That was one of my concerns in my post earlier. Twigmo started out free, now it is like $10 per month. It would suck to get dependent on Searchanise and then have the same thing happen.
I definitely am against using searchanise. I guess as long as it is an addon that can be turned on and off, I'll keep using CS-Cart. I just think it is completely stupid to have to have your search use a system on a different server.
CS-Cart stated that it is cool, just look at everyone who is using it. Even a cart that has 3,000,000 products. I say woopty do. If all my friends were jumping off a bridge, it doesn't mean I'm going to. (something my mom taught me years ago). Personally, I like as much as I can contained on my server with little or no connections to other server. Maybe that is just me though.
Thanks,
Brandon
[quote name='admin' timestamp='1336765339' post='136270']
No, this is not a correct assumption. You can customize your CS-Cart as you wish, CS-Cart code is open, and you can adapt the Quick Search add-on from version 2.x to 3.x if you wish or use some third party solution - that's up to you. Searchanise is just to provide you with the same(actually with much more) functionality but via a different technological approach.
[/quote]
Ha, ha, ha. You say “no” and then you turn around and say “yes” we will have to “adapt” something that was already “adapted” or we will have to find a “3rd” party solution. That was my point! Thanks for confirming it.
It is SO hard to not get sarcastic on the “Searchanise” type stuff. Yikes! I'm not sure I am as concerned about “Searchanise” as I am about the drive to have the shopping cart rely more on 3rd party websites outside of my server. We do have some things, but as little as possible. Not to mention, without a doubt this “Searchanise” will either become something else that is a monthly charge or you will start data mining searches on our website.
I think searchanise move is a mistake. There is many ways to enhance your site search other than using 3rd party service. why not develop an add on for apache solr on cs-cart? it have most searchanise features, or just develop quick search more.
I think its our right to have all our store info in our servers and not be dependent on 3rd party. All other carts offer that!! I've hated twigmo and searchanise move.
[quote name='StellarBytes' timestamp='1336730926' post='136236']
For the record, I can confirm I shall cease all CS-Cart developments if such an integral store function such as the search becomes reliant on a 3rd party server or becomes a paid feature.
[/quote]
Wow, big call if this is such a show stopper for you. It is optional to use searchanise as you can see.
Will be sorry to see you go, but please let us know what your alternative choice of cart software will be if this is where it all ceases for you?
Thanks for more feedback on Searchanise! Again, I would like to state that Searchanise is just an option - you can use it if you like or just skip it if you don't.
[quote name='clips' timestamp='1336788084' post='136284']I'm not sure I am as concerned about “Searchanise” as I am about the drive to have the shopping cart rely more on 3rd party websites outside of my server. [/quote]
Your CS-Cart does not rely on Searchanise service even if you use it for the in-store search and navigation - you can turn it off at anytime and the store will continue functioning without any problem using default search and navigation mechanism.
Same if your cart cannot get a response from Searchanise service for any reason - native CS-Cart search will work in this situation and store functioning will not be affected.
can you also work on site speed? dom elements? CDN? something that makes this cart faster. 3.000.000 products you talking about i am sure that site is slow as hell. ( if not any heavily customized)
you come up with lots of changes, addons etc. but never most important ones for a cart.
make a search on google, everybody is talking about how slow this cart is. and it is slow, very slow!
charge more money on a well functioning cart and forget about making money on extra addons or 3rd party services. you will have more money at the end with the better functioning cart.
I think the admin is missing the point of our concern. When people in the forum started discussing a mobile skin, cs-cart responded with Twigmo rather than building the mobile skin into the cart. Bad decision. When people in the forum started complaining about the poor search, cs-cart respondesd with [font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][color=#282828]Searchanise rarther than build the functionality into the cart. Bad decision. I see a trend forming here. Whant next new feature will be added as a new product rather than being built into the cart.[/color][/font]
[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][color=#282828]All of this has been a poor businnes model by [/color][/font]Simbirsk Technologies. They have a wonderful cart and rather than enhancing it to dominate the market they decided to focus on new product lines. Stick with the one product until it dominates before you break off into too many pieces. I think Simbirsk has lost its way. But it is not to late for them to revert back to enhancing their main product, and I hope the admin realizes that now.
