Shopping Cart Comparisons, Vendio

 

There are about as many ways to sell online as there are things to sell online with eBay, Amazon and many other eBay alternatives offering to host and promote your listings and open source communities like OSCommerce and CRE Loaded offering to help you create your own website to list products on.

This makes getting clear, correct easily understood information is a little hard, especially when those who know the most are often the least able to express their knowledge clearly in a language that will be understood by everybody. So Chinavasion will be running a series on the different eCommerce software / platform options available to you, go through how they work and talk about their benefits and problems.

This is the sixth part in an ongoing series. For an introduction to other shopping systems check out the links below:

• • OSCommerce Review, The OSCommerce Beginners Guide
  • Shopping Cart Comparisons, Zen Cart Review
  • Shopping Cart Comparisons, Yahoo Shopping Review
  • Shopping Cart Reviews: Auctiva Commerce Vs Yahoo Shopping Vs OS Commerce Vs Zen Cart

   

  Or see reviews for all Ecommerce Platforms

Vendio

Vendio falls into the same ecommerce solutions as Yahoo Shopping and Auctiva Commerce as a platform which is relatively easy to use but comes at a cost. Like Auctiva, Vendio is a lot cheaper to list on than Yahoo Shopping, with an online store on Vendio being completely free.

Where Vendio and Auctiva really excel is their ability to take those listings off their respective marketplaces and put them into other locations. Vendio, for example, has an option to put products into Amazon, eBay, Google Product Search, Shopping.com, Shopzilla and your own online store. Vendio charges US$10 a month plus the other sites’ listing fees plus image hosting fees of three USD a month for 3MB of space. After that the company charges final value fees of 1.95% of sales for monthly sales between 1- US$1000 and 1.5% for monthly sales between US$2500.01 and US$5000.

Vendio also sets itself apart from Auctiva by offering:

• find and replace editing
• add images inline
• advanced scheduling
• best offer support
• second chance offer support
• giving works support
• auto delete and manage images
• advanced inventory management
• eBay refund process support
• create new orders on the fly
• add to existing orders
• cancel order updates inventory
• federal express supported

Amongst other features

While you’d think that, with all these features people would be fighting each other to sing Vendio’s praises this is not in fact the case. Its reputation in the marketplace is mainly positive however it does have its detractors. Members of the Auction Software review community (auctionsoftwarereview.com/software/vendio-platform.asp ) give it an overall review rating of 3.5 out of five, saying while the overall experience can be good for people starting out in the industry it can be buggy, not exactly the most SEO friendly of sites and not the most ideal option for people who have been in the industry a long time.

A writer from All business auctions (allbusinessauctions.com/blog/2009/05/16/vendio-platform-review-the-answer-for-ecommerce/) also suggested in May this year that while there had been a lot of effort poured into Vendio there were little things to iron out. So, as you can see, it would be worth examining Vendio alongside Auctiva Commerce and Yahoo Shopping if you’re looking for a fairly easy entry point and you aren’t adverse to spend a little money to do it.

Let us know what you think of Vendio in the comments below or take part in our polls to let us know which ecommerce platform you run your business with.

• Name: Vendio
• Number Visitors: 40,540 U.S. visitors per
  month According to Compete.com
• Set-Up Cost:$0
• Monthly Cost:$0 (to list on the site
  only)
• Transaction Cost:1.95% per month (for
  sales $1000 or less)
• Customizationability:Quite customizable
• Help:vendio.com/ecommerce/training
• Software Requirements: None
• Find At: vendio.com