MainStreet Commerce BusinessFlow as an SMB solution

[jf0721]

Mainstreet is a FL based small company that seems to have an ecommerce platform that seems to look ideal for online retailers. It is competitively priced that looks barely affordable enough for an SMB to buy it.

IT is written in .net and uses MS SQL Database. They seem to have a robust backoffice that can be wired to have a website that can have a custom look and feel.

So far so good, right? Well, that is the mousetrap. The company does not understand that software is only as good as the company's service level, which is non-existent. They have no appreciation for their customers or care if they stay or leave. Since they get paid for their license fee upfront, they have no interest in keeping you as a customer anyway. The CEO who runs the company has no ethics, very difficult to talk to. Their deployment of the software is what it comes down to. Their resources are limited and therefore they make their customers wait forever. They always want to get paid upfront for their "professional services", which is for deployment but anytime you express your dissatisfaction, they are ready to suspend your work.

Bottom line, this company needs to educate itself and clean up its act to appreciate their customers. They need a professional CEO who understands software = service and put in place a proper project management process.

Otherwise, they will go down in flames and hurt many companies in the first place.

My recommendation is to make a solid date specific product deployment plan that is associated with payment, which includes their license fee. Once you pay that you are stuck anyway. And tie in penalties if they delay. They will agree to anything until you make payment, after which they won't even hear you.

They need a good lesson and a shake up to realize their true potential.

I will be happy to provide further info if anyone needs it.

[CSR]

MainStreet Commerce has recently announced that BusinessFlow is available for $950 a month - with no up front license fee, no per user fees, and you get all of the software. You can also cancel if you have an issue. Services are optional and you can have your own developer work the project.

Customers say that customer service/tech support is rapidly improving.

[JEccles]

CSR - I get the impression that you only joined this forum in order to promote Mainstreet Commerce. You do not address any of the concerns that people have had, you are only reposting the same canned response.

[CSR]

There are absolutely legitimate concerns and a heavy dose of truth in the delays as professional services has been very busy. When someone wants MainStreet to do project work for the company, they have had to wait for a slotting which has been sometimes 4 or 5 weeks out. Acknowledging is hopefully a strong indication that there is a sincere desire to improve.

During the past few months, the company has been working hard to correct and improve this and make more resources and documentation available. This has involved implementing a support portal, providing 2 hour "hot topic" conference call sessions, and beefing up support for third party developers who can do implementations of BusinessFlow.

There most definitely is an appreciation for customers. Hopefully, the blend of strong software along with improved project management process, and just generally trying to reach out in every way to provide assistance will benefit everyone.

[jf0721]

MainStreet Commerce has recently announced that BusinessFlow is available for $950 a month - with no up front license fee, no per user fees, and you get all of the software. You can also cancel if you have an issue. Services are optional and you can have your own developer work the project.

Customers say that customer service/tech support is rapidly improving.

I would like to see this announcement made to their existing customers. As one of them, I have not heard anything about monthly payment. If that is the case, I would like to see a prompt refund if they truly mean service.

Incidentally, this software belongs to freeware board with all the bugs in it. Since they don't even fix the bugs in a timely manner, they are looking for guinea pigs to test their software and receive $950 per month on top of it all. Clearly, they can't get away with charging $15,000 for their license anymore.

By the way, watch out for new tricks coming to their existing customers. They will try to charge them for any new features they may add or bugs they may fix in their new version by way of asking them to pay an upgrade fee when they have already charged for Annual Maintenance & Support.

Stay away from this company at all costs or put everything in writing if you have to do business with them. Don't forget to build in penalties and never ever ever pay anything upfront.

With their non-performance, I would not be surprised if they went out of business soon.

[SnapTotes]

We have used MainStreet software for the last 9 months. I will admit that it took some time to get up and running, but a large part of that was just becoming familiar with the system and its capabilities. Now that we are fully operational, I would highly recommend MainStreet as an extremely reasonably priced ecommerce solution (and we paid the full, non-hosted license fee - so with their new pricing scheme, it becomes even more cost economical).

On the positive side, MainStreet provides a great deal of functionality (as well as integration with a large number of 3rd party vendors) across the entire fulfillment cycle which has created significant time and money savings for us. We looked at a number of systems before purchasing Mainstreet and, without a doubt, Mainstreet provided the most functionality among its cost peers. To get similiar functionality, other solutions were priced at $100k or more. In addition, the fact that the system is centered around the .Net platform allows for a great deal of flexibity when customizing your site. We did a lot of customization on top of the basic MainStreet infrastructure and have been very pleased with the experience.

There are certainly limitations, but I think it is fair to say that any system will have its limitations. The ones that I consider to be of note would be a limited ability to define user access levels (it is pretty much all or nothing which is not sufficient when you want to outsource specific portions of web site management and fulfillment), a lack of cart level promotions such as free shippping or specific dollar amounts off of an order, and the lack of integrated gift cards.

As for after-sales support, I would agree with earlier posts that MainStreet has not always been the fastest to respond to inquiries (at times, it seems that easy questions were quickly answered, while more difficult ones required that we proactively follow-up until we received a response). It is important to mention, however, that when we have had issues with support, MainStreet has always bent over backwards to make certain we are satisfied with the ultimate resolution. In other words, the service received has always excellent, even if sometimes not as quick as we might expect. More recently, with the introduction of their new Incident Management System, we have experienced much more timely responses and are hopeful that this trend will continue.

