CoreCommerce Review
Detailed Reviews
CoreCommerce is a Franklin, Tennessee based company founded in 2001.
CoreCommerce offers simplicity, features, and affordability without
hidden or transaction cost. With sufficient plans to choose from, any
kind of business is suitable for this application. Irrespective of the
plan you buy, you gain the full benefit of all the powerful features of
the app. This eCommerce app comes with a big feature set that makes site
designing, managing inventory, and report generating quite easy and
quick.
Design
CoreCommerce is equipped with
hundreds of theme options that will suit the online business owner just
starting out as well as the seasoned player raking in millions worth of
transactions on a monthly basis. Like most other online shopping cart
platforms, CoreCommerce lets you dive into the code of these themes and
modify the HTML and CSS. The design section also comes with a
drag-and-drop Site Builder allowing you to quickly put together a
suitable website to sell your products.
One major drawback in
CoreCommerce’s design features is the lack of adequate mobile support.
While it does provide a mobile version, you don’t get any variety. You
get a single rather bland theme option which may not be the way to go if
you are looking to brand your site effectively. Ideally, a dedicated
mobile version of each theme would be ideal. You can always opt to hire
their in-house designers at an exorbitant price to get this done but we
wouldn’t recommend it.
Security
CoreCommerce tends
to lay extra emphasis on security by providing a combination of 256-bit
encrypted pages, fraud detection as well as fraud handling which makes
it a well-rounded software in terms of security. All plans include daily
backup of data and free 256-bit shared SSL certificate. Users can also
access content through FTP, change mx records to host email elsewhere
and use the multiple login feature.
Hosting
CoreCommerce
utilizes RackSpace, one of the most trustworthy cloud hosting
enterprise services on the market. They have some restrictions on their
allowed storage and data transfer depending on plan. Higher level plans
like a Professional and Premier allows unlimited bandwidth. All their
plan allows 99.9% up-time guarantee with email accounts and email
hosting services.
Marketing
CoreCommerce comes
with a barrage of useful marketing features to increase customer
retention and drive more traffic to your website. Use coupon codes and
product reminders to encourage more customer participation. Increase
awareness and encourage more users by integrating your shopping cart
with social media, optimizing your site for search engines and using an
affiliate program to allow third parties to drive sales to your online
store for a commission.
You can also have your store listed on
online product directories and comparison websites such as Google,
Price Grabber, Nextag and Bing by uploading product data feeds.
However,
unlike other few shopping carts, you cannot offer daily deals, and that
there is no way for your customers to compare products.
Interface
If you have experience using a number of shopping carts, you should be able to figure out the various features.
The dashboard allows viewing and processing orders; analyzing reports
for tracking sales daily, monthly, and yearly; managing customer
returns; adding products; and changing store settings.
When it
comes to evaluating the interface, the eCommerce package grabs full
score, as creating the store is fast and hassle-free. Apart from that,
navigation and store maintenance are also easy and without any issues.
Third-Party Integrations
CoreCommerce
offers support for several popular third party services through its
extensions. With Social Commerce, you get to extend your visibility and
reach by integrating your online store on your Facebook page. In
addition, you can integrate your shopping cart with email marketing
services like GetResponse and Constant Contact, Fullfillment service
like Shipworks, Marketing automation app like HubSpot, eBay as well as
related servicest.
Reports
You get the usual set
of reporting such as your gross sales, tax reports and movement of
items, the marketing section brings some useful data such as search
statistics, customer order history and keyword tracking. Due to
bandwidth limitations, it would be useful to have the bandwidth usage
report handy at all times to ensure you are not exceeding your cap which
may lead to unnecessary interruptions.
Pricing
The
pricing is fairly decent though it’s not the cheapest option in the
market. The 15 day trial gives you a very limited 50MB in storage space
and the possibility of making three test transactions. We would still
advise you to use the trial in order to familiarize yourself with the
interface. The main issue is storage space. Even their professional
package at $140 per month gives you a measly 10GB of storage.
If
you are having detailed descriptions with videos, high resolution
photos and a large number of products, 10GB can quickly run out.
CoreCommerce provides additional storage at a fixed price per GB. Same
goes for bandwidth where caps have been enforced for their bottom two
packages.
Conclusion
If having great support is
useful to you, CoreCommerce should be a service you will be happy with,
it provides all the features of a good shopping cart software and gets
the job done.