that all come standard with the free software. Everything you could possibly think of like a shipping calculator, currency conversion for international sales, automated emails, promotional setup, SEO tools, and even the ability to offer gift wrapping.

If you can’t find something right off hand, but feel like you need it; there is a third-party add-on store. This is a pay-to-play environment with costs ranging from around $20 into the hundreds. It’s here you’re going to find third-party selling integrations (like Amazon, eBay), design elements to make your shop look better, and advanced SEO helps.

Another difference between PrestaShop and the open-source giant Magento are the payment gateways. Presta offers 12 built in and the ability to integrate with just about any choice on the market (here’s our list of the best).

If you want a shop that is a bit more hands on and free than a fully supported ecommerce platform, but still something that is easily managed; there aren’t many options better than PrestaShop.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/prestashop/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438173937

BigCommerce is worth a good look and could be the future of ecommerce

10-second breakdown:

BigCommerce is a great up-and-coming option that is challenging the leader in the ecommerce space (Shopify). This platform’s user-centered features and overall simplicity make it a big name in the making. There are multiple pros geared towards getting shop owners to think twice before signing up with someone else.

The good:

One page checkout is available for all shops using BigCommerce. This is a feature that many other ecommerce platforms don’t offer yet. If your casual “window shoppers” see that you can complete the transaction all on a single page, it has been proven to increase conversions.

There are several tools available to help with your SEO. Rank higher in the search engines for the products you sell (or related terms) and you’ll be drawing them in naturally with intent to buy.

No transaction fees. Every transaction will cost you the processing, but you won’t pay an additional charge to BigCommerce for it.

The bad:

The site builder is a bit clunky and underperforms compared to others. It could take a developer to get things the way you want.

Prices have recently changed and may be too much to start your store, especially if you have a solid growth plan. The plans increase dramatically based on your income.

How it works:

BigCommerce could be the next big name in ecommerce. With a unique and compelling pricing offer and all of the features you could want, this platform has loads of potential. The first step you take with a typical solution is choosing the package that is right for you. Not with BigCommerce. Their pricing is so clear, you don’t have to choose. It’s all based on revenue (and a few extra features). Here’s the breakdown:

Standard (sales up to $50,000/year): All plans have unlimited storage and bandwidth for an unlimited number of products.

Plus (sales up to $125,000/year): At this level, you get access to the abandoned cart saver to help you capture those visitors who are trying to leave without that item they were thinking about.

Pro (sales up to $1 Million/year): Here, you’ll get a site-wide security SSL and access to some further analytics.

There are enterprise-level options for large operations, but that’s a whole different beast that will need to be worked out with a rep from BigCommerce to move forward. The potential setback with these plans is the number of transactions you are limited to having. You aren’t charged transaction fees, but with all plans (except enterprise) you’re only allowed to have up to 3000 transactions. That works out to less than 9 transactions per day which is more than a bit low. If you sell low-cost goods you may earn at the standard level (less than $50k), but need an enterprise plan. This makes it a problem.

That said, you do get a crazy amount of features standard with all plans. Things like
single-page checkout, shipping discounts, SEO features, POS for physical stores, app integrations, coupons and gift certificates, a ratings/reviews system, customer support, and social selling options. These goodies along with the fact that you don’t need specific hardware, just a decent computer and a solid internet/mobile/wifi connection, make great benefits.

Once you sign up and sign in to your dashboard, a tutorial will show you the ropes. Next, you can play around with the software a bit and you’ll notice that it’s easy to navigate. Uploading individual products and adding things (like coupon codes) is a really simple process. The hard part with BigCommerce is picking a theme for your shop.

There are two sets of themes, but one (called “blueprints”) is being phased out. There are more free options in this set, but some aren’t responsive (a huge no-no in online shopping nowadays). The other site builder and themes are called “stencil”. It’s a bit easier to manage and doesn’t require any sort of coding knowledge. However, there are only two free themes and the rest cost around $150 bucks. All of the themes in this category are responsive and it is the site builder that will be supported for the long-term.

Your products will look good here, too. You can upload hi-res images and allow your visitors to zoom in and get a good look. Your offers will also be organized with a sidebar that is customizable and sorts out by categories, pricing, and other metrics. The ability to set up a store on Facebook and use “buyable pins” will help gain those social buyers and could be used in conjunction with advertising. There are even features to help you sell on eBay.

Your buyers will benefit from real-time quotes from all the major shippers and selling worldwide won’t be a problem with currency conversion calculators and tax estimators. Customers will have the option to signup to your site or use guest checkout. By offering the choice, you build trust and don’t alienate those who just want to buy now (that’s the goal, right?).

