iCode Everest or Netsuite? - Looking for an "all-in-one" small business solution

[Bryan]

Starting a new business from the ground up, and I'd like to do it right the first time.

I was leaning towards iCode Everest Advanced, and planning on hosting the entire suite on a server at my ISP... ...but have just come across new information on NetSuite's hosted solution, which is sounding pretty good too...

What I'm looking for:
- all in one business management(!)
- ecommerce
- CRM
- inventory management
- sales & shipping
- integrated payments system

...is that everything?

Am I on the right track with iCode, or should I be looking at a wider range of solutions?

I contacted CoreSense, but the $15,000 startup fee left a sour taste in my mouth...(I don't think they fully understand the 'small' in 'small business'...!)

It's only myself for now, with another person possibly joining me in 6 months. I'd like to 50-90% online sales, but also have the ability to access a type of POS internal to the office (it's an automotive performance shop that sells performance and OE parts, as well as having a 'service' component and shop with face-to-face customer relations...)

Thanks for any help.

[landisnet]

Dear Bryan,
Take a zero off that $15,000 start up fee. CoreSense is a big time business application developer, international networking. You business will not need the resources. Well, hopefully you will in a few years.

There are many less expensive solutions which implement:
"- all in one business management(!)
- ecommerce
- CRM
- inventory management
- sales & shipping
- integrated payments system"

Some even offer real-time inventory. If you are planning to carry an inventory, you should make sure that your resources can supply you within hours of an order. Back-orders are a death sentence for a new company trying to sell online. I wouldn't worry about an inventory management system at this point. Use old-fashioned pen/pencil manual counting every month until you learn the nature of your business. Tweeking an inventory control system can be twice as expensive as the original development. Let your business grow into the technical requirements and react to your growing business with technology.

If you are going develop a web site to sell your services and products, have a good comprehensive CRM strategy in place and be consistant with it. Offer customer communications that are part of your web site via chat, message boards and offer as much information on the products and services you sell.

Best of luck,
Russell Smith
Landisnet
http://www.mawebcenters.com/kate123web/landisnet/index.html
:cool:

[mutahman]

If $15000 seems high you will be floored with the quotes you get from iCode and Netsuite. I was really pumped with what we saw at iCode, then they came back with a $59000 quote. We were floored!

We design, produce and distribute storage cases for digital products (www.slappa.com) and we sell to retailers, importers and directly to customers online.

We are looking for essentially what you had listed:

- all in one business management(!)
- ecommerce
- CRM
- inventory management
- sales & shipping
- integrated payments system
+ we want our accounting working in the same system/database

The only thing we may have that you don't is multi-currency.

We only have 10 users yet the quote from iCode was $6500 for the base license, $13,000 for the additional 8 licenses and $27000 for implementation/training and on site expenses.

Netsuite came back with $20,000 for 3 years of license. In all, these companies who are pitching their solutions for small and medium companies are not realistic. $60,000 is not an enterprise wide deal for a fortune 1000, but at the same time it's not a solution you are going to get many 10 person, 2 year old companies to bite on.

Over the past week I've been tempted to start up another business that brings such solutions to market at a price that is really for the small companies of the world

[Bryan]

Originally posted by mutahman
If $15000 seems high you will be floored with the quotes you get from iCode and Netsuite. I was really pumped with what we saw at iCode, then they came back with a $59000 quote. We were floored!

We design, produce and distribute storage cases for digital products (www.slappa.com) and we sell to retailers, importers and directly to customers online.

We are looking for essentially what you had listed:

- all in one business management(!)
- ecommerce
- CRM
- inventory management
- sales & shipping
- integrated payments system
+ we want our accounting working in the same system/database

The only thing we may have that you don't is multi-currency.

We only have 10 users yet the quote from iCode was $6500 for the base license, $13,000 for the additional 8 licenses and $27000 for implementation/training and on site expenses.

Netsuite came back with $20,000 for 3 years of license. In all, these companies who are pitching their solutions for small and medium companies are not realistic. $60,000 is not an enterprise wide deal for a fortune 1000, but at the same time it's not a solution you are going to get many 10 person, 2 year old companies to bite on.

Over the past week I've been tempted to start up another business that brings such solutions to market at a price that is really for the small companies of the world

Hey mutahman,

I actually ended up choosing 'NetSuite Small Business' shortly after posting this question, $90/month per user (not their full blown 'Netsuite Enterprise' system for $399/month per user, or somewhere in abouts that).

I met with them at their local office to discuss the product in detail and to tell them what we were looking for, our rep even pulled one of the web techs down a few times when we started to get a bit technical with what we were looking for in regards to the website functionality.

To date, I've been very happy with the features and flexibility of the system.

Major warning: the learning curve is steep.

To be fair, I did opt out of any training they were offering, and any setup work they quoted, to save an additional $5-6k. I felt that since I was starting from the ground up, and had no data to import, I could get by (I was also relying on my 3 years of business degrees to help me out - lets just say they were rusty!)

They did have a few 'getting started' type web seminars that I logged into and participated in, and I know they have other presentations in their "NetU" offerings that I have yet to try. Plus there is an online forum which you can subscribe to and seek help with others. I haven't hit any roadblocks that bad yet, and with the 'Small Business' application you get 3 free tech support emails per month... ...not much, but it's something, and I have yet to use those too!

The entire 'Help' sections were very well thought out, and quite extensive. Nice little things like if you're on a page in the application and select 'Help' it brings you directly to THAT page's help page, and tells you just about everything you'd need to know about the page your looking at. Also, all the input fields are 'help clickable'(eg. if you're staring at a box field that wants some type of information punched into it, but your brain simply cannot process what it's asking for, click on the field description to get a more detailed answers as to what it's expecting from you - neat! saved my butt more than a few times)

re multicurrency: The system is setup for it. I am currently using CAN, US, Euro and British Pound.(at launch time, it will only have CAN)

Pros & Cons:
Pros - too many to list quite frankly! highlights are everything you and I asked for and then some I've never even thought would be possible (eg set your minimum stock level, and when inventory quantities drop below that, warnings are sent, and a PO is automatically generated...). Dashboard is really nice, you can customize it to give you just about any sort of an up-to-minute info/report you'd like, so when you log in you have an instant overview of profit/loss, inventory sold, web stats, whatever! There's tons, I could go on and on, but I don't want to sound like a sales man, check it out yourself... ...I know iCode and Netsuite can give you access to a live demo of the application, should you want to mess around.

Cons - my biggest gripe is that the system was clearly built for people moving from QuickBooks, who are familiar with how that system was developed and works, rather than a 'lets build this in a logical way'. It's not hugely bad, but while learning the system you can't help but laugh at how it was laid out at times (okay, it may simply be that way to me being a System Administrator for MS products through the years - Win95/98/NT/2000/XP, NT/2000/2003 Server, Exchange 5.5/2000/2003, IIS, SQL, etc, etc - so you kind of get used to how things get laid out, it's not just MS, I work with Adobe and Macromedia product on a daily basis as well, and it's all about the same UI...). I didn't realize this until I signed up to a web seminar, where they demonstrate how easy the system is to use, because a lot of the functions are the same in QuickBooks and Netsuite. Great marketing to get people away from QuickBooks (#1 business app!), not the greatest for non-QuickBooks folk. Which is fine really, like any app, it only does so much, and when you've figured that out, you'll be fine like I am now. Or just take some training.

[as I’m rereading this, I should note that Netsuite has a variety of ‘Roles’ which are all customizable. When I log in, I log in as the 'Administrator' so I see all and can do all which may also be why it’s a little, err, ‘complex’(?). Should you change your ‘role’ to, say, an ‘accountant’, you’d only see accounting items and not shipping, website, POs, etc, etc – so my biggest con, may not be a con at all…sorry!]

iCode vs Netsuite
Originally I was quoted $1600 for an iCode licence. In the time I waited to buy (trip to Europe, meeting with tuners), they switched CEOs and direction. When I called them back to sign up, I was requoted $21,000. My reaction to Mr.iCode rep "ha ha ha ha ha - 'click'" (I admit, not very professional, but I'm a SMALL BUSINESS with LITTLE START UP $$$ - why would I want to sink 1/3 of my start-up funds into a software package?? morons I tell you! yes, you Mr.iCode CEO!)

In that time Netsuite had also released their new online product (no more "Oracle's Netsuite" requiring a $$$ Oracle backend, hardware, etc) which I am so glad right now that I chose! How can you go wrong with a 100% hosted app (that allows you to back-up!), accessible from any web browser, with everything built-in, +ecommerce website and hosting for $90/month?!

One thing I'd recommend to someone looking at Netsuite, or any licensing software package, is really sit down and think about how many licences you need. Does every employee require one, or can some 'share' (hey, if it's 'per licence' and only one person uses it at a time, it's still legal, no? :)) May save you a few bucks.

My eCommerce website should be live next Friday (finalizing legal, design, etc). Feel free to check it out. It’s honestly nothing special, key word here is “clean”. It's been a long time in production, but that all been because of my end, credit card processing companies(!!!), banks, website design, and not Netsuite. I think they had my company access setup in about 4 days.

Hope some of this helps future readers.

Bryan

[mutahman]

Hi Bryan

Good news on your side!! I'm glad you were able to get things running smoothly.

The only concern I have with Netsuite is (as I menioned earlier)....we are growing at a steady clip and in 3 years time we will have dumped a LOT of our compny information/ transactions/ customer data into the system and who knows if in 3 years the license prices go through the roof (like you experienced with iCode). If that happens we're stuck and potentially screwed. When Netsuite goes public I am certainly buying the stock, but I'm not 100% sure the hosted model works for us

I really do appreciate the detailed response!!!!

[Bryan]

The software does have the ability to download the data into IIF or CSV files.

That is currently how I am performing weekly backups.

As with any sideways move in software, you'd most likely need to perform some sort of import/export to transfer your data, so I don't feel it would be a huge deal to move away from Netsuite in the future should I ever need to...