Another thing worth noting is that we have found MainStreet to be very good about updating known bugs on a regular basis which suggests that support is very effective. As for major upgrades, it would appear that they only release these after significant thought and testing. We have not gone through a major upgrade yet, but look forward to some of the additional functionality scheduled for the next major release.

[JEccles]

I will be interested in seeing if SnapTotes does any more posting, since he/she has no contact info in their profile, or if they joined just to post this response.

[jf0721]

I concur with JEccless. I can see Mainstreet having to defend themselves by way of pretending they are a user as their customers do not have anything good to say about the company with the exception of the same few references they provide to everyone.

The fact remains:

This is a company that

- charged a huge license fee upfront to their customers when they are now charging a small monthly fee for it

- kept its customers waiting for their "Professional Services" for months before wiring their websites and getting paid upfront for it.

- has no project management process

- offers no real set up & training without charging $125/hr for it

- does not stick to a timeline for deployment of the system even though they show a deployment schedule (excuses are always given why the schedule is to be ignored)

- sells an application with bugs that do not get fixed promptly

- provides support with 2 day turn around when you report an incident if you are lucky

There is more so stay tuned.

[SnapTotes]

Obviously, there are a few very upset MainStreet customers on this forum. Again, our experience was different and I tried to provide an honest evaluation of that experience. I suggest you check out our site (www.snaptotes.com) if you want to see how we integrated MainStreet into our site. We are indeed a real site and a real MainStreet customer.

[JEccles]

My deepest apologies SnapTotes . You have a great site and I can see why you are happy with Mainstreets. Though - it could use a little of optimization yet. How are your numbers as far as hits and page views?

[jf0721]

Snaptotes, I am very happy for you that your experience is currently satisfactory with Mainstreet. We paid a lot of money to them and we would like to be satisfied too. Unfortunately we are not there yet.

Have you used an outside developer or have you exclusively used Mainstreet? You can send me a private message if you wish. I tried to send you one but I could not as that option was not available.

[SnapTotes]

jf0721 - I can't seem to do private messages either for some reason or another. We did use an outside developer for the customization work, but they worked very closely with MainStreet support throughout the process. If you are interested in speaking further, try calling me (Jay) at 866-7007-3186, x101.

JEccles - I would also be interested in speaking further with you about optimization if you want to call as well.

[CSR]

A note from MainStreet CEO Michael Sandler. At MainStreet, we are quite proud of our software package and our dedication to professional services and support. As posted above, we have a user that is upset. Despite the comments posted, we have reached out to this user and still sincerely welcome the opportunity to help this user within the constraints of the project resources and budget.

More broadly, we are always seeking to improve and our participation in this forum provides the opportunity to acknowledge issues (such as we did in a previous posting included below for reference), provide insight, and get feedback. As our user community benefits, so do we.

[Previous posting (for reference): There are absolutely legitimate concerns and a heavy dose of truth in the delays as professional services has been very busy. When someone wants MainStreet to do project work for the company, they have had to wait for a slotting which has been sometimes 4 or 5 weeks out. Acknowledging is hopefully a strong indication that there is a
sincere desire to improve. During the past few months, the company has been working hard to correct and improve this and make more resources and documentation available. This has involved implementing a support portal, providing 2 hour "hot topic" conference call sessions,
and beefing up support for third party developers who can do implementations of BusinessFlow.]

To give insight into the pricing change...we eliminated the up-front license fee for hosted deployments so that companies feel comfortable trialing BusinessFlow. It is $950/month subscription with no per user and no per module fees. Users may cancel their subscription if they wish. While this is a sign of our confidence in our software, it also acknowledges that
because BusinessFlow is complex, it may require trial for a company to thoroughly evaluate how they will operate on the system and determine their use of the SDK to customize BusinessFlow for their company. Although BusinessFlow is standards based, there is most definitely a learning curve for a developer using the SDK and companies need to accurately scope their
deployment. When a subscription starts, professional services are not included in the $950 as some companies do not require any assistance and therefore do not need to pay for assistance. So, we have not bundled it.

On deployments...we have been investing very heavily in the usability of the SDK to support third party developers. This is critical to our ability to scale and is consistent with the core values of the package - open and flexible. We are also working on our project management process whereby we require more definitive specifications if MainStreet engineers are to be used for a
project. Because the software is flexible, in times past, we have used that flexibility to craft solutions for clients through our professionals services without having a detailed specification. While we would like to continue that creativity in our engineering, driving more clarity into solution specification will be good for the client and good for MainStreet to define success and reach it.

These changes and genuine efforts are part of our investment and commitment to the continued success of BusinessFlow and the BusinessFlow community.

Best Regards,

Michael Sandler
CEO
MainStreet Commerce
Edit by admin: no contact info permitted on the forum, thank you

[jf0721]

I have made several postings about Mainstreet Commerce over the past several weeks and I still stand by them. There seems to be no significant improvement in the company's customer support practices.

I would recommend a strict agreement in writing to secure an acceptable service level for customer support for anyone who is considering Mainstreet Commerce.

[ntsvijay]

Snapnotes/jfo721 -

I happened to see this forum page and instantly thought of sharing our experience with MainStreet SDK. Our company Dot Com Infoway has worked with MainStreet Commerce team directly and they are very professional in dealing things with us.

We are a software development company located in India and our developers have very good knowledge about MainStreet SDK. So if you want any help on customizing MainStreet SDK then our developers can work with you directly and fix things for you.

We understand the core engine of the SDK and to say about it - "It has an excellent architecture which is stable and robust". You can call me at 91-44-4262000 * 110.

Best Regards,
Vijay Radhakrishnan
Chief Technology Officer
Dot Com Infoway