Cs-cart 3 has the potential to dominate the market in this price point. Don't miss the opportunity by diversifying functionality.
David
P.S.
And for god's sake please get around to fixing the Product Configurator
I agree totally with you
[quote name='Triplets' timestamp='1336829535' post='136304']
I think the admin is missing the point of our concern. When people in the forum started discussing a mobile skin, cs-cart responded with Twigmo rather than building the mobile skin into the cart. Bad decision. When people in the forum started complaining about the poor search, cs-cart respondesd with [font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][color=#282828]Searchanise rarther than build the functionality into the cart. Bad decision. I see a trend forming here. Whant next new feature will be added as a new product rather than being built into the cart.[/color][/font]
[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][color=#282828]All of this has been a poor businnes model by [/color][/font]Simbirsk Technologies. They have a wonderful cart and rather than enhancing it to dominate the market they decided to focus on new product lines. Stick with the one product until it dominates before you break off into too many pieces. I think Simbirsk has lost its way. But it is not to late for them to revert back to enhancing their main product, and I hope the admin realizes that now.
Cs-cart 3 has the potential to dominate the market in this price point. Don't miss the opportunity by diversifying functionality.
[/quote]
I also agree.
I'm running alt-team's multistore, and I'm not even sure if Twigmo/Searchanise will run properly with all the heavy modding done to our cart environment. At least if it was built-in directly to CS, then I could make the necessary adjustments myself.
[quote name='silverbestbuy' timestamp='1336829472' post='136303']
can you also work on site speed? dom elements? CDN? something that makes this cart faster. 3.000.000 products you talking about i am sure that site is slow as hell. ( if not any heavily customized)
[/quote]
We do work a lot on CS-Cart speed. When 3.0.1 is released we will put the most of our efforts to increase CS-Cart speed in next versions of 3.x by optimizing its code, CSS, images, JavaScript. And Searchanise is an extra option to get your CS-Cart store running faster.
In reference to the Searchanise and Twigmo uproar, I think that this all boils down to a key market that Simbirsk Technologies (among so many other cart developers) have failed to recognize, the “middle ground” between a high-end E-Commerce solution and a low-end E-Commerce solution. This is a mistake that so many cart developers have made. You have the high-end (Magento Enterprise) that requires an annual fee of $14,420.00+ USD and the low-end (CS-Cart Professional) at $295.00 USD per license. Where is the middle ground? I am not a Fortune 500 company so I cannot afford $14,420.00+ USD a year but I would like deeper functionality then what CS-Cart provides. However, if I want deeper functionality, then shouldn't I pay for it? Of course I should and this is where Simbirsk Technologies missed the boat on the Ultimate Edition ($650 USD just doesn't cut it). The Ultimate Edition should target the segment of customers who are in between the high-end and low-end with a price point of $2,495.00 USD (one-time payment with a $495 USD annual upgrade fee) and offer more advanced functionality such as “Ultimate Search”, not a 3rd party service on another server but “built-in” in the Ultimate Edition. “Ultimate CMS” with the ability to create categories and specify page locations (Apache mod_rewrite custom URL's and page locations) for greater flexibility, “Ultimate SEO” for much deeper SEO functionality and “Ultimate Mobile”. Again, not a 3rd party service but built-in. There are a myriad of features that CS-Cart has (in basic form) that can be expanded upon and made into a truly great product. But customers should be willing to pay for it, after all Simbirsk Technologies is a company that relies on a healthy revenue stream (as all companies do) and there is no reason for its customer base to demand deep and rich functionality in a cart when their total investment is $295.00 USD to $650.00 USD. You get what you pay for.
