Alternative to ChannelAdvisor?

The recurring monthly fees with Channel Adviser are steep.

Using the Magento platform there are some very affordable alternatives. For eBay and Amazon there is a free extension called m2ePro and it works very well. The price is also great. It exports your inventory, lists it and then imports orders back into Magento. Very slick.

For Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) like Google Shopping, Nextag, Shopping.com etc. I use an extension called Wyomind Datafeed Manager. It was about $100 (I don't recall exactly) one-time fee and works very well.

Magento Community edition would be the right choice here. The amount of plugins and custom modifications available for this type of stuff is crazy.

Last time I spoke to ChanelAdvisor, they did not want to deal with anyone selling under $100,000 a month and their fees were percentage off each sale, which is really dumb.

M2ePro is definitely robust and workable. We do very well with it. The reason it's free is because eBay subsidizes it to encourage Magento merchants to sell on eBay. eBay owns Magento.

M2ePro also works with Amazon but the developer says at some point they will probably charge for that feature. However its free for now.

As far as Magento it's a sophisticated platform and there is definitely a learning curve. But if you are serious about ecommerce it certainly deserves consideration. Just about every imaginable feature is either standard or available as a paid extension. The basic community edition is free and it is very impressive. One thing to note is that you need a strong hosting platform as Magento is a resource hog. Don't even think about running Magento on an $8 / month host. It's STRONGLY suggested to use a hosting provider that specializes in Magento. We use a host called Nexcess and they are very solid.

I paid about $10k for mine and it took about 3 months to develop and there are still some bugs, but it also integrates with my AS400 inventory system. If I might suggest going this route, I recommend it and I can give you my developers information. It seems unnecessary to pay something such as $10k in fees but I was paying that to ChannelAdvisor each month and didn't have to deal with their exceptionally rude customer service. My system manages a database that is shared with Magento and Amazon as well.

Vendio is a joke. I highly suggest staying away from them.

Other sites that offer multiplatform selling pop up every once in a while because the idea of selling on eBay, Amazon, and your own website seems like a great idea - and it is. However, it seems like once most of them get subscribers and a little cash in their pockets, development stops and you can't contact anyone. Vendio for example, you have to pay an extra monthly fee in order to speak to someone and most of the time, you won't even be able to get in contact with anyone. (It was like this about 2 years ago) There was another large site that the name currently escapes me, but as you may or may not know - a lot of scammers use these services because it allows them to use eBay and Amazon without changing their IP. So scammers go on there on pre-running eBay and Amazon accounts and list and sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of items and then once they get the money they close up shop leaving many upset customers. At one point, eBay and Amazon banned most of their used for a while because of the same-IP conflict. Just something to think about.

Also, any service that charges you a percentage of your sales absolutely sucks. eBay is already charging you 20-25% for items sold under $10.00, an extra 1% or 2% can really work against you if you are selling in high volume.

THis is an important thread for anyone that sells a physical product. I am vetting channel advisor, also
http://www.channelsale.com/customer.aspx
and
E-Commerce Solutions for Online Merchants - Monsoon Commerce

I used to work for Infopia and their product was MarketPlaceManager. It appears they have been bought out, their site is offline. It did everything I need, including:
Ability to manage/sell in multiple marketplaces like amazon, buy.com, and many more from the same place.
Ability to test, tweak, know what works where.
Automation of putting products up, taking down where applicable.
Ability to collect all the info collected after the sale to plug in to our infusionsoft campaigns.

PM me if you want to talk about any of this more or brainstorm ideas, if you are looking for similar solutions.

Hi! Did you ever come up with a solution? I am in the same situation now.

I would also be interested in hearing about seller express, as I am currently using bigcommerce.

we work with linnworks for the past 2 years we sale in about 6 channels with linnworks, it same as channel advisor but in much more affordable price, you can download their software for free and really feel how if works before you pay anything.

