TrustRadius Insights for Digital River are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
Digital River has been highly valued by users as a powerful tool for digital software delivery services. Its seamless and effortless integration allows organizations to serve their customers effectively and efficiently. By utilizing Digital River, users have found managing SKUs, promotions, and the checkout process to be a breeze. This comprehensive system not only handles catalog settings, customer orders, marketing, and payments in the eCommerce business but also helps organizations maintain PCI compliance and eliminates the need to act as the merchant of record for international customers.
Moreover, Digital River plays an integral role in expanding e-commerce platforms internationally for various organizations. With its ability to integrate with websites and other systems, this software provides a one-stop solution for all online sales needs. The automation capabilities of Digital River have transformed manual processes like data entry for order processing, enabling customers to make purchases independently. Consequently, customer service representatives can now focus more on system support and demonstrating online offerings rather than being solely responsible for order processing. Its versatility has made Digital River an essential asset used by multiple units within organizations to manage email marketing, online sales, payment processing, and fulfillment of physical products. Overall, Digital River has proven to be a convenient and reliable tool for businesses looking to optimize their digital software delivery services.
They provide digitally delivered software products.
Cons
Digital River does not honor its corporate policies toward refunds on software it sells.
Likelihood to Recommend
Digital River may be a good option if you are simply buying software you are familiar with. In my opinion, if you are buying something you are not very familiar with, be very careful to get a written guarantee that it can be returned within 30 days if you aren't happy with it. Even though they have a 30 refund policy, this is essentially fraudulent as I've recently discovered. In many cases, you will have to go through the software developer for a refund. Digital River only wants to sell, not service (in any way) what it sells from what I've seen.
Digital River Global Commerce is used to support online sales within different departments which are responsible for both the technical and business parts of online sales. It is a convenient tool to manage catalog settings, customer orders, marketing, payments etc. I think it covers all major parts of eCommerce business which should be helpful for a company starting its own online.
Pros
Regional settings like local payment methods, ability to apply or not apply local VAT etc.
Reporting and any kind of business analysis.
Easy usage of the platform.
Marketing is definitely strong side of Digital River Global Commerce. Apart from the features it has, there is a strong team behind it who can make all your fantasies come true using all their expertise and possibility of the platform.
Cons
Enhancement of the platform is almost impossible. If you need a small task to be done, but one which should be implemented for all customers of Digital River Global Commerce, it'll take a significant amount of time to be deployed.
Platform has so many features that even Digital River employees don't know all of them.
I think Digital River Global Commerce will be too complicated for small companies. It's definitely for big market players.
Likelihood to Recommend
Digital River Global Commerce is a strong tool for managing eCommerce in your company because it delivers almost everything you can think of. Even if it doesn't have particular feature, I'm sure Digital River has a plan to implement it. However it could be too complicated for those small companies who want to start their eCommerce business. It is well suited for everything from catalog management to reporting. Marketing is a special part, which is managed perfectly by Digital River Global Commerce. There are so many options to arrange promo campaigns, emails and so on. Also, it is good for starting a local online business because it has the needed features.
We use it for management of our SKUs, promotions and checkout process. We are using it for our largest business unit. It primarily helps us be PCI compliant and saves us from being the merchant of record for international customers. The system is integrated with our website and other systems.
Pros
PCI compliance, huge stress off of our shoulders
Merchant of record support
Bulk SKU manangement and Bulk Promotion Managment
Cons
Their flexibility and customizability are lacking. Changes to our cart or store require a lot of lead time discussions and development time.
They have many strange UI implementations for things. One search bar is a wildcard match, while another is a string match. One setting might break your product, or be editable once, but you cannot change it after that one time.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for large organizations with many SKUs, promotions, and large teams, where flexibility and speed to market are not necessarily as important as repeatability and stability. It is also well suited for digital products, especially if they sell internationally. They have the ability to integrate with an existing system for user management and website in a rather straightforward way as well.
