Before getting into the reasoning behind this post I would like to point out that I have been very happy working with Interspire as a partner and customer for a couple of years now. Customers that I have recommended use their products have done so with a great deal of success and have been very impressed by how easy their software is to use and the level of innovation.
The reason for this post:
Many of us customers and partners are concerned that the success of BigCommerce could be the death of your other products and we need reassurance that Interspire is a company that we can confidently invest our time, our reputation and money into the future!
The Background
For those of you who are not familiar with Interspire, they are an Australian-based software company that was formed in 2003 and offers customers 4 core products — Interspire Shopping Cart, E-mail Marketer, Knowledge Manager and Website Publisher.
In recent times Interspire started experimenting with converting some of their products into Software as a Service applications (SaaS). Their experimentation started with BigResponse (no longer available), which was essentially a hosted version of their E-Mail Marketer product.
In September, 2009 Interspire successfully launched a hosted version of their shopping cart software, which they aptly named BigCommerce. From all reports offering a hosted shopping cart has been hugely successful (and much more profitable) for Interspire, and as a company they have had to meet this demand by directing more internal resources to the product.
In essence, it is the success of BigCommerce and the redirection of resources that has a lot of current Interspire customers and partners somewhat worried … hence the reason behind this open question.
Why would we be worried?
Putting aside certain issues that individuals have with Interspire products and support, my worry is that the current success they are having with BigCommerce will ultimately result in the slow cannibalisation of their traditional core products.
As a customer I need to be confident that Interspire software is able to meet my current and future needs. My long-term profitability depends on it.
As a reseller I need to be confident that Interspire software is able to meet the current and future needs of customers whom I recommend their products to. My business reputation depends on it!
As an online business owner it is your responsibility to perform due diligence checks to make sure that your software investment is with a company that is profitable and able to adapt and support their products into the future.
To date my experience with Interspire has been positive and I have had no hesitation in using and recommending their products. However since the beginning of 2010 I am not so sure how committed Interspire is in maintaining and promoting their core software products.
I fear that as more focus is placed upon BigCommerce we will see Interspire not sufficiently invest in marketing and supporting their traditional products, which will surely then become less and less profitable and in turn make them less viable.
Let’s Take a Look at Some Evidence Of The Shift In Focus
BigCommerce vs Interspire Shopping Cart Product Versions
On March 24, 2010 the BigCommerce platform was upgraded to version 5.6 while Interspire Shopping Cart (ISC) is still currently running at 5.5.4, which was released on February 24, 2010.
While it is noted that some of the new features in BigCommerce 5.6 are solely related to their hosted platform and do not apply to ISC, there are also plenty of new features that I’m sure us ISC customers would love to take advantage of (particularly the much-publicised Social Shop).
As of yet not only have these features not been made available, there has been no official indication as to whether they will be any time soon.
Interspire Discussion Forums vs BigCommerce Support Portal
Interspire Discussion Forums
Once a hive of activity, the Interspire discussion forums are starting to resemble a ghost town. Of particular worry is the participation from Interspire staff. Let’s take a look at their recent participation rates.
- Mitchell Harper — last activity 02/08/2010
- Eddie Machaalani — last activity 06/04/2008
- Chris Boulton — last activity 03/22/2010
- Joshua Waltcher — last activity 04/08/2010
During 2010 the participation rates from Interspire staff taking part in the discussion forums has drastically slipped from previous years.
BigCommerce GetSatisfaction Support Portal
Since opening around three months ago the BigCommerce Support Portal has been a hive of activity, attracting 1,281 new topics and 945 members. Mitchell Harper (CEO) has been particularly active responding directly to 214 queries.
The GetSatisfaction portal is a great example of how a company is able to interact with their customers and I applaud the BigCommerce team on their transparency.
Interspire Blog vs BigCommerce Blog
In 2010 Interspire have updated their blog with 8 topics, with the most recent being March 23, 2010. In comparison over the same time period the BigCommerce blog has around 35 new topics.
Interspire vs BigCommerce Twitter Accounts
The Interspire Twitter account has not been updated since March 23, 2010 and has only been updated 27 times this year, at the same time the BigCommerce Twitter account is extremely busy updated multiple times per day.
BigCommerce are using their account very effectively (and transparently) as both a promotional and customer service vehicle.
BigCommerce on YouTube and Facebook
As it currently stands BigCommerce has a very busy Facebook page and a YouTube channel that is chock full of information to help BigCommerce customers. The BigCommerce team have also successfully integrated their support portal with their Facebook page.
Unfortunately at this stage Interspire does not use either social network to communicate with their customers.
Just how should Interspire answer this question?
Personally I don’t want Interspire to answer this question directly (although it would be nice if they did). There have already been a number of occasions that Interspire staff have offered reassurances that they are committed to each of the traditional core software products. What we don’t need is more rhetoric.
What we need is for Interspire to either adopt the same level of commitment to their customers that they are showing with BigCommerce (i.e. ongoing development, fast support, forum participation, twitter updates, blog articles, etc), or have their executives make some hard decisions as to whether they should continue developing and supporting their traditional products.
For those of you who are currently an Interspire customer or partner do you think I am off the mark here or do you also share the same concerns? Let me know in the comments below.
{ 95 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post, Dave. I have made similar observations about ISC, etc. vs. BigCommerce. Their actions, to me, speak loud and clear. BigCommerce is their baby, and that’s where they are devoting all their energy and focus right now.
Your portrayal of the Interspire forums as a ghost town is spot on. I’d like to point out though that the recent “activity” dates you listed for Mitch, Eddie, et al. are, in most cases, the last time the signed in, not the last time they posted. For instance, the last time Mitch posted was 2/7/10, Eddie was 6/03/08, and Chris (who’s usually more active) was 3/22/10.
Another example of their favoritism toward BC can be seen in the difference between their Get Satisfaction page and the Interspire Ideas portal. Several ideas on the BC support page have been implemented or are planned for future releases with less than 40 votes. Compare that to some of the features on the Ideas forum which have several hundred votes and have yet to be adopted.
I agree 100% with your proposal. I know I speak for many Interspire customers when I say we are pretty well invested in their product(s). In order to make smart business decisions, we need to know where things are headed with ISC in particular.
Thanks for the comment Andrew.
I have updated the dates when each of the Interspire staff at last posted on the discussion Forum. As you pointed out I had only skimmed over the activity dates rather than digging deeper to see when they actually posted something.