[mutahman]

Bryan

based on your comments about Netsuite I e-mailed them back today (actually mailed over to iCode as well). While iCode never responded, Netsuite came back and they are going to work with us to meet our target price without cutting functionality (they actually gave us a new quote today). We are now going through all of the small print, but I have to say, these guys wanted the business. I told them about my 2 concerns (pricing after the initial license and the transfer of files) and they are (a) writing into the contract that they'll not increase pricing more then 10% after the initial license and (b) noted that CSV files, as you stated, are easy and virtually free to download.

So while iCode (who was the front runner at least in my opinion) decided to be the snobbish, non-responsive, "we sell software to small business's that are not small business" company, Netsuite came and got the business.

It looks like, barring any unseen roadbumps, will be going with Netsuite.

Thanks a million for the feedback!!

MTM

[Bryan]

hey, that's awesome. do I get a commission? ;)

in a few month, if you have time, I'd be interested in seeing a followup post with your feedback on the product.

good luck, and I hope all works out for you and the company.

[ajmiller]

Anyone who is looking for a complete Web host with e-com, email, check out, the works... should check out TekInteractive (www.tekinteractive). They have great customer support, and are fantastic at what they do! For examples check out www.grabillhardware.com, www.doitbest.com, www.fwchamber.org. I would recommend Tek to anybody!

A J Miller

[DMuse]

I have to admit I thought maybe that NetSuite was more focused on the mid-market these days, but muthaman's experience shows they still "get" the small business market.
I agree with Bryan that it would be great to hear how things work out down the line.
-Dan

[mutahman]

we have the contract and SOW in hand....all looks good so we'll probably sign off in the next week

Our set up is a full soup to nuts implementation, with 8 users out of the gate, so it will be interesting to see how well we (as a group) take to the system and how much it helps.

I will surely keep you posted.

[Weminuche]

Great info guys. Please keep us up to date. I am considering implementing NetSuite also.

Jim

[cyberdov]

Sorry I joined this thread a bit late for Mutahman...
As a VAR for Icode, I think they have a great product - but in their direct sales operation, they don't get the customer service and support part. Fortunately they are moving more towards a Reseller channel.
As a certified Icode VAR we have been successful in supporting our many Icode installations, with better service and lower costs than Icode direct. We have implemented clients from 5 to 100 users, and continue to support them.
I'd be happy to discuss with anyone who is interested, and to provide references etc.

[mutahman]

Cyberdov...thanks for the post. If I would have found you earlier I would have certainly talked with you. In short, Netsuite wanted the business and did what it took to get it (which for us was very aggressive pricing). While I did like the iCode software they just lost me with pricing. They just don't seem to understand that a 2 year old business with 7 employees cannot invest $40-50K in software and then spend another $10-15K on hardware and implementation. I believe someone over there needs to recognize that there are companies like us who want a full soup to nuts solution for 10 users for $10-15K. We are still in the implementation stages with Netsuite, so I cannot yet comment on the software (we're tinkered with it but not yet put it into play)....but from what they are doing they (at least in my opition) are playing the game the right way. They are building market share rapidly by creating LOTS of beach head accounts, they are agressively marketing the company and they continue to upgrade the features of the software. The thing that puzzles me about iCode is that software is free (I was in the enterprise software biz for 11 years)...so why they would choose to stick to their guns on pricing instead of playing ball and getting a killer international reference account is beyong my comprehension. As do all the software companies, sell licenses at 20% of the list and make your money on the services. The fact they would not do that sent me a message that they are not really out there for the small business like us, they want the medium sized business's

[cyberdov]

I am also mystified by Icode's strategy. It does appear that they are moving towards a breater reliance on the VAR channel, which will be good for them as well as the customers (and of course the VARs). A 10 user license should be less than you stated - total (including implementation/training but without new hardware or customizations) should be $30K. Thanks for your reply.

[nicker]

mutahman - can you provide any updates on the implementation process? We are considering netsuite and I would be very interested in any feedback you can provide. Thanks to everyone else, this thread has provided more unbiased info than I have found anywhere else.

[SonicCubeMC2]

Hi guys,

I am not sure if this will help or not. I am from MerchantCompanion.com. If 90 percent of your business came from your website, you might want to consider our more cost effective solution. Our MC2 software is also an Order/Fulfillment/Inventory/CRM/Email Management package for small to medium e-commerce businesses. MC2 is designed for multi-user environment with enterprise-level departmental task management for more “visual” and logical processing flow. It is compatible with many shopping cart systems, so you are not limited to the shopping cart choices. As for the licensing, MC2 is per site, not per seat. Add additional stations as you need to streamline your business. For complete feature list, you can visit us at http://www.merchantcompanion.com. Thanks.

Let me know if there is anything I can help.

George
MerchantCompanion.com
626-820-0477

[computerguy]

Another alternative will be Interprise Suite from Interprise Solutions once it is released.

It uses some new .NET technology that allows it to run as a desktop application like Everest or as a Internet based application like Netsuite.

They have a free 3 user version and the unlimited user version starts at only $1,500.

http://www.interprisesuite.com/

[SonicCubeMC2]

Hi computerguy,

Just a quick question. Can you import orders from shopping carts in Interprise Suite?
From the website, I can not find much about other shopping cart integration support.

I think the main difference between MC2 and Interprise Suite is that MC2 is focusing on small-to-medium "e-commerce" businesses and Interprise is more for wholesale/import/export businesses.

Best Regards,

George

[jelessy]

Bryan,

I set my entire business up with Yahoo. You can do it for less than 5,000 as long as you don't get carried away with photography and a lot of useless pages.

Fred

[jenny.c]

Hi computerguy,

Just a quick question. Can you import orders from shopping carts in Interprise Suite?
From the website, I can not find much about other shopping cart integration support.

I think the main difference between MC2 and Interprise Suite is that MC2 is focusing on small-to-medium "e-commerce" businesses and Interprise is more for wholesale/import/export businesses.

Best Regards,

George

Dear George,


Thank you for your question.


Interprise Suite is designed to be a complete solution that eliminates the need to use a multitude of applications to complete the day to day tasks of business. As such we plan on developing our own shopping cart solution, Interprise Cart, to fulfill the ecommerce needs of our users. This will eliminate the complexities involved in setting up and maintaining communications between two applications that were not designed to work together. Our customers want solutions that will work with the least amount of expense and effort and the peace on mind that knowing that one company has the expertise to be able to meet their needs from start to finish.


Interprise Cart will be fully integrated with Interprise Suite offering a complete ecommerce solution. The inventory module of Interprise Suite already has the web specific fields in place and we include a very nice html editor so that users can fine tune the appearance of their inventory items on a “per item” basis if needed. The cart will be designed around .NET 2.0 user controls and design templates so that virtually any website design can be implemented. Source code will be provided with for a nominal charge. Implementation options are as follows.


Real-time

In this setup the website is fully connected to the company data. The company data can be hosted on your website (your office workers connect to the data via web services) or locally (You have a T1 or DSL connection in your office with a fixed IP). If you choose to host locally, Interprise Suite can be setup to host your pictures at a different location with a higher speed internet connection. This will allow you to serve the html part of your pages locally – and the images from your ISP. This will allow you to scale quite a bit on even a DSL line.


Partially disconnected

In this setup your website is located at your ISP while your corporate data is located elsewhere. As web users are browsing your website they are running off the local database at your ISP. When web user begin a process that requires real-time data such as entering a new user/order, updating a customer record, etc. then Interprise Cart will connected back to the main system via xml web services.


Fully disconnected

This is like partially disconnected except that all transactions are done outside of the main company’s database and is updated periodically via xml web services.


For complete details please visit our website at http://www.interprisesuite.com/InterpriseCart/Index.asp

Thanks again

Jenny

[computerguy]

Hi computerguy,

Just a quick question. Can you import orders from shopping carts in Interprise Suite?
From the website, I can not find much about other shopping cart integration support.

I think the main difference between MC2 and Interprise Suite is that MC2 is focusing on small-to-medium "e-commerce" businesses and Interprise is more for wholesale/import/export businesses.

Best Regards,

George

Hi Sonic!

I would agree in your comparison. Your application looks great for a ecommerce business. One of the best. However our companies primary business is in distribution so we need something that has alot of B2B features - like icode and everest. ecommerce is a low priority for us.

The thing that I like about Interprise Suite is that it looks like it takes the best from netsuite and icode (which are two applications i have been considering) so anyone looking at those two applications may want to check it out.

[SonicCubeMC2]

Thank you Jenny and Computerguy. I actually told one of my importer friend to try Interprise since our Merchant Companion 2 does not manage shipment schedules and import/export related functions at this moment.

One thing I do not like about complete internet based solutions is that you are giving too much trust on your internet connection. Since most offices will not have business-class T1 service, the best they will get is probably business DSL which is not 100% "Solid" in real world. You are taking the risk that if the internet connection from your office somehow got interrupted, you will not be able to run your business at all. Another concern I have is that if they "quit", you would lost everything. You might have the backup data, but you will have to find another solution that will "take" the data. We see many businesses still run ancient DOS based applications, why, because their developers had long gone, so no more new versions for them. Luckily, they still have the software and can still perform their daily routines. If they were using internet or service based solutions, they will have nothing to run their businesses in this scenario. A business succeeds on its plan A, but a business survives on its plan B. We always have to prepare for the worst case imaginable.

Best Regards,

George

[jelessy]

George,
An interesting view of an all Internet solution. I use Yahoo stores for my business at www.jelessycollection.com. If I hosted this business myself not only would it cost me a lot more money, but the reliability would be very poor.

Believe me when I say that soon computer operations will be a utility that you outsource either locally or to a lower cost country. Light pipes are very reliable.

Fred

[SonicCubeMC2]

Hi Fred,
I think you misunderstood my point. I was talking about the accounting/order management/operation back-end software solutions. Not the front-end website hosting solutions. I do agree with you on the hosting part. No one should ever consider hosting their own sites unless they know exactly what they are doing. But for a daily operation application, it should be available whenever you need the data. The more factors you depend on, the poorer reliability it gets. From my point of view, internet based operation solution is just the same as your online web mail service. How many times we got frustrated because our web mail service is temporarily not available or the internet connection is down? Some free web mail services even disappear without notice. What if this happens when the shopping cart is not working properly and customer wants to place order over the phone with your representatives? See my point here?