So I ask Simbirsk Technologies, why not tap into the “middle ground” market at a price point that will allow you to invest into deeper and richer functionality “built-in”? It is a segment that is growing and has yet to be truly recognized or tapped into. Yes, there are services such as MagentoGo and BigCommerce that charge more but they require a hosted solution. I don't want a hosted solution, I want my own server and I don't want to have to rely on 3rd party services to enhance functionality, I want it “built-in” thus it seems far more logical for a $2,495 USD (one-time payment with a $495 USD annual upgrade fee) solution.
This is what Ultimate Edition should have been:
- Unlimited Store-Fronts (possible with the higher price point)
- Deeper and Richer Functionality (possible with the higher price point)
- Aggressive Bug Fixing (possible with the higher price point)
- Much Improved Architecture for a truly streamlined upgrade process (take note from WordPress, you backup your files and database and literally click “Upgrade” and it's done.) (possible with the higher price point)
$2,495.00 USD One-Time payment
$495.00 USD Annual Fee for upgrades
Key Notes:
License is on our server, no required hosting
Enhanced functionality is built-in, no required 3rd party (external server) services.
Lastly, for those complaining about CS-Cart's speed, get a dedicated server! Do you really expect to drive a significant amount of traffic and orders on a shared hosting account? This again is a problem between the great divide of the low-end versus the need for a “middle ground” solution and I just don't feel that the $650 USD price point for Ultimate will allow for the development of “built-in” rich functionality thus we are experiencing a splinter effect of 3rd party services to enhance functionality. Not a good direction in my opinion.
Hi, I'm a little disappointed about CS providing [color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif]Searchanise and Twigmo on a paid basis.[/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif]Although I can afford the mods but I don't think it's worthy of buying one. I'm not judging the qualityof the mods, but I think you guys pick the wrong way, what you need to do is to build a more efficient cart and earn more store owners.[/font][/color] And I don't think the 3rd party mod will help you earn more money in the long run.
[quote name='Phoenix' timestamp='1336862463' post='136332']
In reference to the Searchanise and Twigmo uproar, I think that this all boils down to a key market that Simbirsk Technologies (among so many other cart developers) have failed to recognize, the “middle ground” between a high-end E-Commerce solution and a low-end E-Commerce solution…
[/quote]
Could not have said it any better - 100% agreed by all accounts.
[quote name='liufuduo' timestamp='1336875259' post='136333']
And I don't think the 3rd party mod will help you earn more money in the long run.
[/quote]
I don't know if the 3rd party developers agree with you? It is after all open code and developers will continue to fill the middle ground, and there is a lot of CS Cart developers here developing some pretty good add-ons.I don't have a problem with that.
I'm still not understanding what all the fuss is about, nor enough information on Searchanise to know how it works and why it's so controversial?
[quote name='admin' timestamp='1336765339' post='136270']
Actually there are more than 100 live store already connected to Searchanise for several months. One of them have more than 3,000,000(yes, 3 million) items and it works very well and fast.
[/quote]
Could you provide us some examples to see this new search in action?
[quote name='Phoenix' timestamp='1336862463' post='136332']
In reference to the Searchanise and Twigmo uproar, I think that this all boils down to a key market that Simbirsk Technologies (among so many other cart developers) have failed to recognize, the “middle ground” between a high-end E-Commerce solution and a low-end E-Commerce solution. This is a mistake that so many cart developers have made. You have the high-end (Magento Enterprise) that requires an annual fee of $14,420.00+ USD and the low-end (CS-Cart Professional) at $295.00 USD per license. Where is the middle ground? I am not a Fortune 500 company so I cannot afford $14,420.00+ USD a year but I would like deeper functionality then what CS-Cart provides. However, if I want deeper functionality, then shouldn't I pay for it? Of course I should and this is where Simbirsk Technologies missed the boat on the Ultimate Edition ($650 USD just doesn't cut it). The Ultimate Edition should target the segment of customers who are in between the high-end and low-end with a price point of $2,495.00 USD (one-time payment with a $495 USD annual upgrade fee) and offer more advanced functionality such as “Ultimate Search”, not a 3rd party service on another server but “built-in” in the Ultimate Edition. “Ultimate CMS” with the ability to create categories and specify page locations (Apache mod_rewrite custom URL's and page locations) for greater flexibility, “Ultimate SEO” for much deeper SEO functionality and “Ultimate Mobile”. Again, not a 3rd party service but built-in. There are a myriad of features that CS-Cart has (in basic form) that can be expanded upon and made into a truly great product. But customers should be willing to pay for it, after all Simbirsk Technologies is a company that relies on a healthy revenue stream (as all companies do) and there is no reason for its customer base to demand deep and rich functionality in a cart when their total investment is $295.00 USD to $650.00 USD. You get what you pay for.