Something that I should have pointed out after rereading this post today was that at the end of the day the Interspire Management need to make their decisions based on what is most profitable for their company. Whether that is BigCommerce standing alone or a combination of BigCommerce and the existing Interspire products doesn’t really bother me either way. I just don’t want to invest more time and money into something like Interspire shopping cart if they are tossing up whether to continue supporting it. A bit of transparency would go a long way.
Great post…
I also used to resell for interspire, and I have since moved everything over to BigCommerce, and have got one of my own stores and 6/7 clients stores…
BC is very good, but I do miss being in control of my own server… having said that they have now introduced DNS control and we have since integrate a Wordpress blog that we host ourselves…
From my design business’s point of view, I do like the BC reseller programe with 25% of all ongoing sales…
Overall, I think that ultimately BC will completely replace interspire… shame, but I think its just business…
Hi Rupert — thanks for the comment.
Server control and private labelling are two massive pluses for ISC that BigCommerce is unable to replace for resellers.
How have you found hosting and support services for BigCommerce?
I to am concerned about the future of ISC. As a reseller I need business stability. The BC platform is of no use to me (im a hosting provider!) and my clients require levels of customization and support that are simply not possible on BC. Not only that, but i’m not going to spend my time building their business.. I whitelabel ISC and have built my own business around my own brand. My time and effort isn’t going to be spent building their BC brand. Us resellers of ISC helped Interspire get to where they are today – We have putup with the bugs and lack of features and practically funded the building of BC. Hopefully when the dust settles from BC they can get on with supporting BOTH platforms equally so us real resellers can continue doing what we do best
@David many of us are in exactly the same position as you. Finding a new solution and then going through the pain of becoming familiar with it is something that I just don’t want to think about at this stage.
As you said, hopefully the dust will settle and they will be able to once again support both platforms.
Hi Dave
Nice post regarding the future of ISC.
I am an Aussie Whitelabel reseller and am very concerned about ISC. I suppose we all need a plan B – I dont suppose you have picked the next best cart to resell ? Its a hard choice and one im not keen to make!
Not quite at Plan B just yet… I hope!
I don’t like Interspire, and I would like to sell the shopping cart I bought from them if possible. Anyone wants it at low price ?
Like you and many others, I’m heavily invested in ISC. Starting with a hefty purchase price and including the many hours of programming (re-programming) to fix their errors… ISC is the software that I’ll be married to for quite some time (flaws and all).
I kept hoping on top of hope that Interspire would fix the minor bugs and glaring flaws, and during that time I made significant modifications to the code that allows me to sell personalized items. These personal modifications which are specific to my needs are the reason that I’ll continue to (grudgingly) use ISC. ~ But not for this custom work… and if I was only using ISC as an “out of the box” and unmodified solution, I would have cut my losses and abandoned it long ago.
After my free “upgrade period” expired, I purchased the extended support option… all in the vain hope that the fixes I needed would be forthcoming. This added expense produced no meaningful improvements for me.
As Interspire rushed to release two major versions, I stayed with my “4.0x” version until I had some confirmation that the two biggest issues (for me) had been addressed. Namely: SEO and coupons. ~ As expected, in each major version release, new features had been added (but typically not thoroughly tested)… some minor bugs had been fixed… but none of the major functionality issues had been addressed. I was disappointed, but not surprised.
Obviously, with each new major version release, they expected it to increase their cash flow. But, I also expect that an anticipated add-on benefit would be that they could disassociate themselves from any obligation to fix the lingering issues that had been ignored. Typically, a bug report or a support-call requesting help on one of the primary issues received the response of “You need to upgrade to the newest version.”
Sadly, this wasn’t really a solution either because the lingering issues STILL existed in the “newest version”. Why would I want to PAY to “upgrade” to a version that still has the same issues as before? ~ That’s insane.
You can tell when a company (or its product) is in trouble… or in danger of being abandoned… when the company-owned support-forum provides no meaningful help. ~ Every time I’d search their forums for answers to a problem, the ONLY “hits” that I’d receive were for posts in which someone was asking the same question I needed help with. In nearly all of those cases, there were no replies from the staff OR from other users. (Well, sometimes there would be a reply of another user adding “me too”.)
In contrast, a user-owned support forum (InterspireD.net) proved to be invaluable. Although the traffic at this alternate forum was much slower than the official ISC forum, it had so much more information, hints, tips, fixes and modifications.
It’s been my experience that private user-support forums are rarely as good as the company-sponsored ones. Usually they’re formed to fill a specific niche that the corporate forums don’t address… but in this case, the private forum was filling a huge black-hole void.
From time to time the staff would publicly acknowledge the programming issues… from time to time they would acknowledge that tech support had been a bit slow… they even made a grand show about their renewed focus on outstanding issues and bragged about how they were hiring additional staff. They’d seek out suggestions, produce lists of NEW FEATURES and promise that old issues would be addressed.
Hey! Wow! A big sigh of relief could be heard and felt from those who felt abandoned and used. The Interspire posturing gave many ISC users a sense of hope that things were about to turn around. We believed that Interspire had simply been overwhelmed with their success, but that they had finally managed to take control again.
Unfortunately, their fanfare and hype was no match for the reality. Precious little of the promises were actually kept. The customers who contributed to Interspire’s initial success were left out in the cold as Interspire pursued other interests and projects. The status-quo might not have been so bad, if not for the fact that Interspire had made such a grand effort to raise our expectations and hopes. We were so hungry and eager for good news, that we allowed ourselves to believe it.
ISC is what it is and for the most part, it’s all that it’s EVER GOING TO BE. I’ll live with what I have, and make whatever modifications and fixes that I can. When the time comes, I’ll move on to something else.
Someone emailed me the other day and complimented me on my web site. They asked what program I was using and I responded with a brief (but truthful) assessment of ISC. I gave ISC credit where credit was due, but also explained the issues many have experienced. For the money, there are less expensive (and better functioning) carts with better support.~~ He wrote back to thank me for the reply, and mentioned something along the lines of “oh yeah… I’ve heard about them before and this isn’t the first time I’ve heard unflattering reviews”.
Interesting, eh? During his research, he had already found out the things that we’ve been complaining about for years. If Interspire believes that our complaints are safely confined to the echo-chamber of the Interspire forums, then they really need to rethink things.
Their future? It’s hard to tell. I think they’ve missed the window of opportunity to rehabilitate their reputation and to get ISC back on its feet. ISC will become the Netscape Navigator of shopping carts. Those who have it will continue to use it, but nobody will pay to use it. Its market-share will continue to dwindle until the company abandons it.
Fantastic response Charles — I think you have very eloquently expressed what many others have also experienced as an Interspire customer.