Best Regards,

George

[computerguy]

Another alternative will be Interprise Suite from Interprise Solutions once it is released.

It uses some new .NET technology that allows it to run as a desktop application like Everest or as a Internet based application like Netsuite.

They have a free 3 user version and the unlimited user version starts at only $1,500.

http://www.interprisesuite.com/

George - I was referring to Netsuite vs. Everest with my post. Not eCommerce solutions.

[jenny.c]

Hi Fred,
I think you misunderstood my point. I was talking about the accounting/order management/operation back-end software solutions. Not the front-end website hosting solutions. I do agree with you on the hosting part. No one should ever consider hosting their own sites unless they know exactly what they are doing. But for a daily operation application, it should be available whenever you need the data. The more factors you depend on, the poorer reliability it gets. From my point of view, internet based operation solution is just the same as your online web mail service. How many times we got frustrated because our web mail service is temporarily not available or the internet connection is down? Some free web mail services even disappear without notice. What if this happens when the shopping cart is not working properly and customer wants to place order over the phone with your representatives? See my point here?

Best Regards,

George


Dear George,

Thank you for your question.

You are absolutely correct about the problems associated with running a website that is designed to work in “real-time” with the company’s backend data. Since the typical office does not have the redundant internet connections that an ISP location will have, even a temporary interruption of the Internet connection will cause the company’s website to go down.

We designed our “Partially Disconnected” Interprise Cart implementation (Described in above post) to overcome this problem. Like Interprise Suite, Interprise Cart is built off “Smart Client” .NET technology and will use a modified version of the Microsoft Offline Application Block http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpag/html/offline.asp allowing it to continue many important functions (such as taking new orders) in the event that the internet connection in the office is down. Once the connection is restored then the new transactions will be uploaded.

Microsoft will be making many improvements to the offline application block in .NET 2.0 and this is one of the reasons why we are developing the Interprise Cart in this platform.

Jenny

[rowen]

Too bad I joined this thread so late. During Fall '03 I spent considerable time reviewing Icode and Netsuite. We were using Peachtree and our business was reaching a point where we really needed a much more customer-centric system for processing orders, invoices, inventory, service, contacts, sales, etc... Our web orders were also increasing and the cart wasn't linked to the back-end. We do considerable mail-order and couldn't manage our list in Peachtree (double-entry everywhere).

Netsuite was impressive but we needed the complete version and price quickly added-up. Over a 3 year period we expected it would cost considerably more than Icode. If we added more staff than expected, it's per user/per month/year-after-year cost would outstrip a purchased license even quicker. On top of that, our access to the on-line demo did not run consistently fast. Didn't seem to matter whether we were using DSL or Cable access and some of the slower periods were late at night as well as 5pm. I wasn't comfortable with it.

So I bought Icode Everest Advanced, 5-user license, on Jan. 1 '04. I gave them $10k and expected to spend another $8k for implementation and a couple add-ons. We decided to wait to implement till we had a new accountant/IT person hired. We were ready to go by Sept. '04 and called Icode. Implementation costs had doubled and they wanted over $16k with a possibility it could hit $20k. I was going to go ahead but they were booked-up till early '05. We called them early in Jan. Now, they wanted to send a new quote! It came in at $37k not counting the add-ons we still needed. After adding those, the bill would be $45k with more due for the 2 new seats I wanted by that time. Can I even tell you how outraged I am!? Add in the original $10k and the cost of a pretty hefty new server, and Icode would have cost $60k for a company of fewer than 10 employees. That puts it into the same price range as a MAS90 or Great Plains implementation with local services. Granted, Icode is a better, fully integrated solution (in my opinion) but none of these guys seem to get the market for $1M to $10M small business software.

By the way, Icode doesn't want you to install on your own. You can't get any service or qualify for the annual maintenance plan until you pass a 23 page exam and pay them $2700 per try for a remote sysem-analysis performed by their engineer until you finally pass (probably after you've spent thousands more guessing what you'll need to fix).

So, Netsuite looks less expensive than it did a year ago but it's still too high and too slow and too inflexible. To those that are looking at the entry price for a single user, think ahead a couple years. If you're only going to have 2 or 3 people, it might be a good deal. If you're going to grow, look at the projected costs and think twice.

Now we're considerning ManageMore, Image Premier by Comtech Solutions and finally I've just become aware of the coming InterpriseSuite. I'm holding out great hope for the latter. It looks great and they understand the pricing of this end of the market. Fingers crossed!

Why do these software guys think you'll go from a few hundred dollars for QB or PT to $50k or more? Too bad Icode hired new execs from the mid-market (client companies over $100M). Though their program was so capable it was a bit harder to learn, it was a great solution that really fit the needs of the growing business market.

I've ranted long enough,

[SonicCubeMC2]

Computerguy,

Sorry for the confusion, I might have made things more complicated than they should be. My points are actually simple. Point one, think if you can handle the worst case if you lost internet for 1 or 2 whole days before choosing internet based management software. Point 2, as software companies come and go, or as often as they change terms and conditions. It might be a better assurance to have the running piece of the software on your own computer than remotely hosted services.

Jenny,

Thanks for your explanation. But I wasn’t worrying about the shopping cart part of your package. I was worrying about the Accounting/Order Managing portion of this approach. As a programmer myself, I totally understand the technology portion of this kind implementation. However, as a business owner I would like to have my order information, customer information stored in the database locally. I would choose your third solution that is hosting the Interprise Suite Database locally in the office. At least in the worst situation that I lost internet connection for who knows how long, I will still be able to not only place the new order, but also search the old orders or complete any customer service related crucial tasks. Also, since Microsoft’s striped-down version of SQL server is offered as Microsoft Desktop Engine (MSDE) for free, a small business with little budget can enjoy the powerful SQL performance without paying for a full featured MS SQL server. As for the shopping cart implementation, I believe it will be vary valuable for businesses adding e-commerce capability to their existing channels. Our business model is the opposite. Our clients will first start an e-commerce website with the shopping cart system of their choice. While growing they will soon find the limitations of their shopping cart systems in terms of order/fulfillment/customer/support management. And that’s when we jump in, unfortunately we have to accommodate which ever shopping cart system they use.

Rowen,

For a company that will ask you to pay and pay more for simple things, it’s a company to avoid. How hard to write a nice installer that will do a self check to make sure the program itself is functional? Not to mention that you are paying $45k for the application. Take Windows XP Operation System for example, it is far more complex than any of the accounting software on the market. Still, anyone can put in the Windows XP CD in the CDROM and have a working system 30 minutes later. The business application consists of the database and the program. If it needs more than two installers, it’s a bad design. It makes me feel sad after reading your post. Small business is the best part of the economy. They don’t have money to waste. Still, people don’t have a heart to help small businesses grow. Even $10k can be used nicely to promote their businesses to the next level and the software companies are asking 4 times more just for the accounting software? Heck, for $40K, you can even develop your own customized solution to tailor fit your business. Many of this so called enterprise class software are even using Access database as the backend, the problem is, Access db is slow by design when used on a network and provides no self-maintenance capability other than the file itself. You also need to spend $$$ again for Microsoft Office License just to run it on each workstation. When the database size grows to couple hundred megabytes, it will be extremely difficult to use on the network with multiple users, not to mention multi-location VPN possibility. What do you do at that time? Pay a lot more for their SQL based “enterprise plus” edition again?


Best Regards,

George
http://www.MerchantCompanion.com

[jelessy]

Very interesting thread everyone. Small business hosted solutions are more reliable and less costly than home grown self hosted applications. I will do some research with our Tatum Partners,(www.tatumpartners.com) and post which applications are best for a small business.

Fred Held Partners.

[Carstone]

I just want to thank everyone for their well thought out comments and their time. This thread has been very educational to me and EXTREMELY timely. These companies have been courting me, too, and I have been holding off because of the same concerns stated. Interprise was a new name to me and thanks to this thread, I am checking them out. They appear to be much more realistic in their pricing for us little guys. I am now beta testing their software and am anxiously awaiting their store solution.
Thanks to all.

[jelessy]

Hey, yahoo stores does all what C-Suite does and more for far less. It is time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Fred

[sac9829]

Hi Guys

Im from Australia and am looking for an all in one online solution and seem to only be able to find one company in Australia which is offering this solution:

Netsuite

Does anybody know of any other companies which offer their products to Australian users.

[sloan]

Icode has the makings of a good product but they have no clue how to deal with their customers. We have been on Everest/Accware for 4 years hoping and praying for improvements in their customer service. Instead they wanted $5,000 plus for unlimited support and maintenance on 10 seats per year. I am an expereinced user and don't need that sort of hand holding.
Now they have a new program, denying their users access to their forum, prior support tickets and bug/enhancement requests unless they are on maintenance. Maintenance now costs more and only includes a small discount off of the per incident fee that goes for $300+ per incident on top of the maintenance charges.
My efforts to negotiate with them have been not fruitful.
So basically unless I pony up $5k per year I am hung out to dry along with several other icode users I suspect. I will be looking for another package soon I suppose unless they change their tune.
Pretty revealing that icode had the forthought to register icod****s.com before any of their disgruntled users got to it.

[sac9829]

SO would everyone agree that Netsuite is the product of choice?

[cyberdov]

Icode users who have implemented, trained, and get support through VARs have a better experience than those who have dealt directly with Icode. A quality VAR has a direct interest in the customer's ongoing satisfaction and will be there to support the users for the long haul. Icode has VARS all across North America (including Pavey Associates, where I am the NY Partner).

[ann_nyc]

Thank you all for your input - this has been a very informative discussion.

I am still early in my search for the right solution for our company, so I don't have much to add. I would investigate Icode with a degree of caution based on what rowan and sloan had to say. Denying liscensed users to forums, raising pricing, etc... doesn't seem like a company I would want to invest in with my time, money or my company's data.

Cyberdov, I appreciate what you are saying, having been a VAR in a past life, but I can't see how having to go through a reseller would make Icode a more attactive option. Although it is a positive to have a knowledgeable VAR for a product, I would still want to know that ultimately, the company that produces what I am purchasing will be as responsive to me, the customer, as my VAR.Icode users who have implemented, trained, and get support through VARs have a better experience than those who have dealt directly with Icode. A quality VAR has a direct interest in the customer's ongoing satisfaction and will be there to support the users for the long haul. Icode has VARS all across North America (including Pavey Associates, where I am the NY Partner).