Which one is better: ChannelAdvisor, Solid Commerce or Sellbrite? - Quora

hi Guys,
Any recommendations for one stop shop:
1. WooComerce
2. Amazon + Ebay
3. Shipstation
4 AppEagle ( or similar repricing)

thanks in advance

We'll try and keep it simple and on a business level but this is one of the most complex areas of any business, integration. Once you start integrating between platforms and/or channels each touchpoint opens up a new issue for sync/failure. The main issue is that most platforms are technical and/or restricted being online SaaS platforms. It all comes down to what you want to do, how many touchpoints, where you are syncing between, product counts, budget, etc.

The whole point of integration is very simple, to increase the amount of revenue each employee contributes to a company by automation and increased market exposure. We work with an incubator than works with implementation consultants, architects using platforms from Magento up to SAP. The issue, finding the exact balance for the business that allows them growth, doesn't put them out of business due to costs, uses best practice business processes, and integrates with all the relevant touchpoints.

To do that however you need to work with the business to find the balance, for example where is the best place to keep your master product data, in the eCommerce platform, and external platform. Where do you do your accounting for sales tax and duties. Multi-channel is basically an ERP central hub that syncs datasets (products, orders, customers) between platforms. The solutions we work with are different, there is no direct frontend like with the other providers, it syncs everything in the background. The advantage we found to this is very simple, you are not restricted by the multi-channel solution so is business-centric rather than technology centric and has one key element, it can integrate with absolutely anything as there's no restrictive user frontend.

For some there will be a combination that works using standard tools, but for most there is a tradeoff and each tradeoff costs revenue and market exposure. We don't believe in those tradeoffs but incubators work very differently to standard business, they expect 10x the result for 10x less cost & effort. Are there alternatives to Channel Advisor, yes, do they cost more, the provider we work with as long as everyone makes a profit no. The question is are these alternatives better, it depends.

All the online solutions are small to medium business focused, including Channel Advisor, and therein lies the benefit and the problem. They are not automated enough to allow a small business to match the business processes of companies that use the top tools. If you are competing at niche that doesn't matter and the tools mentioned can work very well, if you are competing in the general market, it's a different game.

You're going to have to find a best-match platform, invest all your time learning the way they do it, and if it's wrong for your business or you grow too fast you have to start again. That's why we like 'hidden' multi-channel, you don't have to learn anything, but people seem to want something to 'touch' which is where LinnWorks and ChannelAdvisor come in.

We will evaluating Linnworks soon. But I just wonder there is not ANYONE using CA and benefit a lot from it? If yes, can you pls share your experience? We serious consider CA so really want to have some second opinion...

Magento Amazon is a great solution, providing complete synchronization between Amazon Marketplace account and an e-commerce Magento-based web site. Orders positioned by Amazon clients are actually easily downloaded in to Magento after sales. Whenever a good order status modifications on Magento web site, it really is immediately reflected upon Amazon Marketplace accounts.
Magento eBay web sites is really a perfect choice for your online shop owners who wants to increase their business time administration through complete synchronization of the Magento-based store as well as eBay Marketplace accounts. Not just orders and purchase statuses are instantly changed both methods, but share levels and delivery confirmations are actually uploaded via a transparent user interface.

Yes, there is! Please try ChannelSale. It is at any time, a welcome relief from the excesses of Channel Advisor and of course a believable bridge that patches the incompleteness of other platforms (like the ones you mentioned) very effectively and that too in less than a fourth of the price that Channel Advisor would extract from users. ChannelSale performance has been exemplary as far as integrated functioning of e commerce marketplaces / comparison sites and web stores are concerned. The process of achieving the integrated performance is also very easy and free of unnecessary technical hassles. It is by far the best multichannel e commerce option that I have known.

Not surprised to see their high price in your con list. ChannelAdvisor do charge very high--which was okay few years back, but not today, given there exist many alternatives these days, equally good and relatively cheaper.

Having firsthand experience myself with a range of e-commerce solution, I find ChannelSale and Solid Commerce the best. Both of them offer a range of premium features, including multi-channel inventory management and feed optimization. Updating all the information of your eBay and Amazon (and more) stores is quick. Also, their interface is quite easy to understand; integrating various marketplaces and webstores and comparison search engines is quite easy. However, in the pricing department, ChannelSale has an upper hand over Solid Commerce. Plus, its customer service is quite smooth.

So understanding from what you want and are looking for, ChannelSale could be a great option. But still, do your own research and decide accordingly.