They are smart to focus on a hosted product, however I don’t see them giving up selling licenses to the software. They may raise prices, but I think they’ll keep selling the software.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that they are smart to concentrate on the hosted product if that’s where greatest profits can be obtained. The problem lies with them continuing to sell licensing and support for ISC which is by no means cheap and then fail to devote enough resources to live up to expectations.
Great post Dave. I personally never thought about ISC vs. BC like this. I think BC is less work for them and more profit and on the other hand different people use BC comparing people who use ISC. I think people who are able to change php code are using ISC because of the flexibility of that. People who use BC are people who don’t understand php. Seeing some BC sites, I think those people are working from home and are more often small retailers (one man companies). The core functions/code of ISC and BC have numerous bugs so this can’t be sold to someone who can’t solve small bugs his/herself. How often do you see a post in the ISC forums regarding a simple (dumb) question which in your eyes is a piece of cake?
I think that’s why BC is updated more frequently then ISC. Further people pay per month for BC and demand therefore quick responses and quick fixes so all resources, personnel etc are focused on BC.
So I wonder how long it’s gonna take before multiple languages is incorporated in BC.
hi Meules — thanks for the comment.
A hosted solution is definitely the way to go for most people. In fact I now recommend that somebody new to e-commerce start out using a hosted solution such as BigCommerce. Once they are confident that their online business is profitable and if they have unique customisations that cannot be implemented on a hosted solution, only then should they look at purchasing a full software license.
If, as many people find out, their online business turns out to be a failure at least they haven’t invested thousands of dollars purchasing a full software license.
I think we all have to be fairly realistic about the future of ISC, the actions of interspire over the last 12 months clearly aren’t that of a company that’s interested in the product and by that I mean they obviously don’t want to spend any more money on either supporting it or developing it too much further. The broken features and disinterest in fixing them along with a pure lack of support are clear markers for the end of a product.
BC has obviously worked out really well for them and as a business decision you’d be mad not to make that your main focus if its more profitable and easier to maintain so, distasteful as it is for ISC customers, I can see where they are coming from with the shift in focus and the writing is pretty clearly on the wall for shopping cart imo.
Overall my experience with ISC has been 50/50, as a product I like the cart a lot, its easy to use and some of the features are excellent. Company strategy and support issues have been very poor and ultimately a pretty complex piece of software that is the backbone of our businesses and essentially has no support is useless. If I could step back a couple of years I would have definately gone with a different solution, the amount of time and effort involved in setting up, learning and fixing this cart has been astonishing and I kind of feel that I’ve ultimately wasted my time, and got sucked in to the marketing hype, as clearly ISC won’t be viable for a growing business in the future.This could have been a brilliant product in my view and the shame of it is most of the problems could probably be fixed very quickly with a couple of good developers, no phones and a dark room…
Thanks for the comment Sean. It’s surprising how many people are disillusioned like yourself.
I’m glad I didn’t respond when this article was originally posted as many of the preceding comments have managed to nail the various shortcomings of the company and product in a much more eloquent manner than I could have without losing a dispassionate viewpoint.
One thing that has not been touched on properly however is the rather obvious repeating of history that is, even now, taking place with BigCommerce. The previously much hyped GetSatisfaction community space has recently been “downgraded” to a community space with emphasis on it NOT being for bug reports or support requests. This comes at a time when the community are starting to get disheartened by the lack of proper support for BigCommerce.
- The oft complained about support ticket system (same one for all Interspire products)
- stock answers that do not relate to the problem
- ignored tickets whenever the question is obviously more complex
- … (the list of complaints looks painfully familiar)
Needless to say the community is slowly showing the same meltdown characteristics that we saw with ISC’s own forum space 12 to 18 months ago…
So, whilst I take the point that BigCommerce is taking over as the focus, I maintain that Interspires biggest problem is not their products but their management and its complete inability to focus on a product long enough to mature it properly.
It seems as if management have taken to heart the need to be agile in development but adapted it to their management and product portfolios to a degree way beyond sensible or even understandable. There are undoubtedly times when dropping a product makes sense like the SaaS email marketing system but the porfolio includes products that have massive potential which remain unrealised because management simply became “bored” and decided to jump to the grass on the other side.
So ultimately, I fully expect BigCommerce to suffer the exact same fate as all other Interspire offerings… Unless the goal is to develop and sell it off it will likely disappear in a flurry of recriminations and the same see-saw of outrage mixed in with hopeful pleas (fed by marketing soundbites) while Interspire move on to the “next big thing” until that too, dies a death of disinterest and stalled promises.
The pattern is there for all to see (if they care to look hard enough) and sadly it will continue for as long as the current management continue to hold their positions… It’s an opinion but one born of years of painful experience with companies like this who refuse to listen, learn or stop believing their own hype.
Interspire is a fine company and provided a good shopping cart product. However if you are an Interspire reseller or implemenation partner in Australia and New Zealand we would be happy to provide a new partner agreement for you to sell and implement ePages V6 either in a dedicated or hoste environment. If you operate outside of Australia and New Zealand then we can recommend you talk to ePages Software directly.
Excellent post and discussion everyone.
I am also an Interspire customer, while not an ISC or BC customer, I have decided to provide e-mail marketing as a service to my clients and others using IEM.
I have invested a lot of my time and money (More than 4 months) working on establishing the service website, various plans and other things only to find out that the latest version (IEM 6.0.2) is full of issuses that have been there for months without any fix.
It was so frustrating to find out that Interspire doesn’t care about us (Customers) as they do not fix any bugs even though some are affecting our businesses or causing our clients to go somewhere else.
Although after testing various e-mail marketing products I was amazed by IEM, I have no use of a product full of features that doesn’t work.
I have already decided to evaluate alternative products, and I really like ActiveCampaign’s e-mail marketing product, it has similar featutres to IEM but the only down side is that the GUI is not as good as IEM.
Although I really liked Interspire and they have every right to focus on other parts of their business, they shouldn’t do that while STEALING our money as we pay for undeveloped products that do not operate. They should at least inform us or develop their products to a stable state, and we can take it from there.
Thanks for your comment A.Hariri.
The really frustrating part of this argument is that on the whole Interspire produce really good software. If they would only get their act together and concentrate on shoring up the core development of each of their products (i.e. fixing the problems) rather than jumping to something new all the time there would be no need for this conversation.
I second Dave’s comment that the big frustration is having a generally well-designed cart system that has so much potential to be actually great, but it’s severely hobbled by a continuing plethora of bugs in each new release. Even when a particular bug gets resolved, it seems to be replaced by another set of bugs.