Before you’re ready to sell, you’ll have to be able to take payments. For that, a processor or payment gateway will be necessary. BigCommerce integrates with 40 of them and you can check out our favorites right here.

Once you’re up and going, the analytics available (with some plans) are too good not to mention. The ability to see how your visitors are interacting with your site will yield valuable insights. Split testing your offers, copywriting, and other aspects will mean better sales over time.

If you have any problems, support is available 24/7 via email, live chat, and phone. Talking to a real person when your business venture is having problems is a great benefit that isn’t offered by all of the ecommerce solutions.

BigCommerce has all of the features you could possibly want, but with only 8-9 transactions per day (3000 in a year) before you need an enterprise solution may not be sustainable for those with low-cost items that sell well. If you sell higher-priced goods and don’t see yourself breaking that limit, it’s possibly the best choice out there.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

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Weebly an inexpensive tool for the DIY beginner on a bootstrapped budget

10-second breakdown:

Weebly is a great entry point in the world of online selling (on your own). If you want to create a place to sell your goods, but aren’t the most tech literate, you’ll love the simple and friendly interface as well as how fast your first pages can be available to customers.

The good:

Weebly may be the easiest platform to build the kind of online store you want. The builder is intuitive and easy for beginners. There are templates that can easily be tweaked without knowing how to write code. Being able to see your results immediately in a drag-and-drop style will help you move through the process quickly.

This ecommerce software is one of the lowest cost options on our list. If you only have a few products, or have a brick and mortar store that you would like to add an online branch to, this may be the best way to “test the waters” and see if you want to take online shop building more seriously.

There are some great educational resources to help you understand everything that is happening with your account.

The bad:

Some of the features you’d expect to see on other platforms just aren’t available. Photo editing is one feature that isn’t up to par (even though you can edit photos).

There isn’t an undo button. If you make a mistake, you’ll have to manually fix it.

How it works:

Weebly isn’t primarily an ecommerce platform. It does intend to help business owners, creatives, and just about anyone else have an online platform to spread their message. However, there are online selling capabilities with every plan making them a solid option for those looking for an extremely easy way to sell stuff via the internet. As with all of the other options, you’ll first have to choose a plan. To assist you with that, we’ve put together a rundown of each.

Free: Believe it or not, even the free plan comes with the ability to sell online. You get free hosting, unlimited pages, and can have up to five products. There is a 3% transaction fee for each and you don’t have a personal domain. This means that your branding is going to be tough and we really don’t recommend this route. It’s just not a good idea for a business to rely this much on a third party.

Starter: This plan makes things more interesting for those with a few info products, or just a few items for sale. At this level you get your own domain and can sell up to 10 types of products. Your customers go to the Weebly checkout process (meaning they leave your site to purchase your goods) and the 3% transaction fee remains. Not the best option for a robust ecommerce site, but not bad to “test the waters”.

Pro: Things get a little better at the pro level. You’ll be able to have 25 products and a few more features like videos and the ability to have a membership-style site. Again, you have the third-party Weebly shopping cart and 3% transaction fee.

Business: The last plan isn’t bad for a full-fledged ecommerce operation. You can put up an unlimited number of products, the transaction fee goes away, and customers stay on your own website when they checkout. It’s a big jump, but even this plan is priced better than most other software on the market (for the features you get).

The site supports both digital and physical product offerings and gives you some impressive features. Things like a shipping and tax calculator, inventory management system, and coupon codes to discount your goods (a premium feature among many ecommerce solutions).

As far as site design goes, Weebly starts to shine. For starters, there are several dozen themes to get you started quickly. Next, the drag and drop builder is one of the easiest ways to build a site on the internet. You essentially start with a great design template and change it to be unique to your brand. You choose the elements you want (e.g. pictures, icons, and text) and move them around and change colors until you are happy.

Since this isn’t exclusively an ecommerce platform, there are some things that are done better than the top online shop builders. Blogging is extremely easy, so if content marketing is a big part of your overall strategy; it’s something to think about.

Support is both good and bad. Bad in the sense that the only real support option is email. Opening a ticket and waiting isn’t something you want to do with a site that is potentially losing money. On the plus side, there are extensive learning resources. What seems like over 100 detailed articles on every nuance and tool to run your Weebly site properly.

