EvolutionX vs. Optimizely Commerce Connect

EvolutionX is great at getting a large catalog online in a hurry. Though the editing may take some time, the pull is a great feature to get you started. EvolutionX will give you the most professional looking site right out of the gate vs the competitors we have viewed. The person assigned to your account is a nice benefit and are very helpful and efficient this is an even bigger plus for those with no coding experience. EvolutionX may not be the best option for a small business, though the website may make you look like the big dogs it doesn't function as well yet. The cost of the service is high compared to what the customer gets from it after the initial set up and is the main reason why this isnt the best solution for a small business. It would be nice to see the price to be able to scale down or up in price with how well the site is doing after a set amount of time.

Incentivized

Very strong fit for mid-sized organizations that need more flexibility and customization as compared to canned or template-based offerings, but also want the efficiency and externalization that comes with a pre-existing, cloud-hosted platform (as compared to a full custom offering). Works well with a PIM and more mature catalog data in order to fully leverage the dynamic data capabilities.

Incentivized

• Very easy to onboard products
• Pricing updates are easy due to bulk editing (export to excel -> import back to EvoX)
• It's easy to run promotions / sales with just a few clicks
• SEO options with ready to grab site map

Incentivized

• Web content management -- the interface is drag and drop and makes it very easy for business users to create product pages.
• In site search with Episerver Find -- it is easy to promote attributes and make quick tweaks to fine-tune results.
• Integrate with other systems -- we have integrated with our ERP, our product information management system, our digital asset management system and our marketing automation system to take advantage of investments we have already made in content and customer data.

Incentivized

• On the backend, it would be nice to be able to COPY a similar sku to edit and make its own - creating items takes too long
• The option for drop downs for different colors / sizes / etc. could be nice
• The ability to export pricing where you can see the cost too would be nice

Incentivized

• Support. Episerver used to have direct support and access to the tech team to discuss and resolve issues. The new support portal is not enough for developer needs.
• Quality Assurance. We find issues in the Episerver code that should have been resolved in QA before release.
• Sales. Episervers sells the framework as a solution while showing Alloy. While it helps Episerver sell more, it puts the implementation partner into trouble as the client thinks they bought the solution. Episerver does not provide a solution. It provides a framework that you can build a solution on.

Incentivized

I don’t see us making a switch anytime soon, but are always open to new opportunities should they arise.

Incentivized

Really want to be able to spend more time and resources on rolling out new things with Episerver but at the moment we seem to be fixing alot of issues and pain points with the way our system was setup.

Incentivized

EvoX is a very user friendly platform, both for admin and customers. On the admin side, there are lots of KBs and videos to watch to learn more on the site and features of it. On the customer side, the features provided make it very easy for our customers. Quicklists are a feature we push to customers to make their ordering experience as easy as possible. B2B has a priority to make ordering as easy as possible, our customers are busy and need to place their orders quickly. If the customer cannot do that with your company, they will find one that does do that for them

Incentivized

The job functionality is one of the strongest benefits Optimizely offers. It allows a savvy user to quickly go in to a given job, see the job history to find errors and then even take the steps of a job, copy the code and paste it back into your source to diagnose a potential issue.

Incentivized

I havnt come across an issue like this since we’ve started using it.

Incentivized

Havnt seen any slowdowns.

Incentivized

ECI has always provided good support for us on EvoX. Weather it is via monthly conversations to the intercom system, EvoX is quick to respond and look into the issue. Our sales reps are also a huge support for us to contact on any major issues that may come up

Incentivized

We had an incredible team at Episerver Supporting us with the go live, reviewing our integration, and pushing our integration partner to deliver a quality product

Incentivized

In-person training was not an option for us.

Incentivized

Hard to remember specifics, but I think it was executed at a level where we were satisfied.

Incentivized

This project took some time for us to complete. Some of it was on our end with data cleanup, but overall I thought it went well.

Incentivized

Fully understand what is OOTB feature of the platform before proceeding to develop. Then implement a customization of key features once you can prove they are working as OOTB to make them more user friendly and productive for the business. Eg pre order and e gift card

Incentivized

We actually also have a BigCommerce account for a another division of our company. Both are great platforms with more capabilities than you can imagine. I appreciate / become frustrated with things from both platforms & truthfully would say they are pretty equal. - 8.5/10 overall

Incentivized

Stibo STEP MDM was a powerhouse. It seems we could do anything we could dream up, but we also had an in-house IT dev team to support it. The cost was the reason we went with Optimizely Commerce Connect. We did not explore HubSpot for this project.

Incentivized

10/10 is a hard rating for me to give, but I have been impressed with the scalability

Incentivized

• Massive time savings for our AR Department as customers can now self-generate account statements, see past invoices, pay balances, etc.
• Huge improvement for in-store customer service as our floor associates and reps can reference the website inventory to provide quick assistance to customers on their mobile devices.
• Increased sales & revenue thanks to broader reach- most of our walk-in customers now start their shopping journey on our website to identify product availability and pricing.

Incentivized

• Positive: We have a usable website - better than what we had before and we are seeing a constant increase in adoption.
• Positive: Counter associates are using the website to help customers.
• Negative: Too much time being spent QCing previous work.

Incentivized