So I ask Simbirsk Technologies, why not tap into the “middle ground” market at a price point that will allow you to invest into deeper and richer functionality “built-in”? It is a segment that is growing and has yet to be truly recognized or tapped into. Yes, there are services such as MagentoGo and BigCommerce that charge more but they require a hosted solution. I don't want a hosted solution, I want my own server and I don't want to have to rely on 3rd party services to enhance functionality, I want it “built-in” thus it seems far more logical for a $2,495 USD (one-time payment with a $495 USD annual upgrade fee) solution.
This is what Ultimate Edition should have been:
- Unlimited Store-Fronts (possible with the higher price point)
- Deeper and Richer Functionality (possible with the higher price point)
- Aggressive Bug Fixing (possible with the higher price point)
- Much Improved Architecture for a truly streamlined upgrade process (take note from WordPress, you backup your files and database and literally click “Upgrade” and it's done.) (possible with the higher price point)
$2,495.00 USD One-Time payment
$495.00 USD Annual Fee for upgrades
Key Notes:
License is on our server, no required hosting
Enhanced functionality is built-in, no required 3rd party (external server) services.
Lastly, for those complaining about CS-Cart's speed, get a dedicated server! Do you really expect to drive a significant amount of traffic and orders on a shared hosting account? This again is a problem between the great divide of the low-end versus the need for a “middle ground” solution and I just don't feel that the $650 USD price point for Ultimate will allow for the development of “built-in” rich functionality thus we are experiencing a splinter effect of 3rd party services to enhance functionality. Not a good direction in my opinion.
[/quote]
I think this would all boil down to CS-Cart conducting a market survey to see whether they can generate enough demand for it. Perhaps a CS-Cart Diamond / Premium of sorts would be ideal for this market segment?
Either way, I'm definitely in the same boat as you are. I'd be willing to pay out more than the current price points to get the extra bells and whistles.
Just because someone comes up with something new and better doesn't mean it has to be:[list=1]
[]Standard within an existing product
[]Free
[/list]
Notably standard search within the product basically sucks and should be fixed to provide basic functionality.
Work goes into developing new things. Do you really think the $300 each person pays for cs-cart lasts very long when paying developers full time to develop new features? A staff of 10 over a year costs…? In the US, that would be about $1M (salary, taxes, benefits, overhead), not sure about Russia.
Personally I would rather have seen them basically return the “cart” to being just a sales mechanism to allow people to shop and order and move all the order management (ERP, CRM, shipping, fulfillment, whatever you want) off to separate applications. They could then keep the cost of the base cart low, keep from bloating it with tons of unused code that has to be maintained and charge appropriately for the needs of each user.
If you wanted an enhanced search, you could buy Google's for $100/month or other 3rd party site indexing search engines or you could buy Searchenize for $25/month. If it doesn't have value to you, don't buy it.
You then end up with a layered product that could be bundled with certain sets of functionality, you can buy addons to extend it, or new management consoles to manage multiple sites, inventory, sales channels, etc.
I also don't see what all the fuss is about. Searchanise is an option (you don't have to use it), cs-cart thinks it's a good product, and people have to pay a little bit of money for it. If it's good, I'd be happy to do so but I have to say I'm also not really a fan of having my software run on another server even though there is a safety net (normal search will be used)
But honestly, my search is working just fine right now! Also, I have no complains about site speed at all.
