I'm back looking at Marketworks and Vendio again. I seem to be taking the middle-of-the-road-neutral-meditation stance. I can see good things about each auction software product, and bad things about each. Thus, I can't make up my mind. I'm stuck in indecisive mode.
Soooo---BBH. I want your input on Vendio. Straight up. I know I can always count on that from you. Does it suck? Is it so so?
I know a lot of people have issues with Marketworks, yet it seems like many people still use them. Beadaholique is a superhero type power seller and I know that her Marketworks store has upsold me on numerous things. Same with a video game seller dude. I bought over $50 worth of stuff from him on Upsell from his Marketworks shop, on an original $9.00 game order. Bet that's exactly what makes MW worthwhile.
In my quest for auction software, last night I fiddled with Auctiva and AuctionTamer. Blehh. Auctiva doesn't seem to support any venue besides eBay now and AT is missing key things from its submission templates (and asks you to buy IMAGE CREDITS to upload images). Yeah, right. I will probably mess with AuctionSubmit today as well. I'll post what I find with that, in case it helps someone else in the future.
Infopia and ChannelAdvisor seem really cool and all, but I don't want to take out a second mortgage to pay the fees.
p.s. I started a new thread in the right category this time.
I think.
BBH, never mind. This quote of yours in another indecisive thread that I started answers all:
Quote:Feature wise they're way behind Marketworks but ahead of Channel Advisor Pro. Vendio does have PayPal IPN which MW doesn't. Vendio doesn't support Overstock but they do support Amazon Auctions (not Marketplace). Vendio's Yahoo support--they still haven't figured out how to get a gallery picture to show up (either has CA Pro).
Vendio discountinued support of yahoo recently but still supports Amazon auctions.
The biggest differences I see:
Vendio doesn't let you manage multiple IDs on one account and it lacks the ability to customize your store front to the extent that MW does.
(Yeah, and it doesn't support Overstock.
)
P.S. I highly recommend the Inventory Edition (even if you sell *one ofs*).
Quote:Vendio discountinued support of yahoo recently but still supports Amazon auctions.
No Overstock or Yahoo...the 2 auction sites I list on (OK, I do use Amazon Auctions but its much faster to use their spreadsheet bulklister, and I have items on Bidville but next month will be the 2 year anniversary of when I listed them
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Quote:Soooo---BBH. I want your input on Vendio. Straight up.
If you only need eBay support then the Vendio inventory edition might be a better choice than Marketworks. Not quite as many features but fewer problems and easier to master.
Quote:I know a lot of people have issues with Marketworks, yet it seems like many people still use them.
There are 2 reasons we use them
#1 Overstock and Yahoo support, and of course the features. Featurewise they have the most in their price range and the only other services with more features are much more expensive (Infopia and Channel Advisor Merchant). The lack of affordable options means we're "forced" to suffer through their frequent glitches, breakdowns, slow servers, etc.
#2. Thanks to a platinum powerseller and a pair of gold powersellers who used us as referrals when they joined Marketworks, we haven't paid any fees since June 2005 and based on our current credit balance of $320 we won't be paying fees anytime soon.Â
OK! I'm signed up for a test drive with marketworks. Am customizing the color scheme now. I used you as a referral, BBH (I still had your MW ID in a private message from last October. LOL).
Thanks to all of your input, I finally made my decision! MW it is. I appreciate your insight and help.
Quote:Vendio discountinued support of yahoo recently but still supports Amazon auctions.
This cinched it for Vendio.
[quote author=thentavius link=topic=4102.msg16146#msg16146 date=1150318148]
Quote:Vendio discountinued support of yahoo recently but still supports Amazon auctions.
This cinched it for Vendio.
[/quote]
Yahoo finally added an API last Summer, listings are up 800%, and yet they haven't gotten a single new auction management service provider to signup. Yahoo Auctions is apparently an extreme pain to support because they don't let developers know about site and API changes before they go live on the site.
I did pretty well on AZ auctions during the last holiday season, but I never sold diddly squat on Yahoo and half of what I did sell was to NPBs. I still list there - because it's free and the bulk upload is easy and you can relist a bunch of times - but I've just never had the success that I've had on AZ auctions. (I'm not sure that success is actually a very accurate description, but I've sold about 20 times more on AZ auctions than I have on yahoo and no NPBs.
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Well, shit.
Vendio only supports AZ auctions if you use the Merchandising Edition, not the Inventory Edition.
Wanna guess which I've been using and prefer??
Unless something has changed in the past 3 years you're not missing anything by not having AZ support. I did trials of Vendio and Channel Advisor Pro before picking MW. Vendio's Amazon support sucked (and their Yahoo support wasn't much better). CA's Amazon and Yahoo support was better than Vendio but everything else about CA Pro sucked (especially the multi-page listing form they had then)...and Auctiva's AZ Auction and zShop support was the worst of them all-i.e. it was broken.