I posted a comment to the ISC forum a while back about the problem with ISC being that they are “putting the cart before the horse” so to speak; i.e., putting the cart (“features”) ahead of the horse (solid, rigorously tested functionality). It’s really that solid functionality which should be pulling the cart system forward, but instead it seems they have chosen to focus on “new features” and the attendant marketing hype at the expense of resolving the many bugs that are hampering us ISC customers to a very serious extent. That’s a losing strategy in the end, and I just don’t get why Mitch and his team don’t get it.
I emailed my critique to Mitch directly, and his response was the now-typical circle-the-wagons defensive PR blather… i.e., “I can understand your concern however each new release also includes bug fixes – we don’t simply build new features and ignore bugs.” (Right… you just release a whole host of NEW bugs… and leave many others unresolved.) And, “You can see for yourself in regards to the upcoming 6.0 release at http://track.interspire.com” (Right… So just how are we supposed to have any confidence that ISC 6.0 will be any different?)
Like so many other ISC users, we have a lot invested in this system, and our disappoint just grows. After our latest abortive attempt to update from version 5.0.6 to 5.5.4, it seems it’s pretty pointless. Maybe there will be some point in upgrading to version 6, but I’m not holding my breath.
Steve
Hi Everyone,
I must congratulate Dave for such a detailed overview of Interspire’s business activities & future plans. There is no doubt that BigCommerce is proven to be a bug success for them however keeping in mind the future of their other products such as knowledge manager, E-mail marketer etc, I must say that we (as resellers) should start looking for alternatives for recommendation to our clients. I’ve found Campaign Monitor (http://www.campaignmonitor.com) as a very good alternative to E-mail marketer and PHPKB knowledge base software (http://www.knowledgebase-script.com) as a much better knowledge management solution than Interspire’s knowledge manager. The best thing about both of these products (Campaign Monitor & PHPKB) is that they are the principle products of their companies so they are well maintained, regularly updated & have much better future (being the principle products). I’ve personally contacted both of these companies and they offer an attractive re-seller commission structure as well (based on the volume of sales). Regarding Website publisher, I’ve not done much research yet however I am sure that there are better alternatives out there. So, let us make a switch to these 2 products. There is no need to make a shift from BigCommerce since there is no doubt that it is being taken well care of by Interspire.
Regards,
Robert
Re: Robert’s post: Campaign Monitor seems a bit on the high side, cost-wise. Compared with what we’re spending on Ratepoint, it would be a bit more than double the cost to send campaigns for our list.
(We’ve postponed / avoided Interspire Email Marketer because of our experience with all the problems of the Interspire cart and the general apparent problems with the company.)
Steve
Thank you very much for suggesting PHPKB knowledge base software over Interspire knowledge manager. We have been using Interspire’s knowledge manager for over 2 years now and their techical support sucks! We have recently made transition to PHPKB after reading your post above and the best thing was they offered 15% discount to us being owners of a competitor’s product. They also provided data import module that helped us migrate all KB data from Interspire’s product to PHPKB.
An intriguing post. Thank you.
I am also a seasoned ISC developer with several live and upcoming projects. As noted by others, there are a few bugs we’d like to see fixed sooner rather than later, but then again we enjoy hacking away at it.
So far I have usually received good advice and somewhat responsive support (within 1-3 business day response time) via the Client Area ticketing system.
Does that response time improve with BigCommerce?
Have any Interspire personnel responded to this article (officially or not)?
hi Ronnie — thanks for your thoughts.
Personally I believe a 1-3 business days response time on support tickets is dreadful for a tech company. understandably all problems cannot be resolved immediately but if your web host operated within this response timeframe you would leave them in a flash. I am not sure how things are working out at BigCommerce in regards to support.
At this stage we haven’t heard anything from Interspire, which has become typical end exactly why this article was written in the first place. All we need is a bit of transparency. I don’t expect them to be giving us daily updates but at least respond to questions on your forum, occasionally update your blog, respond to twitter followers etc etc.
Their rhetoric is so hypocritical! Just take a look at their homepage, I quote “customers are our greatest asset”, “feedback makes our products better”.
Agreed. End-user support and qualified forum response times can be improved. Releases/patches more stable, more frequently.
Right on the money… I have a number of organisations I support and have recommended Interspire to… and have found the lack of useful support and community become a real problem…. might be worth dusting of my OSC skills….
lets see what the answer is.
Thanks for the comment Stephen.
I am not so sure about going back to the future with OSC! I have lost count of the sleepless nights I have had trying to work out how to fix up osCommerce installations, I can’t even bear the thought of going back.
I just looked at the relative pricing etc…
For customers with under 100 products I’m inclined to move small clients to BC
as its only USD$13/month more than ISC … and they *will* get the updates
and don’t have to pay for hosting or me to do version/security upgrades.
And on the reseller plan I get annuity revenue
and can still charge for support if the customer doesn’t get a result from the BC paid support…
Hmmm this seems easier than …. OMG … the OSC nightmares are returning
I wouldn’t go with BC if I were you… Already the signs are the BC is getting the same treatment as ISC with the GetSatisfaction space already switched to “unofficial” status.
All the same bugs are there, including some that we found workarounds for in ISC, so really it’s not so much frying pan -> fire, as different frying pan, more oil!
I’ll trade you my social shop for a working google base feed . . . or even an API that works. We at BC are limited in the bug fixes and work arounds we are able to accomplish because we don’t have access to the code that you do.
From a business owner/customer service point of view . . . it is amazing to me that Interspire/BC has already been able to generate among current BC users some of the same feelings and sentiments expressed above. The PTB are going to find that it’s much more difficult to retain BC customers than ISC customers if they don’t deliver what is promised and communicate. (And eventually someone will figure out that when we leave, we stop paying!)
I loathe and despise the thought of moving our cart again. It’s disruptive to our business and since I’m the one who gets to put in most of the man hours . . . well, what a sucky way to spend a summer. And, I won’t be buying ISC, regardless of how many times it is suggested to me by BC tech support. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Hi Beth
Thank you for your thoughts and insights into BigCommerce.
The thought of transferring/learning the ins and outs of another shopping cart is quite frankly horrendous, ended the main motivation behind starting this conversation.
It is my hope (perhaps I am an optimist) that some public discussion can “encourage” Interspire to focus on getting the core of their software working correctly (and matching their sales message).
