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Adobe Business Catalyst Reviews??

by Kevin AKA Hubcap
5 replies
**Repost From Product Review Section--didn't get any reviews**

Just looking for some reviews from people who use Business Catalyst to create web sites/e-commerce platforms.

I'm particularly interested in the e-commerce, analytics and e-mail capabilities as well as the blog function.

It seems that having everything under one dashboard will ease the pain of less web savvy clients but are the tools as powerful/useful as their alternatives (aweber, get response, wordpress etc--you get the idea).

Kevin
#adobe #business #catalyst #reviews
  • Profile picture of the author JMSS3
    Just checking in did you ever use this product. I am about to launch an e-course program and my web guy is trying to move me from aweber/wishlist/optimisepress etc to this all in one package. Keen on any thoughts.

    Jane
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  • Profile picture of the author GoogleWarrior
    Anything from Adobe is great.
    I love the After Effects, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Dreamweaver, Photoshop... and this BC looks amazing... I may try it out when I get some more free time.
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    • Profile picture of the author JMSS3
      Thanks I look forward to your thoughts.
      Jane
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  • Profile picture of the author Ryan Rieth
    We use BC for our ecommerce site. shieldskins.com I like it. It has it's bugs though. The ecoommerce part is really good. The blog is very, very basic. Currently we are building a wordpress blog and will be using the CName records to point to the wordpress blog instead of using the BC blog. I just want more functionality the the BC blog offers.

    Analytics again are okay but kinda basic. It can tell you how many visitors you had to your site, total sales, new subscriptions, forum posts ect... for a period of time. It cannot tell you any ecommerce data like Google Analytics can. With GA you can see what keywords were used to get to your site that resulted in a purchase. All in all Google Analytics is much better for Analytics data. Oh ya and there is no way to track the ecommerce data with GA when you are using a BC site. Well no easy way anyway. I'm told it can be done but it will cost $400 to install and $20 a month for access to a JSON server (I have no idea how they make it work but supposedly they can do it, I don't know because I haven't tried it)

    All in all I think it's an okay system. It could be better if they would have partnered with some of these other companies like GA and Aweber then they would have really good systems instead they built their own and they are all just mediocre. But I stay with them because the ecommerce part of their system is really good.
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    • Profile picture of the author LTCreations
      The system, Business Catalyst, is pretty good. It's not great, but good.

      I look at things from a developers stand point as well as a newbie looking at the software for the first time.
      For a developer, it's decent. It has 'most' of what a business would want, but lacks a lot of things.
      For the newbie, it's an absolute nightmare! A newbie would be using the software for days in order to understand enough to begin creating a site. Of course, if they wanted anything out of the ordinary the newbie would be completely "stuck" trying to figure out how. There are no step-by-step instructions, and, usually, clients are brought to Business Catalyst by a developer.

      Now comes the really hard part to swallow.
      A "Partner" is someone who has paid to be a reseller for the Business Catalyst (BC). A "Partner" will need to dig deep, gulp, and pay a whopping $2,000 to become a "Partner".
      At that point the "Partner" can sell to anybody. The "Partner" can allow a business to develop within BC either with another developer or the "Partner" can develop the site.

      Becoming a "Partner" provides just 1 value - the BC software. You can purchase Dreamweaver for a lot less, although in today's Internet there is no such thing as developing a new static Web site. But anybody has access to the OpenSource CMS that are available, and, depending on your abilities, there are some very good options out there - MUCH better than BC.

      The BC software is good, only if you are a "seasoned developer" who knows their way around software, content management systems, and, most importantly, knows a lot about HTML (simple), CSS (a bit more difficult), and how to create or implement API's. At this point, if you don't know what an API is, then you are missing out on some important aspects of what you want to offer businesses.
      Of course, you can do what a lot of businesses do which is hire a developer who can do that all for you.

      Let's say you hire a developer, or, the "Partner", to do all of the work for you. How do you know the code used by the developer is going to be W3C compliant? You don't. How do you know the "Partner" isn't going to use "off-shore" developers? You don't.

      So, even though the BC software is fully compliant, the minute you have a developer touch the software, include JavaScript, unless the developer knows what they are doing it's going to cause errors because nobody has access to the main files that are used to create what you "can" access within BC software.
      Most developers are not that savvy. They can write something that "works", but they could care less about compliance - errors - worse, they don't have any concern about mobile devices. Especially if you use "off-shore" developers you run that risk.

      So, let's say you contracted with the "Partner", explicitly wrote that the site must be compliant and mobile friendly into the contract, and awaited the site to be developed.
      When the site goes live, you are happy with what you see and then decide you want someone "in-house" to watch over the site, make periodic changes, and just keep things up to date. So you interview a few developers for the position.
      You know that the "Partner" used "off-shore" developers, and you were told what the site development costs would be prior to signing any contracts.

      As the business owner, imagine how you'd feel when you were told that there were more than 230 errors in 1 page of the new site (and every page has at least 50 errors), mobile devices can't use the site, and to fix anything would cost an additional investment to the more than $50,000 that the "Partner" already charged for what you have (including the errors)....plus the monthly hosting fees (which are over $40).

      It gets worse...Now that you know the site is NOT what you paid the "Partner" to provide, and the "Partner" is demanding more money to further develop - even to fix what the contract stated is part of the initial investment - you contact Adobe to move the site to your own account in order to get away from the "Partner".

      Adobe tells you that unless the "Partner" agrees to move your site, you cannot move your site - end of story.
      If the "Partner" says you have to pay all outstanding invoices first, then you have no choice. If the invoices are bogus, it makes no difference - Adobe will NOT move the site until the "Partner" is happy.

      Now you have a $50,000 site, no access because the "Partner" has locked you out, and Adobe will NOT mediate. This is well documented by Adobe. If the "Partner" doesn't want you to move, you aren't moving. If the "Partner" wants more money for YOU to move the site using another developer, you have to pay the "Partner" until they are happy.

      So, the moral of the story is, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER put your business Web site in a position that you are unable to have 100% control over the site, its contents and the server on which it is hosted!!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!!! Even with Adobe being the hosting company.
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