If running your store on the go is important, don’t write this solution off. Their app is really powerful and can help you manage your site from any smart device. This feature is something that some of the top players in the ecommerce game don’t have (yet). It’s another shocking thing that throws Weebly into one of the best value options to start a store, well, at least the business plan.

It’s easy, inexpensive, and surprisingly feature-rich. The obvious downside is building your business on someone else property. If Weebly closed down tomorrow, you’d be in for a long-haul moving all of your files and setting up shop somewhere else. While it’s not likely, building something that is a little less reliant on a third-party is more sustainable.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

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Shopify can’t be matched for quality and speed when starting your online store

10-second breakdown:

Shopify has quickly become the most popular way to start a stand alone online store in the world. Within minutes you can have a beautiful site (with your first few products) that is fully-functional and ready to take payments. Add-ons galore and loads of happy shop owners make them our number one ecommerce software overall.

The good:

Simplicity is the name of the game and there isn’t another software that allows you to create the same quality level of store with the same amount of ease. Choose from templates (both free and paid) ranging for a number of different industries and product types (e.g. apparel, jewelry).

The add-ons are nearly endless and new ones are being added all the time. From programs that can help you keep track of physical inventory compared to sales, to cart abandonment apps and everything in between is available in either free or paid form.

It’s a one stop shop (pun intended). You get your hosted site, beautiful software, and an easy way to take payments all for one monthly fee (plus transaction fees).

The bad:

The checkout is a problem because it redirects people to Shopify’s main site and pulls them away from the experience of your store.

If you buy all kinds of paid add-ons it will get costly and eat up operating budgets before you have a chance to make money (if you’re not careful).

How it works:

If we were going to size Shopify up in one phrase, it would have to be “simple and powerful”. There really isn’t another platform on the market that has quite the appeal of this one. It’s for these reasons it came out on top of our list for best ecommerce solutions. Getting started is, like many other hosted web-based shop builders, a matter of picking out the plan you want. Here’s a breakdown:

Lite Plan: All plans come with unlimited bandwidth (for site traffic) and the ability to list unlimited products. You’ll also get a Facebook integration and customer support options. If you choose Shopify’s payment gateway, there is no fee. If you use a third party gateway, Shopify will take another 2% per transaction at this level.

Basic Plan: At this level, you’ll get the ability to integrate Pinterest sales, mobile shopping, ability to offer discounts, and have your own domain and blog with the store. The transaction fee is still 2%.

Shopify Plan: Their more popular plan allows all of the abilities of lesser plans and comes with gift card functionality, advanced reporting options, abandoned cart recovery, and lower fees- 1% if you don’t use their gateway.

Advanced Plan: This plan gives a significant jump up in the transaction fee (5%) to make it way more beneficial to use the in-house gateway. This level comes with even better reports and the ability to see real-time carrier shipping.

There is an enterprise option, but it’s for high-dollar shops ($1 million +) and you have to talk with a rep to find out details and pricing information.

Once you choose a plan, you can either choose to use the platform’s payment gateway (which they push heavily), or integrate with a third party option (they allow for 70, click here to see our favorites). If you do choose another processor, you’ll have to pay a transaction fee to Shopify of anywhere from 1% to 5% per transaction.

After the initial setup, you’ll be whisked into the dashboard to see what Shopify does best. It’s a web-based software that hosts your site for you, so there’s no-hassle. Just keep paying your fee to them and they’ll keep your products online. If you like the play-by-play sort of training, the checklist format will suit you nicely.

Prompts will help you pick a theme and take you through until you have loaded your first product. All of which is super easy. Picking a theme that suits your business needs may cost a fee. There are over 100 options and 26 of them are free, but can be considered “basic”. The premium themes range in price but hover around the $150 mark. There are themed themes, too. If you sell fashion accessories or clothing, there are themes that have been thoughtfully designed for that purpose.

Editing your theme is done in real-time. Meaning that if you make a change, you can see how it looks right on the screen. If you publish it, those changes go right into effect. Changing colors, photos, headers and several other minor things is easy and doesn’t require coding at all. Changing the code can also be done (for more advanced improvements) through the HTML/CSS editor.

Features vary based on the plan you get and don’t all come stock and that could be a problem if you don’t want to pay a hefty fee just to get something that less expensive shop builders give standard. While that may be a bummer, one of the coolest things about Shopify is their app store. Add-on features to your shop can be downloaded from there. With over 1200 to choose from, you should be able to get by. Many of them are free, but most require a one-time or even monthly fee. You can expect to see advanced analytic help, SEO tools, and email.