My ever optimistic hope that they will step up to the plate . . . and that is what has kept me with BC so far. It’s so disappointing. I first discovered the ISC software before BC was released, but we really wanted a hosted solution for our store. When BC was released as the SaaS version, I was thrilled. I demoed the software early on and loved it – but it wasn’t quite “there” yet to meet our needs. When they added 301 redirects and promised Shipworks integration by this summer, we signed on.
Foolishly, I overlooked things prior to sign up – things that are so standard they weren’t even on my check list like the ability to set custom urls. As much as I demoed the site, I never noticed their lack, until we went live and started breaking links when editing. Just last night, after having yet another outtage, I discovered that while BC guarantees 99.9% uptime (I’m at two 9s right now, not three), they don’t have an SLA that backs up that guarantee. Seriously? How can you guarantee without guaranteeing?
It’s so frustrating because like many BC users, I’d prefer they’d fix existing bugs and make existing promised features functional before adding more whistles and bells. And iPad shopping thingy only adds value if the core site works. And, frankly, the developer time spent on that could have been used to fix the broken API.
The latest disappointment: finding out that BC’s uptime guarantee is nothing more than . . . substance-less advertising . . . with no SLA behind it and no intent to compensate users when they fall short.
Great Blog Dave!
You and all the comments here hit the nail on the head. On the surface BC looks new & shiny, but it’s not until after you sign-up, invest your time getting your store ready, you find out all the features that don’t work as advertised. BC has stated that they want to be “transparent” but so far all they do is keep the client in the dark, and when negative things are said they don’t try and resolve anything. Their answer is to delete the postings, both on getsatisfaction.com, and their Facebook page. As another poster here said “companies like this who refuse to listen, learn or stop believing their own hype.”
As the frustration grows with BC, even though they are now enjoying growing successes; people will only put up with so much. Eventually they will get fed up and move on to plan “B.” It’s a real shame because they have such a great opportunity to make BC a great commerce choice. It’s very sad that despite the offering by the customer community to want to be part of the “TEAM” and help support BC by volunteering to be testers, in order to make the product better; BC just ignores us and leaves everyone in the dark. Transparency ended almost as soon as they advertised it. Just hype to get new customers, with no real intention on following through.
If someone is looking for a hosted solution in the US, do you have any suggestions of any that have a solid track record?
Many thanks, Mary
Hi Mary
Thanks for your comment. I can tell that you are pretty passionate about BigCommerce, as were a lot of us Interspire Shopping Cart customers/resellers when they first started using their product. In the early days we were all pretty happy to put up with a few problems knowing that the software was still new compared to its competitors. However now that the software is more “mature” we feel they have no more excuses and need to fix the existing problems as well as release new features.
For too long a lot of this discussion has been behind closed doors in the Interspire customer to customer forum. Getting it out into the public domain can only be a good thing and hopefully have an effect on how they go about communication and transparency.
Unfortunately, from the testing I have conducted on hosted solutions my preferred option is still BigCommerce while ever Shopify continue to charge transaction fees.
Oh boy, I have just finished a 1 month ISC trial (even though they say they don’t do trials) and 2 days ago, I paid for ISC Ultimate and IEM (single user) and now I find this eye-opening post!
After reading this post (and everyone’s insightful comments) I now find myself wanting to pull the plug on both ISC and IEM and look at other options i.e. CS-Cart? The general consensus seems to be that most people would drop ISC if it weren’t for amount of time/money/effort they have already invested. Is this the advice you would be giving to new Interspire users? Should I be asking for a refund sooner rather than later?
The only reason I stumbled across your post was because I was in need of additional help/info on a few ISC ‘issues’ (having searched the ISC forum and came up empty) and turned to Google.
Nervous wreck,
Shaun
Hi Shaun
From what I understand CS-Cart has a bunch of it’s own problems although there have been a number of former Interspire customers happily make the transition.
Hopefully, if you have tested ISC for a month you should have a pretty good idea whether it meets your needs, however it is always hard to tell exactly what’s going to happen until you get real customers involved. Over the past couple of years I have set up plenty of customers on Interspire, and most of them don’t have overly demanding needs and are very happy with the way things are going. In saying that, if you have a lot of product variations or want to rely heavily on discount options you may want to try out something else. I am sure others may chip in with more on this.
One thing I would advise you to take a further look at is the upcoming MailChimp integration with version 6. Personally I’d much rather use a third party provider for e-mail marketing than try and run my own show and the integration is looking pretty solid from the graphics I have seen.
Hi I am selling my Interspire Shopping Cart for cheap. Because I dont need it anymore.
I have the professional license at the price $995 USD. I will sell it at the price $600 and I am serious. I bought in January and now our store is closed now so I dont need it anymore.
Please let me know. email me at tommyaditya@gmail.com
Thanks.
The most post here are very accurate and hit the nail on the head. We developer for ISC since it’s earlier beta version and have done well over 250 modifications and addon’s for Interspire. However the complete lack of care for it’s partners and customers sees us using more and more our own customised version of CS Cart over Interspire Shopping Cart as there are just to many well known problems with variations, statistics, promotional features, B2B functionality to warrant the high price and running cost for the cart.
We and our customers are supposed to purchase paid update after update without the fundamental issues which are there since version 1 not being addressed!!
Thanks for chipping in Steve!
Personally, I am still researching the various options available as I myself want to start a SAS website for my clients or the companies interesting in E-Mail Marketing in my country.
So far, I came across:
1) ActiveCampaign: Lots of nice features. Only down-side when compared to Interspire’s EM is the GUI needs some improvements. Other than that, it is on top of my available solutions.
2) CampaignMonitor: Nice set of features. However, I miss having the ability to add System-wide templates while allowing clients to view them in a gallery. Another important feature is Auto-responders. In my opinion, this is a very important feature that should be available in any E-Mail Marketing Software/Service. However, one good thing is allowing clients to pay directly for any credits from within the system. So, you won’t have to deal with payments processing & orders, etc…
Those top two are rebrandable, and for me and anyone interested in provding E-Mail Marketing services, this is important. However, if White-labeling is not really that important for you I suggest you check MailChimps. Personally I believe its one of the best. Many features, continously developed and many new features are released & the GUI is just simple & great.
Ofcourse if anyone have any more solutions,I am open.
Note: the only reason I still haven’t bought ActiveCampaigns is because I have no means of researching and checking their support quality because their forums are closed for non-customers. Hopefully, someone will help with this!
Forgot to say, I received an e-mail from Interspire telling me that my support period is going to finish in 10 days or something.
The funny thing is that since I purchased their system, I have managed to report a number of bugs in 6+ and most of them are not fixed.