Thanks

[Skyytek]

Thank you Jenny and Computerguy. I actually told one of my importer friend to try Interprise since our Merchant Companion 2 does not manage shipment schedules and import/export related functions at this moment.

One thing I do not like about complete internet based solutions is that you are giving too much trust on your internet connection. Since most offices will not have business-class T1 service, the best they will get is probably business DSL which is not 100% "Solid" in real world. You are taking the risk that if the internet connection from your office somehow got interrupted, you will not be able to run your business at all. Another concern I have is that if they "quit", you would lost everything. You might have the backup data, but you will have to find another solution that will "take" the data. We see many businesses still run ancient DOS based applications, why, because their developers had long gone, so no more new versions for them. Luckily, they still have the software and can still perform their daily routines. If they were using internet or service based solutions, they will have nothing to run their businesses in this scenario. A business succeeds on its plan A, but a business survives on its plan B. We always have to prepare for the worst case imaginable.

Best Regards,

George
George,

The disaster recovery point is something to consider. It is important for all companies to have a disaster recovery plan. However, the loss of internet connection worry is a bit of a red herring.

Internet connections have excellent uptime track records. It is much more likely that the drive on your a server in your office goes down or that you get a virus or worm that lose your internet connection. Moreover, web-based applications such as Netsuite can be accessed from anywhere. So here is your disaster recovery plan in the incredibly unlikely event that your Internet connection is down:

(a) Have a coffee. It will be back up in a few minutes.
(b) Go anywhere that has an internet connection and keep doing business.
(c) To help with (b) use a virtual PBX such as SkyyCall from Skyytek and your customers will never know that you aren't at the office.

Over 8,000 companies are using Netsuite as a fully hosted net apps. No problems. Servers, back-ups and data security are taken care of as a matter of course.

Mark Walker
Skyytek Canada
www.skyytek.com

[Skyytek]

By the way, folks.

Here is a powerful demonstration of the power of Netsuite. Skyytek was just named one of the top 15 accounting VARs in the world by Accounting Technology.

See story here(http://www.skyytek.com/s.nl/sc.7/SS.2221/ctype.SS/category.80/id.13/.f)

A really interesting aspect of the story is how small Skyytek is and how rapidly our sales have grown compared to the other top 20 VARs. NetSuite allows Skyytek to punch WAY above our weight, partner effectively and grow very rapidly.

As a direct result of this, we are offering special pricing until the end of May to celebrate. Contact me for details.

So if you are thinking about moving to Netsuite, Netsuite Small Business or NetCRM, now would be a good time.

Mark Walker
Skyytek Canada
mwalker@skyytek.com

[dands]

We paid more than $100K for an iCode "implementation" and we are still not up and running more than two months after our scheduled completion date. All attempts to work with iCode to try to fix the situation have been met with a "not our problem" attitude, and their proposed solution to every concern has been to ask us to pay large additional fees. They are also very specific about letting us know that despite their recommendations and regardless of what we spend, they will not provide any guarantees that anything will work. Read the very limited terms on the invoice and you will get a good feel for what iCode is like to work with. "Thank you for your order. No returns are permitted and refunds will not be issued for software licenses or services."

[jelessy]

Dands,

Go to www.tatumpartners.com and get one of the very experienced Information Technology Partners to help you. I used to be with them before I took on this CEO position. The important thing is for you to get your business processes running the way you want them. What ever iCode needs to supply believe me a Tatum Parnter will be more than capable of making that happen.

Best,

Fred

[cyberdov]

dands has a sad and frustrating story which is unfortunately not unique. Those of you out there who are considering a software sytem implementation should consider using the services of a reputable VAR with good references. A good VAR will stand behind their estimates and work. For example our VAR organization has put in the extra hours required at no extra charge, if we originally underestimated the effort required.
And if you want to talk to us about salvaging a botched Icode implementation, please talk to us - we have done several of those as well and we will get it to work if it is at all possible. You can contact me via email.
Dov Weinstock
dov.weinstock@nycadvantage.com
www.paveyassociates.com

[Skyytek]

Dands,

cyberdov is absolutely right.

The important thing to remember is that software companies are focused on selling software. VARs are usually focused on the quality of implementations - that is their competitive advantage. Most high quality VARs have a significant practice fixing botched implementations.

Although we are a NetSuite VAR with iCode experience, I can also hook you up with some iCode specialists. However, some of the folks on this thread should be able to give you perspective and references to help you decide on a course of action.

Good luck.

[ppolishook]

Great thread everyone!

I run a small manufacturing company that does essentially no business via the web, although we'd like to start having our customers (businesses, not consumers) order online. We currently use a ten-year old version of Epicor Vista as our ERP/accounting system and we need to switch systems soon.

We are considering Quickbooks Enterprise (10 license version for $3,500) and NetSuite. I know that Quickbooks doesn't offer the webstore. NetSuite would seem to win hands down in terms of features vs. Quickbooks, but I'm extremely concerned about speed, particularly for order entry.

I've heard a few complaints that NetSuite is slow. So I'd love to hear from any NetSuite users about their experience regarding the speed of using NetSuite.

Thanks,
ppolishook

[Jeff ransom]

There are several Icode solution providers throughout North America that sell and support the Everest product. You are able to receive top quality service and support at a reasonable cost.

www.ibsnw.com
Intelligent Business Systems LLC

[bladinaction]

Here's our Icode sob story.
We were a fast growing clicks and mortar business (1.5M/year in 2001). We were looking for a solution just like Everest promised to be. You save money on payroll, one software for multiple locations, point-of-sale etc.
So we purchased a 10 user Everest license in Feb '02. Same as everyone else, they told us it would be up and running in a week if we hired their "implemetation engineers" to come on site for a week. So we paid $38000 for the whole deal and had them come out.
October '02 we scheduled them to come out. They had two guys come out (one was in training), and after a weeks time, nothing was working. All they could say was that the brand new Dell servers we bought would be reformatted(because these guys had messed them up so bad, they were the only ones that touched the machines). They couldn't even import the data from netsuite (which we were using for accounting at the time). So, they sent the qualified onsite guy back two weeks later. The software was "not ready for primetime". So we started using it without our previous data. We were on the phone with their support crew virtually every day because this or that didn't work right. Two weeks later they sent another support guy out (at our expense!) because they said we needed him to rebuild our database. Only one catch, all the information we had put in over the two weeks we were working on the system would have to be thrown out! So we bit the bullet, and got it done.
After that we spent at least 10 hours/week on the phone with their support folks (who speak hardly intelligible English by the way) and over the course of the first year submitted over 100 support "incidents". An incident was a situation where something didn't work right.
Here we are paying them to tell them whats wrong with their software! Thats not how it works...We should have been paid for being their lab rats.
We have talked to many Icode users and all of them have the same feelings and thoughts on this subject. No one is happy.
We are not lawyers, but if one of you out there reads this, you could probably make a lot of money off this situation. I don't know how they can get away with this FRAUD, but it has to stop before there are more victims.

If anyone would like to buy our 10 user license, you can get it at a bargain price of $20,000.

P.S. I don't know much about Interprise, but hasn't anyone noticed that their website looks and feels a lot like Icode? Who are these people?

[rowen]

I don't think the Interprise people are related to Icode in any way. Interprise is written in the Phillipines while Icode is done in India. Some of the Interprise people were previously affiliated with Comtech Solutions (Image Premier) in Houston. Comtech opened a development office in the Phillipines and some of those people now work at Interprise.

I have a working demo of Icode and I also bought a 5 user license at $10,500 that isn't installed. They want more than $40k to get it going. I was supposed to get implementation somewhere between $8k and $20k but everytime I tried to schedule a date they raised the price. I like the working demo but it isn't always easy-to-use and I don't think my people would get as much out of it as they could due to the learning curve.

I also have a beta release of Interprise. I love it. Very intuitive user interface and it looks like there is a clear and logical way to customize it if necessary. The beta is buggy but then again, it is a beta version. Whether or not the first release version runs smoothly is anybody's guess. It's supposed to be out by the end of the year. If you're in a position to wait and see if they make a good start, then it might be well worth the wait. The biggest difference from Icode currently is the price!

[cameraworld]

I'm a small business here in Australia ( www.cameraworld.com.au ) we purchased Everest Advanced a little over a year ago, we received our 'support charge' three months ago and it has increased more than 400% over the original pricing, they apparently have changed direction.

We paid it and the service is still the same rubbish as before, every release has consistant fatal bugs and we are about to sign up with NetSuite with still 9 months of support available from iCode (Shows how much their product is making our business suffer!), their support and product are rubbish! The supposed developers in Australia & Singapore complaign that they have huge trouble customizing the product due to the dreadful and more than $200US and hour support from iCode out of India, also everytime they load an update my site has to be virtually rebuilt from scratch.

Once my NetSuite site is finished, I'd be happy to give you the software for free! But personally the product is a bottomless pit for money with no return.
The CRM is a joke, the site cannot even be picked up by web crawlers so no organic rankings and the site goes down on average once a week. We pay for both iCode direct support & local supplier support, the Australian sales agent is so sick of iCode Indias pathetic support that he is dropping the product all together.

I may sound bitter, and I am, but the product honestly is average at best and even worse their support is tragic especially when you calculate the cost.

Do yourself a favour and look at NetSuite or some other product from a major supplier with 'local' support the less you have to deal with hardware, software and maintenance the more time you can have on driving your business making profits for you.

[dands]

After several more months of trying to work with iCode, we have abandoned our Everest installation. We are now in the terrible position of having to decide what to do about the now $120K plus we have lost to this fraudulent and unreasonable company. Do yourself a favor and stay as far away from iCode as you possibly can.

[DMuse]

Are you working directly with iCode or with a reseller?

[Jason]

I have experienced all of the above.
All of us are in the same situation, we got fulled one way or another, they sold us a product that looked good, but had no real good backend, crashing all the time, crawlers can not pick up any pages, on and on ,
we should all get together & go after Icode guys legally,
they made our life misreble, lets make theirs worst, we paid them good money , & they took it & ran, now no real support , no good product.
one advice to all of you do not buy Everest.
We should all go to the district attorney & file a complain, may be at east we can get our money back.

