Adobe Experience Platform vs. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

I think AEP is ahead of its competitors when it comes to hosting customer data for various use cases. It’s seamless integration with other Adobe products like AJO or CJA make it a very compelling overall package.

It may not be very applicable for smaller or medium sized businesses. There could be an opportunity for Adobe to bring in a trimmed down version for such customers.

Incentivized

Great for a quick and easy setup of a multi-vendor solution, supporting multiple stores / languages / payment options. Will probably need some tuning if you have 1 million products or so. Great if you have a PHP dev or team, probably not the best option if you don't know the language and need to customise backend logic.

Incentivized

• Host online/offline data with common IDs
• Ease of profile activation to destinations
• Flexibility around how many sources and destinations can be used to move data

Incentivized

• Easy to use
• No third party control
• Great support
• Lost of [an] add-on to make it [a] more vast platform
• Can sale [almost] any product

• You need to be well trained and resourced to use the product
• Features and integration work but often times you need to pay Adobe consultants for help
• Not transparent in their pricing per customer

Incentivized

• update subscription
• 3rd party theme & addons subscriptions (its not sure that you have also updates in 2 years)
• expensive license prices (if everything is cheaper, more peoples will buy it)

Incentivized

It is useful when executed properly

Incentivized

AEP works very well with the entire Adobe suite of products and services making it a must-have product from a marketing standpoint. The fact that you are able to understand the customer and have a better impact with the customer journey is really helpful. We have also used AEP data to cross sell products to our customers through email campaigns/ offers m/ advertising etc but to have all this data stored in a single place makes it very convenient.

Incentivized

The software consists of most of all e-commerce related features. Also, there are plenty of third party addons are available in the market which can improve our business. There are a lot of powerful themes available in the cs cart market which improve the look and feel on the front store. If CS-cart adjusted the price on their software license cost, controlling the third party addon cost and provide more freelancers with cheaper hourly rate for the customization on the cs-cart multi vendor software, the cs-cart company can be a master among other e-commerce software companies in the world.

Adobe has support at all levels and for each product but beyond tool questions you'll often be told they can help but it requires some paid consulting hours. So you either hire Adobe consultants or find 3rd part consultants who know their products well.

Incentivized

I've had very good support over the years. They've helped solve some issues here and there that were difficult to track down. Thumbs up.

Incentivized

Mostly extremely easy to implement, both back-end logic as well as styling. Great addon marketplace helped, particularly around payment options.

Incentivized

In most cases we have found Adobe products to be harder to use but offer a lot more capabilities. In some cases Adobe products are missing key, basic functions. Adobe does offer a more holistic toolset rather than buying pieces of the puzzle and having to integrate on your own but that results in paying for a higher price tag.

Incentivized

For big vision in doing something in online marketplace, I think CS-Cart can help to scale up and run business smoothly. CS-Cart started their business in 2005 and since [then has been] running successfully worldwide. It means they have a large scale of experience in implementing online marketplace based software and we can rely on them.

Incentivized

• The platform has allowed us to mature into digital spaces we couldn't otherwise have experienced
• Contract pricing went up yearly on some products by 200%
• We were able to consolidate email tools to save on yearly contract expenses

Incentivized

• From an investment point of view, it is naturally much more profitable to purchase CS-Cart Multi-Vendor than to assemble a team of developers and try to create such a platform from scratch.
• Creating a marketplace is a rather risky business. If you don't know a lot about marketplace building technologies, consider investing in a different business. But if you have already decided on the idea, and all you have to do is find a suitable platform, then CS-Cart Multi-Vendor will probably be a profitable investment. And if your sales go at least half a year after purchasing this platform, then you will quickly enough recoup these several thousand dollars.