Why would I bother…
I would like to hear your thoughts on the legal side of this. Aren’t they supposed to provide a good quality service since we purchased their systems? Is there any way to sue them or something for not fixing the bugs and allowing us to use their systems as they marketed them?
@A.Hariri
Interspire is an Australian company located in Sydney. They need to fulfil the requirements of Commonwealth Trade Practises and NSW Fair Trading Act which states goods must be of merchandise quality and fit for purpose etc. You can find more information here: http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/Consumers/Advertising_and_pricing.html#Prohibition_on_misleading_and_deceptive_conduct_and_false_or_deceptive_advertising
If you cannot rectify your problem with Interspire, Fair trading can intercede on your behalf, but it is a difficult process at best, and I’m sure it’s even more painful with software and the licence agreement you would’ve agreed to which will state something about ‘provided as is with no warranty’.
Personally, we’ve found some specifically advertised features that don’t work at all, so I believe fair trading would uphold that.
Thanks Dom — the fair trading act is an angle that I hadn’t thought of.
Thanks Dom, I guess there might be a chance after all to get our money back.
I moved our website from ISC to Cs-Cart recently and havent looked back. The cs-cart support has been fantastic and timely and the whole thing is much cheaper.
Regarding the Fair Trading angle – use it. I had a situation where they wouldnt give me the code for a known bug because my maintenance period was up. Thing is, the bug was there when I bought it. I wasnt asking for any new functionality, just wanted a fix to the pile of poop they sold me!
In the end I threatened with action to Consumer Affairs & VCAT and they begrudgingly extended my maintenance free of charge.
Hi, I have a micro business and invested weeks of work in installing and customising ISC. Since then i have discovered that i need to get an Australia Post 3kg parcel script written as there is no way to manually configure shipping, as there is with PDG cart, for example. I can not afford the time or money to switch to a new cart. If ISC bail, i wonder if we have a case with Consumer affairs – but who will have the time and expertise to handle that? I am annoyed that ISC put out so much hype about their fantastic cart and now it seems they have deserted us.
hm just wondering whether this is the end of the self hosted version the Interspire developer network is gone http://idn.interspire.com/ which obviously would not be needed for the hosted version.
How long have you noticed it missing Steve?
notices it today, the partner portal is also gone by the way
Stupid question I know but has Mitch or anyone else from Interspire even responded to the comments, question or even bothered to address any of the issues?… or is business as usual and brick wall time?
Anyone heard anything?
I haven’t heard a word from them…. you would think such a self-proclaimed marketing genius would have some understanding of reputation management!
I’ve been given access to BC v6 Beta, and as expected the eBay integration is useless.
There is no option to create a proper template for your ebay listing. Your entire ebay listing is the product’s description written in small font. That’s it…. Unless i am missing something, i would have no hope at selling on ebay if my product listings looked liked this. No images, colour, proper layout, titles, warranty, returns, shipping, payment, cross promotion, vidoes etc.
Really disappointing, I don’t see why anyone with a little eBay experience would use this feature.
Can’t say I’m too surprised but if they are taking the beta aspect of it seriously they’ll be getting feedback on this and “hopefully” attacking it properly.
Version 7.x?
So there is no option to use your custom html template? Hopefully its better than that with all the hype about eBay integration. From what I’ve been reading eBay integration is the biggest part of this upgrade. I’ve been holding off signing up so I could test it for the trial period. Maybe its time to look elseware…
I tested the beta. The Ebay feature is very basic, with no ability to use templates to make your listing look customized. It also had limited options to choose for the listing, you’ll have to log on to your Ebay account to adjust any changes you might want to add. It also only sends 1 photo (your default for the item). your product will be listed but it will be very basic, just text and the one picture.
Hm no surprise and exactly as I predicted, and for interspire using the beta to actually use the information they gather I guess the same way they did with variations, coupon codes and the other promotional features
To be fair that is what a beta trial is designed for. The only problem is that traditionally Interspire overcommit to the wrong model and find it far too hard (expensive) to remodel once customers provide feedback that the feature isn’t working as it should.
The bit that grates is that there is a LONG thread in the Interspire ISC forum where a lot of experienced users gave feedback on what they would like to see as well as a very long list of potential problems that would need to be overcome in order to make the feature anything other than a marketing BS exercise.
“As expected” (becoming an all too familiar phrase!) all of it was ignored to provide a paper tiger that looks good in theory but lacks anything in substance…
All the indicators are now pointing in the direction of selling the company with what appears to be a good customer base but in reality it’d be a poisoned chalice where the buyer would be faced with at least 9 months work and a complete rewrite to resolve the huge number of outstanding issues…
HOWEVER… There is another possible explanation…
…It’s entirely possible that the eBay functionality has suffered because the core coder(s) have been making the necessary changes to the basic structure to resolve some of the bigger problems.
If they did, then perhaps there is hope… After all, eBay integration based on the existing patchy infrastructure would be hamstrung and probably require rewriting.
So, it could be a good thing… Unfortunately we won’t know until 6.x rolls out for ISC… assuming it happens…
I was just about to get myself Interspire Email Marketer, but saw the forum and decided not to go there anyway
What now? ActiveCampaign, OemPro, AutoResponsePlus?
Any recommendations on other self-hosted solutions? Thanx.
I’m afraid I prefer to use third-party e-mail service providers Anton. They can deal with all the hassles associated with software upgrades and delivery issues.
If someone is thinking to move from Interspire Shopping Cart to CS-Cart but is put off
by the thought having to manual migrate all products incl Meta Tags, variations, orders and customer details. We have the solution. We programmed a Interspire Shopping Cart (ISC) 2 CS Cart Migrator which does all of this automatically and requires very little
manual touch up work after the migration process.
sorry contact us at http://www.4sprung.com.au or check out http://www.module-shop.com
ISC V6 is out…
Official launch is next week – http://www.interspire.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16772
Might wait a few weeks before upgrading.
My maintenance contract expired last month, after no real updates/news in 6 months, i’m really not wanting to fork out another $500usd to renew in order to upgrade to v6 and benefit from bug fixes and basic improvements that should have been released long ago.