[danw]

Sorry I joined this thread a bit late for Mutahman...
As a VAR for Icode, I think they have a great product - but in their direct sales operation, they don't get the customer service and support part. Fortunately they are moving more towards a Reseller channel.
As a certified Icode VAR we have been successful in supporting our many Icode installations, with better service and lower costs than Icode direct. We have implemented clients from 5 to 100 users, and continue to support them.
I'd be happy to discuss with anyone who is interested, and to provide references etc.

I'm looking hard at it and I'd like to talk to someone. How can I reach you?

[danw]

OK, so I read all of the messages in this thread. I am hearing that most people are very upset with ICODE, I don't think I heard of 1 person say they like it. However it sounds like everybody is in the transitioning phase to another product like NetSuite or Interprise (when it comes out).

So are there folks out there that can rave about a solution (ICODE, NetSuite, etc.) that they have implemented and are very pleased with in all aspects (price, service, support, functionality,etc.)?

[icodevictim]

I am in total shock right now, the level of service being delivered by Icode is the worst I have ever seen in 12 years with CRM, ERP and Finance system I have never come close to this level of frustration.

They sell software that doesnt work and then refuse to assist you.

As far as I'm concerned this company is fraudulent and needs to be stopped. Any of you other Icode Victims want to get together?

[iCode employee]

There are two sides to every story.

The iCode customer satisfaction rating has continued to improve over the last 2 years as illustrated by the customer survey conducted on an annual basis every April.

The iCode product works and works well. This can be attested to by the thousands of customers currently using Everest Advanced and the significant number of customers willing to be referenced as to how Everest has had a positive impact on the way they manage their business.

iCode is willing to assist any customer who has a current maintenance contract. As with any software company, customer support is not free. iCode offers customers the option of either having an annual maintenance contract with unlimited calls to customer support or the flexability to pay by the call.

If you have a legitimate issue, please email me and I will look into the situation.

[Randy]

I have been an Icode customer since 2001. I have found them to helpful and very supportive. I can not figure out who you are and why you are so bitter towards them? I have been in business for 52 years and find them to be a value oriented company with solid solutions.
Here's our Icode sob story.
We were a fast growing clicks and mortar business (1.5M/year in 2001). We were looking for a solution just like Everest promised to be. You save money on payroll, one software for multiple locations, point-of-sale etc.
So we purchased a 10 user Everest license in Feb '02. Same as everyone else, they told us it would be up and running in a week if we hired their "implemetation engineers" to come on site for a week. So we paid $38000 for the whole deal and had them come out.
October '02 we scheduled them to come out. They had two guys come out (one was in training), and after a weeks time, nothing was working. All they could say was that the brand new Dell servers we bought would be reformatted(because these guys had messed them up so bad, they were the only ones that touched the machines). They couldn't even import the data from netsuite (which we were using for accounting at the time). So, they sent the qualified onsite guy back two weeks later. The software was "not ready for primetime". So we started using it without our previous data. We were on the phone with their support crew virtually every day because this or that didn't work right. Two weeks later they sent another support guy out (at our expense!) because they said we needed him to rebuild our database. Only one catch, all the information we had put in over the two weeks we were working on the system would have to be thrown out! So we bit the bullet, and got it done.
After that we spent at least 10 hours/week on the phone with their support folks (who speak hardly intelligible English by the way) and over the course of the first year submitted over 100 support "incidents". An incident was a situation where something didn't work right.
Here we are paying them to tell them whats wrong with their software! Thats not how it works...We should have been paid for being their lab rats.
We have talked to many Icode users and all of them have the same feelings and thoughts on this subject. No one is happy.
We are not lawyers, but if one of you out there reads this, you could probably make a lot of money off this situation. I don't know how they can get away with this FRAUD, but it has to stop before there are more victims.

If anyone would like to buy our 10 user license, you can get it at a bargain price of $20,000.

P.S. I don't know much about Interprise, but hasn't anyone noticed that their website looks and feels a lot like Icode? Who are these people?

[Randy]

Why are you complaining here, I have been an icode customer since 2001 and I have not problems with the product working. I have been in business for 52 years and have found Everest to be a solid solution to run my business on. You must not be a real company.




ave experienced all of the above.
All of us are in the same situation, we got fulled one way or another, they sold us a product that looked good, but had no real good backend, crashing all the time, crawlers can not pick up any pages, on and on ,
we should all get together & go after Icode guys legally,
they made our life misreble, lets make theirs worst, we paid them good money , & they took it & ran, now no real support , no good product.
one advice to all of you do not buy Everest.
We should all go to the district attorney & file a complain, may be at east we can get our money back.[/QUOTE]

[Randy]

I have read some of the information posted on this site and I can't believe my eyes. I have been an Icode Customer since June of 2001. I have found them to be helpful and willing to work with me to solve any and all problems. I have migrated to their new product from Accware and I have been impressed with working of the product. The product is solid and stable and works fine for our 52+ year old company. I'm shocked that web site like this would cause any customer to not want to buy the product that was being slamed. The parties that write the articles that I have read show no credibility what so ever as the statements that are being made look more like Fraud and bad mouthing than fact. I personally made the decision to go with Icode products and my business is running fine. I'm guessing that your readers of this site must be out of business or close to it. We like the product and we are using it daily. I continue to see results from the Icode Everest product and will look forward to being a user of it for quite some time.


I am in total shock right now, the level of service being delivered by Icode is the worst I have ever seen in 12 years with CRM, ERP and Finance system I have never come close to this level of frustration.

They sell software that doesnt work and then refuse to assist you.

As far as I'm concerned this company is fraudulent and needs to be stopped. Any of you other Icode Victims want to get together?

[Randy]

Bryan thanks for your version of things, now you starding a new business so I quess that you have not looked at Great Plains software. The product that you are referencing must be for a business with no Enterprise budget. I guess if you have few to none employees and your are counting every penny that you should consider any low cost option to run your business. Everest is for Companies that are looking for a long term solution that runs on a stable platform. I have been a customer of Icode's since June of 2001. I compared their product to 24 other software products and found their sollution to be superior with features and performance beyond the industry leader. I don't think that any product is perfect. I'm not sure where your comments are coming from but they are hardly accurate.

Starting a new business from the ground up, and I'd like to do it right the first time.

I was leaning towards iCode Everest Advanced, and planning on hosting the entire suite on a server at my ISP... ...but have just come across new information on NetSuite's hosted solution, which is sounding pretty good too...

What I'm looking for:
- all in one business management(!)
- ecommerce
- CRM
- inventory management
- sales & shipping
- integrated payments system

...is that everything?

Am I on the right track with iCode, or should I be looking at a wider range of solutions?

I contacted CoreSense, but the $15,000 startup fee left a sour taste in my mouth...(I don't think they fully understand the 'small' in 'small business'...!)

It's only myself for now, with another person possibly joining me in 6 months. I'd like to 50-90% online sales, but also have the ability to access a type of POS internal to the office (it's an automotive performance shop that sells performance and OE parts, as well as having a 'service' component and shop with face-to-face customer relations...)

Thanks for any help.

[Randy]

I'm not sure how are what criteria that you use in evaluating software. I have been running a sucessful busines that is 52 years old. What about recurring expenses. What you are saying here makes no sense. I'm sure your product must be a rental product with recurring cost annually. What about support i'm sure that your figure does not include any support from the company and that you are paying for support and for training extra. And does your prodcut run on your own server or are you renting time on their system to run your application? Everest is in a whole different class to what you are refereing to product wise. You are bad mouthing a product that has features beyond maybe what your business can afford? hey don't buy the product if you don't want it. But to spend time bad mouthing the Everest product on this blog makes no sense.

If $15000 seems high you will be floored with the quotes you get from iCode and Netsuite. I was really pumped with what we saw at iCode, then they came back with a $59000 quote. We were floored!

We design, produce and distribute storage cases for digital products (www.slappa.com) and we sell to retailers, importers and directly to customers online.

We are looking for essentially what you had listed:

- all in one business management(!)
- ecommerce
- CRM
- inventory management
- sales & shipping
- integrated payments system
+ we want our accounting working in the same system/database

The only thing we may have that you don't is multi-currency.

We only have 10 users yet the quote from iCode was $6500 for the base license, $13,000 for the additional 8 licenses and $27000 for implementation/training and on site expenses.

Netsuite came back with $20,000 for 3 years of license. In all, these companies who are pitching their solutions for small and medium companies are not realistic. $60,000 is not an enterprise wide deal for a fortune 1000, but at the same time it's not a solution you are going to get many 10 person, 2 year old companies to bite on.

Over the past week I've been tempted to start up another business that brings such solutions to market at a price that is really for the small companies of the world

[Randy]

I have found Icode's support to be timely and results oriented. I'm shocked that you have made the comments that you have. My expirence with them since June of 2001 has been a company that cares about the customer and hangs in their to make sure that everything works. I had VAR support with another software package SBT which was awful. The VAR did not have the knowledge and the ability to handle my source code application issues. Icode wrote their own package and has been able to deliver complete support including if necesseary providing patch's to fix problems. I guess that your customers did not want pay for service.

Icode users who have implemented, trained, and get support through VARs have a better experience than those who have dealt directly with Icode. A quality VAR has a direct interest in the customer's ongoing satisfaction and will be there to support the users for the long haul. Icode has VARS all across North America (including Pavey Associates, where I am the NY Partner).

[Randy]

Why did you not contact the management of Icode. I quess complaining to the world and hiding here is the only way you survive as a person. I have found Icode to completely support their products even in a situation like yours they Icode would have helped you. You must not have paid for support with a contract. You must have wanted something for nothing. You get in life what you pay for. You must not have needed the product if you did not persue the situation in 2002! I have been an Icode customer since June of 2001 and I have found Icode to care and support me, but wait a minute I was not looking for something for nothing. Were you?

