Former Miva Merchant Users?

[lesliekirk]

I have been a Miva Merchant developer since 1998 and while it's still the primary shopping cart application I work with, I am looking for viable alternatives to it for some of my clients. I wanted to see if there are any other Miva Merchant users floating around here and would like to get your honest opinions and insights.

I'm used to working with applications that I can host on servers of my choosing. It also enables me to add additional applications like WordPress and Gallery2. I realize there is a "blog" included with 3dcart, but does it have the flexibility and extensibility that WordPress has? I haven't dug far enough into 3dcart to see if there is any photo gallery ability.

Also as a long time Miva Merchant developer, that has some perks to it such as development copies of the software and modules - is that available with 3dcart? I've also been able to participate in pre-release beta testing.

LOL and now I start back at the total noob status ;)

Many thanks!
Leslie

[You2]

Hi Leslie,

We migrated from MM and have never looked back.
The feature set is amazing. No more module overload!
There is real technical support here that has always been professional and helpful.
We are happy with the service.

Can't help you with the blog question, but it does have a photo gallery.
Customizing the templates allows for many options beyond the stock templates.
There is no MivaMia offline server here, but it would be a welcomed addition.
Before you "Go Live" you set it up and migrate or input the data on the test server.
Once you go live then all changes are instant so if you want to test things out, you can get a $20 account for testing or just do the tests during off-peak hours.
You can do some limited testing by using customer groups that restrict the products (test products) that can be seen.

Good Luck!

[lesliekirk]

Thanks for the insight. Since most of the Miva Merchant savvy hosts offer free dev sites and the licensing does allow for it, I quit using Miva Mia while back. Almost every site I develop is now done using a free dev site (dev.domainname.com). It's also a "safe haven" to let the store owner get comfortable in before going live. So not having something like this could be a minor drawback during the development phase.

I also do a lot of flat file importing of products/categories - I've gotten most of my clients well trained in creating an Excel spreadsheet, which I format into a flat file to upload. I'll have to see if there is an equivalent import. Don't really want to have to add products one at a time.

Thanks,
Leslie

[piaf]

You can use an Excel csv file to import products, categories, options, inventory, manufacturers, images, etc. Just start out with a couple of manual entries, then download those entries so you have the correct format of the csv table. Then upload like crazy. That's how we set up our entire store.