I’m in exactly the same boat as you Matt.
exactly same scenario here, was coaxed in to past two updates without much improvement of fundamental issues and now another US$900 for an update
NO THANK YOU INTERSPIRE
Oh dear, Now im more confused than I thought I was, Ok Im pretty new to this however I loved the interspire demo, But for some reason I could not get myself to commit since there was talk of the version 6 and I knew there was only 12 free upgrade, I waited waited and only 2 wees ago send a more than annoyed e mail, hey the version 6 was actually out but not listed on their site, I was issued another demo loved it again, there is few things not working for me but overall not bad! I THINK
anyhow I tried to get my merchant account working with securetrading and my .htaccess went missing ?? who knows !!?? ..I got in touch with interspire via support ticket , im waiting, waiting and still waiting , I then called sales up who weren’t to bothered 
oh dear! , Still waiting,
I have also asked for more information how to get secure trading working and im waiting waiting,,,
I stumbled on this post today, NOW im totally unsure what to do, I have only 10 days left with my trial but to be honest I need to be up and running now !!
Even if they do carry on upgrading ISC a few months behind BC im not sure I can handle living with the stress of knowing when or if something goes wrong I have support that is not exactly supportive, If its like this for a prospective customer how will it be when they have got my money???.
Like I said I love what the program offers and the while labeling is fantastic but with how I feel about the support and with what im reading Im not so sure, what are my options ?
Is CS, Cart close to the functionality of Interspire ? or is there another cart option that will give me what interspire do without the support issue, and development commitment, or is that just to much to ask
?
Interspire seemed to be everything I would need but if its going to die whats the point, even if it continues whats the point with such terrible support and disregard to customers
!
I so need advice ASAP!!
Thanks for writing this Dave and all you contributing helps a lot ,although its put me into another dimension of fear, but at least I haven’t purchased yet like some of you!
Thanks for dropping by Brend, even though it probably wasn’t the information you’d hope to see. At least it’s better to have your eyes opened to what’s really going on with Interspire, allowing you to make an informed decision on your final shopping cart purchase. If only Interspire could get their act together they could easily dominate the small/medium business market, there just isn’t any good quality alternatives
One alternative that might be worth checking out is a new shopping cart – LemonStand. I have no real experience other than playing around with a demo for an hour or two but have heard some good reports so far.
So my hours of searching for something equal or better than interspire got nowhere as there is nothing!!
I see so much highly rating CS Cart, But they all seem to compare the Basic version of Interspire, Where would you actually put CS cart on the scale, bearing in mind Interspire has set my level of expectation “feature wise” ? People also naturally go on about the low price, I thought Intespire was stupidly low considering the prices I had previously been given, a company called ATG quoted me from £200 GRAND to 300
Now that was a short call !!!:) others up to £15 Grand
If Cs Cart is so low priced how can that ever compare, It takes revenue to produce anything worth having, Not suggesting CS Cart is not any good just exploring every question.
Im playing about with lemonstand at the moment, initially didn’t like the feel but im getting over that, and it looks like it deserves some time to look into.
back to interspire potentially dropping the cart, Funny that I e mailed them with two questions one being the commitment they have for the cart and if any rumors had some truth since they had dropped a program before. Guess what they badly answered my secure trading question but ignored the other ,,, smells a bit!!
If they did drop it though, would it be easy enough for someone to keep the code up to date for me ?? or could that be a huge cost ?
Looks like this is going to be a hard one to get right
Hi Brend,
Cs-cart is way ahead of ISC in regards to functionality and most of it is much better implemented though Interspire has a nicer UI.
We have now created several customer sites with CS-Cart and do not look back.
Check out http://www.4sprung.com.au or http://www.module-shop.com
Thanks
Steve
Hi steve
Thanks for the comment, I cant seem to see where CS Cart is ahead with functions ?
Im not saying its not, I have been messing about with CS Cart for hours now, to me it looks like it is missing things, small things but items I think are important, like the image auto magnification, all the big stores use it now, and the ability to enable video reviews, I think this is a brilliant dimension to have in the descriptions.
I need to look at a side by side comparison, of the ultimate Interspie version though.
With how I am feeling about Interspire and their support I so need CS Cart or the new one lemonstand to be right for me.
Hi Brenden,
Hm not sure where to start, variations, global options, affiliates, statistics, data feeds, product import export, wholesale, customer rules, reward points, blocks and many more please have a look at http://www.4sprung.com.au/WEB-SOFTWARE/CART-SYSTEM/FEATURES/shopping-cart-features.html however no cart is perfect but as CS cart is a truly modular system it can be modified without affecting the cart core (not really possible with ISC) and it seem to have a better future then ISC.
maybe email me directly if you have further questions.
thanks
Steve
I would advise against anyone looking to purchase any standalone products from Interspire. Their support has been entirely focused on BC, and has given up on the other products they are required to support. If you check out this post on their forum, there was a business for sale ad that looked similar to Interspire: http://www.interspire.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16223&page=3
Do yourself a favor and pass on Interspire.
Although Interspires email marketer is very good, Interspire make me extremely angry. I am wondering why I, a happy, relaxed person, is dealing with people who make me mad when I can choose not to.
I only need to change the domain name the system is used under, and they want $364.50 for a new 12 month support contract or they wont change it. I dont need their support, but I do need to change the domain name. Quite an expensive change, considering their system is automated. I have 6 systems with them, have spent thousands of $$ with them, but they want me to spend that same money again and again every year. I am just a 1 man business and dont have this kind of cash.
Last time I needed their support (over a year ago) they made me angry then too. In fact I think everytime I dealt with them they make things difficult, unless I spend a lot of money.
It seems Interspires only priority is to make as much money as it can, and not care about customers. They dont realise looking after customers results in making more money!
Time for Mitchel Harper and the rest to be replaced by customer caring leadership perhaps?
I can see hacked Interspire Marketer systems online, their policy drives us to hack the system to remove the license restriction, or use competitor products, when in fact they could make money if they charged a reasonable amount.
I thought to be fair I should post another response I have just had of Interspire , as in my last post I had stated that interspire did not even mention part two of my question, . anyhow they eventually replied, here is all they said.not sure what to make if it though!
I cannot comment on future releases that come from our home office in Sidney, though our products are still under development, and I know of no plans to end development. In fact we recently released updates to two of our products, the cart and Email Marketer.
The problem with the lack of ability to comment is because Mitch does not comment on anything like this. His policy is of make big sweeping generalisations that sound good or complete silence. The latter usually means that they haven’t decided or simply that it’s going to be bad news… It’s right up there with the “No comment” you get from politicians in that it allows plausible deny-ability without closing any doors to options (such as shutting down a product).
The frustration with this approach is that it’s unprofessional, leaves customers completely at sea as to whether to trust the company or not, and ultimately provides a beautiful environment for conjecture and rumour to circulate.
I still think the plan is ultimately to sell everything off and walk away… and nothing I’ve seen in the last couple of months does anything to dispel that impression… quite the opposite in fact.