Here's our Icode sob story.
We were a fast growing clicks and mortar business (1.5M/year in 2001). We were looking for a solution just like Everest promised to be. You save money on payroll, one software for multiple locations, point-of-sale etc.
So we purchased a 10 user Everest license in Feb '02. Same as everyone else, they told us it would be up and running in a week if we hired their "implemetation engineers" to come on site for a week. So we paid $38000 for the whole deal and had them come out.
October '02 we scheduled them to come out. They had two guys come out (one was in training), and after a weeks time, nothing was working. All they could say was that the brand new Dell servers we bought would be reformatted(because these guys had messed them up so bad, they were the only ones that touched the machines). They couldn't even import the data from netsuite (which we were using for accounting at the time). So, they sent the qualified onsite guy back two weeks later. The software was "not ready for primetime". So we started using it without our previous data. We were on the phone with their support crew virtually every day because this or that didn't work right. Two weeks later they sent another support guy out (at our expense!) because they said we needed him to rebuild our database. Only one catch, all the information we had put in over the two weeks we were working on the system would have to be thrown out! So we bit the bullet, and got it done.
After that we spent at least 10 hours/week on the phone with their support folks (who speak hardly intelligible English by the way) and over the course of the first year submitted over 100 support "incidents". An incident was a situation where something didn't work right.
Here we are paying them to tell them whats wrong with their software! Thats not how it works...We should have been paid for being their lab rats.
We have talked to many Icode users and all of them have the same feelings and thoughts on this subject. No one is happy.
We are not lawyers, but if one of you out there reads this, you could probably make a lot of money off this situation. I don't know how they can get away with this FRAUD, but it has to stop before there are more victims.

If anyone would like to buy our 10 user license, you can get it at a bargain price of $20,000.

P.S. I don't know much about Interprise, but hasn't anyone noticed that their website looks and feels a lot like Icode? Who are these people?

[Randy]

Your expirence with Icode is completely different than mine. It sound like you purchased the wrong product and now want to complain after making the decision. I have been an icode customer since June of 2001 and never one time have they Icode ever told me something that was not true. I'm shocked that you are taking this public forum to vent. Why not call Icode and discuss your concerns with them as a company directly. I guess hiding behind a blog is the best way to solve your business problems. Good luck and much sucess in your future.

I'm a small business here in Australia ( www.cameraworld.com.au ) we purchased Everest Advanced a little over a year ago, we received our 'support charge' three months ago and it has increased more than 400% over the original pricing, they apparently have changed direction.

We paid it and the service is still the same rubbish as before, every release has consistant fatal bugs and we are about to sign up with NetSuite with still 9 months of support available from iCode (Shows how much their product is making our business suffer!), their support and product are rubbish! The supposed developers in Australia & Singapore complaign that they have huge trouble customizing the product due to the dreadful and more than $200US and hour support from iCode out of India, also everytime they load an update my site has to be virtually rebuilt from scratch.

Once my NetSuite site is finished, I'd be happy to give you the software for free! But personally the product is a bottomless pit for money with no return.
The CRM is a joke, the site cannot even be picked up by web crawlers so no organic rankings and the site goes down on average once a week. We pay for both iCode direct support & local supplier support, the Australian sales agent is so sick of iCode Indias pathetic support that he is dropping the product all together.

I may sound bitter, and I am, but the product honestly is average at best and even worse their support is tragic especially when you calculate the cost.

Do yourself a favour and look at NetSuite or some other product from a major supplier with 'local' support the less you have to deal with hardware, software and maintenance the more time you can have on driving your business making profits for you.

[Randy]

Jason i'm wondering if you are one of the folks that did not want to move forward to everest from Accware. You sound like an underfunded company that might have purchased the wrong product in the first place. I'm sure that you should qo to quick books for 1500.00 and call it a day. If you needed this type of product in the first place then your business should have been able to handle the conversion to the new product. I guess hiding behind this blog is the way you survive in business and life. Keep up the good work. Looking at things positively Icode is a product that competes against Microsofts Great Plains which is double to 2.5 the cost of Everest Advanced. The Everst product does work and solves problems.

I have experienced all of the above.
All of us are in the same situation, we got fulled one way or another, they sold us a product that looked good, but had no real good backend, crashing all the time, crawlers can not pick up any pages, on and on ,
we should all get together & go after Icode guys legally,
they made our life misreble, lets make theirs worst, we paid them good money , & they took it & ran, now no real support , no good product.
one advice to all of you do not buy Everest.
We should all go to the district attorney & file a complain, may be at east we can get our money back.

[Gromit]

Randy,

Could you be any more judgemental? People here are simply sharing their experiences. You've made it clear that you've had nothing but good results with ICode. Yippee for you...now why not try relating your experience without assassinating anyone's character?

[Curt]

I would bet money that the three nasty messages above come from iCode or one of its VARs. That kind vitriol doesn't make sense for someone without a personal stake in the outcome...

[icodevictim]

All of us are misrepresenting the issues except Randy who has nothing but glowing words:) give me a break!

Randy seems like an internal employee trying to imploy a method of damage control, how is it that with so many bad dealings with Icode you have a stellar one, and a relationship that would prompt you to post here over and over again.

Let's be clear, if you were a customer or had any business accumen you would not have claimed to compare Everest with 24 other products, that is rediculas.

Also, the price is similar to packages like Great Plains and MSFT CRM, they have better integration, but lack flexibility, stability and have really poor service.

Lastly, let's stop saying Everest is the premier anything, they have a "Codie" award that is irrelevant, they are in no way even close to the top as far as market share or innovation.

[icodevictim]

Just as a quick note, I have 3 people ready to join in on legal action, send me a personal message if you want more information

[icodevictim]

You have got to be kidding me, publish even 100 happy customers, Icode does not get <7M in revenue with 1000's of customers..you guys are very funny.


There are two sides to every story.

The iCode customer satisfaction rating has continued to improve over the last 2 years as illustrated by the customer survey conducted on an annual basis every April.

The iCode product works and works well. This can be attested to by the thousands of customers currently using Everest Advanced and the significant number of customers willing to be referenced as to how Everest has had a positive impact on the way they manage their business.

iCode is willing to assist any customer who has a current maintenance contract. As with any software company, customer support is not free. iCode offers customers the option of either having an annual maintenance contract with unlimited calls to customer support or the flexability to pay by the call.

If you have a legitimate issue, please email me and I will look into the situation.

[cameraworld]

Your expirence with Icode is completely different than mine. It sound like you purchased the wrong product and now want to complain after making the decision. I have been an icode customer since June of 2001 and never one time have they Icode ever told me something that was not true. I'm shocked that you are taking this public forum to vent. Why not call Icode and discuss your concerns with them as a company directly. I guess hiding behind a blog is the best way to solve your business problems. Good luck and much sucess in your future.
Thanks for your opinion Randy, but I do not appreciate being told I 'hide' behind a blog, I have taken my complaint to iCode who apologised allot then took four days to get back to me and recommended I seek support from their 'experts' in Malaysia who would resolve the issues, these people they recommended are the same idiots from Singapore who brought my site down in the first place, once I pointed this out it took them another two days to have a US representative contact me who wanted to to book a time with me in about two weeks. This is not what I call customer service.

I am very happy that your experience has been so 'great' but I'd like to point out that mine wasn't and if I was in the US I probably wouldn't have had the same issues, but if you live in Australia then you will definitely have issues, even the Australian distributor has dropped the product due to the huge number of issues with trying to deal with India! Hardly a case of odd man out am I...

Finally I'd like to point out that everyone is entitled to their opinion even you... who is obviously the resident expert on everything to do with Everest.

[jesse glen]

First of all thanks to everyone for this discussion, I was lost amidst a sea of software before I came here. I have a few questions:

Does Netsuite have simple POS capability? I would like to be able to barcode all of our items, and have a scanner add and remove them from the shared web/accounting inventory system.

And the big question of course, what package should I go with, Netsuite or Interprise? I'll give you the lowdown on the company I work for:

We have 5 employees at the moment, and could expand that to as many as 10 within a year. Likely going to hover around 7-8 for now. We sell retail items, and have an online store featuring around 3000 products. We also have a small retail store. What we are looking for is a system that will integrate our accounting, inventory, and online purchasing in one package. One invoice, and accurate inventory across the board. Presently we are using Quickbooks and Miva Merchant, and we want to dump them for something better.

Any opinions or comments are appreciated.

Thanks,
Jesse

Oh, P.S. to the Interprise devs, any updates on a full release?

[rowen]

Netsuite will cost you many thousands more, especially over time. However, Interprise isn't released yet so you'll have to be patient. We have a similar number of employees and have decided that Netsuite will cost $8k to $10k per year to get the features we want. Remember, it's a yearly license. You don't "own" any software.

[rowen]

Insults aside, Icode is a disaster.
I bought Icode so I know what I'm talking about (and I did try telling them the problem). The people that trash it here have REASONS! Wait for Interprise Suite or live with the capabilities of a "boxed" solution. Quickbooks and Peachtree get better every year. You can add-on CRM with ACT and there are service/helpdesk packages too. That approach isn't "fully integrated" but it can be done for just a couple thousand dollars vs. $50K PLUS for Icode or $10K per year (every year) for Netsuite. MAS90 and Great Plains are even more expensive. Beware of the new Microsoft Office solution. They intend for you to switch-up to Great Plains when you get just a bit bigger. Peachtree thinks you should move-up to their own MAS90 but you can put it off a bit longer by getting CRM and other features with the "add-ons" from third party people (MAS90 doesn't have CRM either nor does Great Plains without "add-ons"). The truth is, the sales guys of all the "mid-market" software companies have charts that tell them how much you should spend on accounting software for your annual revenue level. I'm over $2M now and find that Microsoft, Sage and Icode all want over $50k from me for licenses and services. Netsuite is less up-front but will cost more over 4 to 5 years. I grew my last company to $20M before selling it. My people developed an in-house system using Foxpro. My current venture is my third. I've spent hundreds of hours reviewing software and the beta of Interprise Suite. My advice is don't give any money to Netsuite, Icode, MAS90 (or MAS200) or Great Plains until you're well over $10M in revenue (and I think you can avoid them then as well).

If you plan to stay a 1 or 2-man operation, with a healthy stream of revenue, Netsuite is a pretty good deal if you can live without some of the "enterprise" features. You won't need a hardware helper or a server and e-commerce is built-in. But it may cost you alot over the long run if you need alot of people on the system.