Digital River is used by several units within our organization to handle email marketing, online sales, process payments and fulfillment of physical product. It alleviates the need for us to manage all the complex systems internally with additional personnel and IT resources
Pros
Digital River's email marketing arm has always been top notch. They are very connected with their customers, quick to alert us to any problems they are experiencing and respond if we bring something to their attention.
The Global Commerce platform has grown leaps and bounds in the last few years. Its great having a cloud based ecommerce platform that can be accessed securely from any computer in the world.
Worldwide payments continues to be a Digital River strong point. They are continually investigating and and doing the work necessary to new countries and locales to their platform.
Cons
Digital River has been working hard to pivot away from it's focus on traditional software sales (a declining market) which has often left clients wondering what's coming next, what will change and where things are headed. The atmosphere of uncertainty and changing internal staff can be difficult at times.
The Global Commerce platform development seems to be managed by programmers rather than a manager with end user experience. Changes are rolled out that often make no sense to the end user. A user forum for their clients has been painfully absent for years.
There should be classes or training to teach clients best practices on how to use and manage the Global Commerce platform. Alternatively, account managers should be proactive product experts who can suggest effective changes and solutions to their clients.
Likelihood to Recommend
Digital River is a great end to end solution for larger companies who want to outsource their ecommerce/payments/fulfillment. I would say they are more well suited for medium to large companies rather than startups or small businesses. Key questions to ask:
1) Does our company require an end to end platform versus one or two components?
2) What is cost differential between building/maintaining in house platform vs. outsourcing to DR?
3) What is the benefit of having a cloud based platform?
We used Digital River to expand our e-commerce platform internationally.
Pros
Outsourcing of e-commerce
International presence, tax management, etc.
Software distribution/Product fulfillment
Cons
Integrating with any 3rd party is challenging. The more you can do to clearly define your requirements, the easier it will be to integrate.
It can be difficult to differentiate and customize your product with an outsourced solution.
Your internal timeline might not match with their timeline and delivery schedule.
Likelihood to Recommend
We leveraged Digital River to expand our presence internationally, which was a nice supplement to our e-commerce platform that we developed internally. This allowed us to get our product to market in a very short window. The integration was easy and working with the vendor was pleasant.
If your competitive advantage is your ability to quickly customize your e-commerce platform and react to customer demand, then a hosted e-commerce solution might not be the best approach. Collect and measure web statistics like shopping cart abandonment and react accordingly.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (51-200 employees)
We used Digital River for digital software delivery services for our organization. It was a great solution that allowed us to serve our customers seamlessly with current infrastructure with minimal effort or resources required by stakeholders within our organization.
Pros
Great customer service and support.
Easy to use tools.
Very flexible/customizable
Cons
Easier import methods for product enrollment.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited if you are wanting to implement a solution with minimal staff or resources to support a large project such as E-Commerce software delivery.
I currently do not use Digital River. With my previous employer, Korn/Ferry, Digital River was utilized to help with the eCommerce of commercial products. Digital River helped to change a process which was once a manual system to an automated one. Previously, Customer Service Representative would have to enter each order (i.e. Data Entry). Digital River helped to enable the consumer to make the purchases on their own. This then helped to change the role of Customer Service to a more systems support role. It also allowed for the Customer Service to demo more products that were online offerings (i.e. eBooks, Performance Management Systems, Online Development plans, etc.)
Pros
Creating a more efficient and up-to-date market practice via eCommerce.
Providing technical support for both front-end and back-end users of their system.
Cons
Timeliness of the support provided--at times the staff of Digital River wasn't as efficient as we needed them to be to support our customers.
Often frequent changes of Project Managers. At the time I was the lead contact person for communication on support for the back-end of the eCommerce site. From the time of implementation to the time I changed positions within the company (total of two years), there were four different project managers I worked with. This was at times difficulty having to deal with while trying to help customers.
Likelihood to Recommend
Korn/Ferry had a very specific brand of product and how it was controlled. Typically an eCommerce site wouldn't have restricted products in which a person would have to call to purchase certain items, while others are available. I believe this was a big difference and slightly difficult for Digital River to help support in the beginning stages. At the time of my 2nd position with Korn/Ferry, I do believe they became much better at the support for the eCommerce site.
