Network Solutions eCommerce Review

Network Solutions eCommerce is the name of the eCommerce platform created by Network Solutions, a company with more than 30 years of experience in the field. Sometimes the platform is simply known as “Network Solutions.” Network Solutions provides many other related services including website hosting and email hosting. The company manages more than 7 million domains and more than 350,000 websites. Overall nCommerceSpace seems like a pretty good product.

eCommerce Features

From an administrative point of view, Network Solutions eCommerce offers everything you need including a website builder, free templates, and fully customizable layouts. You are able to upload your products in bulk and you have a backorder system and advanced inventory management at your disposal. Traffic statistics and performance reports give you the information you need to refine your layouts and your marketing promotions. You can sell both physical and virtual goods. Other shopping cart software programs are a little easier to use; still, there isn’t much to complain about here.

Network Solutions limits you to 100,000 products, which may be a bit restrictive if you’re a big business. For small businesses this isn’t going to be an issue. You’re allowed to post color variations and other options for your items, and you can upload as many photos as you want for each of your products. We didn’t find anything about product comparisons or showcase zooming, however, and it doesn’t look like you can display product videos. In terms of security, there is no uptime guarantee mentioned, probably because hosting is optional. Fraud prevention is not included, nor did we find reference to a delivery network or staff access controls.

Marketing Features

Network Solutions eCommerce is search-engine friendly and has a number of marketing features you can use to get the word out about your products. You are able to create discount offers and coupon codes and can choose different price levels to each product. Gift certificates, customer reviews, and featured products can help you promote on-site, and customers can also create and manage shopping lists. Mailing lists are included to help you to send relevant email messages to customers.

While these features are good, there are a lot of marketing features that we’d have liked to see, but didn’t find any mention of. There is no daily offers option, and we didn’t find anything about direct social offers or social networking. We also didn’t find reference to a loyalty program, though you could probably use the multiple pricing tiers to manage this. This may be more of an ease of use issue rather than a marketing concern.

Pricing

There are three different pricing tiers available including Network Solutions eCommerce Starter, Standard and Premium. The Starter package costs $29.95 per month after a $49.00 setup fee. For this price you can sell up to 25 products (so this would only be good for a very small store, and a bit expensive at that). At the next tier up, you can sell up to 300 products for $56.19 per month after a $49.00 setup fee. At the top tier, Premium, you may sell up to 100,000 products for $115.95 per month after a $99.00 setup fee. Needless to say, since some services allow you to sell unlimited products for comparable prices, Network Solutions eCommerce is not the most affordable choice out there. Mobile support is optional, only included at the most expensive level. Product variations only come in at Premium as well.

Customer Support

Customer support is available and included at all levels. 24/7 access to help via telephone, email, or live chat makes it easy to get in touch with the company if you have questions. You can also turn to the user manual, FAQ, or knowledge base to get more answers to your questions. We didn’t find video tutorials, however, and we also didn’t find a user forum anywhere, which does impact the score we gave to Network Solutions. There is a company blog but it seems to be out of date at the time of this review.

Conclusion

Network Solutions has been around a very long time and is very experienced in internet business, so we know that they have a solid reputation and can definitely deliver a great product. There were some shortcomings with the marketing features of Network Solutions eCommerce, but the program seems to be top notch where administrative features are concerned. It seems like a number of important features involved in product display do not apply unless you pay for Premium membership, however, such as mobile display support and product variations. It’s also inconvenient that there are no video tutorials or user forums, though the fact that 24/7 phone support is included with all the packages is definitely great. Prices are a bit expensive in general. For creating a solid eCommerce software solution with a few drawbacks, we give Network Solutions a 5/10.