Quickbooks has more third-party add-ons than Peachtree but has always been weaker in inventory and distribution until the promised 2006 version. We're still using Peachtree. The 2006 version is much faster over the network than previous versions and the look-up tools are better. We use ACT for CRM - pretty basic but good enough. There is an ACT add-on called dbLink that gives you a way to include even more customer database stuff through ACT while keeping the accounting stuff linked from Peachtree. Very simple to run and very affordable!

If you want a budget-level integrated package (and can't wait for Interprise) look at ManageMore and ImageAccounting from Comtech Solutions. Both are priced in the low thousands and have all the features you mention.

[iCode employee]

Hey iCodevictim a couple of points to think about;

1) I suspect your issue with iCode is not legitimate because if you were interested in resolving your problem you probably would have taken me up on my offer to look into the situation, and you didn't.

2) Randy is not an internal employee and has no vested interest in iCode other than being a loyal, satisfied customer.

3) iCode has been in business for 11 years and that would not have been possible if our customers felt has as little regard for iCode as you do.

4) get your facts straight...we are NOT <$7M in revenue and we Do have thousands of customers.

All of us are misrepresenting the issues except Randy who has nothing but glowing words:) give me a break!

Randy seems like an internal employee trying to imploy a method of damage control, how is it that with so many bad dealings with Icode you have a stellar one, and a relationship that would prompt you to post here over and over again.

Let's be clear, if you were a customer or had any business accumen you would not have claimed to compare Everest with 24 other products, that is rediculas.

Also, the price is similar to packages like Great Plains and MSFT CRM, they have better integration, but lack flexibility, stability and have really poor service.

Lastly, let's stop saying Everest is the premier anything, they have a "Codie" award that is irrelevant, they are in no way even close to the top as far as market share or innovation.

[iCode employee]

Randy,

Could you be any more judgemental? People here are simply sharing their experiences. You've made it clear that you've had nothing but good results with ICode. Yippee for you...now why not try relating your experience without assassinating anyone's character?

Gromit, I disagree. While most participants do just share their experiences, there are plenty of judgmental comments and character assassinating going on that is not completely fact based...freedom of speech works both ways.

[JPnyc]

Randy, amateur psychology has no place on the forum. Thank you.

[davec]

What’s great is how Randy literally SPAMMED the board trying to derail any of the criticism that Icode has been under. I am glad you have been in business for 52 years, but some of us want to be retired long before we hit your age. We aren’t looking for products that are “ok” “satisfactory”. We want products that amaze us and not only meet our requirements but far exceed them with tools and features we never even though of.

The thing I want to point out is that products like Netsuite, even though it is a yearly fee, are allowing customers to make 10x 100x 1000x that amount of money.

How valuable is your business to you? Is spending $10,000 a year worth the 10 million a year you gross in sales? What about the things that have no monetary value? Your employees come into work, answer the phone, and in general deal with customers that have no idea about your products, how frustrating do you think that is? Do you want them to deal with the added frustration from horribly implemented solutions, or would you rather them zoom along with the tools they need and make an extra $50,000 in sales that day?

Its all about how efficient you can relay your information inside your company, and then use that information to give your customers the best possible service that you can. Keeping your customers in the loop and coming back year after year is a sign of success. Software like Netsuite allows a company to maintain and expand their operation to multiple locations, multiple states, and even multiple countries.

Most people here seem to be small business, and that’s cool. Some of the people reading this thread have to decide on a solution that meets the needs of today as well as tomorrow. The company I work for is a distributor and a manufacturer of industrial products. Our sales are in the millions each year, and that’s not including anything from the website. So at the start of this thread, it was about what is the best solution for me, but now its turned into a flame war between employees of these products and customers.

Let’s try to stay somewhat on topic =)

[davecove]

You know, iCode is a mamber of the DC area BBB (www.dc.bbb.oeg) I just filed a complaint against them over their policy of not refunding the incident fee when the issue is a bug.

It is unconscionable (and I suspect illegal) that iCode breaks their own product and then charges every customer that calls in for a solution to a bug a non-refundable $195 fee to address it. At the best that leads to a dis-incentive to produce a bug-free product. iCode actually makes less money when it produces a bug-free product. Rush a release to market and make more on the support. At the worst it leads to purposeful bugs with the intent to make more money on the support.

As for legal options, I don't think that the district attorney is the right forum. I think that this is more a job for the state Attorney's General. If anyone else thinks that the 'pay for bugs' policy is illegal (fraud I am thinking) I would encourage you to send an email AND a fax or letter to your state's AG.

Dave

[Speedyg]

Hi There,
I just came across the website and read Netsuite.
We are a company in South Africa and have been
fighting to find an all in one solution. After contacting 10
different companys such as Vcommerce and others
we opted for Netsuite, and are currently implementing it.

Why? Because they actually returned emails, took their time
and were willing to consider a South African company and a "small"
business and had a partner here.

Bryan, we are in the same business I'd love to have a chat with you.
www.speedworkz.co.za (old website)

[Gromit]

I'm not a big fan of character assassination, fact-based or otherwise. Clearly there are a lot of people here who are less than thrilled with iCode and who have tried, with varying degrees of success, to resolve them with the company.

If you are indeed an iCode employee, I would think you'd alert your management to this forum -- they should know about the complaints and take steps to correct what could be a huge PR problem for the company.

[danw]

I've spent the past few weeks looking into this and I think I'm coming to the conclusion that NetSuite is the way to go. The reasons are:
1. Fully hosted solution - we are a small company and I would rather not hire infrastructure people at this point. Sure I could buy SW and then find a place to have it hosted, but NetSuite provides it all for a reasonable price.
2. Comprehensive functionality - It seems that they have pretty much everything I need and I can customize if required at a later point.
3. Large Revenue/Customer base - They are in the 100s of millions in revenue with 1000s of customers.
4. Backed by Larry Ellison - large revenue/customer base combined with Larry Ellison indicates they will be around for a little while at least!
5. so maybe in the long run I pay a bit more, this will probably save me a bit more in the short term which is more important to me. I would rather pay less now and have a robust solution running quickly at a lower cost. This will allow my business to grow quickly and buy the time the costs end up catching up with me (4 -5 years down the road), I hopefully over the hump and have grown the company significantly and it becomes less of an issue.

Any thoughts on my reasoning???

[Dynamo321]

I hear great things about Interprise Suite

[JMaguire]

For what it's worth, I'm a journalist who has talked with a lot of e-commerce owners about software platforms, and I'm impressed with the positive buzz about NetSuite. It seems like a company that offers a reasonably priced product that's well-respected in the industry, and the company is on its way up.

[iCode employee]

Davecove

You can't really believe that iCode deliberately creates bugs in the code to create a revenue opportunity. Do you really believe the company is less profitable if it creates a bug free product?

Application software unfortunately has bugs from time to time. iCode offers it's customers the opportunity to purchase an annual maintenance plan whereby customers may call customer support for assistance (an unlimited number of times) on a variety of subjects including "how to" questions so the customer can better utilize the application. Customers on the annual maintenance program also receive all the upgrades and enhancements to the product free. (Incidentally, this annual maintenance fee is lower than all of our major competitors.)

I realize you don't like being charged for assistance but try to understand that there is a cost involved with customer support and iCode does not, under any circumstance, try to create issues in the software so we can charge for the issue to be resolved.

[Dynamo321]

Our corporation handles it:
Software bug reports or help: Always Free
How to questions: Chargeable $7 per call billable in 10 min increments.

Yes every application will have bugs. It is hard to write a 100000 page word document without one spelling mistake and having every chapter back link to multiple chapters in a flawless manner. In large applications like ours and the one we are debating recursiveness is always a pain. The intent though is of course to never have bugs.

We have worked tirelessly over the last 7 years to ensure our software is relatively bug free however the statement still remains true: Where man meets computer, there will always be a bug :)

[InfoSourcing]

Hi,

My 2 cents here, few extended thoughts on “your reasoning”.

I've spent the past few weeks looking into this and I think I'm coming to the conclusion that NetSuite is the way to go. The reasons are:
1. Fully hosted solution - we are a small company and I would rather not hire infrastructure people at this point. Sure I could buy SW and then find a place to have it hosted, but NetSuite provides it all for a reasonable price.
2. Comprehensive functionality - It seems that they have pretty much everything I need and I can customize if required at a later point.
3. Large Revenue/Customer base - They are in the 100s of millions in revenue with 1000s of customers.
4. Backed by Larry Ellison - large revenue/customer base combined with Larry Ellison indicates they will be around for a little while at least!
5. so maybe in the long run I pay a bit more, this will probably save me a bit more in the short term which is more important to me. I would rather pay less now and have a robust solution running quickly at a lower cost. This will allow my business to grow quickly and buy the time the costs end up catching up with me (4 -5 years down the road), I hopefully over the hump and have grown the company significantly and it becomes less of an issue.

Any thoughts on my reasoning???


1. Fully hosted solution - Yes, fully hosted solution would be the next wave in software. Keeping up with technology and passing on the benefits to consumers is very important. NetSuite does that very well, for their hosted solution they have given a rich user interface with help of AJAX technology/tool, making the applications equally good to desktop/thick client usability.

2. Comprehensive functionality - "One size doesn't fit all..." being a hosted solution you lose certain functionality such as POS, which is sole functionality requirements for retail industry.
Being hosted solution helps start-up companies to have web presence at easy, but gets painful to grow in terms of capitalizing on new marketing trends such as SEO and SEM, which is a must in today's world and don’t want to be dependant with vendor.

3. Large Revenue/Customer base - Hmm this is good point, but again as we have seen when companies grow big you either hit the ceiling or you grow fat for your legs :) and you may crash like QuickBooks with millions of users who can't grow beyond 5/10/15 users (with enterprise maxing out at 15 users)

4. Backed by Larry Ellison - True good in a way, but history of Larry shows he can do what he wants to do, who knows if he takes all of us for a boat ride in his yatch - Rising Sun

5. Long run - Calculating the ROI is tough, let's say if you are selling some fast moving products and would like to cash out then I would suggest a powerful ecommerce with good backend office mgmt tool, would increase your online sales and you see a greater healthier ROI.

a) For now NetSuite is commanding in the mini-ERP space, however there are new-comers joining the race, look out for Interprise and Evolution, they have right technology for serving SMB and their cost is much better than NetSuite, only drawback is they yet to gain credibility.

b) Everest is not a bad software, reading the comments on this forum tells the tale of the management resulting in such an outcry, but it has a good integrated solution though, better than obsolete solutions like Accpac, Great plains, Peachtree and QB where the applications are not integrated and are based on old technology.

