ChannelOnline vs. Shopify Plus

It would be ideal for a small solution provider looking for an entry level option to handle many of the company's functions at the same time. If customer relationship management, sales reporting, having a indexed eCommerce site, or having the ability to connect to 3rd party solutions is important to you; I would not go with ChannelOnline

Shopify Plus makes order management simple and less error prone. Connecting our ERP allows us to seamlessly manage our product listings, fulfill orders, and sync customer data. Limitations to the number of product variants requires attention from our staff to make sure our products sync without issue. Other than being arbitrary, there's really no need to limit the number of product variants.

Incentivized

• Detailed product information
• Product reviews
• Supplier Relationships

• Scales incredibly well. Forget about hardware concerns, load balancing, downtime, etc. and focus on eCommerce. We've seen merchants go from a few thousand dollars per month to having million dollar days, all on Shopify without having to worry about performance or scaling systems.
• Great new features consistently being added, ahead of the curve on almost everything
• Solid API to build on and work with, a few annoying quirks here and there for super complex use cases but overall very well documented and works well
• Most Merchant Success Managers are good and genuinely want to be helpful
• A fantastic user interface, very logical and easy to use
• Tons and tons and tons of out of the box integrations. Easily the best integration marketplace of the e-commerce platforms. There's an app for that.

Incentivized

• Sales Reporting Features
• Product Documentation and Training
• Customer Relationship Management
• Account Management
• Supplier Integration
• New Release Information
• Search Engine Indexing
• Custom Solutions

• The Account Managers/Reps have become more scripted and seem like they are busier and handling more clients than before. It doesn't seem as personal and special anymore like when we first upgraded to Plus.
• Shopify still has missing features in their software that might not have an app in their app marketplace available that fills this void.
• The 24/7 support doesn't seem as dedicated as they once were.

Incentivized

Updates aren't valuable and don't see us ever being ahead of the competition with this solution. Feature enhancements that are released are just attempts to stay relevant with other ERPs in the industry. If you're trying to take your company to the next level this isn't going to be your solution unless you're a very small company

The interface is pretty easy to use and get used to. It's the lack of account, product and customer management usability that hinders ChannelOnline

Shopify Plus is intutive as stated previously. It's easy to find what we want and edit (reports, products, online store theme, etc...) You dont need to have a ton of coding experience to be able to get a website up and running on Shopify Plus. The reason I wont give a 10/10 and gave an 8 is because I do think it is heavily realiant on app and it can open up a can of worms with the amout of apps that are out there, their costs, and which one to chose. There are also some internal limitations as stated previously with discounts and personalized message for different customer groups. But overall, it is a good platform that I recommend.

Incentivized

We are down for 5-20 minutes once or twice a month

Support Staff is very nice and friendly. Most are knowledgeable but other than phone support they're lacking in every category

Always are quick to answer our questions and help us find a solution

Incentivized

Shopify Plus is an all in one service. You are able to keep track of invoices and payments. Shopify Plus also offers options for shipping and connects your tracking number to you order which allows for easy tracking. Your tracking number is also a link which makes it even easier.

Incentivized

New features are released twice a year. Often these releases are fixing bugs and will rarely be an enhancement that will take your company to another level of effectiveness

• It handles most business functions so the value is definitely there.
• Account Management is really inconvenient and will cost you hours of pay if you're in a business with a relatively medium-high employee turnover.
• It won't easily integrate at all with your website.
• Lead Management is pretty much non existent.
• Quotes and orders are fairly easy to manage so employee efficiency could rise.
• Training and readily available documentation on ChannelOnline is weak. This is especially true for new features.

• Definitely makes selling on multiple platforms easy, saving us time and effort.
• Keeps all of our business in one place, saving us money on other apps to manage each aspect.
• Automatically flags potential fraudulent orders, preventing us from accidentally shipping to a scam.
• During our busiest months, we don't see any slowdowns, which allows us to go full throttle with all ads and marketing without worrying about whether or not the software can handle it.

Incentivized