Reader Feedback on HipHip's Merchandizer

There seem to be very few "turnkey" mid-size e-commerce solutions available. Most require buying an expensive and complex piece of software and developing the application oneself. So I wanted to share with you my experience with our current e-commerce service solution: Merchandizer by HipHip Software. http://www.merchandizer.com

From my own research I consider Merchandizer to be the most customizable turnkey solution available. I am able to customize nearly every aspect of the application -- down to every piece of wording in the Shopping Cart. In addition, they have developed a depth of features that allows me to grow with them. Some of these are standard features and some they will develop for us.

Recently, I had an onsite meeting with their CEO and head of customer service. My concern was whether we could stay with them when our main mail order system went to Great Plains (which we use for our core accounting module and are rolling out through the rest of the organization). http://www.greatplains.com/ HipHip Software assured me that they will develop an XML interface with Great Plains that allows for real time inventory and automatic data processing with our legacy system. I then gave them a list of features I want developed and we reached a basic agreement on how they will proceed with developing these features. These customizations are being priced very reasonably and will fit within the development budget I had allotted for the site.

I want to emphasize their customer service and technical support. When we were looking for an e-commerce service provider we strongly considered [another e-commerce product], however we had problems with their legal contract and I had many technical/feature questions about their product. The poor level of response from the company led me to believe that we would not be served by such a large organization. HipHip Software has proved to be completely the opposite. E-mails are responded to within a couple of hours. I can always get technical support on the phone. Unresolved issues are escalated to a manager who resolves them. If I need to talk to the CTO or CEO about something I can get them. It is so rare to find this level of customer service in technical company these days. I recently found HipHip's webpage where they post customer comments about their technical support. It's worth reading. There are literally dozens and dozens of thank yous. http://www.merchandizer.com/techsupportquotes.htm You just don't find this sort of service nowadays -- and I thought you might want to share this with your readers. This is a small company, with a great product - offering great service. (AND they are a fun team!)

Now I don't have to go through the pain of researching a new e-commerce service provider and moving our operation to a new platform. We can grow with the current one. That's six months of my life just saved! -- Mark Davis