It would be interesting to see Microsoft’s new Project Green application supposed to be released in 2007 integrated with MS office.

Ideally the Future of ERP is based on "Software As A Service (SAAS)" where you rent/lease the service for conducting your e-business at easy. I would give 5 star ratings for NetSuite and re-visit in 6 months time frame and check if it still holds good.

[Dynamo321]

1. Fully hosted solution - Not to disagree but I will disagree. I believe a blended solution will be the wave of the future. Fully hosted solutions will always have the limitations of needing a hosted connection. When you can work online and offline in a seamless manner a new type of experience can be found. There is only one business application that I know of that does this flawlessly. I know others have tried and failed or are trying in some way but still have a long way to go.

2. Comprehensive functionality – Once again here is where a blended solution does the best of all worlds. With a semi-disconnected application you can benefit for local POS and other application data while instantly sharing that data around the world. That is again why I believe a blended solution will dominate the marketplace in the months and years to come.
“Being hosted solution helps start-up companies to have web presence at easy, but gets painful to grow in terms of capitalizing on new marketing trends such as SEO and SEM, which is a must in today's world and don’t want to be dependant with vendor.”
I completely agree with you and that is why again in my opinion a blended solution is the best way to go. You still maintain control while realizing full versatility.

As for the other thoughts: Great points info-sourcing and great point of view. You rock as always!

I think this is the best link any modern business should read:
http://darwinproductions.net/Presentation/ShowSlide.aspx?SlideID=3C6B75A3-6D09-4D0A-9D28-FD6E73D30293&FileName=%7e%2fPresentation%2fWhyChooseEvolution.x ml
If not for a company to purchase the solution but to simply understand what can be achieved with a semi-disconnected reality as this is what new technology is bringing to the table. Soon the old limitations of the past will become exactly that: A thing of the past.

[Gil10018]

If you are truly looking at a small ecommerce site, I believe a hosted solution would suffice for day to day business needs. Now... if you're looking at things that require real time automation, for example, please consider that a hosted solution is limited to your connection speed and as such might be an additional bottleneck in your business flow. Consider that you are shipping packages from your a warehouse, your flow might look like this: your shipper will need to pick the products (are you considering barcoded products with serialized inventory?). Scan the invoice, Scan the items (are you able to connect a bar code reader to the platform you're choosing?), seal the box, print the label and go to the next invoice. In general, this might take up to 20 seconds. If you're using a hosted solution, the data transfer over the web might take 20 seconds in itself, not withstanding the physical labor desribed above. Also consider automation, a HUGE request from our clients. Does a hosted solution offer Business Process Management (BPM) or Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)? Consider that in today's market, business is most always time of the essense. Does your system automatically react to situations? Can you build intelligent automation in a hosted solution? Consider a real world scenario... We have a client with a 5 man crew that ships over 1000 packages a day. I cannot imagine how to accomplish this without automating a multitude of processes. Mind you that this company started 3 years ago with only a husband and wife team. Take care of your bottlenecks by automating your processes. Not only will this increase your capacity but will lower your costs and most likely increase your customer satisfaction! A hosted solution is a bottleneck in itself.

I hope this help,
Gil
Devix Group LLC
http://www.devix.com

[Dynamo321]

Right on Gil.

[natureday]

You should put money into a business like that, and don't go the cheap route cause you are going to own it for life (hopefully.)

[rsingh]

I would like some feed back on Southware. I am helping new racing parts company pick accounting software. The plan on being both click and morter.

Thanks

[DMuse]

Just wondering if folks saw that Everest Software (used to be iCode) announced version 3.0 of Everest Advanced yesterday.

Part of the announcement was a new software developers kit and a focus (or maybe "refocus" is a better word) on developing channel partners.

It will be interesting to see if opening up the software lets resellers help SMBs get their money's worth.

[coopertool]

Hi

I have seen all the issues here with Icode. I bought Icode advance about a year and a half for a project that never came off. But I am thinking of using it now becuse of the integration. What is really needed is the service, pos, ecommerce and accounting. But now I am having second thoughts. My first experience was good. Dont know about now.

Please advise

[InfoSourcing]

Hi,

If such thoughts cross your mind next time drop me an email info@info-sourcing.com or visit my website http://www.info-sourcing.com/ERP_Enterprise.htm and maybe I have a solution that fits every budget and every customer to keep them happy...

I exclusively help Everest customers, coz of in-depth knowledge in the enterprise software and passion to succeed.

Everest is a grt integrated software with a bad customer satisfication not sure why? I will let icode mgmt figure that out ...

[coopertool]

To all existing everest software owners, I wish you the best. If you are a small business and you looking for solution, I warn you ahead of time, do not consider everest. These people are crazy. What I am telling you here is first hand experience. I bought a sing user from which has now expired the service contract. After reading this forum I called them today. Lo and behold. Below is a copy of the quote they sent me to renew my service. I know we have reps on the forum but unfortunately, this came directly from the company. Remember this is only a single user. I am sure they gone senile.

It was a pleasure speaking to you. Per our conversation, the support renewal pricing for your license is:

Base license (Accounting and Inventory): $1040
Ecommerce: $800
Databridge: $240
POS: $400
MailBridge: $192
PageBoost: $240
CRM Studio: $800

I have not included Payroll or Pocket Everest, per our conversation.

[jazzcat]

Coopertool,

Did the software stop working? Or, does the software continue to work but the support contract is expired?

In either case, if I were in your position, I would write back and say that I'd be glad to pay $1,000 for all of those items OR I'd be glad to pay a consultant to move me to something else. Give them a choice: either they can continue to keep you as a valued customer and make $1,000, or they can continue to be unreasonable and make $0. There are lots of consultants and others here chomping at the bit to sell this kind of s/w - with Interprise you can get it for free, and there are other free or low-cost solutions as well.

[rowen]

3 days ago the CEO of icode sent out a customer mailing via email and copied about 1/3 of his customers email addresses into the cc: block. An "ad hoc forum" immediately sprang into life as angry customers began hitting "reply to all" and asking if anyone was actually satisfied with Everest. You wouldn't believe how mad some of them are. A few are "satisfied".

A real forum was just opened up for Everest customers. Here is the link:
http://hstore.infopop.cc/groupee/forums/a/cfrm/f/51310998921

The administrator says you're invited to join and read comments from actual users and anti-users alike. He has posted a link to this forum so Everest users can become aware of other options and read the views of a larger community.

[coopertool]

Jazzcat
I aint want anything more to do with everest. I pretty much told them go to hell. I will reccomend to all my clients to use Interprise Suite. I intend to support them 100%.
Did you not read that many of the people want to leave too?

[ESE]

a little late in the thread but I just found it.

we are using Everest Advanced for www.eurostyleseast.com and personally I'm really pleased with the results....

but....

I would never recommend it.

Having a technical background I was able to skip the training. The learning curve wasn't too steep. I know if I didn't have such a background, I would have been in big trouble. The ecommerce site is lacking to say the least, and many little hacks had to be implemented to get it up to par with most of the other feature-full ecommerce packages out there. Accounting is antiquated and isn't even used. Luckily we didn't pay much for the software, as the only features that are worth anything are the inventory and sales/purchasing processes.

The lack of application customization is probably my biggest disappointment.

Our service contract is up and will not be renewed. When we require a new all-in-one solution, it'll be with a different company.

[furniture guy]

Has anyone looked at Adept.net or AccTrak21 for in-house, integrated solutions instead of netsuite, or everest? Adept.net looks pretty good, except the web part is a little fuzzy to me.

[EricS]

This thread started a long time ago but I will add my experience. Everest works great for us BUTTTTT almost all said before is true. I started a company using peachtree which got outgrown. Found Everest looked great bought into about 2 months before the supposedly restructured the company for a single user license $3500 ($2500 for license $1000 for like 10 1 hour phone calls for implementation). One really needs a strong IT background to get it going on your own I cant not count the hours in setting it up, reading and getting the knowledge I needed to make it work. Good now but not when you are busy trying to make a business work. I imagine that’s what a lot of the other peoples problems were but they paid for implementation it should have worked and worked right. We did not renew our contract with Everest because to get what we originally paid $2500 for now cost $5200 a year every year when we signed up it was $500 and we were told that it would not change. Everest is decent software in my opinion but there people skills **** they will not budge on their prices for support. And the support you receive is ok at best in my experience. At the $2500 price it was a great deal now I think it’s not worth it

[Dynamo321]

You are not the first person to have said that. I am quite astounded at the number of truly frustrated customers Everest presently has. It hurts me to see companies spend well earned money on solutions that provide headaches at every corner. I believe this is one of the reasons why so many are flocking to our software.
I am sorry you had such a frustrating experience EricS. Thank you for your post.

[asr_guy]

Another option to packaged products is to hire a solid e-commerce development company that can build a custom site for you based on open-source products. I work with such a company and they build SEO friendly e-commerce sites from the ground up. Then I add in web analytics to improve conversion, online marketing techniques, and affiliate systems to handle the sales channels.

I recommend customers hire an appropriate e-commerce consultant to do the evaluation of the needs and select either a package (e.g. like Evolution) + some tweaking or else go with a custom site.

Much of it depends on the amount of integration you need to do with other systems, which is the "gotcha" in e-commerce.

Regards,
Peter

[lightguy]

Has anyone tested this package yet? www.distone.com

I have no idea what pricing is, but they claim to be "Small Business" not "Icode Small Business" I'm still having sticker shock from the quote from Icode. They just don't get the mass market of 1-10 users.

[InfoSourcing]

Hmm a new one haven't heard about them, need to research more on this one ... But did you look into Evolution, Interprise Suite they should fit in your "small business" category....

Everybody defines