It’s worth saying that this style of adding features can become costly and many of these tools do come standard with some of the other ecommerce tools on the market. There is a 14-day free trial that doesn’t require a credit card, so it’s less risky to try out than any other site-builder. If you decide that it’s for you, just pony up your first month’s payment and your store never skips a beat. If not, just part ways and look elsewhere.

Shopify can make anyone the proud owner of an online shop within minutes. It’s ease-of-use and overall power make it our number one choice for anyone wanting to build their first ecommerce store.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

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Volusion has the longevity and experience to help you online dreams become a reality

10-second breakdown:

Volusion is one of the oldest names in the ecommerce game. They’ve worked with some Fortune 500 companies to make the first iterations of their stores. The experience offered and the trustworthy name make them a viable option for anyone looking to set up a store that will be around for a long time.

The good:

There is a quick setup with Volusion. Signup, login and start building your site or pumping products into the database. All of the functionality you need to get started (and more) comes right out-of-the-box to make the whole thing work smoothly from the first moments your site is live.

You won’t have any transaction fees through Volusion. They offer their own payment gateway and besides the standard percentages required, you won’t pay a dime. Others in the space still do charge a small fee for every transaction, adding up over the course of your store’s progress.

Customer support is good which doesn’t seem to be a standard in the ecommerce software space.

The bad:

You have to purchase and maintain your own SSL certificate.

The software itself is a bit outdated and could use a complete overhaul to really be competitive with the newer products.

How it works:

Volusion was in the full-service ecommerce game well before Shopify came along. Their pricing is competitive and the process is overall pretty simple to get started. The first thing you’ll have to do is pick out the plan that best suits your new shop. Here’s a brief rundown of their plans:

Mini: At this level, you can have up to 100 products on your site and you get 1GB of bandwidth for traffic (typically good for less than 1,000 visitors in a month). There are several goodies too including a responsive site, mobile app, social media tools, and a tax calculator.

Plus: This will get you up to 1,000 products and 3GB of bandwidth space. All of the features in the mini plan are included as well as 24/7 support, abandoned cart tools, the ability to import/export product lists, send newsletters, and get ratings and reviews for your offers.

Pro: The pro plan gives you all of the features from the lower-level plans plus up to 10,000 products and 10GB of bandwidth for traffic. In addition you’ll get priority support, eBay/Amazon integration, customer loyalty plans, customer relationship management tools, and the ability to take phone orders.

Premium: All other features are included in the premium plan plus the ability to have unlimited products and 35GB of bandwidth. The only additional feature is that your account will have a dedicated rep to help you with any problems that may arise.

After you choose the plan and opt for the 14-day free trial, you’ll get access to the dashboard. Volusion really strives in the on-boarding of new users. Since they were so early in the game, they had to educate every new client. This experience has helped them streamline the process of starting a new online shop.

There is a quick video to get you oriented to the setup, but if you are the in-depth type there are an abundance of detailed tutorials that will make you an expert on the platform. After you get acquainted, it’s time to add products and pick a theme. Adding a product is super-simple and you have the ability to see it from the perspective of the customer before you’re done so you know exactly how it will look “live”.

Templates are available and there are over 70 free options. Only about a third of them are mobile responsive, so watch out for that. This problem speaks to the overall age of the company. There are a lot of things that can stand to be improved; the mobile-friendly themes should be top on the list. Even if you opt for a premium template the mobile designs are borderline outrageously expensive (nearly $1000 for almost all of them). There are much cheaper themes, but if they aren’t geared for smartphone/tablets, it’s a waste of your money.

The site-builder is a bit out of date too. It’s not the easiest to work with and capabilities are limited to simple modifications.

If you can look past the design problems, you really get a lot of features “out-of-the-box” with this solution. One-page checkout is awesome and some of the top software products don’t offer this at the moment. Advanced abilities including coupon codes, gift cards, and allowing customers to write reviews are a few.

There is a marketplace in beta for additional apps that integrate with the platform. Right now there are several dozen widgets that can help owners with a range of things from email marketing to accounting tools.

There are over 30 supported payment gateways to choose from (here’s our top list of them) including the one from Volusion. It’s fees are cheaper than most, but you’ll have to compare all of the fine print. There are no transaction fees from Volusion no matter who you choose (again not something everyone in this space does).

It’s a very solid option. While there are some cons, Volusion offers a great experience in setting up and managing your store. Making it look the way you want may take some development expertise, but once it’s all in place there are some great advantages to using this platform. It’s not going to be for everyone, but the beginner who wants to take advantage of the trustworthy and long-standing company are sure to like this option.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

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