There has been a bit of talk about CS Cart in the comments so I have put together a review and am in the process moving the most relevant comments from this post over to the review.
You can access the CS Cart review here: http://www.shoppingcartstrategies.com/software/cs-cart-review/
I am shocked that Mitchell Harper, CEO of Interspire, has not responded to this post by now. This is typical of Interspire support: they are not good at it. They are slow to respond, and provide weak support. Mitchell Harper should notice blog posts like this and give a response. I think all Interspire shopping cart customers would appreciate an update from Mitchell Harper via a comment on this post. I’m really hoping Mitchell Harper from Interspire will notice my comment here and provide his own comments on this post.
I would be very surprised if he hasn’t noticed it and must admit it is pretty poor reputation management from somebody who claims to know so much.
It’s pretty much standard Interspire policy to ignore criticism on all levels and pretend it’s just one of those “Every successful company has customers who complain” issues as if it’s just a few nutters.
You can bet this site will get some attention if/when it gets a serious SEO ranking against Interspire results though and it won’t be to resolve issues…
It’s a good thing he’s not an admin on here, because he would just delete the negative stuff. Oh, but wait that wouldn’t be transparent, lol. Besides they are too busy right now working on cleaning up their latest mess over at BC. They rolled out an upgrade that caused many stores to go seriously awry. Lots of store owners very upset, losing days of sales, and ready to jump ship. They need to follow the 7 P’s (proper-prior-planning-prevents-piss-poor-performance). I don’t know that they will ever wake up & smell the coffee. Sad, because BC had so much potential.
Interspire is an exmaple of a poorly ran business and that rests on Michell Harper and his no where in sight business partner. They neglect their Interspire customers and only support their Big Commerce customers where they obviously make the most money from.
A reason partly for his non existance is that he is too busy creating his blog posts, even when he knows little about what he is talking about.
I think Interspire is going into the deep end, they are lacking the funds to fully develop the core products, and big-commerce sell’s enough and earn Interspire higher residuals. They also have accounts that customers forget about and pay the bill, that’s the nature of recurring revenue industries. Interspire CLEARLY is brushing the ISC license version to the side and keeping everyone’s hopes and dreams a float by “sugar coating” the topic. It’s highly ticked me off, I have dozens of licenses just for our own sites of Interspire, not to mention countless hours and money put into teams of development for modifications to the platform. I am to the point now, once we upgrade the rest of our sites to the highest version, we are going to just keep adding the modules we need, and never buy a license from Interspire again. They are going to end up in a “warranty” battle or law-suit from the public if they are not careful and it’s going to dip into the BigCommerce gold rush they are thriving from. BigCommerce WILL NOT work for the majority of REAL sites out there, it’s only for junk sites that can never grow out of the garage. If they do, great but they are limited and they know it.
I have been a reseller for some time now, and originally they were in Sydney with their support, but now its all in the USA – and it typically takes them days to get back to you, then it is a vague answer, then they go off and close the ticket rather than trying to help me fix their buggy software.
Next was multi-currency, on their site it said sell multi-currency…what a joke. Even on their own website when you check out they tried to charge me in USD, whilst still trying to charge my Australian GST? Monumental if you ask me. Then I said to a customer yes it does multi-currency. But when we tried it, it converted nicely into another currency, but when they went to go check out and pay via paypal it switched back to charging them in the default currency??? So I had to get one of my programmers to fix it all up. I tried to confront them to say they had mis-leading copy on their website, and I don’t think they have changed it since.
Even the partner support is shocking, and as you rightly said the forums are a joke and no one will see your message.
I even asked the partner manager for a phone number to call for support, and he said no support via phone is offered, unless you are a BigCommerce customer. WTF? No phone support – for partners?
I’ve also tried other platforms like Business Catalyst (Now owned by Adobe) and several others, but they all seem to start off ok, but when they get too big they all seem to drop the ball!! Especially in their support desk (phone support is has been dropped for years now). All were once a thriving ground for people asking questions, but now NADA.
So much for customer support these days.
Carl
We are all hearing you loud and clear Carl! It’s a real shame the way things are heading after it looked like they were getting their act together (even if it was only briefly).
Once an Interspire Evangelist , I’m also now another Refugee !
I have 27 Interspire licenses across the range of product – I don’t pay for support any more and I don’t update them – let sleeping dogs (and sleeping problems!) lie.
Once thing you haven’t mentioned is the appalling support to us UK / Europeans, due to time zones. If you raise a ticket in UK time on a Friday afternoon, it could be 3 days before ISC Supoort even get to their office to read it. Absolutely crazy. When i contacted Mitch et al directly and they wouldn’t commit to providing support during UK/Eurozone time, that was my decision to cease buying new licences and go elsewhere.
Ken, as I said in the other comment you’re definitely not alone.
Thanks for the article Dave, I have had similar concerns for some time now. I can’t say I’ve noticed any decrease in support levels, it is interesting that Interspire Shopping Cart used to get updated regularly (maybe every few months) and now I can’t recall when the last update was, even though there are still bugs in it. It certainly does seem that development work is focused on BC instead. It makes me worried for the future.
Cheers
Graeme
Graeme, I would say that most longer term users of Interspire if they haven’t already are planning on moving to another platform. CS Cart seems to be a popular choice.
As for the ethics of Interspire Management, I think that Aaron Wall recently posting that he has never endorsed Interspire shopping cart or BigCommerce, and has repeatedly asked them to remove use endorsement from their marketing material sums up their spin over substance attitude.
I have an Interspire Shopping Cart. If I knew 18 months ago what I know today, I would have gone with Big Commerce. I like the Interspire Shopping cart and find it easy to use. I am not a programmer nor a developer. As a result, I do not take advantage of the benefits of owning your own cart.
My concern is that now when Interspire has a software release, it doesn’t appear to have minimal validation testing done prior to release. For instance, I recently upgraded to 6.1.6 from 6.1.1. Bad idea. Live Chat was broken and worse of all, if a customer order 10 widgets, they were charged for 100. The bug was found by a customer in less than 2 hours after 6.1.6 was installed. Here is an example:
Subtotal: $186.45
Coupon Code (Anniversary): $-22.37
Shipping: $3.97
Grand Total: $1,808.85
I quickly reverted to 6.1.1 but there is no excuse for that release of software. 6.1.7 is now available but I am afraid to upgrade.
That is now new though, Interspire always has had a terrible record for new releases and never seem to do more then a superficial white box testing and the rest of the testing is done by the customers.
A company like Interspire should have proper white and black box testing at least that is what we do for every customers cart release and not to mention for any 4s cart updates.
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