2nd, I think some customization is always needed. No matter if I pay $2500 or $300 for software. Yes, I'd be happy to pay more for cs-cart if that would make it perfect. But more expensive competitors like interspire have exactly the same problems and charge much more. So I'm fine with paying a couple of 100 dollars for cs-cart and a couple of times that amount to have the shop exactly the way I want it to be.
About cs-cart in general: I do think they should have stayed with the 2 brand for a while longer to be able to fix all the bugs and little annoying things. And then, when that is all done, move forward to version 3. Now, all these things will be again not fixed in version 3. Instead they are adding things hardly anyone asked for to gain new customers.
If you ask me, it's better to make your existing customers super happy so they will post positive things about the product and gain new customers like that.
Not that I'm unhappy. I have 3 shops (for a super price) I'm extremely happy with, that work just great after some little fixes and customizations by some developers here. And again, it seems like this will always be needed no matter how expensive software is. A perfect shopping cart is simply almost impossible to make with all the local differences that exist.
Then my (ugh) professional opinion about cs-carts marketing strategy: I think cs-cart should make it's product somewhere around the $1250 - 2000 range. This way they will filter our the customers that whine about spending $50 for an add-on and keep the shop owners that are serious.
Less customers for more money = less complaints = more time for development and support.
Of course they could keep a community version without support that beginning shop owners can use.
[quote name='tbirnseth' timestamp='1337018950' post='136399']
Personally I would rather have seen them basically return the “cart” to being just a sales mechanism to allow people to shop and order and move all the order management (ERP, CRM, shipping, fulfillment, whatever you want) off to separate applications. They could then keep the cost of the base cart low, keep from bloating it with tons of unused code that has to be maintained and charge appropriately for the needs of each user.
[/quote]
Agreed. They could then do as other shopping carts and offer a “mod” area on their site. They could then make some for free if they wish and then have some that would be for sell. I know this is not their normal business model, but I think it would be better. The biggest problem would be going “backwards” for all of us who have been using it for a while. I would have to admit that there are some portions of CS that I don't use. Then there are other parts (like the affiliate program) that I still cannot figure out how to make it work.
[quote name='tbirnseth' timestamp='1337018950' post='136399']
Notably standard search within the product basically sucks and should be fixed to provide basic functionality.
[/quote]
We don't have a lot of problems with the base search, but we have put more thought in to our “search terms” and we not only add misspelled words when we create an item, but we watch our server for what people are actually searching for and then we add them to our “search terms” to make our search better.
I have had plenty of fun with Google's idea of what search terms supposedly fit some of our terms (through their PPC) and I have been way less than satisfied as there really appears to be nothing better than not only a real person doing it, but someone within your company making sure search terms fit. So I just not feel that outsourcing my search to a company who knows nothing about my product is a good idea.
[quote name='Flow' timestamp='1337020655' post='136402']
Then my (ugh) professional opinion about cs-carts marketing strategy: I think cs-cart should make it's product somewhere around the $1250 - 2000 range. This way they will filter our the customers that whine about spending $50 for an add-on and keep the shop owners that are serious.
Less customers for more money = less complaints = more time for development and support.
[/quote]
You're kidding, right? Complaints will NEVER stop and I'm not so sure you would want them too. No matter who you are, no matter what you sell, no matter how much you sell people will give their opinions, or as you say, complaints. That is what brings things to the surface or betters things. I'm not so sure it would be a good idea to squash creativity or the thoughts of others. Shoot, if it wasn't for someone “complaining” about the horse drawn carriage we may have never gotten the automobile.
In regards to “keeping the shop owners that are serious”, I'm not for sure that is a fair statement. I'm not going to question the person who does a couple thousand a month any more than the one doing a hundred thousand a month. As your sales grow you can usually afford to expand and you usually do. To say the one who sells more is any more “serious” is just not accurate.